Path of The Hero

[MooNiNite]

The Seven Archetypes:¹

1. Hero: "The Hero is the protagonist or central character, whose primary purpose is to separate from the ordinary world and sacrifice himself for the service of the Journey at hand - to answer the challenge, complete the quest and restore the Ordinary World's balance. We experience the Journey through the eyes of the Hero."
2. Mentor: "The Mentor provides motivation, insights and training to help the Hero."
3. Threshold Guardian: "Threshold Guardians protect the Special World and its secrets from the Hero, and provide essential tests to prove a Hero's commitment and worth."
4. Herald: "Herald characters issue challenges and announce the coming of significant change. They can make their appearance anytime during a Journey, but often appear at the beginning of the Journey to announce a Call to Adventure. A character may wear the Herald's mask to make an announcement or judgment, report a news flash, or simply deliver a message."
5. Shapeshifter: "The Shapeshifter's mask misleads the Hero by hiding a character's intentions and loyalties."
6. Shadow: "The Shadow can represent our darkest desires, our untapped resources, or even rejected qualities. It can also symbolize our greatest fears and phobias. Shadows may not be all bad, and may reveal admirable, even redeeming qualities. The Hero's enemies and villains often wear the Shadow mask. This physical force is determined to destroy the Hero and his cause."
7. Trickster: "Tricksters relish the disruption of the status quo, turning the Ordinary World into chaos with their quick turns of phrase and physical antics. Although they may not change during the course of their Journeys, their world and its inhabitants are transformed by their antics. The Trickster uses laughter [and ridicule] to make characters see the absurdity of the situation, and perhaps force a change."

