Rethinking the Monomyth
by Reg Harris
Copyright © 2013 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission. For permission, please contact me.
Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey model, the monomyth, is usually described as containing between 12 and 17 stages. Campbell, himself, lists 17 stages in "The Adventure of the Hero," part one of his book The Hero with 1000 Faces (1949). Other scholars put that number as low as 12.
In Chapter 4 of Hero (1949, p. 245), Campbell summarizes the monomyth in a chart (right) that shows the journey in four main stages-Call to Adventure, Tests, Flight and Elixir-with other elements listed as contingencies within those stages. In that chapter, Campbell also makes the point that describing all of the contingencies in the journey process is impossible:
The changes rung on the simple scale of the monomyth defy description. Many tales isolate and greatly enlarge upon one or two of the typical elements of the full cycle (test motif, flight motif, abduction of the bride), others string a number of independent cycles into a single series (as in the Odyssey). Differing characters or episodes can become fixed, or a single element can reduplicate itself and reappear under many changes (p. 246).
About the only structure that stays constant in all hero's journey stories is the basic, three-stage structure which Campbell derived from the rite of passage: Separation (Departure), Initiation and Return.
In this two-part article, I'd like to present another interpretation of Campbell's model in which elements are viewed as a process rather than separate, equal stages. In part one, we review Campbell's model as he described it. In part two, I offer an alternative, nine-stage arrangement of his model. This approach allows us to subordinate some "stages" as conditions or contingencies, giving us a nine-stage structure that is more abstract and, thus, more universally applicable. (The link to my reworking of the monomyth is at the bottom of the page, after the chart.)
Campbell's 17-Stage Model of the Hero's Journey
Before we look at my reinterpretation, let's review Campbell's model. The chart below lists the 17 elements Campbell presents in part one of Hero, with a brief description of each stage. I use Campbell's order, treating each element equally. Please note that, because of limited space, my descriptions are relatively simple. Some of the elements, such as the Scared Marriage and the Atonement with the Father, can be extremely complicated, and describing them fully would require more time and space than we have here. References are to Campbell's classic work The Hero with 1000 Faces (1949) and The Power of Myth (1988), Campbell's interviews with Bill Moyers.
STAGE | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|
| Departure | (Copyright © 2013 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Neither this table or its descriptions may be copied in any form without written permission.) |
| 1. Call to Adventure | The Call is an event or perception that invites us into the adventure. As Campbell writes, “The familiar horizon has been outgrown; the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for passing the threshold is at hand" (1949, p. 51). The Call might be something small that triggers a revelation or awakens a potential, or it might be a major change in our lives that sends us on a journey of adjustment and adaptation. If we hear the Call but try to continue our normal life, we may find that our old life may seem hollow and meaningless. |
| 2. Refusal of the Call | If we do reject the Call, for whatever reason, life may become a shadow of itself because the insight or change which triggered the call in the first place does not simply go away. It lies at the edge of our awareness, a constant reminder of the possibilities we have rejected. As Campbell wrote, "Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or 'culture,' the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland ...and his life feels meaningless" (Campbell, 1949, p. 59). |
| 3. Supernatural Aid | “For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero-journey is with a protective figure...who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass” (Campbell, 1949, p. 69). The "amulet" may be a magical item, a magical power or life-saving advice. In life, we won't find magical help, but, according to Campbell, once we have committed ourselves to the journey, "doors will open" to us, often where we had not know there even were doors (1949, p. 73). |
| 4. Crossing the First Threshold | After accepting the Call, we cross the First Threshold and enter what Campbell called "the zone of magnified power" (1949, p. 79). The passage usually has an aura of finality: it opens one way, and we can't go back. In myth, the Threshold usually appears as an entry: a gate or the mouth of a cave. For us, it often involves a major life change, but it could be something as simple, yet symbolic, as becoming ill or walking out a door. At the Threshold the we meet our first challenge: the Threshold Guardian. The Guardian challenges the our readiness for the journey. In myth, the challenge may be physical or mental: a fight or a riddle. In life, Guardians tend to be more psychological: fear of failure or the internalized voices of our parents, whose warnings protected us in childhood, but cripple us as adults. |
