TEXT: THE HERO WITH A
  THOUSAND FACES
  JOSEPH CAMPBELL
  B O I . L I N G E N 
  S E R I E S 
  X V I I
  P R I N C E T O N 
  U N I V E R S I T Y 
  P R E S S
  P R I N C E T O N 
  A N D 
  O X F O R D
  
  Copyright © 2004 by Princeton University Press
  Published by Princeton Unhxmt^Pms, 
  U WiffiaM SUrtt, Pnnceton,
  New Jersey 08540; im^inii!-. •:-..• - 
  punght i 1-49 by
  Botiingen 
  Foundation, 
  andpttt 
  . 
  !.,.: 
  b% 
  / , . 
  ,;:,c,m 
  B<,.ik.*, 
  second
  e d i t i o n 
  l n ' i l h 
  rc't.'itii.yi 
  • : 
  • 
  t*j''!' 
  !_•"' 
  :''<"~i 
  • ' • • 
  I'1
  :'}' 
  \ 7 . ' j 
  t 
  '!!','(t";iti/ 
  / • J
  r ^ s . s
  All rights reserved
  First Edition, 1949
  Second Edition, 1968
  t-'tWUt'-i •""'''• L'L'1 
  I,.!i!•''•••. 
  £! {, ,•
  -he Introduction to the 2004 edition is copyright © 2003 Clarissa Pinkola
  Estes, Ph.D. All rights reserved
  Library of Congress Control No. 200306H0H4
  ISBN: 0-691-11924-4-
  This hook has b<-pn composed in
  Princeton University Press Distal Monticxllo
  Printed on acid-free paper, r-r-
  w ww.pup ress.priiiCKton.edu
  Printed in the United States of America
  1 3 .> 7 9 10 8 ft 4 2
  TO MT FATHER AND MOTHER
  
  TABLE OF CONTENTS
  List of Figures 
  xi
  List of Plates 
  xvi
  Preface to the 1949 Edition 
  xxi
  Introduction to the 2004 Commemorative Edition,
  by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. 
  xxiii
  Acknowledgments 
  lxvi
  PROLOGUE: The Monomyth 
  1
  1. Myth and Dream 
  3
  2. Tragedy and Comedy 
  23
  3. The Hero and the God 
  28
  4. The World Navel 
  37
  PART ONE
  The Adventure of the Hero
  CHAPTER I: Departure 
  45
  1. The Call to Adventure 
  45
  2. Refusal of the Call 
  54
  3. Supernatural Aid 
  63
  4. The Crossing of the First Threshold 
  71
  5. The Belly of the Whale 
  83
  CHAPTER II: Initiation 
  89
  1. The Road of Trials 
  89
  2. The Meeting with the Goddess 
  100
  3. Woman as the Temptress 
  111
  
  CONTENTS
  CONTENTS
  4. Atonement with the Father 
  116
  5. Apotheosis 
  138
  6. The Ultimate Boon 
  159
  CHAPTER III: Return 
  179
  1. Refusal of the Return 
  179
  2. The Magic Flight 
  182
  3. Rescue from Without 
  192
  4. The Crossing of the Return Threshold 
  201
  5. Master of the Two Worlds 
  212
  6'. Freedom to Live 
  221
  CHAPTER IV: The Keys 
  227
  PART TWO
  The Cosmogonic Cycle
  CHAPTER I: Emanations 
  237
  1. From Psychology to Metaphysics 
  237
  2. The Universal Round 
  242
  3. Out of the Void-Space 
  249
  4. Within Space-Life 
  253
  5. The Breaking of the One into the Manifold 
  261
  6. Folk Stories of Creation 
  268
  CHAPTER II: The Virgin Birth 
  275
  1. Mother Universe 
  275
  2. Matrix of Destiny 
  280
  3. Womb of Redemption 
  285
  4. Folk Stories of Virgin Motherhood 
  288
  CHAPTER III: Transformations of the Hero 
  291
  1. The Primordial Hero and the Human 
  291
  2. Childhood of the Human Hero 
  295
  5. The Hero as Warrior 
  309
  4. The Hero as Lover 
  316
  5. The Hero as Emperor and as Tyrant 
  319
  6. The Hero as World Redeemer 
  322
  7. The Hero as Saint 
  327
  8. Departure of the Hero 
  329
  CHAPTER IV: Dissolutions 
  337
  1. End of the Microcosm 
  337
  2. End of the Macrocosm 
  345
  EPILOGUE: Myth and Society 
  351
  1. The Shapeshifter 
  353
  2. The Function of Myth, Cult, and Meditation 
  354
  3. The Hero Today 
  358
  Bibliography 
  363
  Index 
  383
  
  LIST OF FIGURES
  1. Sileni and Maenads. From a black-figure amphora,
  ca. 450-500 B.C., found in a grave at Gela, Sicily,
  {Monumenti Antichi, pubblicati per cura della
  Reale Accademia dei Lincei, Vol. XVII, Milan,
  1907, Plate XXXVII.) 
  9
  2. Minotaur•omachy. From an Attic red-figure crater,
  5th cent. B.C. Here Theseus kills the Minotaur
  with a short sword; this is the usual version in the
  vase paintings. In the written accounts the hero
  uses his bare hands. {Collection des vases grecs de
  M. le Comte de Lamberg, expliquee et publiee par
  Alexandre de la Borde, Paris, 1813, Plate XXX.) 
  22
  3. Osiris in the Form of a Bull Transports His Worshiper
  to the Underworld. From an Egyptian coffin in the
  British Museum. (E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and
  the Egyptian Resurrection, London, Philip Lee
  Warner; New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1911,
  Vol. I, p. 13.) 
  50
  4. Ulysses and the Sirens. From an Attic polychrome-
  figured white lecythus, 5th cent. B.C., now in the
  Central Museum, Athens. (Eugenie Sellers,
  "Three Attic Lekythoi from Eretria," Journal of
  Hellenic Studies, Vol. XIII, 1892, Plate I.) 
  76
  5. The Night-Sea Journey:—Joseph in the Well: Entomb-
  ment of Christ: Jonah and the Whale. A page from
  the fifteenth-century Biblia Pauperum, German
  edition, 1471, showing Old Testament prefigure-
  ments of the history of Jesus. Compare Figures 8
  and 11. (Edition of the Weimar Gesellschaft der
  Bibliophilen, 1906.) 
  87
  
  LIST OK FIGURES
  6. Isis in the Form of a Hawk Joins Osiris in the Under-
  world. This is the moment of the conception of
  Horns, who is to play an important role in the res-
  urrection of his father. (Compare Fig. 10.) From a
  series of bas-reliefs on the walls of the temple of
  Osiris at Dendera, illustrating the mysteries per-
  formed annually in that city in honor of the god.
  (E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian
  Resurrection, London, Philip Lee Warner; New
  York, G. I\ Putnam1* Sons, 1911, Vol. II, p. 28.) 
  109
  7. Isis Giving Bread and Water to the Soul. (E. A.
  Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrec-
  tion, London, Philip Lee Warner; New York,
  G. P, Putnam's Sons, 1911, Vol. II, p. 134.) 
  163
  8. The Conquest of the Monster:—David and Goliath:
  The Harrowing of Hell: Samson and the Lion.
  (Same source as Fig. 5.) 
  170
  9a. Gorgon-Sister Pursuing Perseus, Who Is Fleeing with
  the Head of Medusa. Perseus, armed with a scimi-
  tar bestowed on him by Hermes, approached the
  three Gorgons while they slept, cut off the head of
  Medusa, put it in his wallet, and fled on the wings
  of his magic sandals. In the literary versions, the
  hero departs undiscovered, thanks to a cap of in-
  visibility; here, however, we see one of the two
  surviving Gorgon-Sisters in pursuit. From a red-
  figure amphora of the 5th cent. B.C. in the collec-
  tion of the Munich Antiquarium. (Adolf Furtwan-
  gler, Friedrich Hauser, and Karl Reichhold,
  Griechische Vascnmalerei, Munich, F. Bruckmann,
  1904-1932, Plate 134.) 
  187
  9b. Perseus Fleeing with the Head of Medusa in His
  Wallet. This figure and the one above appear on
  opposite sides of the same amphora. The effect of
  the arrangement is amusing and lively. (See
  I.I ST OF FIGURES
  Furtwangler, Hauser, and Reichhold, op. cit.,
  Serie III, Text, p. 77, Fig. 39.) 
  188
  10. The Resurrection of Osiris. The god rises from the
  egg; Isis (the Hawk of Fig. 6) protects it with her
  wing. Horus (the son conceived in the Sacred Mar-
  riage of Fig. 6) holds the Ankh, or sign of life,
  before his father's face. From a bas-relief at Philae.
  (E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Res-
  urrection, London, Philip Lee Warner; New York,
  G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1911, Vol. II, p. 58.) 
  194
  11. The Reappearance of the Hero: —Samson with the
  Temple-Doors: Christ Arisen: Jonah. (Same source
  as Fig. 5.) 
  203
  12. The Return of Jason. This is a view of Jason's adven-
  ture not represented in the literary tradition. "The
  vase-painter seems to have remembered in some
  odd haunting way that the dragon-slayer is of the
  dragon's seed. He is being born anew from his
  jaws" (Jane Harrison, Themis, A Study of the Social
  Origins of Greek Religion, Cambridge University
  Press, second edition, 1927, p. 435). The Golden
  Fleece is hanging on the tree. Athena, patroness of
  heroes, is in attendance with her owl. Note the
  Gorgoneum on her Aegis (compare Plate XXII).
  (From a vase in the Vatican Etruscan Collection.
  After a photo by D. Anderson, Rome.) 
  229
  13. Tuamotuan Creation Chart:—Below. The Cosmic
  Egg. Above: The People Appear, and Shape the Uni-
  verse. (Kenneth P. Emory, "The Tuamotuan Cre-
  ation Charts by Paiore," Journal of the Polynesian
  Society, Vol. 48, No. 1, p. 3.) 
  256
  14. The Separation of Sky and Earth. A common figure
  on Egyptian coffins and papyri. The god Shu-
  Heka separates Nut and Seb. This is the moment
  of the creation of the world. (F. Max Muller,
  
  LIST OF FIGURES
  LIST OF FIGURES
  Egyptian Mythology, The Mythology of All Races,
  Vol. XII, Boston, Marshall Jones Company,
  1918, p. 44.) 
  263
  15. Khnemu Shapes Pharaoh's Son on the Potter's Wheel,
  While Thoth Marks His Span of Life. From a pa-
  pyrus of the Ptolemaic period. (E. A. Wallis Budge,
  The Gods of the Egyptians, London, Methuen and
  Co., 1904, Vol. II, p. 50.) 
  270
  16. Nut (the Sky) Gives Birth to the Sim; Its Rays Fall on
  Hathor in the Horizon (Love and Life). The sphere
  at the mouth of the goddess represents the sun at
  evening, about to be swallowed and born anew.
  (E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians,
  London, Methuen and Co., 1904, Vol. I, p. 101.) 