1. Ordinary World: "The Hero's home, the safe haven upon which the Special World and the Journey's outcome must be compared." The Journey begins in the Ordinary World, travels to the Special World, and returns to the Ordinary World.
2. Call to Adventure: The Call to Adventure sets the story rolling by disrupting the comfort of the Hero's Ordinary World, presenting a challenge or quest that must be undertaken.
3. Refusal of the Call: "A Hero often refuses [or is reluctant] to take on the Journey because of fears and insecurities that have surfaced from the Call to Adventure. The Hero may not be willing to make changes, preferring the safe haven of the Ordinary World. This becomes an essential stage that communicates the risks involved in the Journey that lies ahead. Without risks and danger or the likelihood of failure, the audience will not be compelled to be a part of the Hero's Journey."
4. Meeting with the Mentor: "The Hero meets a Mentor to gain confidence, insight, advice, training, or magical gifts to overcome the initial fears and face the Threshold of the adventure. The Mentor may be a physical person, or an object such as a map, a logbook, or other writing."
5. Crossing the Threshold: "Crossing the threshold signifies that the Hero has finally committed to the Journey. He is prepared to cross the gateway that separates the Ordinary World from the Special World."
6. Tests, Allies, Enemies: "Having crossed the threshold, the Hero faces Tests, encounters Allies, confronts Enemies, and learns the rules of this Special World. The Hero needs to find out who can be trusted. Allies are earned, a Sidekick may join up, or an entire Hero Team forged. The Hero must prepare himself for the greater Ordeals yet to come and needs this stage to test his skills and powers, or perhaps seek further training from the Mentor. This Initiation into this Special World also tests the Hero's commitment to the Journey, and questions whether he can succeed."
7. Approach to the Inmost Cave: "The Hero must make the preparations needed to approach the Inmost Cave that leads to the Journey's heart, or central Ordeal. Maps may be reviewed, attacks planned, a reconnaissance launched, and possibly the enemies forces whittled down before the Hero can face his greatest fear, or the supreme danger lurking in the Special World." The Approach may be a time for some romance or a few jokes before the battle, or it may signal a ticking clock or a heightening of the stakes.
8. Ordeal: "The Hero engages in the Ordeal, the central life-or-death crisis, during which he faces his greatest fear, confronts his most difficult challenge, and experiences "death". His Journey teeters on the brink of failure. The Ordeal is the central magical Stage of any Journey. Only through "death" can the Hero be reborn, experiencing a resurrection that grants greater power or insight to see the Journey to the end."
9. Reward (Seizing the Sword): "The Hero has survived death, overcome his greatest fear, slain the dragon, or weathered the crisis of the heart, and now earns the Reward that he has sought. The Hero's Reward comes in many forms: a magical sword, an elixir, greater knowledge or insight, reconciliation with a lover. Whatever the treasure, the Hero has earned the right to celebrate. The Hero may have earned the Reward outright, or the Hero may have seen no option but to steal it. The Hero may rationalize this Elixir theft, having paid for it with the tests and ordeals thus far. But the consequences of the theft must be confronted as the Shadow forces race to reclaim the Elixir that must not see the light of the Ordinary World."
10. The Road Back: "The Hero must finally recommit to completing the Journey and accept the Road Back to the Ordinary World. A Hero's success in the Special World may make it difficult to return. Like Crossing the Threshold, The Road Back needs an event that will push the Hero through the Threshold, back into the Ordinary World. The Event should re-establish the Central Dramatic Question, pushing the Hero to action and heightening the stakes. The Road Back may be a moment when the Hero must choose between the Journey of a Higher Cause verses the personal Journey of the Heart."
11. Resurrection: "The Hero faces the Resurrection, his most dangerous meeting with death. This final life-or-death Ordeal shows that the Hero has maintained and can apply all that he has brought back to the Ordinary World. This Ordeal and Resurrection can represent a "cleansing" or purification that must occur now that the Hero has emerged from the land of the dead. The Hero is reborn or transformed with the attributes of the Ordinary self in addition to the lessons and insights from the characters he has met along the road. The Resurrection may be a physical Ordeal, or final showdown between the Hero and the Shadow. This battle is for much more than the Hero's life. Other lives, or an entire world may be at stake and the Hero must now prove that he has achieved Heroic status and willingly accept his sacrifice for the benefit of the Ordinary World. Other Allies may come to the last minute rescue to lend assistance, but in the end the Hero must rise to the sacrifice at hand. He must deliver the blow that destroys the Death Star (Star Wars), or offer his hand and accept the "magic" elixir of love."
12. Return with the Elixir: "The Return with the Elixir is the final Reward earned on the Hero's Journey. The Hero has been resurrected, purified and has earned the right to be accepted back into the Ordinary World and share the Elixir of the Journey. The true Hero returns with an Elixir to share with others or heal a wounded land. The Elixir can be a great treasure or magic potion. It could be love, wisdom, or simply the experience of having survived the Special World. Even the tragic end of a Hero's Journey can yield the best elixir of all, granting the audience greater awareness of us and our world (Citizen Kane)."

 

 

source:http://www.divineparadox.com/arts/archetypes_on_the_path.htm

Edited July 22, 2014 by MooNiNite

[i am]

Joseph Campbell was one of the first people to get me started on this path.

 

I really like him.

[Protector]

What path? This is a template used by writers to write stories

[Nungali]

The heroes path and story template are the same thing ... they are different expressions from the same source.

 

Reading it is exciting and satisfying to the psyche because it is a map of psychic or mythic reality, going beyond reading about it - in stories or explanations like Campbell's - ..... doing it ...... is initiation.

[i am]

A path towards spirituality and "following bliss".

[GrandmasterP]

Hero accepts quest.

Hero goes on quest.

Hero is accompanied by at least one 'comedy buddy' sidekick ( this is compulsory).

Hero overcomes problems along the way.

Penultimate scene, hero has a massive fight and almost dies but, with a sudden bound; slays the giant (or whatever).

Hero discovers that all along he was some sort of super- dude or king-in-waiting but he'd not noticed it 'prior to'.

Hero gets to marry the princess.

They all live happily ever after.

The end.

 

Stories address aspiration, hence their enduring popularity.

Aspiration is grasping.

Stories are nice though, we all tell them, to ourselves and to others; most of the time.

