“It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth–penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words,” says Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero With A Thousand Faces. The power of mythology and its relevance to our lives rarely crosses the minds of 21st century citizens, especially in the West, where religion and fairy tale have been drowned out by politics, business and the mundane of daily life. While none of those things are bad—in fact all three are necessary facets, to some extent, of the operation of our nations—they have overwhelmed what everyone is searching for, which, according to Joseph Campbell, is this thing, this intangible place, a life, or adventure, that matches what can been seen in ancient mythology and to ultimately understand our place in the Cosmos. A Hero’s Journey.
Campbell centers his argument around identity, in that every so-called hero succeeds not because of who they are, but because of what they discover. An understanding of the cosmic state—that everything is part of a large system, in which everyone is connected and everything is set-up for us to eventually reach a set destination—is more powerful than any sword, any magic or any power of the gods. “And the exploration of [the divine] dimension, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the hero.” Take, for example, the story of Christianity. According to Campbell, the point of the story is the realization that God is love, that God is everything and that we are all connected through Him. “The good news, which the World Redeemer brings and which so many have been glad to hear, zealous to preach, but reluctant, apparently, to demonstrate, is that God is love, that He can be, and is to be, loved, and that all without exception are His children.” Campbell uses this example to demonstrate how through this belief system followers can fulfill their inner desire, which is to be connected through some cosmic power, impossible to be understood, but necessary to believe to satisfy this inner desire.
As expected, due to this book’s focus on mythology, Campbell also discusses Good and Evil, Mortality and Fate and Free Will. According to Campbell, each of these sub-categories of mythology are meant to demonstrate the balance in the universe. A hero may seem good, because he/she sets out to solve a problem that will benefit many people, but along their journey the hero must come to the realization that they are just as much evil as they are good. Fate and free will are also balanced. The hero can make their own decisions, take wrong turns or do the wrong thing, but in the end, Fate cannot be denied, she will get her way. “Perhaps some of us have to go through dark and devious ways before we can find the river of peace or the highroad to the soul’s destination.” Campbell argues that our body will deviate from our fate because we cannot understand it all at once, but our soul knows where we are heading and it ultimately guides us to our fated destination. And death, another piece of mythology, is yet another part of the hero’s journey, an event that helps guide the hero to his/her place in the universe. Just as Evil is balanced with good and fate with free will, death’s importance in the journey is balanced with life’s fulfillment.
Finally, Campbell argues that spirituality, religion and belief are all ways of trying to understand our set place in the cosmic system. We all desire to discover this place, so we try different physical ways of achieving this (whether money, power, respect or any other). Once these methods have failed, we turn to religion or science, a belief, in order to discover where we belong so that we can live that craved adventure within our place in the universe.
“The multitude of men and women choose the less adventurous way of the comparatively unconscious civic and tribal routines. But these seekers, too, are saved—by virtue of the inherited symbolic aids of society, the rites of passage, the grace-yielding sacraments, given to mankind of old by the redeemers and handed down through millenniums. It is only those who know neither an inner call nor an outer doctrine whose plight truly is desperate; that is to say, most of us today, in this labyrinth without and within the heart. Alas, where is the guide, that fond virgin, Ariadne, to supply the simple clue that will give us courage to face the Minotaur, and the means then to find our way to freedom when the monster has been met and slain?”
- The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell
Campbell comes to the conclusion that each of our psyches understand what we want within our place in the universe. All we have to do is follow our own hero’s journey to learn from our own psyche and that of others to allow us to find our place in the cosmos and to best live in it. That is our innermost desire, whether we know it or not.
J. Fletcher Brown 