  276
  17. Paleolithic Petroglyph (Algiers). From a prehistoric
  site in the neighborhood of Tiout. The catlike ani-
  mal between the hunter and the ostrich is perhaps
  some variety of trained hunting panther, and the
  horned beast left behind with the hunter's mother,
  a domesticated animal at pasture. (Leo Frobenius
  and Hugo Obermaier, Hddschra Mdktuba, Munich,
  K. Wolff, 1925, Vol. II, Plate 78.) 
  310
  18. King Ten (Egypt, First Dynasty, ca. 3200 B.C.)
  Smashes the Head of a Prisoner of War. From an
  ivory plaque found at Abydos. "Immediately be-
  hind the captive is a standard surmounted by a
  figure of a jackal, which represents a god, either
  Anubis or Apuat, and thus it is clear that the
  sacrifice is being made to a god by the king."
  (E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Res-
  urrection, London, Philip Lee Warner; New York,
  G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1911, Vol. I, p. 197; line cut,
  p. 207.) 
  315
  19. Osiris, Judge of the Dead. Behind the god stand the
  goddesses Isis and Nephthys. Before him is a
  lotus, or lily, supporting his grandchildren, the
  four sons of Horus, Beneath (or beside) him Is a
  lake of sacred water, the divine source of the Nile
  upon earth (the ultimate origin of which is in
  heaven). The god holds in his left hand the flail or
  whip, and in his right the crook. The cornice
  above is ornamented with a row of twenty-eight
  sacred uraei, each of which supports a disk.—
  From the Papyrus of Hunefer. (E. A. Wallis Budge,
  Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, London,
  Philip Lee Warner; Xew York, G. P. Putnam's
  Sons, 1911, Vol. I, p. 20.) 
  341
  20. The Serpent Kheti in the Underworld, Consuming
  with Fire an Enemy of Osiris. The arms of the vic-
  tim are tied behind him. Seven gods preside. This
  is a detail from a scene representing an area of the
  Underworld traversed by the Solar Boat in the
  eighth hour of the night. —From the so-called
  "Book of Pylons." (E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods
  of the Egyptians, London, Methuen and Co., 1904,
  Vol. I, p.'193.) 
  342
  21. The Doubles of Ani and His Wife Drinking Water in
  the Other World. From the Papyrus of Ani. (E. A.
  Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrec-
  tion, London, Philip Lee Warner; New York,
  G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1911, Vol. II, p. 130.) 
  344
  
  LIST OF PLATES
  FOLLOWING PACE 84
  I. The Monster Tamer (Sumer). Shell inlay (perhaps orna-
  menting a harp) from a royal tomb at Ur, ca. 3200 B.C.
  The central figure is probably Gitgamesh. (Courtesy of
  The University Museum, Philadelphia.)
  II. The Captive Unicorn (France). Detail from tapestry, "The
  Hunt of the Unicorn," probably made for Francis I of
  France, ca- 1514 A.D. (Courtesy of The Metropolitan Mu-
  seum of Art, New York City.)
  III. The Mother of the Gods (Nigeria). Odudua, with the infant
  Ogun, god of war and iron, on her knee. The dog is sa-
  cred to Ogun. An attendant, of human stature, plays the
  drum. Painted wood. Lagos, Nigeria. Kgba-Yoruba tribe.
  (Horniman Museum, London. Photo from Michael E.
  Sadler, Arts of West Africa, International Institute of
  African Languages and Cultures, Oxford Press, London:
  Humphrey Milford, 1935.)
  IV. The Deity in War Dress (Bali). The Lord Krishna in his terrify-
  ing manifestation. (Compare infra, pp. 215-220.) Poly-
  chromatic wooden statue. (Photo from C. M. Pleyte,
  Indonesian Art, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1901.)
  V. Sekhmet, The Goddess (Egypt). Diorite statue. Empire Pe-
  riod. Karnak. (Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of
  Art, Xew York City.)
  VI. Medusa (Ancient Rome). Marble, high relief; from the Ron-
  danini Palace, Rome. Date uncertain. (Collection of
  the Glyptothek, Munich. Photo from H. Brunn and
  F. Bruckmann, Denkmdler griechischer und romischer
  Sculptur, Verlagsan-stalt fur Kunst und Wissenschaft,
  Munich, 1888-1932.)
  LIST OF PLATES
  VII. The Sorcerer (Paleolithic Cave Paintmg, French Pyrenees).
  The earliest known portrait of a medicine man, ca. 10,000
  B.C. Rock engraving with black paint fill-in, 29.5 inches
  high, dominating a series of several hundred mural en-
  gravings of animals; in the Aurignacian-Magdalenian
  cave known as the "Trois Freres," Ariege, France. (From
  a photo by the discoverer, Count Begouen.)
  VIII. The Universal Father, Viracocha, Weeping (Argen-tina).
  Plaque found at Andalgala, Catamarca, in northwest
  Argentina, tentatively identified as the pre-Incan deity
  Viracocha. The head is surmounted by the rayed solar
  disk, the hands hold thunderbolts, tears descend from
  the eyes. The creatures at the shoulders are perhaps
  Imaymana and Tacapu, the two sons and messengers of
  Viracocha, in animal form. (Photo from the Proceedings
  of the International Congress of Americanists, Vol. XII,
  Paris, 1902.)
  FOLLOWING PAGE 180
  IX. Shiva, Lord of the Cosmic Dance (South India). See discus-
  sion, infra, p, 118, note 46. Bronze, 10th-12th cent A.D.
  (Madras Museum. Photo from Auguste Rodin, Ananda
  Coomaraswamy, E. B. Havell, Victor Goloubeu, Sculp-
  tures Civaites de I'Inde, Ars Asiatica III, Brussels and
  Paris: G. van Oest et Cie., 1921.)
  X. Androgynous Ancestor (Sudan). Wood carving from the re-
  gion of Bandiagara, French Sudan. (Collection of Laura
  Harden, New York City. Photo by Walker Evans, cour-
  tesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York City.)
  XL Bodhisattva (China). Kwan Yin. Painted wood. Late Sung
  Dynasty (960-1279 A.D.). (Courtesy of The Metropoli-
  tan Museum of Art, New York City).
  XII. Bodhisattva (Tibet:). The Bodhisattva known as Ushnisha-
  sitatapatra, surrounded by Buddhas and Bodhisattvas,
  
  LIST OF PLATES
  LIST OF PLATES
  and having one hundred and seventeen heads, symboliz-
  ing her influence in the various spheres of being. The left
  hand holds the World Umbrella (axis mundi) and the
  right the Wheel of the Law. Beneath the numerous
  blessed feet of the Bodhisattva stand the people of the
  world who have prayed for Enlightenment, while be-
  neath the feet of the three "furious" powers at the bottom
  of the picture lie those still tortured by lust, resentment,
  and delusion. The sun and moon in the upper corners
  symbolize the miracle of the marriage, or identity, of
  eternity and time, Nirvana and the world (see pp. 156-
  157 ff.). The lamas at the top center represent the ortho-
  dox line of Tibetan teachers of the doctrine symbolized
  in this religious banner-painting. (Courtesy of The
  American Museum of Natural History, New York City.)
  XIII. 'The Branch of Immortal Life (Assyria). Winged being offer-
  ing a branch with pomegranates. Alabaster wall panel
  from the Palace of Ashur-nasir-apal II (885-860 B.C.),
  King of Assyria, at Kalhu (modern Nimrud). (Courtesy
  of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.)
  XIV. Bodhisattva (Cambodia). Fragment from the ruins of
  Angkor. 12th cent. A.D. The Buddha figure crowning
  the head is a characteristic sign of the Bodhisattva
  (compare Plates XI and XII; in the latter the Buddha
  figure sits atop the pyramid of heads). (Musee Guimet,
  Paris. Photo from Angkor, editions "Tel," Paris, 1935.)
  XV. The Return (Ancient Rome). Marble relief found (1887)
  in a piece of ground formerly belonging to the Villa
  Ludovisi. Perhaps of early Greek workmanship.
  (Museo delle Terme, Rome. Photo Antike Denkmdler,
  herausgegeben vom Kaiserlich Deutschen Archaeolo-
  gischen Institut, Berlin: Georg Reimer, Vol. II, 1908.)
  XVI. The Cosmic Lion Goddess, Holding the Sun (North India).
  From a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century single-leaf
  manuscript, from Delhi. (Courtesy of The Pierpont
  Morgan Library, New York City.)
  FOLLOWING PAGE 308
  XVII. The Fountain of Life (Flanders). Central panel of a trip-
  tych by Jean Bellegambe (of Douai), ca. 1520. The
  assisting female figure at the right, with the little
  galleon on her head, is Hope; the corresponding figure
  at the left, Love. (Courtesy of the Palais des Beaux-
  Arts, Lille.)
  XVIII. The Moon King and His People (South Rhodesia). Prehis-
  toric rock painting, at Diana Vow Farm, Rusapi Dis-
  trict, South Rhodesia, perhaps associated with the
  legend of Mwuetsi, the Moon Man {infra, pp.
  279-282). The lifted right hand of the great reclining
  figure holds a horn. Tentatively dated by its discov-
  erer, Leo Frobenius, ca. 1500 B.C. (Courtesy of the
  Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt-am-Main.)
  XIX. The Mother of the Gods (Mexico). Ixciuna, giving birth to
  a deity. Statuette of semi-precious stone (scapolite, 7.5
  inches high). (Photo, after Hamy, courtesy of The
  American Museum of Natural History, New York City.)
  XX. Tangaroa, Producing Gods and Men (Rurutu Island).
  Polynesian wood carving from the Tubuai (Austral)
  Group of Islands in the South Pacific. (Courtesy of
  The British Museum.)
  XXI. Chaos Monster and Sun God (Assyria). Alabaster wall
  panel from the Palace of Ashur-nasir-apal II (885-
  860 B.C.), King of Assyria, at Kalhu (modern Nimrud).
  The god is perhaps the national deity, Assur, in the
  role played formerly by Marduk of Babylon (see pp.
  263-265) and still earlier by Enlil, a Sumerian storm
  god. (Photo from an engraving in Austen Henry La-
  yard, Monuments of Nineveh, Second Series, London:
  J. Murray, 1853. The original slab, now in The British
  Museum, is so damaged that the forms can hardly be
  distinguished in a photograph. The style is the same
  as that of Plate XIII.)
  
  LIST OF PLATES
  XXII. The Young Corn God (Honduras). Fragment in lime-
  stone, from the ancient Mayan city of Copan. (Cour-
  tesy of The American Museum of Natural History,
  New York City.)
  XXIII. The Chariot of the Moon (Cambodia). Relief at Angkor
  Vat. 12th cent. A.D. (Photo from Angkor, editions "Tel,"
  Paris, 1935.)
  XXIV. Autumn (Alaska). Eskimo dance mask. Painted wood.
  From the Kuskokwim River district in southwest
  Alaska. (Courtesy of The American Indian Ileye Foun-
  dation, New York City.)
  PREFACE TO THE 1949 EDITION
  "THE TRUTHS contained in religious doctrines are after all so
  distorted and systematically disguised," writes Sigmund Freud,
  "that the mass of humanity cannot recognize them as truth. The
  case is similar to what happens when we tell a child that new-
  born babies are brought by the stork. Here, too, we are telling
  the truth in symbolic clothing, for we know what the large bird
  signifies. But the child does not know it. He hears only the dis-
  torted part of what we say, and feels that he has been deceived;
  and we know how often his distrust of the grown-ups and his re-
  fractoriness actually take their start from this impression. We
  have become convinced that it is better to avoid such symbolic
  disguisings of the truth in what we tell children and not to with-
  hold from them a knowledge of the true state of affairs commen-
  surate with their intellectual level."1
  It is the purpose of the present book to uncover some of the
  truths disguised for us under the figures of religion and mythol-
  ogy by bringing together a multitude of not-too-diffiailt exam-
  ples and letting the ancient meaning become apparent of itself.