Edited July 24, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[i am]

One of the things Joseph Campbell did was to look at the myths, religions and stories and different cultures throughout history, as far back as he could find information. What he found was many common threads (beyond that in the vast majority of cases...pretty much different cultures from all over the world at different times telling the exact same stories), one of them being the Hero's Journey.

 

So yeah...when you dismiss it as a template, you're completely correct. It is THE template by which all cultures' inspirational and value instilling myths/stories/fairy tales/creation stories are written.

 

To me that's kind of a big deal.

[GrandmasterP]

No disrespect to Joseph Campbell but what he 'did' was to gloss and aim to popularise standard academic lit crit.

Having done so he puts his own spin on it.

Check out "mythopoesis".

That's what Mr Campbell ( amongst others) does.

There's good money to be made.

 

Edited July 24, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[ThisLife]

There are many people who have made their fame and fortune re-jigging the standard "questing hero" plotline which, as pointed out by one reader above. Interestingly, I came across an extract from Kurt Vonnegut a while back where he pointed this out about one of the unquestioned 'heroes' of my teens / early twenties reading,... Hermann Hesse. It was quite a startling revelation to me, as up till that point I'd simply regarded his writings as sheer genius personified. I hadn't realised I'd been carrying the feelings and valuation of a twenty-year-old for almost forty years without examination, or up-grading.

 

I found Kurt Vonnegut's 'whistle' to get my attention, to be much more of a salutary experience than a disillusioning one. Here's his words, anyway,... since they seem to be relevant to this thread :

 

*

 

*

 

 

"Here are the bare bones of a tale that will always be popular with the young anywhere : A man travels a lot, is often alone. Money is not a serious problem. He seeks spiritual comfort, and avoids marriage and boring work. He is more intelligent than his parents and most of the people he meets. Women like him. So do poor people. So do wise old men. He experiments with sex, finds it nice but not tremendous. He encounters many queerly lovely hints that spiritual comfort really can be found. The world is beautiful. There is magic around.

 

The story has everything but novelty. Nevertheless, the man who tells this age-old tale best is from our modern age; Hermann Hesse. He has been dead for eight years now. He was about my father's age. He was a German, and later a Swiss. He is deeply loved by those among the young who are questing."

 

*

Edited July 24, 2014 by ThisLife

[i am]

Why do I feel like we aren't talking about the same thing? Joseph Campbell wasn't a best selling fiction author re-hashing a tired theme. What he did was research ancient people's, as well as contemporary cultures, and show how common threads run through them, most often following the "hero" theme.

 

Either I'm missing something blatant, or people have no idea who Joseph Campbell is and are lumping him in with people they do know, who have sold fictional stories using the plot line Campbell noticed was popular in all cultures.

 

My understanding is that he came to the same realization as you, albeit with a different take on it. Your take, after seeing a "formula" for stories much like the tried, true and tired Hollywood formula, is that authors are using an un-original theme to make money of young seekers. Campbells take, in my understanding, was that people throughout time and different cultures have all yearned for the same thing. And also somehow come up with creation stories, myths, gods etc that are strikingly similar, illustrating either a common truth about what's "out there" beyond the normal perception of reality, or a common crutch among humans to seek "something more" due to their ultimate mortality.

 

But I'm no expert...just someone who watched and read a lot of Campbell's material. If there's some side to him I'm missing, let me know!

 

He, like you, pointed out this common theme. He didn't write a bunch of fiction stories cleverly disguising it, as people here seem to be implying.

Edited July 24, 2014 by i am

[MooNiNite]

..... doing it ...... is initiation.

 

Buddha says, "abandon shelter, rely on no one and no thing,then you will be my disciple."

 

This is the path of the hero.

 

 

Or external meditation.

Edited July 24, 2014 by MooNiNite

[Nungali]

Please dont tell me THIS is the path of the hero, that might be one of them there are many, as it is shown in life experience, story plot lines and mythology ... and also religion. You may be a Buddhist but from an objective cultural anthropological viewpoint, that is but ONE version of the hero's quest.

