There is so much in this chapter, that I feel somewhat daunted at the idea of summing up my thoughts on it. I admit that the last two sections are my favorite with the second and third not too far behind. I'll deal out by sub-chapters centering discussion around quotes from Campbell.
1. The Road of Trials
Though this section helped set up the rest of the chapter, I feel as though this was also perhaps the least interesting of the subsections. After opening the chapter, Campbell recounts the tale of Psyche's trials to gain Cupid. This portion reminded me of reading C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces, the other year, and what an excellent and fascinating a reshaping of the myth it was. That's a bit of an aside. From Campbell's description, we understand the gist: hero's go through trials and tests to attain their goals.
Despite the simple transfer of information about hero's trials, I found several of Campbell's claims rather fascinating, for one the following concerning medicine men:
The medicine men, therefore, are simply making both visible and public the systems of symbolic fantasy that are present in the psyche of every adult member of their society. "They are the leaders in this infantile game and the lightning conductors of common anxiety. They fight the demons so that others can hunt the prey and in general fight reality."
Who are our "medicine men" today? Who among us "fight the demons" so that we may "fight reality?" I suppose one could argue that preachers and religious teachers might play a similar role, but I feel they're role has shifted over the years out of this dramatic category of action, and more into the role of the helper, of the guide attempting to help point people in the right direction when they feel confused. Also, religious concerns have branched in the modern age, and now often include the questions of the religion's validity. I think this has largely occurred because knowledge about other religions and about explanations of how the natural world work have been cast, by some, into contention with how one views the structure and validity of his religious beliefs.
I am aware that there have been dissidents of religious factuality in all ages, with recorded skepticism coming from as far back as the pre-Socratic philosophers. But, I also feel as though this trend has come to a head since the Enlightenment. Because scientific systems of thought have been so highly prized, there has been an attempt to require of religious belief the same structure of empirical evidence to prove its "truth." Some have attempted to answer this challenge by advancing a system of admitted irrationality, claiming it is faith itself in the face of reason that is the heart of true belief. Yet, this seems to miss the point, as it attempts to play in a league it was never supposed to be in, like a dance team being forced to play football to prove they are good dancers. It's nonsensical. Campbell's argument, on the other hand, is that the stories were never meant to be taken factually, because they hold implications for how we should live, rather than indications of what exactly did or did not occur in antiquity. I must say that I find this point rather compelling.
On to the next fascinating quote:
And so it happens that if anyone–in whatever society–undertakes for himself the perilous journey into the darkness by descending, either intentionally or unintentionally, into the crooked lanes of his own spiritual labyrinth, he soon finds himself in a landscape of symbolical figures (any one of which may swallow him) which is no less marvelous than the wild Siberian world of the pudak and sacred mountains. In the vocabulary of the mystics, this is the second stage of the Way, that of the "purification of the self," when the senses are "cleansed and humbled," and the energies and interests "concentrated upon transcendental things"; or in the vocabulary of more modern turn: this is the process of dissolving, transcending, or transmuting the infantile images of our personal past.
Campbell returns again and again to this image of the myth as a spiritual guidepost, a language for encountering and moving through life. Though the process seems one that is, in many ways, intellectual and introverted in our society, he frames it within epic proportions. I say that I rather agree with Campbell's mentality. Finding one's place in life seems to be a steady adventure in the interior of soul, no matter the level of physical activity involved.
One descends into the self to encounter and move past self. This is a central motif of the chapter, the kind of "second birth" that takes place within one to reach a new level of maturity.
Finally, the following quote seems to sum up very well the first section and set the tone/theme for the rest of the chapter with the claim of the cyclical realization of oneness within duality:
The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth or the dreamer of a dream, discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self) either by swallowing it or by being swallowed. One by one the resistances are broken. He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty, and life, and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable. Then he finds that he and his opposite are not of differing species, but one flesh.
This makes me wonder about our interpretations of spiritual rebirth within the church. So often the dialogue centers on rejecting an old self, a kind of aggressive pushing away of a past or a still disappointing present self, rather than a whole and full acceptance of a new self. The kind of death and birth of Christ himself, one where the hero is led silently to the slaughter. He allows himself to be subsumed and in this obedience, this emptying of self, he achieves a new grasp and way of life itself. It is a the true union within the self that is important. More on this in Apotheosis.
2. The Meeting with the Goddess
As the hero continues through his trials, he is sure to meet the goddess. Campbell claims she is the symbol of the remembered mother and the future bride. She can be kind or she can be fearful, she helps either bring together life or destroy it.
Woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known. The hero is the one who comes to know. As he progresses in the slow initiation which is life, the form of the goddess undergoes for him a series of transfigurations: she can never be greater than himself, though she can always promise more than he is yet capable of comprehending. She lures, she guides, she bids him burst his fetters. And if he can match her import, the two, the knower and the known, will be released from every limitation.
Woman, in mythology, as gateway to freedom and universal comprehension. This again fits with the theme of freedom and oneness in duality in the last quote from Road of Trials. When male and female come together in love and understanding, they form the image of God, so Campbell claims.
Woman is the guide to the sublime acme of sensuous adventure. By deficient eyes she is reduced to inferior states; by the evil eye of ignorance she is spellbound to banality and ugliness. But she is redeemed by the eyes of understanding. The hero who can take her as she is, without undue commotion but with the kindness and assurance she requires, is potentially the king, the incarnate god, of her created world.
I found this to be an enlightening quote. Again, Campbell claims that problems within experience (here, within relationship) come from a restriction of consciousness. It is ignorance that dims the beauty of the world around us. This calls to my mind two different quotes.
Rainer Maria Rilke:
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no indifferent place.
Jesus:
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness.
I've been thinking a lot about these recently. The majority of our conscious existence is spent simply perceiving. How we perceive affects deeply everything that we do, and thus, what happens to humanity. Human history is the record of what people did because of how they perceived the world around them.
Campbell says the hero is the one who has come to know, but perhaps even more fundamentally, the hero is the one who has come to see.
3. Woman as the Temptress
As the reverse of the goddess, woman can also be temptresses in mythological stories. I think this is the source of many a misunderstanding of myth and, in some cases, has led to the mistreatment of women in history. I believe that women (as well as men) portrayed in negative light in stories should be interpreted as forces and as manifestations of threats within the particular situation of the story, not as guiding commentary on how they actually are or should be treated. The tempting women sent to St. Bernard in Campbell's telling, clearly should not be interpreted as "women are evil" which is clearly a logical fallacy, but as situational threats/obstacles that St. Bernard had to navigate. Clearly, not everyone is vexed with the trouble of having to constantly turn down overly zealous attractive women.
Fascinatingly, I believe I found the best quotes from this section to be outside the section's topical focus. For instance:
The mystical marriage with the queen goddess of the world represents the hero's total mastery of life; for the woman is life, the hero its knower and master. And the testings of the hero, which were preliminary to his ultimate experience and deed, were symbolical 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, his inevitable bride. With that he knows that he and the father are one: he is in the father's place.
The cycle complete, the hero is now in the father's place, he has become what he once found, at least in Campbell's archetypal tongue, to be his nemesis, his opposite. Yet, this is come to after a journey in which his understanding of the universe around him has shifted. So, for us, to truly be in possession, enjoyment and full knowledge of life, we must bypass competency tests that come in many different forms.
Lastly, from this section, I loved this quote, I'm afraid I've already talked quite a bit about similar subjects, but I still find it absolutely appealing as a conceptual reading of human affairs:
Nevertheless, every failure to cope with a life situation must be laid, in the end, to a restriction of consciousness. Wars and temper tantrums are the makeshifts of ignorance; regrets are illuminations come too late.
Wow. There it is in full. Granted, it's nice to have a grasp of the central aspect of our problems, but it may seem absurdly general and generic when applied to specific situations, "Oh! That's why I lost my job and my wife left me: My consciousness is restricted! Man... I should do something about that." Yeah, you probably should. Or, "Oh! That's why Hitler massacred millions of Jews and why we dropped some nukes on Japan: Ignorance! Boy... We should make sure nothing like that every happens again."
Now, I actually like this a lot and I find it to have some deep truth to it, but, again, it hardly qualifies as practical advice. We must raise our consciousnesses and be not ignorant. But, I must say, there's something to generalist advice like that. Because, applying it at the specific level hardly works, but when we step back and look at the big picture, it makes sense. In figure drawing, this happens frequently. If you're too close to your pad of paper, you may be shading all the areas nicely, but at the end you might step back and find that the head is too small and the right arm too long, and the hips too thin and the foot too small and etc. One must constantly step away from the drawing, away from the canvas, away from the everyday fabric of life, to see how the whole structure of the work is flowing and then make proper adjustments. Otherwise, without regularly being conscious about the whole structure of your art or life, you risk its immanent deformation. So, I guess, how do you do this with life itself? I suppose Campbell would say via myth. Religion serves this purpose for many people, it gives them a way to investigate how to form the whole structure of their lives to make sure that it is, in the end, good.