  The old teachers knew what they were saying. Once we have
  learned to read again their symbolic language, it requires no
  more than the talent of an anthologist to let their teaching be
  heard. But first we must learn the grammar of the symbols, and
  as a key to this mystery I know of no better modern tool than
  psychoanalysis. Without regarding this as the last word on the
  subject, one can nevertheless permit it to serve as an approach.
  The second step will be then to bring together a host of myths and
  folk tales from even' corner of the world, and to let the symbols
  S i g m u n d 
  F r e u d : 
  T h e 
  f u t u r e 
  o f 
  a n 
  i l l u s i o n 
  ( t r a n s l a t e d 
  b y 
  J a m e s 
  S t r a c h e y
  et al., Standard Edition, XXI; London: The Hogarth Press, 1961), pp. 44—45
  (Orig. 19-27.)
  
  PREFACE TO THE 1949 EDITION
  speak for themselves. The parallels will be immediately appar-
  ent; and these will develop a vast and amazingly constant state-
  ment of the basic truths by which man has lived throughout the
  millenniums of his residence on the planet.
  Perhaps it will be objected that in bringing out the correspon-
  dences I have overlooked the differences between the various
  Oriental and Occidental, modern, ancient, and primitive tradi-
  tions. The same objection might be brought, however, against
  any textbook or chart of anatomy, where the physiological varia-
  tions of race are disregarded in the interest of a basic general
  understanding of the human physique. There are of course
  differences between the numerous mythologies and religions of
  mankind, but this is a book about the similarities; and once
  these are understood the differences will be found to be much
  less great than is popularly (and politically) supposed. My hope
  is that a comparative elucidation may contribute to the perhaps
  not-quite-desperate cause of those forces that are working in the
  present world for unification, not in the name of some ecclesias-
  tical or political empire, but in the sense of human mutual un-
  derstanding. As we are told in the Vedas: "Truth is one, the
  sages speak of it by many names."
  For help in the long task of bringing my materials into read-
  able form, I wish to thank Mr. Henry Morton Robinson, whose
  advice greatly assisted me in the first and final stages of the
  work, Mrs. Peter Geiger, Mrs. Margaret Wing, and Mrs. Helen
  McMaster, who went over the manuscripts many times and
  offered invaluable suggestions, and my wife, who has worked
  with me from first to last, listening, reading, and revising.
  J. C.
  New York City
  June 10, 1948
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004
  COMMEMORATIVE EDITION
  What Does the Soul Want?
  . MYTH IS THE SECRET OPENING THROUGH WHICH THE
  NEXHAUST1BLE ENERGIES OF THE COSMOS POUR INTO
  HUMAN CULTURAL MANIFESTATION. . . .
  —Joseph Campbell
  A Preamble
  I AM HONORED to be invited to write this introduction to the work
  of a soul I have regarded in many ways for so long. The context
  and substance of Joseph Campbell's lifework is one of the most re-
  cent diamonds on a long, long necklace of other dazzling gem-
  stones that have been mined by humanity—from the depths, and
  often at great cost—since the beginning of time. There is no doubt
  that there is strung across the eons—a strong and fiery-wrought
  chain of lights, and that each glint and ray represents a great
  work, a great wisdom preserved. The lights on this infinite liga-
  ture have been added to, and continue to be added to, link by link.
  A few of the names of those who have added such lights are
  still remembered, but the names of those who ignited most of
  the lights have been lost in time. However, it can be said that we
  are descended from them all. This phenomenon of the necklace
  of lights should not be understood as some mere trinket. Its real-
  ity is that it has acted, since forever, as a swaying, glowing life-
  line for human souls trying to find their ways through the dark.
  Joseph Campbell was born in 1904, and his work continues to
  attract the interested reader, the experienced seeker, and the
  neophyte as well, for it is written with serious-mindedncss and
  
  I N T R O D U C T I O N 
  T O 
  T H E 
  2 0 0 4 
  E D I T I O N
  such brio, and so little mire. The Hero with a Thousand Faces is
  about the heroic journey, but it is not written, as some works on
  the subject are, by a mere onlooker. It is not written by one sim-
  ply hyper-fascinated with mythos, or by one who bowdlerizes
  the mythic motifs so that they no longer have any electrical pulse
  to them.
  No, this work is authored by a genuinely inspirited person
  who himself was once a novice, that is, a beginner who opened
  not just the mind, but also the longing heart, all in order to be a
  vessel for spiritual realities—ones greater than the conclusions of
  the ego alone. Over time, Campbell became to many people an
  example of what it means to be a master teacher. While granting
  merit to the pragmatic, he also carried the sensibilities of a mod-
  ern mystic—and even in old age, a time during which many may
  feel they have earned the right to be irritable and remote,
  Campbell continued to be intensely capable of awe and wonder.
  In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, via numerous myths, he
  shows how the heroic self seeks an exacting spiritual counte-
  nance, that is, a higher way of holding and conducting oneself.
  This heroic way offers depth of insight and meaning. It is atten-
  tive to guides along the way, and invigorates creative life. We
  see that the journey of the hero and heroine are most often deep-
  ened via ongoing perils. These include losing one's way innu-
  merable times, refusing the first call, thinking it is only one
  thing when it really is, in fact, quite another—as well as entangle-
  ments and confrontations with something of great and often
  frightening magnitude. Campbell points out that coming through
  such struggles causes the person to be infused with more vision,
  and to be strengthened by the spiritual life principle — which,
  more than anything else, encourages one to take courage to live
  with effrontery and mettle.
  Throughout his work too, time and again, he does not offer
  pap about the mediocre, timid, or tired ruts of spiritual life. In-
  stead, he describes the frontiers of spiritual matters as he envi-
  sions them. One can see in the tales he chooses to tell that he
  knows a heroic endeavor draws a person into timeless time.
  There, the intents and contents of spirit, soul, and psyche are
  I N T R O D U C T I O N 
  T O T H F , 
  2 0 0 4 
  E D I T I O N
  not logged according to artificial stops normally assigned to mun-
  dane time. Now life is measured instead by the depth of longing
  to remember one's own wholeness, and by the crackle of efforts to
  find and keep alive the most daring and tin diminished heart.
  In the oldest myths from Babylonia, Assyria, and other ancient
  populations, the storytellers and poets, who pecked with styluses
  on stone or etched with pigment on hand-wrought paper or
  cloth, beautifully detailed a particular idea about psychic reso-
  nance—one that modern psychoanalysts, mythologists, theolo-
  gians, and artists also continue to take up with interest. This
  very old idea about mythic reverberation was understood as one
  which takes place in a triad between Creator, individual human
  being, and the larger culture. Each mysteriously and deeply
  affects and inspires the others.
  Thus, in a number of ancient Babylonian and Assyrian tales,
  the psychological, moral, and spiritual states of the heroic char-
  acter, of the king or queen, were directly reflected in the health
  of the people, the land, the creatures, and the weather. When
  the ruler was ethical and whole, the culture was also. When the
  king or queen was ill from having broken taboos, or had become
  sick with power, greed, hatred, sloth, envy, and other ailments,
  then the land fell into a famine. Insects and reptiles rained down
  from the skies. People weakened and died. Everyone turned on
  one another, and nothing new could be born.
  Campbell brings this ancient idea into his work too. Borrow-
  ing the term monomyth, a word he identifies as one coined by
  James Joyce, he puts forth the ancient idea—that the mysterious
  energy for inspirations, revelations, and actions in heroic stories
  worldwide is also universally found in human beings. People who
  find resonant heroic themes of challenges and questing in their
  own lives, in their goals, creative outpourings, in their day- and
  night-dreams—are being led to a single psychic fact. That is, that
  the creative and spiritual lives of individuals influence the outer
  world as much as the mythic world influences the individual.
  By restating this primordial understanding, Campbell offers
  hope that the consciousness of the individual can prompt, prick,
  and prod the whole of humankind into more evolution. His thesis,
  
  like those of the ancients—and as put forth also, but in different
  ways, by Freud, Jung, and others—is that by entering and
  transforming the personal psyche, the surrounding culture, the
  life of the family, one's relational work, and other matters of life
  can be transformed too. Since time out of mind, this has been
  understood as being best effected by journeying through the
  personal, cosmological, and equally vast spiritual realities. By
  being challenged via the failings and fortunes one experiences
  there, one is marked as belonging to a force far greater, and one
  is changed ever after.
  Campbell acted as a lighted fire for many. The mythic matters
  he resonated to personally also attracted legions of readers and
  listeners worldwide. In this way, he gathered together a tribe of
  like-minded individuals, thinkers, and creators. His book, The
  Hero with a Thousand Faces, continues to be one of the major
  rendezvous sites for those who seek the meridians where "what
  is purely spirit" and "what is purely human" meet and create a
  third edition of a finer selfhood.
  What will follow now in the first half of this introduction for
  Joseph Campbell's work are specific details about the continuing
  importance of mythic stories in current times, the energies that
  support such, and how the body of myths and stories can be-
  come corrupted, undernourished, assaulted, even destroyed —
  and yet return again and again in fresh and unusual ways. The
  second half of the introduction is devoted to additional commen-
  tary about Joseph Campbell's work as a thinker and artist of his
  time and our time also.
  One last word now before we pass through the next portal:
  The Hero with a Thousand Faces has shed light for many men
  and women since it was first published. The hearts and souls
  who are attracted to this work may have lived few years of life or
  may have had many years on earth. It does not matter how long
  one has lived, for, you see everything begins with inspiration,
  and inspiration is ageless —as is the journey. With regard to the
  heroic, so much is unpredictable; but there are two matters,
  above all, about which a person can be certain—struggle on the
  journey is a given, but also there will be splendor.
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  The Search for the Highest Treasure
  In an ancient story called "The Conference of the Birds,1' a flock
  of a thousand birds, during a time of great upheaval and dark-
  ness, suddenly glimpse an image of wholeness—an illumined
  feather. They thusly feel encouraged to take a long and arduous
  journey to find out what amazing bird this illumined feather be-
  longs to. This narrative in poetic form was written in the eleventh
  century by the Persian Sufi mystic Farid ad-Din Attar. It tells
  about a remarkable saga with many long episodes that precisely
  describe the psyche's perilous journey to seek the Soul of souls.
  When the illumined feather floats down from the sky, one
  of the wisest of the birds reveals that this feather is in fact a
  precognition —a visionary glimpse of the Simorgh, the Great
  One. Oh, how the birds are buoyed up then. The birds are of
  many different kinds: short-beaked, long-billed, fancy-plumed,
  plain-colored, enormous, and tiny. But, regardless of size, shape,
  or hue, the birds who have witnessed this sudden and evanes-
  cent sight of the lighted feather band together. They make thun-
  der as they rise up into the sky, all in order to seek this radiant
  source. They believe this sovereign creature to be so wondrous
  that it will be able to light their darkened world once again. And
  thus the creatures begin the grueling quest.