| 5. The Belly of the Whale | The Belly of the Whale marks the final separation between the known world and the unknown world, the death of our old life and the birth the new. "The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth," Campbell writes, "is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale" (1949, p. 90). We achieve our release from the from the belly when we fully relinquished our attachment to the world we are leaving behind. |
| Initiation | |
| 6. The Road of Trials | (NOTE: In a chart, the Road of Trials looks relatively short, but in reality it usually consumes the bulk of the journey.) In the Road of Trails the hero faces a series of challenges and temptations that begin his or her transformation. As Campbell explained, "...the trials are designed to see to it that the intending hero should be really a hero. Is he really a match for this task? Can he overcome the dangers? Does he have the courage, the knowledge, the capacity, to enable him to serve?" (1988, p. 126). The challenges breakdown old understandings and behaviors, our self-limiting ego, and help us develop skills we'll need to face the ensuing challenges. |
| 7. Meeting with the Goddess | The polar natures the Goddess and the Temptress (below) are really just two aspects of the complex and ambiguous Great Mother archetype. While they are depicted as female, they really transcend gender in their symbolism. According to Campbell (1988), the female archetype represents the paradox of duality in life (time within eternity, death within life). "She is time and space itself, and the mystery beyond her is beyond all pairs of opposites" (p. 167). Meeting with the goddess, or Sacred Marriage, symbolizes the hero's transcendence of duality, and thereby the winning of "the boon of love (charity: amor fati), which is life itself enjoyed as the encasement of eternity" (Campbell, 1949, p. 118). The hero's earlier tests were symbolic "of those crises of realization by means of which his consciousness came to be amplified and made capable of enduring the full possession of the mother-destroyer" (Campbell, 1949, p. 121). With the transcendence of duality also comes a transcendence of ego, of I and thou, and the assimilation of poles as dual aspects of one reality. |
| 8. Woman as Temptress | The Temptress represents the physical or material temptations in life, temptations that may divert a yet-unready hero from his journey to enlightenment. The hero whose consciousness has been insufficiently amplified by the Road of Trials may be lured into the Temptress' world and have to redouble his efforts to push through. However, while the Temptress may represent the lure of the material life, she should not necessarily be seen only as an adversary. She does force the unready hero to deal with a weakness in his consciousness, thereby helping him resume his quest. |
| 9. Atonement with the Father | In the Atonement with the Father (or other powerful figure representing adulthood), the hero faces the final transformation: the complete abandonment of ego attachment and the acceptance of life's often-cruel dual nature (Campbell, 1949). In making this transformation, "The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands—and the two are atoned" (Campbell, 1949, p. 147). Essentially, in Atonement the hero dies to his infantile, immature nature and is initiated through the father into the larger, transcendent world. Campbell tells us that "finding of the father has to do with finding your own character and destiny" (1988, p. 166). To do that one must relinquish attachment to the mother (dependence) and move to independence (and, finally, interdependence). |
| 10. Apotheosis | The Apotheosis (or "deification" of the hero) continues Campbell's theme of transcendence and rebirth: "the wall of the pairs of opposites is shattered and the candidate admitted to the vision of the God" (1949, p. 170). The entrapment of ego consciousness and the duality of the physical world have been broken, and the hero is free. Campbell writes (1949), "the childhood parent images and ideas of 'good' and 'evil' have been surpassed. We no longer desire and fear" (p. 162), and "both male and female are to be envisioned, alternately, as time and eternity...the two are the same, each is both, and the dual form...is only an effect of illusion" (p. 170). The enlightened hero may be venerated or worshipped. |
| 11. The Ultimate Boon | Following Apotheosis, the hero achieves the goal of the quest: the Ultimate Boon. In mythology, the Boon may be a physical object or special knowledge which the hero will take back to his people. In Hero, Campbell discuses at length the spiritual boon, the "life-transmuting trophy." He describes attaining this Boon as the point when "The prodigious gulf between those childishly blissful multitudes who fill the world with piety and the truly free breaks open at the line where the symbols give way and are transcended...Here is the line beyond which thinking does not go, beyond which all feeling is truly dead" (p. 177). It is not uncommon for the journey to end here, if the hero has achieved all that was |
