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Posts Tagged ‘atheism’

The Hero and the God (The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Monomyth Chapter 3)

01 Aug

Book cover of The Hero with a Thousand Faces

…the adventure of the hero normally follows the pattern of the nuclear unit above described; a separation from the world, a penetration to some source of power, and a life-enhancing return. – p 35

This is the most basic outline of the rather circular hero story. Unlike the outline of any old story, the conflict, the uncomfortable realm, is supernatural in some way in the hero story.

Everywhere, no matter what the sphere of interest (whether religious, political, or personal), the really creative acts are represented as those deriving from some sort of dying to the world; and what happens in the interval of the hero’s nonentity, so that he comes back as one reborn, made great and filled with creative power, mankind is also unanimous in declaring. We shall have only to follow, therefore, a multitude of heroic figures through the classic stages of the universal adventure in order to see again what has always been revealed. This will help us to understand not only the meaning o those images for contemporary life, but also the singleness of the human spirit in its aspirations, powers, vicissitudes, and wisdom. – p 35-36 (emphasis added)

Campbell lists the steps of the universal hero story, which are also the chapters in his Part I (We’re still in the prologue for this and another chapter):

1 Departure

1.1 The Call to Adventure
1.2 Refusal of the Call
1.3 Supernatural Aid
1.4 The Crossing of the First Threshold
1.5 Belly of The Whale

2 Initiation

2.1 The Road of Trials
2.2 The Meeting With the Goddess
2.3 Woman as Temptress
2.4 Atonement with the Father
2.5 Apotheosis
2.6 The Ultimate Boon

3 Return

3.1 Refusal of the Return
3.2 The Magic Flight
3.3 Rescue from Without
3.4 The Crossing of the Return Threshold
3.5 Master of Two Worlds
3.6 Freedom to Live

– p 36-37

He draws a distinction between a “hero of the fairy tale” and a “hero of myth” : “Typically, the hero of the fairy tale achieves a domestic, microcosmic triumph, and the hero of myth a world-historical macrocosmic triumph.” – p 37-38

He writes:

The godly powers sought and dangerously won are revealed to have been within the heart of the hero all the time. He is “the king’s son” who has come to know who he is an therewith has entered into the exercise of his proper power-“God’s son,” who has learned to know how much that title means… the two-the hero and this ultimate god, the seeker and the found-are thus understood as the outside and inside of a single,self-mirrored mystery, which is identical with the mystery of the manifest world. The great deed of the supreme hero is to come to the knowledge of this unity in multiplicity and then to make it known.

My thoughts & questions

  1. The story of the hero demands the supernatural. Campbell as an atheist doesn’t believe in the supernatural, yet he believes we must live out the subconscious hero story for our own well-being. His conclusion is thus that we just need to go through the motions.
  2. What if, instead, the repetition of this same hero story in every human heart and in every culture is a story written by an author, directing us to the life we’re supposed to be living and/or to the real ultimate hero of all reality? I don’t think the data drives the conclusion, but the worldview of the author.
  3. Campbell’s desire to go through the motions includes stepping through a stage of rebirth. Isn’t being born something that someone else does to a person? How does one walk through a passive step in denial of the one who births? Or is this just a weakness of language?
  4. One of my ongoing questions is whether the biblical call to discipleship is a call to all to engage in the hero story themselves. The quote above lends itself well, as he is using biblical language of dying the world and being reborn. Biblical Christianity speaks of this being a spiritual reality as well as the symbolism of baptism. In this case, it seems that delaying baptism is putting the breaks on the story, not really engaging with it; being stuck in what Campbell calls The Refusal of the Call.
  5. How does this compare with the list compiled by Lord Raglan I posted yesterday?
 
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Posted in Books, Story, The Hero Story, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

 

Hero With a Thousand Faces: Tragedy and Comedy (The Monomyth, chapter 2)

25 Jul

Book cover of The Hero with a Thousand FacesThe happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved.  p 25-26

Again Campbell’s worldview provides the driving source behind and the limitations of his research into the Monomyth. His religion (a term which G. K. Chesterton defined as one’s basic understanding of everything) leads inevitably to hopelessness. To Campbell, every story with a happy ending is a deception.

Campbell reasons that since even “the envied of the world” “know what bitterness of failure, loss,” etc. (p 27-28), we value tragedy higher than comedy, unlike the Greeks. It’s more true to life.

But was comedy – a life of happy endings – more true to life for the Greeks? We’ve got advancements in science, medicine, philosophy, and more. We don’t tend toward tragedy because it’s true to our lives, but the Greek life was somehow characterized by happy endings. We tend toward tragedy because of our worldview.

Campbell says that we shouldn’t read comedies – stories with happy endings – as contradictions to reality, but “as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man…because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, [the objective world] is beheld as though transformed.”

That is – don’t let this challenge your hopeless worldview, your instructions are to pretend. To behold the world as though it is transformed, knowing all the while that it isn’t, and all is damned. His proof? Myths that have happy endings are dream-like:

Even when the legend is of an actual historical personage, the deeds of victory are rendered, not in lifelike, but in dreamlike figurations; for the point is not that such-and-such was done on earth; the point is that, before such-and-such could be done on earth, this other, more important, primary thing had to be brought to pass within the labyrinth that we all know and visit in our dreams. – p 29

It’s true, myths are primarily about conveying truths, rather than true stories. It’s brilliant that values have been conveyed through human history through story.

A brief example of truth through untrue stories: One can learn about bravery from Spiderman or sacrifice from Superman much more than you can learn about bravery from the dictionary definition of those terms.

My questions:

  1. Tolkien’s comment to Lewis about the story of Jesus being the ultimate myth because it was the best, but also was actually true. The “deeds of victory” in the story of Jesus would primarily be the passion – his death, crucifixion and resurrection. These are recorded by multiple gospel writers in very earthy, lifelike, gory detail. It’s not make believe language, and the details that are there don’t fit in a fairy tale story. Is Jesus’ story an outlier the his rule? Are there others?
  2. How much of Campbell’s views of mythology are driven by his religion/worldview? In both chapters so far we’ve seen his worldview limit the discussion. Alternatively, Ecclesiastes sets a similar tone about all being meaningless/hopeless.
  3. With Campbell’s direction in the last chapter to take up the hero story as a necessary tool for human psychological health and now in this chapter as a way to pretend things are different (beholding the world as though transformed), it’s feeling like this book is largely a mental health manual for atheists, how to use stories when they have no stories to believe in.
  4. In the lack of a story to believe in, where do people turn? Is this why politicians become larger than life? (I’m reminded of how Obama promised the sea levels would lower just because he was nominated instead of Clinton.)
 
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Posted in Spirituality, The Hero Story, The Hero with a Thousand Faces