  There are many old European "fool tales" that begin with
  similar motif's. There is one version told in my old country fam-
  ily, which we called "The Hidden Treasure." The story revolves
  around a group of brothers who were told by their father the
  King that, whosoever could bring back to him the golden trea-
  sure of "what has great price and yet is priceless," should inherit
  his kingdom. Two of the brothers rush off with their maps and
  plans and schemes in hand. They are certain they will reach the
  goal first.
  But the third brother is portrayed as a fool. He throws a
  feather up into the air, where it is taken up by the wind. He fol-
  lows in the direction the feather leads him. His brothers jeer at
  xxvii
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 30O4 EDITION
  him and say he will never learn and never be successful. After
  all, he is only a fool, and fools inherit nothing but more foolish-
  ness until the end of their days.
  Yet, at the last, the fool does find the treasure, for the wafting
  feather has led him to more and more canny insights and oppor-
  tunities. The feather has magical powers that guide the hereto-
  fore hapless hero to live more soulfully, and in full spirit and
  compassion. Thus he finds a way of being that is "of this earth
  and yet not of this earth." There is a "great price" to be paid to
  live in such an attitude of wholeness, for it means one must
  abandon the old unconscious way of life, including, for the fool,
  some of one's former self-indulgent foolishnesses.
  At the same time, however, the ability to live while being "of
  this earth and yet not of this earth" is "priceless," for such a
  stance brings contentment and strength of the finest kinds to the
  heart, spirit, and soul. Thusly, having found this truer way of
  life to be "of high cost and yet priceless," the former fool lives
  free and claims his father's reward.
  Meanwhile, the other two brothers are still somewhere out in
  the flats, busily calculating where to go next to find the treasure.
  But their requirements for finding something of value are un-
  wise. They maintain that they will try anything and look any-
  where for the treasure, as long as the ways and means to do so
  avoid all difficulty, yet also satisfy their every appetite. In seek-
  ing to avoid all peril, discomfort, and "all love that might ever
  cause us heartache,11 they thus find and bring to themselves only
  the empty assets of self-delusion and an aversion to real life.
  In "The Conference of Birds," there are some birds who also
  wander off the path and those who flee it. The birds are, in
  essence, questing for the fiery phoenix, that which can rise from
  its own ashes back up into illumined wholeness again. In the
  beginning, the thousand birds set out to enter into and pass
  through seven valleys, each one presenting different barriers and
  difficult challenges. The thousand birds endure increasingly hos-
  tile conditions, terrible hardships, and torments —including hor-
  rifying visions, lacerating doubts, nagging regrets. They long
  to turn back. They are filled with despair and exhaustion. The
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2OO4 EDITION
  creatures receive no satisfaction, nor rest, nor reward for a very
  long time.
  Thus, more and more of the birds make excuses to give up.
  The attrition rate continues, until there are only thirty birds left
  to continue this harsh flight that they all had begun with such
  earnest hearts —all in quest for the essence of Truth and Whole-
  ness in life —and, beyond that, for that which can light the
  dark again.
  In the end, the thirty birds realize that their perseverance,
  sacrifice, and faithfulness to the path —is the lighted feather, that
  this same illumined feather lives in each one's determination,
  each one's fitful activity toward the divine. The one who will
  light the world again —is deep inside each creature. That fabled
  lighted feather's counterpart lies ever hidden in each bird's heart.
  At the end of the story, a pun is revealed. It is that Si-Morgh
  means thirty birds. The number thirty is considered that which
  makes up a full cycle, as in thirty days to the month, during
  which the moon moves from a darkened to a lit crescent, to full
  open, to ultimate maturity, and thence continues on. The point
  is that the cycle of seeing, seeking, falling, dying, being reborn
  into new sight, has now been completed.
  There is one last advice given to anyone else who might
  glimpse such a lighted feather during darkness and long to fol-
  low it to its source. The counsel is presented by the writer of the
  story, and in absolute terms —as if to say, there will be no more
  shilly-shallying around regarding "Ought I to go where 1 am
  called? or not?" The definitive guidance is this:
  Whosoever desires to explore The Way —
  Let them set out—for what more is there to say?
  These words were written nine hundred years ago. They por-
  tray a timeless idea about how to journey to the curve around
  which one finds one's wholeness waiting. These w-ords of wis-
  dom have continued to surface over the eons. They point to the
  same parallels on the map of spirit, marking the entry points
  with big red X's: "Here! Here is the exact place to start, the
  exact attitude to take."
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  Three hundred years after Farid ad-Din Attar wrote his
  "Conference of the Birds," the ancient poetry of Mayan Popul
  Vuh was first translated into Spanish. One part of that poetic
  saga tells about the great journey four companions are about to
  undertake —a journey into a hard battle to recover a stolen trea-
  sure. They are frightened and say to the ethereal warrior-entity
  that leads them, "What if we die? W'hat if we are defeated?"
  And the enormous brute force that guides them—rather than
  being aloof and hardened, replies, "Do not grieve. I am here.
  Do not be afraid." And they are comforted and strengthened to
  go forward. The greater force gives no coddling, but rather en-
  couragement woven through with compassion, which says, in
  essence, "You can go forward, for you are not alone; I will not
  leave you."
  The idea to go forward, to seek wholeness without pausing to
  reconsider, debate, or procrastinate one more time—this is
  found too in the twentieth-century poet Louise Bogan's work.
  She writes in the same crisp vein about commencing the mo-
  mentous journey. Her poem, entitled "The Daemon," refers to
  the angel that each person on earth is believed to be born with,
  the one who guides the life and destiny of that child on earth.
  In the piece, she questions this greater soulful force about going
  forward in life. The daemon answers her quintessential question
  with the ancient answer:
  It said, "Why not?"
  It said, "Once more."
  These responsories are an echo from twenty-one hundred
  years ago, when the venerable first-century-BCE rabbi, Hiltel,
  encouraged in his mishnah, "If not now, when?11 This simple
  and powerful encouragement to go on with the journey has been
  expressed in different words, at different times, to the yearning
  but timid, to the uncertain, the jaded, the hesitant, the dawdlers,
  the postponers, the fakers, the foolish, and the wise. Thus, since
  the beginning of time, humanity has lurched, walked, crawled,
  dragged, and danced itself forward toward the fullest life with
  soul possible.
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2 O O 4 EDITION
  The journey to the treasure is undertaken with as much valor
  and vision as each can muster. Even when one's will or one's un-
  derstanding wavers, the creative gifts to follow and learn this
  larger life are fully present. People may be unprepared, but they
  are never unprovisioned. Each person is born with the where-
  withal fully intact.
  What Does the Soul Truly Want?
  If the world of mythos is a universe, I come from a tiny archi-
  pelago of deeply ethnic families, composed of household after
  household of Old World refugees, immigrants, and storytellers
  who could not read or write, or did so with grave difficulty. But
  they had a rich oral tradition, of which I have been in a long
  life's study as a cantadora—that is, a carrier and shelterer of
  mythic tales, especially those coming from my own ancestral
  Mexicano and Magyar traditions.
  My other lifework is that of a post-trauma specialist and
  diplomate psychoanalyst. With the aim of helping to repair torn
  spirits, I listen to many life dramas and dream narratives. From
  repeatedly seeing how the psyche yearns when it is inspired,
  confused, injured, or bereft, I find that, above all, the soul
  wants stories.
  If courage and bravery are the muscles of the spiritual drive
  that help a person to become whole, then stories are the bones.
  Together, they move the episodes of the life myth forward. Why
  stories"? Because the soul's way of communicating is to teach.
  And its language is symbols and themes —all of which have been
  found, since the beginning of time, in stories. I would even go so
  far as to say, the soul needs stories. That radiant center we call
  soul is the enormous aspect of psyche which is invisible, but
  which can be palpably felt. When in relationship with the soul,
  we sense our highest aspirations, our most uncanny knowings,
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  our mystical understandings, and our spontaneous inspirations
  and unleashings of creative ideas.
  We speak of the soul infusing us with the humane and sacred
  qualities of life that gratify longings deep within. Thus, via
  dream-images, evocative moments, and story plots—the soul ap-
  pears to stimulate the psyche's innate yearning to be taught its
  greater and lesser parts, to be comforted, lifted, and inspired to-
  ward the life that is "just a little bit lower than the angels."
  There is a "hearing capacity" in the psyche. It loves to listen
  to all manner of nourishing, startling, and challenging dramatic
  patterns —the very ones found in tales. It matters little how the
  stories arrive—whether they take shape in day-time reveries,
  night-time dreams, or through the inspired arts, or are told sim-
  ply by human beings in any number of ways. They are meant to
  be conveyed in blood-red wholeness and authentic depth.
  In my work of listening to others telling about the many im-
  ages and ideas that colonize them, stories, regardless of the forms
  they are given, are the only medium on earth that can clearly
  and easily mirror every aspect of the psyche—the cruel, the cold
  and deceptive, the redemptive, salvific, desirous, the tenacious
  aspects, and so much more. If one did not know oneself, one
  could listen to a dozen profound stories that detail the pathos of
  the hero's or heroine's failures and victories. Thence, with some
  guidance, a person would soon be far better able to name, in
  oneself and others, those critical and resonant elements and facts
  that compose a human being.
  There was a serious piece of advice given by the very old peo-
  ple in our family. It was that every child ought to know twelve
  complete stories before that child was twelve years old. Those
  twelve tales were to be a group of heroic stories that covered a
  spectrum—of both the beautiful and the hellacious—from life-
  long loves and loyalties, to descents, threats, and deaths, with
  rebirth ever affirmed. No matter how much "much" a person
  might otherwise possess, they were seen as poor—and worse, as
  imperiled—if they did not know stories they could turn to for
  advice, throughout and till the very end of life.
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  There Must Be a River: Ever and Ever,
  There Must Be a River
  In the past two centuries there has been much erosion of the oral
  storytelling tradition. Many clans and groups, when too quickly
  forced into another culture's ideals, have been de-stabilized eco-
  nomically and therefore often de-tribalized as well. This can
  cause entire groups to become abruptly and painfully un-storied.
  Sudden monetary need can cause the young and old to be sepa-
  rated from one another, as the younger ones travel far away
  seeking income. The same occurs when there is massive loss of
  hunting, fishing, or farming habitat. People must break family
  ties to seek farther and farther from home for their sustenance.
  For thousands of years, a solid oral tradition has depended, in
  many cases, first of all, on having a close-knit and related group
  to tell stories to. There must also be a time and place to tell the
  stories, including special times to tell certain stories—such as, in
  my foster father's Hungarian farm-village, where love stories
  with a certain erotic flavor to them were told in latest winter.
  This was to encourage babies to be made then and, it was
  hoped, to be delivered before the hard work of first harvest came
  in the late summer.
  Elena and Nicolae Ceaus.escu's murderoiis regime in late
  twentieth-century Romania destroyed hundreds of living, thriv-
  ing smail farm-villages, and disenfranchising the people who
  had worked those fertile lands for centuries. The two dictators
  said they were "modernizing" the peasants—but, in reality, they
  were killing them. The Ceau§escus were like the Kraken of
  Greek mythos, which tries to devour and destroy anything of
  beauty, till nothing but its own grotesque hulk is left standing.
