The late and much-beloved scholar of mythology, Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), established his public reputation with the publication of his book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, in the late 1940s. Remarkably, for an academic work, it is still in print.
Campbell's cross-cultural studies of the myths of ancient peoples brought him to the conclusion that these diverse stories were all telling the same small number of myths but in slightly different language. He further concluded that there was an archetypal plot line within these myths which remained constant from one culture to the next.
The Hero With A Thousand Faces outlines one such plot line. Campbell recounts in his book dozens and dozens of ancient hero myths from unrelated cultures around the world to come up with a common denominator for a plot line, the archetypal hero story.
Campbell showed that the story always began with an Everyman just living his hum-drum life. Suddenly and unexpectedly, either by chance or by choice, Everyman is either pulled out of his ordinary life or chooses to leave his ordinary life to launch into a great adventure, whose ending he cannot know at the beginning.
The adventure, according to Campbell, then goes through several specified stages. The hero will journey into a dark world where he meets various forces or entities which he has to deal with. Along the way he encounters a teacher who gives him the instruction in new skills he will need to learn to successfully achieve his goal. No later than this part of the journey the hero becomes consciously aware of what that very specific goal is.
Striving for his goal, the hero is challenged to his limit, reaching a peak culminating experience, that Campbell calls a "supreme ordeal." The result is that the hero "gains his reward" and is forever changed by the experience. He often gains some new powers and sets off with them. Eventually the hero re-emerges to his society with these new abilities bringing a boon to his society which somehow restores that society.
Campbell's work with this archetype was the basis for George Lucas' original three movies in the Star Wars saga (Episodes 4 - 6). In the story of Luke Skywalker, Lucas was simply retelling one of the world's oldest myths for a new generation. While Episodes 1-3 of the series have proven to be every bit as entertaining as the original episodes, they do not follow the Joseph Campbell plot line, but instead set the stage for it.
Lucas was not the first to tell the story of the Hero's Journey. More than 2,500 years ago the ancient Greeks told this same myth with Ulysses as the hero.
Campbell today is remembered for his video-taped television interview series in which the kindly, wise retired professor from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, brings to life the ancient stories with a twinkle in his eye.
Click here to view one of the interviews, a 56-minute long piece in which Campbell discusses the hero's journey. Note the video is 43 MB in size, and the video quality isn't great (hey, this is a WMV file from P2P after all). Beware download times if you're on dialup; even on high speed this puppy can take four or five minutes to download.
BTW, Bill Moyers, the interviewer in this video clip, is a real piece of work. He was the press secretary for US president Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s during the Vietnam War. In those days Moyers was the enthusiastic young mouthpiece and flunky for some of the ugliest war mongers America was able to produce during the 20th Century.
Given his background, I can't figure how it is Moyers got to interview one of the finest spiritual scholars of the era just 20 years after the Vietnam War ended, unless as an ordained Baptist minister, Moyers suddenly realized he had some guilt to exculpate. While Moyers' side of the interview drips with the obscene hypocrisy of his past, note how deftly Campbell sidesteps all of that in the interview, which speaks to Campbell's ability to remain detached from the ugliness of the material world, a sure indicator of a wise spiritual soul.
While Moyers is a bad choice as interlocutor, the interview itself is still a delight as Campbell steals the show. For instance, midway through it Campbell briefly discusses his oft-quoted and now famous advice to undergraduates who are uncertain and confused about their career path . . .
. . . and it seems the most natural thing in the world. For those who would like to see more of Campbell on video, click here to download a 252 MB zipfile with the complete set of six Campbell/Moyers interviews in WMV format.
And if that's not enough for you, fire up your mp3 player for seven hours of Joseph Campbell voice recordings. Included are mp3 files of him talking on the following topics: Experienceing the Divine, History of the Gods, Interpreting Symbolic Forms, Mythic Vision, and The Religious Impulse. The World of Joseph Campbell recordings bring us Campbell's lectures on the Arthurian and Holy Grail legends. Click here to download the 220 MB zip file.