 

It may come by accident; one is lost in the woods, comes to a special clearing or house or animal or person meeting, One may be forced into it, by family or tribal traditions, one may seek to find and enter it ... even be abducted into it.

 

The reference to Kurt Vonnegut is interesting, I was just about to make one myself:

 

Kurt's writing thesis included story plot graphs on an x y basis with x being time or progression through the story and y being good or bad fortune of the main characters, like:

 

And can represent different cultures take on things ( eg. many Indigenous myth stories are just a flight of steps going up, we get one good thing after another until its a complete creation manifested with us in harmony in a type of garden of Eden)

 

Western omnes usually have a stage of step ups and failings, a penultimate disaster then recovery. The graph line of the most popular of our western stories is exactly the same as that of the Bible

 

Curious that !

 

It might not seem so ... it seems to end in disaster ... but that isnt the real end of the story, jesus is supposed to come back and fix everything ... its just that we are supposed to be living this story and the end hasnt happend yet, at the end, the baddies are vanquished, the graph swings up to an 'all good people' who ....

 

'and they all lived happily ever after

 

Campbell and Jung have become 'un-chic' lately ...

 

 

Why ?

Edited July 25, 2014 by Nungali

[MooNiNite]

Please dont tell me THIS is the path of the hero, that might be one of them there are many, as it is shown in life experience, story plot lines and mythology ... and also religion. You may be a Buddhist but from an objective cultural anthropological viewpoint, that is but ONE version of the hero's quest.

 

 

lol

[i am]

So your take is that Campbell was preaching the philosophies he found in past and current cultures, not just examining and comparing them?

 

That is interesting, and I guess I should go back and watch The Power of Myth. My take has always been that he has studied it all and shown the similarities. "Comparative Mythology" and "Comparative Religion", as the wikipedia entry says. The only thing I heard him preach was this:

 

“If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.”

 

So did I selectively listen and read him? Maybe.

 

I've just always seen him as a guy who found great truths about the commonalities of human experience and spirituality, and encouraged everyone to follow a path that spoke to them.

 

I'll need to go back and look at his stuff some more.

[Nungali]

lol

 

nothing like an intellectual, detailed reply is there ?

Edited July 25, 2014 by Nungali

[Nungali]

So your take is that Campbell was preaching the philosophies he found in past and current cultures, not just examining and comparing them?

 

That is interesting, and I guess I should go back and watch The Power of Myth. My take has always been that he has studied it all and shown the similarities. "Comparative Mythology" and "Comparative Religion", as the wikipedia entry says. The only thing I heard him preach was this:

 

“If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.”

 

So did I selectively listen and read him? Maybe.

 

I've just always seen him as a guy who found great truths about the commonalities of human experience and spirituality, and encouraged everyone to follow a path that spoke to them.

 

I'll need to go back and look at his stuff some more.

 

I liked your post ... not that you should go back and read him in a bad light.

 

It may be good for you (and me) to re-read him in a different light. But without the issues being detailed about his supposed faults then what new light are we supposed to review him by ?

 

I value what he contributed too.

[MooNiNite]

nothing like an intellectual, detailed reply is there ?

 

yeah, i apologize that was rude of me. I think you understand anyways

[MooNiNite]

Regarding entering the "special world"

 

Sometimes i think there is something special to a person who abandons everything he has ever known and relyed on.

 

Every second for that person becomes fresh. Life becomes his adventure and not someone elses.

 

But at the same time, the hierarchy of needs would almost completely oppose this position, because it places spiritual development at the top.

 

 

 

 

How can a wonderer or hero, reach self-actualization if their life is not stable?

[i am]

I've wondered this quite a bit myself. I dropped everything recently and in some ways it's allowed me to progress spiritually, but in other ways it's hindered it.