  Many dear souls I spoke to in Bucharest had been literally
  forced from their farmhouses by their own government. They
  were driven thence into the city, to live in one of the hundreds of
  ugly, drab, cement-block high-rise apartments the Ceaus_escus
  had ordered to be built. Bucharest was once called "the Paris of
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 20 04 EDITION
  the Balkans," for it had such gracious ancient villas, beautiful
  houses, and buildings made by incredible Old World craftsmen.
  The despots destroyed over seven thousand villas, homes,
  churches, monasteries, synagogues, and a hospital, in order to
  put up their dead garden of gray concrete.
  I met wild artists, and gracious young and old people, who
  were still deeply scarred after the nightmare tyranny of the
  Ceaus.escus had fallen. But the people were still filled with
  guarded hope. One group of old women told me that there in the
  city, the young girls no longer knew the love stories traditionally
  used to draw the interest of suitors. Though the lovely young
  girls' physical beauty surely would attract them, how would any
  suitor determine whether a girl knew anything about deep life if
  she did not know the stories about all the beauties and dead
  ends of life"? If she were naive about the challenging themes re-
  vealed in stories, how would the girl therefore be able to with-
  stand the ups and downs of marriage?
  How did the young girls lose their stories? They normally
  would have learned them at the river, where village women of all
  ages washed clothes together. Now that their lands had been
  confiscated and their villages plowed under and replaced by
  huge (and largely inept) "state-run" agricultural cooperatives,
  now that the villagers had been "removed" to the city, each tiny
  urban apartment had one small sink. This is where the women
  were to wash their family's ctothes evermore. There was no river
  in the projects. No river: no gathering place. No gathering place:
  no stories.
  Yet, since time out of mind, for those souls no longer able or
  allowed to live the integral village life, it has been amazing how
  faithfully these people have found other ways to "dig" psychic
  rivers wherever they are, so that the stories can still flow on. The
  need for stories —to engender relationships, and creativity, and
  to grow the souls of all—does not ever cease. This mysterious
  drive to have the succor of stories remains, even in the midst
  of crises.
  The former farm-women now living in the big Romanian city
  no longer had the village river, so they made a story circle in the
  INTRODUCTION TO THE: 2004 EDITION
  eldest one's tiny home. Her living room became the river. The
  old women put out the word that all the other women should all
  bring their daughters; that they would make them clothes-
  modern ones, like those displayed in the store windows. The ex-
  cellent old seamstresses thus sewed and talked and told the old
  stories of love and life and death; and the girls, taking delight in
  their new clothes and in gratitude for the hands that made them,
  were taught, at last, the needed stories. It was a different river
  than before, that is true. But the women still knew where in the
  heart the headwaters lay—the river that ran through their hearts,
  uniting them, was still as deep and clear as it had ever been.
  The Story Function Will Not Die
  One of the most remarkable developments that criss-cross the
  world, no matter how urbanized a people may become, no mat-
  ter how far they are living from family, or how many generations
  away they are born from a tight-knit heritage group—people
  everywhere nonetheless will form and re-form "talking story"
  groups. There appears to be a strong drive in the psyche to be
  nourished and taught, but also to nourish and teach the psyches
  of as many others as possible, with the best and deepest stories
  that can be found.
  For those who are able to read, perhaps the hunger for stories
  may be partially met through the daily reading of a newspaper,
  especially those rare kind of heroic stories to be found in longer
  feature articles. These allow the reader to "be with" the story, to
  follow the leitmotifs patiently, to give consideration to each part,
  to allow thoughts and feeling to arise, and so to speak, to flood
  the fertile psychic delta.
  When I teach journalists, writers, and filmmakers about au-
  thentic story, its archetypal parts and powers, and how a story
  may become compelling, or may fail to be —I encourage them to
  be brave by taking time to tell the whole story, not just story
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2OO4 EDITION
  simplex as the overculture too often seems to demand. A longer
  piece, with archetypal themes intact, invites the psyche to enter
  the story, to immerse in the undergirdings and nuances of an-
  other human being's wild fate.
  When stories are shortened to "bytes," all the most profound
  symbolic language and themes —and thereby the deeper mean-
  ings and nourishments—are left out. The too-short or superficial
  story colludes in supporting a mad culture that insists that
  human beings remaining frazzled, ever on the run —rather than
  inviting them, by the telling of a compelling story at some
  length, to slow down, to know that it is alright to sit down now,
  that it is good to take rest, and to listen with one's inner hearing
  to something that is energizing, engaging, instructive, and nour-
  ishing in one way or another.
  To supplement the written word, or as an alternative to it,
  many people who are "un-villaged" recreate villages wherever
  they go. Thus they gather with others at a crossroads, or at a
  certain cafe, the gyros shop, the bakery, the breakfast-place, at
  the curb, or on the street corners—all to "jape and jaw," that is,
  to talk long-windedly and jokingly with peers about each one's
  latest exploits. And in between the exploits, they tell all the old
  personal and mythic stories each can remember. These are all
  reassertions of tribal story gatherings. Sometimes, too, people
  gather with others around the "central hearth" of a book, and
  thereby draw strength and guidance from it and from each other.
  Parks across the world are filled every day with adults and
  teenagers who share the mundane stories of their days with one
  another. The themes of great love, and no love, and new love
  that they have lived firsthand, form the center of many of the
  stories they tell each other. Even when people no longer remem-
  ber the old stories, they can pick up the great heroic themes
  again, as they study their own and other people's lives. Many of
  the true stories of human love-life are but echoes of the themes
  found in the heroic legends of Abelard and Heloise (lovers who
  were driven apart by others), or Eros and Psyche (the big mis-
  step in love), or Medea and Jason (the jealousy, envy, and re-
  venge of insanely possessive love).
  INTRODUCTION
  THE 2004 EDITION
  In restaurants, there are many chairs reserved in perpetuity
  for "The Ladies Club," or "The Outrageous Older Women's
  Club," and many other coteries, covens, and circles —the whole
  point of which is to tell, trade, make stories. Around the world,
  at any given time, there are legions of old men walking to gather
  together at their designated story place. It is a pub, a bench out-
  side or inside a store or arcade, a table—often outdoors, under
  trees. My elderly and vital father-in-law, a former estimator and
  installer of burglar-alarms for American District Telegraph,
  meets his cronies religiously. Several times a week they gather at
  Mickey-D's, which is what MacDonatd's chain of restaurant is
  called by "da guys" in Chicago.
  "The Mickey-D's Good Guys1 Club" is the formal name they
  have given their gathering. They are a group that includes many
  grizzled and handsome old union truck- and tanker-drivers.
  Their clan ritual is to bring up every serious, foolish, and noble
  story they have heard on the news or read in the newspaper.
  They discuss the world's terrible woes in detail then, and sug-
  gest theoretical—but always heroic—solutions. They agree that
  "If only everyone would just take our good advice, the world
  would be a much better place by tomorrow morning."
  The desire to make, tell, and hear stories is so profound that
  groups and clubs are formed for that precise purpose. There are
  pods of drinking "regulars," civic meetings, church fellowships,
  celebrations, sanctifications, homecomings, reunions, birthday
  parties, holiday gatherings, high holy days, porch-stoop sittin's,
  readers' groups, therapy groups, news meetings, planning ses-
  sions, and other occasions are used to call people to be together.
  The point of it all certainly includes the stated reason the gath-
  ering was called, but, underlying it, it is about stories—the ones
  that will be traded, hooted out, acted out, suppressed, reveled
  in, approached, interpreted, and laughed over—wherever like-
  minded people come together.
  And after such meetings, though gifts might have been ex-
  changed or door prizes given out, though arguments might have
  taken place, alliances begun, ended, or strengthened, learnings
  achieved or delayed, what is remembered most—and told over
  xxxvii
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  and over again —is nut the trinkets or the mundane proceedings
  so much, as the stories that unfolded there, and often the love
  that carried them.
  Thus one more link of story-associations is forged so that the
  group can be bound together. As the matriarch of my family, it is
  my job to lead in many ways. Thus, I often say to my fissioning,
  active family, "We have to go somewhere together soon now. We
  have to make new memories together now." By such means, peo-
  ple all across the world experience continuing new stories to bind
  and rebind their self-made clans together. For everyone, from war
  veterans to families, from co-workers to classmates, from sur-
  vivors to activists, religious and artists, and more, the stories they
  share together bind them more faithfully, through the heart and
  soul, to each other and to the spirit, than almost any other bond.
  In Extremis:
  The Story Finds a Way
  To be in extremis means to be in severe circumstances, to be
  near the point of death. This can be the exact condition of the
  psyche at certain times, depending on the quality of one's
  choices and/or the terrible twists of fate. Then, even if the
  means for sharing stories is almost completely disassembled—as
  when persons are incarcerated in prison —the human spirit will
  still find a way to receive and to convey stories.
  I have had a ministry to the imprisoned for many years. People
  in penitentiaries can communicate a story in a quick pantomime
  passing in the corridors. They will write short stories in letters
  that are flushed down one toilet, and retrieved from another toi-
  let that has been linked with the first. People imprisoned learn to
  tell stories in sign language, sticking their arms out through the
  cell bars so other people imprisoned in cells further down the line
  can see their hands. They then literally spell out letters to the
  words in the air and make inventive gestures as well. Pictures
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  and paintings are made. These often resemble ex-votos that de-
  scribe an episode in life or death, and these are often smuggled
  from cell to cell. People learn how to tell brief stories of success
  and failure by merely letting their eyes do the telling as they
  pass by each other.
  The story-making and story-receiving functions persevere,
  no matter what. There are many egregious events recorded in
  history wherein a person or a people have been massacred. In
  their last room, on the walls, in the dirt, they drew a picture or
  wrote the story of what was happening to them, using anything
  they had, including their own blood. People who have fallen and
  been fatally injured in the wilderness have been known to man-
  age to use their own cameras to photograph themselves, or to
  write in a journal, or gasp into a tape recorder the story of their
  last days. The drive to tell the story is profound.
  Secret-keeping is a risky affair for the same reason. There is
  something in the psyche that recognizes a wrongful act and wants
  to tell the story of how it came about and what action ought be
  undertaken to correct it. The tale of "The King with the Ears of
  an Ass" is a case in point. It is an interesting story about personal
  politics. In the story, the king has committed a wrong. As a re-
  sult, the long tender ears of a donkey suddenly erupt on his head.
  He anxiously begins to let his hair grow to disguise these bo-
  dacious ears. He allows his barber to trim his hair, but only a
  tiny bit, and only if the barber will keep his horrible secret. The
  barber agrees. Yet, though he is a good man, it is soon killing
  him to keep the secret. So, with full desire to remain loyal to his
  promise, the barber goes out each night and digs a shallow little
  hole in the ground by the river. He leans down to the opening in
  the earth and whispers the secret: "Psssst, the king has the ears
  of an ass." He then pats the dirt back into the opening, turns,
  and goes to his bed greatly unburdened.
  However, over a short time, reeds grow up from the openings
  he has made in the earth. Shepherds pass by and see these lovely
  strong reeds growing there. They cut them for flutes. But the
  moment the shepherds put their lips to the newly made flutes,
  the flutes must cry out, "The king has the ears of an ass!"