4. Atonement with the Father
This is a wonderful section. It seems to breath a lot about how one must humble himself to become what he desires to be.
Atonement (at-one-ment) consists in no more than the abandonment of that self-generated double monster–the dragon thought to be God (superego) and the dragon thought to be Sin (repressed id). But this requires an abandonment of the attachment to the ego itself, and that is what is difficult.
It seems our maturity comes from eliminating the black and white reading of the world for a gentler understanding of the fullness, with beauty, humor and tragedy of life. I found the stories and examples in this section to be most illustrative and helpful, though, sometimes, disconcerting.
In particular, the stories about the Australian Great Father Snake rituals were rather difficult for me to read at times. The drinking of blood and then the slitting of the bottom of the penis to become the image of androgenic god, with both the phallic and vaginal portions represented on the body. Being a highly visual and experiential person, it is difficult to read without imagining BEING a part of such a ritual. Anyway. I found it extremely interesting, but also perhaps a little much. Maybe we lack sufficient ritual in our society, but maybe we don't have to quite have that much, either.
I very much enjoyed the story of Phaethon. That has always been one of my favorite stories from Greek mythology. How bold, and yet how sad. There's something beautiful in the image of his falling, burning, from the chariot. But, as Campbell points out, here is a good reason for the tests and trials to be in place. If we are not ready for the power handed to us when we come to maturity, then how horrible the fall and commotion that follows. It reminds me of an excellent Japanese animated film and graphic novel: Akira.
In a future dystopian Neo-Tokyo, where politicians are corrupt, government protesters proliferate, civil unrest is growing and biking gangs rule the streets, supernatural powers are suddenly called forth in the young biker Tetsuo after a chance encounter with a wrinkle-faced child, an escaped subject in a series of military tests on children to develop one with Jedi-like powers as the next step on the evolutionary scale. Tetsuo ransacks the city with his new found powers, yet they quickly metastasize into a nightmarish reality which he no longer can control. All the while, we learn the secret of Akira, a project that back-fired years ago when the military attempted to forcefully control such a power itself.
That's a long aside, but its an epic masterpiece by Katsuhiro Otomo. Both the graphic novels and the animated film are renowned for their technical virtuosity and epic story. It deals with power, science, religion, technology, and human understanding. You should watch the film if you ever have the chance.
The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its particular 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.
After this quote, Campbell has a brief exposition about the book of Job and God's final speech to Job. I found this to be an excellent commentary. As he mentions, God gives no reasons for his actions, but simply accuses Job of claiming to be more just than God. God goes on to magnify his own "Presence" as the core of might and justice. Even though nothing has been explained, per se, Job seems to accept this understanding of the higher Being of God himself and thus is calmed by God's answer. Then he goes about his life and his blessed. Again, it is the raising of one's consciousness through suffering and humility that win the day, not logical proofs or theorems.
Finally, as a summing up of this principle:
For the son who has grown really to know the father, the agonies of the ordeal are readily borne; the world is no longer a vale of tears but a bliss-yielding, perpetual manifestation of the Presence.
The trials are nothing to the world-transforming understanding that comes through atonement with the father.
5. Apotheosis
Apotheosis is, according to my dictionary widget, "The highest point in the development of something; culmination or climax." I found this to be the most thoroughly interesting section. The fascinating part to me is that the climax is not the defeat of the enemy, but the defeat of the self, the point at which the hero comes to true enlightenment. As Campbell writes comparing this to the becoming of the Bodhisattva in Buddhism:
"All things are Buddha-things"; or again (and this is the other way of making the same statement): "All beings are without self."
The world is filled and illumined by, but does not hold, the Bodhisattva ("he whose being is enlightenment"); rather, it is he who holds the world, the lotus. Pain and pleasure do not enclose him, he encloses them–and with profound repose.
This is a beautiful passage. "All beings are without self." It is a way to live that is beyond the very classification of selfhood. It seems that at this point, one does not have to fear the loss of his or her identity, because what dwells within and beyond are the same bountiful and beautiful greatness, the point at which one is no longer reigned in by fear or power or suffering or greed. One finds absolution in all by its complete and total unity in a continuous life force.
I admit that I'm getting rather vague here, as Campbell himself does, but it seems to be true of the greatest and most compelling stories. Christ dies, and suddenly, Christ is everywhere and in everyone. If the hero attains less than the transcendence, then it seems he is not a true hero after all.