 

I mean if the path to enlightenment is just a quiet, simple life...being on an "adventure" isn't a path to enlightenment. It's hard to calm down my mind...too much to think about...Much harder to get into a routine. Much harder to meditate and do qigong. But also no job tying me down, no need to conform to anything I don't want to, and a great chance for growth. Time of discovery and all that crap

 

I think that a quiet, simple life of near total security (needs being met), with a dash of adventure here and there, at least in the earlier stages, is actually a pretty good path. For some people the "journey" may be a necessary step to open them up. Then they need a quiet contemplative life after that.

[GrandmasterP]

That's Abe Maslow's heirarchy and life's not like that.

Abe did all his research amongst well paid white ( still racially segregated workplace ) Detroit automobile production line workers way back in the late 60s of the last century.

Maslow's work hangs around as it's in colour and a triangle hence nice to look at and seems to make sense.

However it has that 'production-line based mindset' that insists that each component is in place so that the 'product' can move forward (' upwards') to the next level.

Now we all know that is BS as we've all met 'self actualized' people who are potless or homeless or victim-martyrys or whatever.

Maslow is ' Mom, home and apple pie', if the 'American Dream' ( circa 1969) is all in place, according to Abe; then you are at the top of the tree.

That never ever was, nor is; the necessary case.

Edited July 25, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[GrandmasterP]

Maslow's hierarchy of human needs is a classic " Hero's Path" BTW.

A triumphalist yarn told around the campfire to keep the shadow's at bay before bedtime and to ward off bad dreams.

The world is full of such.

 

Edited July 25, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[Stosh]

I liked the book, think the subject is interesting ,and I dont know what anyone is talking about except Iam,

 

If I remember it right

He was describing an archetypal paradigm , the hero, which this repeats in many cultures and may have underlying meaning psychologically.

There can be variation of this theme, but the general form seems to remain consistent.

 

I personally wouldnt put too much weight on the significance of it though, but it does provide a nice smattering of crosscultural reference. (The statue of Kali is a favorite)

[GrandmasterP]

I've wondered this quite a bit myself. I dropped everything recently and in some ways it's allowed me to progress spiritually, but in other ways it's hindered it.

 

I mean if the path to enlightenment is just a quiet, simple life...being on an "adventure" isn't a path to enlightenment. It's hard to calm down my mind...too much to think about...Much harder to get into a routine. Much harder to meditate and do qigong. But also no job tying me down, no need to conform to anything I don't want to, and a great chance for growth. Time of discovery and all that crap

 

I think that a quiet, simple life of near total security (needs being met), with a dash of adventure here and there, at least in the earlier stages, is actually a pretty good path. For some people the "journey" may be a necessary step to open them up. Then they need a quiet contemplative life after that.

Journeys are good for sure.

Just finished Alastair Humphreys 'Moods of future joys' and begun his second book ' Thunder and Sunshine'.

The books describe Humphreys' 4-year round the world bike ride.

Book 1 England to Capetown.

Book 2 Tierra del Fuego to Alaska then through Asia, Europe and 'home'.

He's a motivational speaker nowadays.

http://www.alastairhumphreys.com/

Now that was an 'heroic journey' for sure.

Edited July 25, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[Nungali]

yeah, i apologize that was rude of me. I think you understand anyways

 

No ... I just heard you laughing out aloud, I dont know what at, presumably something I wrote ... sokay though .... as long as I can make a sarcastic comment about it

[Nungali]

I am not sure if some people realise there is some distinction between 'a journey', an exciting event, a path of enlightenment, a social system of success, and the 'Hero's journey' as a psychological process to find unification with the 'soul' ( or anima) ... the woman's journey is different, and although I have written a bit on that, really, that's up to women.

 

Also there is a distinction in the 'journey' ... process, may be a better word? ... as to how one carries their ego along with them on that journey. Some myths of 'hero's journey' show failure ... although that may not be pointed out in the myth itself, it might seem triumphant for the ego - when examined in part ... usually the end result indicates failure or success.

 

Hercules is seen as the classic hero, yet his is a journey of constant ego projection and failure.