  
  Myth and Dream
  WHETHER we listen with aloof amusement to the dreamlike
  mumbo jumbo of some red-eyed witch doctor of the Congo, or
  read with cultivated rapture thin translations from the sonnets of
  the mystic Lao-tse; now and again crack the hard nutshell of an
  argument of Aquinas, or catch suddenly the shining meaning of
  a bizarre Eskimo fain' tale: it will be always the one, shape-shifting
  yet marvelously constant story that we find, together with a chal-
  lengingly persistent suggestion of more remaining to be experi-
  enced than will ever be known or told.
  Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every
  circumstance, the myths of man have flourished; and they have
  been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared
  out of the activities of the human body and mind. It would not
  be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through
  which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human
  cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social
  forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science
  and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from
  the basic, magic ring of myth.
  The wonder is that the characteristic efficacy to touch and in-
  spire deep creative centers dwells in the smallest nursery fairy
  tale—as the flavor of the ocean is contained in a droplet or the
  whole mystery of life within the egg of a flea. For the symbols of
  mythology are not manufactured; they cannot be ordered, in-
  vented, or permanently suppressed. They are spontaneous pro-
  ductions of the psyche, and each bears within it, undamaged, the
  germ power of its source.
  What is the secret of the timeless vision? From what profundity
  of the mind does it derive? Why is mythology everywhere the
  same, beneath its varieties of costume? And what does it teach?
  Today many sciences are contributing to the analysis of the
  riddle. Archaeologists are probing the ruins of Iraq, Honan,
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2OO4 EDITION
  Thus it goes with the psyche. Story erupts, no matter how
  deeply repressed or buried. Whether in night-dreams, or through
  one's creative products, or the tics and tocks of neurosis, the story
  will find its way up and out again.
  Sometimes an entire culture colludes in the gradual destruc-
  tion of its own panoramic spirit and breadth of its teaching
  stories. Purposefully, or without awareness, this is done by fo-
  cusing almost exclusively only on one or two story themes,
  inhibiting or forbidding all others, or only excessively touting a
  favorite one or two. Whether these narrowly defined or overly
  vaunted stories are predictable and repetitive ones about the
  same aspects of sex or violence, over and over again, and little
  else, or they are about how sinful or stupid people are, and how
  they ought be punished—the effect is the same. The story tradi-
  tion becomes so narrowed that, like an artery that is clogged, the
  heart begins to starve. In physiology, as in culture, this is a life-
  threatening symptom.
  Then the psyches of individuals may resort to scraps and tat-
  ters of stories offered them via various channels. And they will
  take them, often without question, the same way people who are
  starving will eat food that is spoiled or that has no nutritional
  value, if none other is available. They might hope to find such
  poor food somehow replenishing, even though it can never be
  so—and might sicken them to boot. In a barren culture, one or
  two fragmentary story-themes play, like a broken record, broad-
  casting the same notes over and over again. At first it may be
  slightly interesting. Then it becomes irritating. Next it becomes
  boring and hardly registers at all. Finally it becomes deadening.
  The spirit and mind and body are made narrower, rather than
  radiant and greater, by its presence, as they are meant to be.
  Such flattened-out stories, with only one or two themes, are
  far different from heroic stories, which have hundreds of themes
  and twists and turns. Though heroic stories may also contain
  sexual themes and other motifs of death, evil, and extinction,
  they are also only one part of a larger universal rondo of stories,
  which includes themes of spirit overriding matter, of entropy, of
  glory in rebirth, and more. Sex, death, and extinction stories are
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  useful in order for the psyche to be taught about the deeper life.
  But to be taught the full spectrum of stories, there must be a
  plethora of mythic components and episodes that progress and
  resolve in many different ways.
  It is from innocent children that I learned what happens when
  a young soul is held away from the breadth and meaningful nu-
  ances of stories for too long. Little ones come to earth with a
  panoramic ability to hold in mind and heart literally thousands
  of ideas and images. The family and culture around them is sup-
  posed to place in those open channels the most beautiful, useful,
  deep and truthful, creative and spiritual ideas we know. But
  very many young ones nowadays are exposed almost exclusively
  to endless "crash and bash" cartoons and "smack 'em down"
  computer games devoid of any other thematic components.
  These fragmentary subjects offer the child no extensive depth
  of storyline.
  When I have taught children as an artist-in-residence in the
  schools, I have found that many children were already starved
  for deep story before they had reached second grade. They
  tended to know only those from sit-com television, and they
  often reduced their writings to these drastically narrowed
  themes: "A man killed another man." "He killed him again and
  again. Period." "They lived, they died. The end." Nothing more.
  One fine way parents, teachers, and others who cherish the
  minds of the young can rebalance and educate modern children's
  psyches is to tell them, show them, and involve them in deeper
  stories, on a regular basis. They can also begin to interpret daily
  life in mythic story terms, pointing out motifs, characters, mo-
  tives, perils, and the methods of finding one's way. By these
  means and more, the helpers override the immense repetition of
  one-point-only stories that so much contemporary media and
  culture so harp on ad infinitum. The mythic is as needed as air
  and water. The mythic themes not only teach, but also nourish
  and, especially, energize the psyche. The vast world of story is
  where the child's spirit will find these most consistently. The
  radical knowledge and amazements found in stories ought to be
  every child's daily inheritance.
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2OO4 EDITION
  Amongst adults, too, the need and desire for story are so
  great, that even though storylines in the collective may have de-
  teriorated, and become obsessive, drilling, and repetitive, or else
  corrupted, human beings will find apertures through which to
  create fresh and new stories—from underground. From outside
  the culture or at its edges, inventive and inspired souls will not
  allow the stories to be subverted. They will resurrect the "lost
  stories" in new ways that restore their depth and surprise—that
  are capable of uplifting, testing, and altering the psyche.
  Currently, it is on the internet that gifted "frontier" writers
  and artists gather to create stories together. It is in web-zines,
  through cyber-art, the fabulae of game design, and in other
  wildly inventive never-before-seen forms, that any impoverish-
  ment to deep story the over-culture has caused is being over-
  thrown. What an amazement it has been to us mere mortals to
  find that the reality now exists for "a voice greater" to be broad-
  cast via the binary-code blips of ones and zeroes —a process, I
  am toid, which mirrors the binary code used by the synapses in
  the human brain. The computer transport system has become
  the circuitry for la voz mitologico, the mythic voice, to potentially
  address the entire planet within seconds. How mythic is that?
  Very.
  The "underground" artists understand how to use this win-
  dow to psyche, and unleash their stories with an intense under-
  standing of the motives, successes, failures, and possibilities in
  mythic life. They will not be crushed under the boots of the lat-
  est societal obsession that endarkens. They see that the soul does
  not scrimp on images, and they, as creators, must therefore
  avoid, whenever possible, casting any images in too tight a way
  so that there is no room left for the wind of the holy spirit to
  pass through and rearrange everything—sometimes blow it all
  away—all in order to bring wonder and meaning. The ones who
  can both allow and withstand this rapid-fire process are the new
  myth-makers and reformers of the cultures of our times.
  It is not too much to say that lack of compelling and unpre-
  dictable heroic stories can deaden an individual's and a culture's
  overall creative life—can pulverize it right down to powder. It is
  I N T R O D U C T I O N 
  T O 
  T H E 
  2 O O 4 
  E D I T I O N
  not too much to say that an abundance of compelling and unpre-
  dictable heroic stories can re-enspirit and awaken a drowsing
  psyche and culture, filling both with much-needed vitality and
  novel vision. From the ancient storytellers to the present, the idea
  has always been: As go the souls that lead, so goes the culture.
  The Repair Needed In and For This World
  STORY CAN MEND, AND STORY CAN HEAL.
  Certainly, we have hardly ever faced a world in worse shape or
  in greater need of the lyrical, mystical, and common-sensical.
  There seem to be large and perpetual pockets where fair and
  sustaining values are more pale than they should be. But when
  we consider Plato, Strabbo, and the apostles Paul and John, and
  many others over the centuries, we see that they also wrote
  about their times as being likewise devoid of proper "manage-
  ment and meaning." It appears that "culture at edge of utter cor-
  ruption" and "world at the edge of utter destruction" are two of
  the oldest themes to be found in stories of the human race.
  But there are always those too, who have created and written
  about last-minute and long-term redemptions. They are the ones
  who give out stories that stir—that give succor and bread
  enough for the crossing. I think of story-givers like Abraham
  Joshua Heschel. The title of one of his books is a story in
  itself that says it all: I Asked for Wonder. He wrote that the cul-
  mination of life carries a more and more clear disposition to
  achieve moral virtue. His stories, exegeses, philosophy, and mys-
  tical views revolve around the idea that life ought to have
  poignant incomparables in it. He urged persons to "the ecstasy of
  deeds"—that is, "to go beyond oneself, to outdo oneself—and
  thence to "go beyond one's own needs, and illumine the world."
  Others, including the Persian poet-priest Kabir, tell instruc-
  tive stories through poetry using themes like this: First thing in
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  the morning, do not rush off to work, but take down your musi-
  cal instrument and play it. Then test your work in the same way.
  If there is no music in it, then set it aside, and go find what has
  music in it again.
  In this way the old teaching stories helped others to remember
  the most loved sources of life. Stories told by the Buddha often
  contain the message "Harm no life." The texts of the Bhagavad
  Gita record battlefield discussions wherein the leader reveals
  that it is the love in all things that makes up the heart of man-
  liness and womanliness. All these convey soulful encourage-
  ment through story. In his lyric hymns, Homer writes that the
  mother, Demeter, while seeking her lost child, "tears down her
  hair like dark wings" and flies over the surface of the earth in
  search of her beloved. She will not rest until she finds her heart
  again. These all serve as examples of the kind of guidance for re-
  discovering the radiant center that is often found in heroic story.
  There is a living concept of repair that has called to many in
  our lifetime—even seized some of us when we were only chil-
  dren just walking along one day. This concept embodies the
  idea that the world has a soul, and, thereby, if it is the soul that
  wants stories, then the world needs stories too—stories of repair,
  strength, and insight. If the world has a soul, then story informs
  and heals and spiritually grows the cultures, and the peoples
  within those cultures, through its universal cache of idioms
  and images.
  In ancient Hebraic, this concept is known as tikkun olam;
  meaning repair of the world soul. This is a living concept, for it
  requires endeavor —a daily one, and sometimes even an hourly
  one. It is a commitment to a way of right conduct, a form of liv-
  ing meditation, a kind of contemplative pragmatic. I understand
  it this way: Tikkun olam is giving one's attention and resources
  to repair that part of the world that is right before you, precisely
  within your spiritual, psychological, and physical reach—according
  to soul's sight, not ego's alone.
  I understand the artful methods of tikkun olam, handed down
  generation to generation, to be of the most simple and humble
  kind: the spiritual sight that has enough of a glowing heart behind
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2OO4 EDITION
  it to see beneath the surface of things; to care for others beyond
  oneself; to translate suffering into meaning; to find the edges of
  hope, and to bring it forward with a plan; a willingness to find
  insight through struggle; an ability to stand and withstand what
  one sees that is painful; and, in some way, to gentle the flurry; to
  take up broken threads as well and tie them off; to reweave and
  mend what is torn, to patch what is missing; to try for percep-
  tion far beyond the ego's too-often miniscule understanding.