This has made me start to consider the films and stories and books which I find most compelling, and, indeed, in most of them, the protagonist comes to a point at which he has a kind of enlightenment that springs him beyond what he knew before, that allows him to love all things around and about him. Yet, in the mythological stories, it seems that this transformation is a total kind of mastery of the universe, while as in life, it seems it is something perhaps as profound, but quieter. We don't get halos, but we do get understanding and so in as much as it transforms us (now relating back to notions about sight) it transforms how we see and comprehend the universe. Thus, for the transcendent hero, the universe itself has been completely shifted and raised to a higher aesthetic level.
In The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky and in Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, similar transformations seem wrought in the respective protagonists, Alexei and Levin. Childhood beliefs about the nature of sainthood are shattered for Alexei, but he finds new strength to leave the monastic community he's basically interned with and face the world in a new way, but with an outgoing love for all. Levin, too, struggles continually with his understanding of love, life, God and the universe, but he comes to a point of satisfaction where he finds himself in tune with it and the universe beautiful in and of itself. What I really love about both of these characters is how they find ways to spin this kind of new understanding into the realm of everyday life. For instance, Anna Karenina ends with Levin's bliss:
'This new feeling hasn't changed me, hasn't made me happy or suddenly enlightened, as I dreamed – just like the feeling for my son. Nor was there any surprise. And faith or not faith – I don't know what it is – but this feeling has entered into me just as imperceptibly through suffering and has firmly lodged itself in my soul.
'I"ll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my mind inappropriately, there will be the same wall between my soul's holy of holies and other people, even my wife, I'll accuse her in the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I"ll fail in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray – but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!'
Levin realizes that it is something that has been somehow in him the whole time, a golden ball hidden in the cleft of his mind. But, now that he's found it, he also realizes that life will continue to be the same in much of its structure, but that he can and will change dramatically because of his own awareness. I think many people experience a brief inkling of what this kind of sight is like from time to time, but too often it is treated as a kind of game of endurance where one must walk on eggshells holding this glowing golden stuff, to keep it all in perfect balance so as not to lose that one ounce of beautiful understanding. In truth, it seems this kind of holy sight should become an integral part of the hero, of the person and it should be able to be integrated into daily life. Such that all things, "become Buddha things."
Similarly, Campbell writes:
Those who know, not only that the Everlasting lives in them, but that what they, and all things, really are is the Everlasting, dwell in the groves of the wish-fulfilling trees, drink the brew of immortality, and listen everywhere to the unheard music of eternal concord.
It is the treasure that becomes part of us by our very awareness.
Lastly, in this section, Campbell makes some recourse to warn about pitfalls about misunderstandings about myths, and ways we can misinterpret and misapply them:
Totem, tribal, racial, and aggressively missionizing cults represent only partial solutions of the psychological problem of subduing hate by love; they only partially initiate. Ego is not annihilated in them; rather, it is enlarged; instead of thinking only of himself, the individual becomes dedicated to the whole of his society. The rest of the world meanwhile (that is to say, by far the greater portion of mankind) is left outside the sphere of his sympathy and protection because outside the sphere of the protection of his god.
I have to say that I agree with Campbell. Too often, this is the case in how we interpret and apply religious thought and belief. Rather than it becoming the way to unite and redeem and purify the world, it becomes a way to divide and polarize it. The mistake is simple, but insidious, as it is indeed the opposite of the hero's goal, but occurs when even the slightest misunderstanding is applied. We can flesh this part out more in comments as well, if needed.
6. The Ultimate Boon
I thought Campbell touched upon an insightful distinction in this portion:
Humor is the touchstone of the truly mythological as distinct from the more literal-minded and sentimental theological mood. The gods as icons are not ends in themselves.
Humor provides personality and a kind of aesthetic taste, something that helps truly bring the world to life. It's fascinating to pit mythology against theology. I'm not sure that they have to be in conflict. But I can see how their different moods/sentiments allow for vastly different readings of life.
Finally, back to the understanding of what the hero's quest and focus actually is: heightened understanding and awareness about the universe:
The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form–all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void.
I like his list of helping activities, though I feel as though each of these also have within them the duality that allows one to become trapped. "Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines" if treated like the recently mentioned "literal-minded and sentimental theology" then we just end up trapped in ourselves and our own systems of heuristics, rather than seeking the knowledge that comes from real experience of the totality and beauty of life. To that effect, these things can only help one so far before he must put down his book and leave his arm chair or cave (as in the ascetic) and journey beyond his front door step. It makes me think of The Hobbit. But, I'll just leave off with that, assuming you've probably read it and know the sense I mean.