| Return | |
| 12. Refusal of the Return | According to Campbell, the monomyth should conclude with the hero bringing the Boon back to renew his community (1949, p. 193). However, not all heroes return because the return can pose difficulties. For example, the hero, who has experienced the transcendent, must accept the "passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life..." (1949, p. 218). And why try to teach one's "speech-defying" insights to the ignorant, unbelieving multitude. Why not just leave the world to its own devices and remain in bliss? The the hero could refuse the return because she fears that her hard-won enlightenment will be corrupted by contact with the material world. In other cases cases (i.e., soldiers), the hero may be addicted the excitement of the journey itself. Returning to the banalities of life is unacceptable, so the hero embarks on another quest (or re-enlists). Or the hero may experience a fall of sorts, a return to ego-consciousness, feeling that he is too good for the old way of life. Whatever the reason, the Refusal of the Return is not unusual. |
| 13. The Magic Flight | In myth, if the hero has been blessed by the gods and charged with taking the Boon back to the world, the Return is supported and triumphant. "On the other hand," Campbell writes (1949), "if the trophy has been attained against the opposition of its guardian, or if the hero’s wish to return to the world has been resented by the gods or demons, then the last stage of the mythological round becomes a lively, often comical, pursuit. This flight may be complicated by marvels of magical obstruction and evasion" (p. 197). |
| 14. Rescue from Without | A variation on the Refusal of the Return occurs when the hero does not really refuse to return, but is only sidetracked or delayed. In this case, the hero may require Rescue from Without. The need for rescue could occur when the hero is too weak to manage the return alone or when the hero is temporarily enthralled by the "bliss of the deep abode." Rescue from Without differs from the Refusal of the Return in that to be rescued, the hero must accept the return; a hero who refuses the return will not be rescued. As Campbell tells us, "If the hero...is unwilling, the disturber [rescuer] suffers an ugly shock; but on the other hand, if the summoned one is only delayed...an apparent rescue is effected, and the adventurer returns (1949, p. 207). |
| 15. Crossing the Return Threshold | "This brings us to the final crisis of the round," Campbell writes, "to which the whole miraculous excursion has been but a prelude – that namely, of the paradoxical, supremely difficult threshold-crossing of the hero’s return from the mystic realm into the land of common day. Whether rescued from without, driven from within, or gently carried along by the guiding divinities, he has yet to re-enter with his boon the long-forgotten atmosphere where men who are fractions imagine themselves to be complete. He has yet to confront society with his ego-shattering, life-redeeming elixir, and take the return blow of reasonable queries, hard resentment, and good people at a lost to comprehend" (Campbell, 1949, p. 216). The returning hero's problem, then, is to maintain the cosmic consciousness won in the adventure when plunged back into the material world, with its attractions and delusions. |
| 16. Master of the Two Worlds | The hero must use the knowledge, skill and wisdom gained on his journey to benefit his culture, but he must be able to do this without allowing the distractions of everyday life to destroy or distort his message. He must be the master of the Two Worlds. Essentially, the Master can convey profound insights about life--through parables, symbols, etc.--so that the message is not only understood by the world, but so that the medium of the message is not distorted or reshaped by a biased and fearful audience. As Campbell explains, "Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the casual deep and back – not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other – is the talent of the master" (1949, p. 229). |
| 17. Freedom to Live | Essentially the Freedom to Live is the freedom to live without the attachments and illusions of temporal, material life. "The goal of the myth," Campbell tells us, "is to dispel the need for such life ignorance by effecting a reconciliation of the individual consciousness with the universal will. And this is effected through a realization of the true relationship of the passing phenomena of time to the imperishable life that lives and dies in all" (1949, p. 238). The hero is freed from worries of past and future, of life and death, of I and other. "The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become," Campbell writes. "He does not mistake apparent changelessness in time for the permanence of Being, nor is he fearful of the next moment (or of the "other thing"), as destroying the permanent with its change...Thus, the next moment is permitted to come to pass" (1949, p. 243). |
With this review of Campbell's original model complete, we can now take a look at my reworking of the monomyth, the Hero's Journey as a Process.