  All these ways of tikkun olam are recorded in different ways in
  stories —in heroic stories about bad roads, poor judgments, dark
  nights, dreadful starts, mysterious ghosts, terrible ambushes,
  great strengths, mercies, and compassions. All these actions for
  repair of the world soul also constitute the growing of one's own
  soul: By their acts ye shall know them. By reaching out to the
  world, as a more and more individuated soul, one also repairs
  the ravel of oneself—for whatever of the world has gone awry
  and can be aided, is sometimes in similar needful condition in
  the personal psyche as well. In many ways, we can see the evi-
  dences that the inner life strengthens the outer life, and vice
  versa. And it is stories that can unite these two precious
  worlds —one mundane, the other mythic.
  The Human Heroic Figure
  It would appear, were we to follow the long genealogy of heroes
  and heroines in mythos, that it is via the soul being stolen, misman-
  aged, disguised, disrupted, pre-empted or trodden upon, that some
  of the purest features of the psyche may rise up and begin to long
  for—call for—the return of that radiant companion and counsel.
  In stories, the force of soul is conveyed in so many ways.
  Sometimes it is represented by such symbols as the darling
  princess, the handsome prince, the tiny or wounded creature,
  the holy chalice, the cloak of invisibility, the golden fleece, the
  answer to the riddle, the seven-league boots, the creature who
  xlv
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  reveals the secret, or the proof that there is yet left in the world
  one last honest human being.
  Since first daylight, the revelatory actions and lessons found in
  the oldest tales are ignited by and revolve around the loss of the
  precious thing. And then come the efforts, detours, and inspira-
  tions that suddenly appear whilst in pursuit of the recovery of
  the greatest treasure.
  How may one do this? The people, the tribes, the groups and the
  clans of the world keep heroic mythos alive—keep stories impor-
  tant to the soul alive—by telling them, and then by trying to live
  them out in some way that brings one into more wisdom and ex-
  perience than one had before. The same is given to us to do on
  our life's journeys also—to seek and follow the personal life myth,
  to see our worst and best attributes mirrored back to us in stories.
  Once embarked, there will be times, as occurred in the life of
  the hero Odysseus, when one will have to search one's ways
  through crushing life circumstances, and, often enough, have
  to start all over again —while at the same time having to resist
  seductions that invite one to stray off the path.
  On the mythic journey, like Demeter, most human beings will
  be called at least once, and perhaps many times in a lifetime, to
  set aside passive longing, and instead to fly up to the highest
  light, or even into the face of convention —"taking the heat" in
  order to find the truth of things, in order to bring one's Beloved
  back home.
  And counter to Oedipus and the sad motifs found in the
  story-play Oedipus Rex, perhaps we will also have reason in life
  to resist throwing away the spiritual child self, and instead to
  unburden and uncurse what has been misunderstood, and par-
  ticularly what is innocent. We may also find good reason to
  refuse to blind ourselves, as Oedipus did, to the evils of the
  world or our own foibles, and instead to try to live in full disclo-
  sure and integrity.
  In tribal groups, whether stories of the journeys of the heroic
  soul end humorously, tragically, or grandly, each kind of termi-
  nus is still considered an object lesson, a window through which
  one can see the broad continuum of how the soul can not only be
  I N T R O D U C T I O N 
  T O 
  T H E 
  2 O O 4 
  E D I T I O N
  known more and more, but how it can also, through courage and
  consciousness, be grown to greater capacity. The soul is not
  known or realized less when a tale comes to no good end—only
  differently. In tales, as in life, increase can come as much as from
  travail and failure as much as when the episode ends with a com-
  fortable or lovely result.
  Most persons who have been through hell of various kinds-
  war, massacre, assault, torture, profound sorrows, will tell that,
  even though they still fee! sick with the weight of it all, and per-
  haps also ill with regrets of one kind or another—they are never-
  theless learning how to swim strong to reach the able raft of the
  soul. Though there is something to be said for those rare heroes
  and heroines who sit on the undisturbed shore enjoying the in-
  tense beauty of the soulrise, I am more on the side of those who
  must swim the torrents while crying out for help. In all, they are
  striving hard not to drown before they can reach the safety of
  the souPs arms. And most who have been so deeply harmed will
  tell you that, all the while they are swimming, they feel their
  own soul is rowing toward them with the strongest, deepest of
  strokes that can only come from One who loves without limits.
  This is the underlayment of mythos, as I understand it: that
  there is a soul; that it wishes to be free; that it loves the human
  it inhabits; that it will do all it can to shelter the one it loves; and
  that it wants to be known, listened to, followed, given an en-
  larged broadcast range, granted leadership in the quest for expe-
  rience that carries such worth for the higher self—and that its
  language is stories.
  The Mythic Question
  Over these many decades of being a keeper of stories, I have
  come to see that almost invariably every story, myth, legend,
  saga, and folktale begins with a poignant question of one kind or
  another. In tales, this premiere query may be spoken—or only
  xlvii
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2OO4 EDITION
  inferred. But regardless, the poignant question strikes a spark to
  the engine that ignites the heart. This starts up the energy of the
  story; it rolls the story forward. The mythic tale unfolds in re-
  sponse to that single igniting question.
  Thus Odysseus answers, throughout his entire saga in The
  Odyssey, the single mythic question posed at the beginning, the
  one which could be phrased as: How do I ever find true home
  again"? Demeter is the Greek Mother Goddess, the essence of
  nurturance for earth and for humans. She undertakes a horrible,
  grief-stricken journey to seek and retrieve her innocent daughter
  who had been snatched down into the dark underworld against
  her will. Throughout Demeter's unfolding story, the question is
  posed: To what great lengths can the immortal soul be pressed
  and still retrieve the Beloved? The account of Oedipus in the
  play by Sophocles, throughout to its end, answers a question
  like this: What darkness, dead-zones, and deaths can occur
  when secrets are not revealed and truth is not told?
  This question at the beginning of a story—or at any point
  along one's own life line—grants the seeker a bar to measure
  against, to see then which directions to take most profitably in
  order to find one's own answers. The transformative question
  grants a scale on which to weigh which portion of each learning
  one might most fruitfully keep, and which parts or pieces can be
  bypassed or left behind as ballast, as one continues on the quest.
  Thus Odysseus leaves behind Circe, the Sirens, and Calypso,
  all of whom seek to lure and imprison him with their charms.
  His question is how to find his way back home to Ithaca, which
  symbolizes, along with his wife and children, his true home. His
  answer unfolds, as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of
  Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, would write many cen-
  turies later, "Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the
  mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the sou! may fix its
  intellectual eye." Odysseus has only to stay to his purpose to find
  home. That is the wild answer.
  In mythic tales, the soul poses the question, and all things
  are measured against the soul's interest. Though sometimes the
  answers to one's most unifying and electrifying questions seem
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  to come from out of nowhere, more often too, in mythos, the an-
  swers come only from a hard labor that is kept to day after day.
  Thereby, if one is seeking gold, one must go where gold is and
  suffer through the travail to get there—and then use all of one's
  brawn and wits to mine for it, and to recognize it when one sees it.
  The grandmother in "Jack and the Beanstalk" does not real-
  ize the golden opportunity her grandson has been given, when
  she has it right in her hands. In that tale, the land and people are
  in a terrible famine. She throws away what she thinks are the
  "useless beans" that Jack has brought home, having traded the
  family cow for them. Out the window the beans go. But, over-
  night, they grow into a giant "tree of life" that allows Jack to
  bring home a goose, which lays golden eggs, and other riches
  that reverse the long famine. The ogre, signifying a coarse and
  dominant quality in the psyche, is defeated.
  Likewise, in mythos and tales, if one is looking for wood, one
  must go to the forest. If one is looking for life, one must go to
  the eternal life-giver—and/or the eternal death-dealer—in order
  to find the needed understandings to wrest free the answer to
  the riddle, all in order to answer the question most dear to one's
  soul—the one used to motivate and locomote true consciousness.
  Thereby, whatever adventures, misfortunes, detours, and gratifi-
  cations occur along the road—all are seen as moving the self to-
  ward learning and transformation. Obstacles and preformed
  ogres rise up regularly. They confound and injure the hero and
  heroine. Thus the seekers find, at many different levels, a multi-
  tude of responses to that single question posed at the beginning-
  responses that increase their life-giving capacities.
  Odysseus finds more answers to his question—where is true
  home? —by meeting and outmaneuvering the she-monsters of
  the sea, Scylla and Charybdis, which attempt to destroy him
  and all his mates. He meets Aeolus, the king of the winds, who
  gives him a sack filled with a wind that will take him within
  sight of home. But Odysseus falls asleep; and his crew thinks
  there is booty in the sack, so they pry it open. The wind that
  rushes out pushes them so far from home that they literally lose
  themselves.
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2 O O 4 EDITION
  Through these perils and more, he learns the way home is
  mazed with hazards that force him to take chances and to make
  choices —and he learns to not fall asleep. All that he endures is
  also presented to human beings in the same way during times of
  duress. One either forgets one's spiritual commitment and is
  thereby blown farther from true home, or else one becomes, in
  those moments, more determined to fulfill the question, to be-
  come more expansive, more docile, more fierce — whatever is
  required—than one had been just moments before.
  Thereby the hero and heroine are made more durable, more
  able to enter into mystery, more adept at defeating what is often
  seemingly invisible and cloud-like, yet which carries impact
  enough to crush us to death, or else blow us off course and away
  from our stated goal. These heroes and heroines are often the
  ones who —though dragged, drugged, dumped, or seduced into
  peril —manage to call to the soul for support and correction of
  trajectory. The soul will answer, and aim the person toward the
  best results that can be managed at the moment.
  The complications that thwart the hero and heroine of myth
  are called complexes in depth psychology. Complexes are to be
  met, confronted, evaded, amplified, transformed, contained, or
  triumphed over. These blockages appear suddenly in life too.
  They erupt from one's own unconscious, in forms resembling
  anything from irritating needle-toothed ankle-biters to huge,
  bellowing screed-spreaders—or, more subtly, as something we
  long for or are easily seduced by, but which is poisonous to us at
  its core.
  The sidestepping of such obstacles is a common motif in
  myths. Yet, ironically, it is change of direction that often greatly
  furthers the life of the soul. Demeter does so with style. She sees
  that she is at a dead end and must give up trying to make a
  Demophoon, a mortal child, into an immortal, so as to replace
  her own lost immortal child. That desire to "replace" does not
  fulfill the soulful need which guides her seeking—which is not
  to replace, but to find. Ultimately, she turns toward eliciting an-
  swers to her daughter's whereabouts, by focusing and extending
  her power through enlistment of the aid of another.
  I
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2 OO4 EDITION
  One of her tripartite sisters, Hekate, encourages them to fly up
  to the face of Helios, the sun. There they bravely demand, in the
  heckle tones of crones, to be told where Demeter's Beloved is
  being hidden. And Helios, who sees all, tells them of the young
  girl's abduction by Hades, the dark God of the Underworld.
  Thence Hekate and Demeter utilize this information to force
  those who conspired to steal the daughter to instead return her
  to the world again.
  Also in mythos, we see the failures to understand that one has
  choices. Poor Oedipus finds his tragic answers to the question,
  What will be lost if one does not overturn the projections and
  pronouncements of others? When he was born, the Oracle
  claimed he would be doomed to kill his father and marry his
  mother. His parents—attempting to evade the curse for them-
  selves, but without being willing to risk confrontation or counter-
  balance—leave him to die in the woods.
  But he is rescued by shepherds and, when he is grown, he is
  challenged one night by a stranger on a bridge. Both he and the
  stranger are astride horses, but neither will yield to let the other
  pass first. In the ensuing struggle, Oedipus kills the bold
  stranger. Later it is revealed to him that the man murdered was
  his own father .. . the father who had been held away from him
  for so long, by secret-keeping and other nefarious means.
  As the story goes on, Oedipus's incomparable grief over wrong-
  ful identity and futile relationships causes him to blind himself to
  any further sights of the painful truths that swirl around him.
  These awful possibilities are also offered to us when we are on the
  journey—we may too not, at first, ask the most useful questions
  needed. We might try to lie down in psychological slumber and
  ignorance, or give in to the crabbed and destructive expectations
  of something, within and outside ourselves as well, that wishes to
  block knowledge of our soulful origins. Thence, we may suddenly
  be shocked awake to all the ruin that we have become so
  swamped by. We may not ever want to see or feel again. But, of
  course, our story goes on—whereas Oedipus's ended. We will
  have another episode, then another, in which there will be oppor-
  tunity to change course, to see and do differently—and better.
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  In many ways the saga of Oedipus is one of being terribly
  weakened by believing that fate alone is a greater force than free
  will, even though there is indeed something dark and unformed
  in the psyche that believes such to be so. However, it is not so,
  ultimately. In mythos there are far more resurrections and re-
  turns than ever there are cinema screens that simply go blank at
  the end.
  The idea, since forever, has been that story is a conveyance, a
  vehicle, to use in order to think, to move forward through life.
  At the end of a life that has meaning, the point is not that one is
  perfected, but that one will still carry a view of self and the
  world that is divine—and not just some kind of lazy drift. The
  point is to have enough stories that guide —that will allow life's
  closing act to end with one's heart still bright, despite the gales
  that have passed through it —so that it can be said that one has
  lived with spiritual audacity.
  The Spirit and the Academic: Joseph Campbell
  Let us now speak more about Joseph Campbell, his life and
  work. Jung often spoke about essential attitudes needed to sup-
  port a quality life of the soul. He said a certain kind of spirited-
  ness was needed, as well as a certain kind of resistance to societal
  pressures —pressures that might cause a person to become di-
  vorced from a life of meaning.
  In his later years, Joseph Campbell wore his clothes a little like
  a coat hook wears the jacket thrown onto it. He walked with a
  utilitarian gait that was clearly meant only to carry him from one
  side of the room to the other. When he spoke, he often became so
  enthused and talked so fast that his words just tumbled out.
  Seeing and listening to him over the years, it was easy to note
  his genuine love for the essence of the mythic. He particularly
  loved the similarities of themes to be found in mythos, calling
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  upon these themes to be unifiers of disparate groups rather than
  dividers. He managed, throughout his always accessible schol-
  arly work, to utterly resist putting on the slightest of airs about
  it all. Though he occasionally made a small misstep, common to
  his time, revealing a preconception about certain tribal affairs,
  he gave no effort to appear low-, high-, middle-, or any other
  kind of brow.
  Rather, as the lines of mythos are lived out within the spiritual
  vessels of closely woven family groups, in traditional clans, and
  living tribes, he became a central vessel which poured out to oth-
  ers too. No matter where in the world they live, the worldwide
  tribe he stil! teaches, through his published books and films, is
  united by their complementary desire to know—to find meaning
  that matters—in the interior and the outer worlds, both.
  Wrhether an individual is at the very beginning of life's in-
  quiry, or in the deadly middle struggle between ego and higher
  self, or near the lighted terminus where the soul is more finely
  seen and embraced—Campbell was interested in providing sub-
  stance for the long journey ahead.
  He used a language that was easily understood by those he
  was speaking to. He kept to all these simple ways of being, even
  though he lived in a world that sometimes confuses the messen-
  ger with the living message. That he resisted those ideologues
  and demagogues who consistently attempt to press all things
  that once were graceful and filled with love into an artificial and
  one-sided shape, is a grace.
  I have heard that some thought Campbell sometimes did not
  write in a sufficiently high scholarly form. It is true that he con-
  cerned himself with the activities of spirit and soul, mythos and
  fairytales, religious exegesis—the invisible arms that hold up the
  world of human spirit. It is true that he pursued these with all
  the gusto of a child let out of school, and running toward the
  open sea.
  Perhaps it was this eagerness and fervor that caused some to
  talk—to tsk-tsk—to question his seriousness and mien. But one
  must remember that the mythic root of the word intellectual
  means to seek to understand, to enter the nature of a thing and
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  try to understand it from the inside, not just the outside; and
  that academic means, at its heart, to sit "among the groves," to
  have a relationship with one's teacher in the midst of beauty and
  nature, as was once undertaken in the oldest lyceums; . . . and
  that scholarly means "of a school," characteristic of one devoted
  to weighing and pondering—just as a young acolyte gives him-
  or herself to study of sacred Torah — studying deeply with the
  gift of the love of learning fully intact. And all these Campbell
  kept to in his own original way. His scholarship embraced all
  these facets and more.
  It is a fact that he was loved by many for his "everyman" de-
  meanor. Yet, at times as he spoke on his favored subjects, he
  sometimes took on the eerie quality of looking older or younger
  than his real age. Anyone who has been in the presence of a
  great storyteller has seen this phenomenon. I have experienced
  this in great singers, too. Richard Strauss's work, Four Last
  Songs, is a composition about people of great age who are re-
  membering the goodness and fears of life. I have heard several
  gifted sopranos sing Strauss's song-cycle. By virtue of the spare
  and evocative words, by means of the heart-piercing music, and
  the hush of the listeners, the singers may suddenly begin to look
  like ancient beings. Something other than the mundane self
  seems to have come into them.
  Campbell had this quality, too. Sometimes, as he told his work
  aloud with such passion, that he looked a thousand years old,
  like an ageless being himself, an old man before the fire. Yet at
  other times, he looked youthful as he displayed his gentle hu-
  morist's gift alongside his earnestness. These personifications of
  the essences underlying the mythic are seen in tribal groups,
  too, wherein the teller gradually seems to take on the appearance
  of a child, an old person or a creature, as they tell the deeper and
  deeper aspects of the tale.
  Some were said to be shocked at his late-in-life interest in and
  attendance at a Grateful Dead concert, then one of the preeminent
  rock groups of his time. All I could think was, "jAndele! Yes, go
  on!" The Grateful Dead papered the world with posters, books,
  album covers, decals, and stickers detailing their much-vaunted
  liv
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  leitmotif of death in various skeletal forms. Their depictions of
  skill! and skeleton-images were most often surrounded by sym-
  bols of living roses, iridescent rainbows, and full-blown color.
  "The Dead's11 aura was similar to the old Greek stories about
  the souls of the dead who somehow became lost on their ways to
  their final places of happiness and peace. In the tales, a living
  human sees them and takes pity on them, helping to put them
  on the right path, for which the ghostly souls are forever grate-
  ful. In this way, the Grateful Dead's name itself, and their logos,
  were similar to those found in ancient and eternal images repre-
  senting death of the old, and rebirth of new life—all in continu-
  ous cycle.
  But there is this oddity in the deep storytellers isn't there? A
  stop at the shores of a Grateful Dead concert is not too much
  different than any other episode during a great odyssey. Jason
  and the Argonauts made many stops, both at sea and on land,
  meeting with any number of mysterious and unusual creatures.
  Too, the same was true for Hercules, for Perseus, for Demeter
  during her search for her daughter and later her respite under
  the mountain to remake herself. Compelling experiences add to
  the development of the hero and heroine.
  For a living soul following a personal life-myth as Campbell
  did, almost everything of interior and exterior life is approached
  as though it is an old story just now returned to new life. The
  riddle of honor being worked out by Falstaff and others in
  Shakespeare's Henry IV plays can be seen in many modern
  politicians and leaders, who wrestle with the same issues. Every
  soul who desires a transformative life has to give time to a regu-
  lar Herculean clearing of the Augean stables.
  Hasn't everyone lived through friendships that play out as if
  one were dealing with the God of the Morose in Nahua mythos,
  who is guaranteed to infect with his depressive thoughts anyone
  he touches? Isn't there also a good deal of life that is like the
  crazy, whirling dances of King David and his retinue, on their
  way to home? He exhorts everyone to wear their most colorful
  clothing, to crash their finger-cymbals loud, to sing at the top of
  their lungs, and to raise the dust with their dancing feet—to
  lv
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2 O O 4 EDITION
  make a joyous noise to show their God how much divine vitality
  exists on earth.
  To call up modern versions of the old stories, one has to go
  forth and live life. As a result then, one will have the challenge of
  not only living the story, taking it all in, but also interpreting it
  in whatever ways are useful. So too, one will reap the reward of
  telling all about it afterward. One's interest in the world, and in
  having experiences, is really an interest in hearing, having, liv-
  ing one more story, and then one more, then one more story, till
  one cannot live them out loud any longer. Perhaps it should be
  said that the drive to live out stories is as deep in the psyche,
  when awakened, as it is compelling to the psyche to listen to sto-
  ries and to learn from them.
  The Wild Man and the Wild Woman
  Campbell writes about the masculine and feminine archetypes in
  his work. Sometimes there has been a confusion regarding mod-
  ern depth psychology and mythology, and what these gendered
  images represent. Recall that an archetype is a representation
  of the Irrepresentable. It is a shard of something so enormous
  that the greater thing cannot be apprehended by the mundane
  mind. But smaller images of the greater —the kinds that are
  found in art, mythos, music, dance, and story—can be grasped
  by us mere mortals.
  Some think that certain symbols stand only for women, and
  certain other symbols, especially those found in mythos, stand
  only for men. But, at bottom, all represent forces of immense
  creative energy within any psyche. Though there have been cer-
  tain human attributes assigned to "the masculine" and others to
  "the feminine," both, and all, actually have their full share of
  power, strength, fierceness, receptivity, and creativity.
  In mythos, the heroic attributes belong to both feminine
  and masculine, both to men and to women, and to children and
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2OO4 EDITION
  creatures and spirits and sky and earth and the Self as well.
  Thus an individual of any gender can become entranced by and
  learn from the mythic figure of the ancient wild man Campbell
  writes about in these pages. He tells us about a fabulous wild-
  man figure from Russian tales called the "Water Grandfather,"
  who also goes by the name Dyedushka Vodyasnoy.
  Water Grandfather lives just beyond the boundary of the con-
  scious culture. He lives in "the danger zone" of ideas, longings,
  and yearnings —some sanctioned, some not. Those with smaller
  and less well-lit minds try unsuccessfully to exile him. Water
  Grandfather is a shapeshifter. His psyche closely mimics the di-
  vine attributes, as well as human foibles and less-than-lovely at-
  titudes found in ordinary people. This mix flows within every
  individual as he or she struggles to become stable, useful, and
  wildly creative.
  Then there is the wild woman. Campbell writes about this
  character —so dear to my heart. The wild woman is found in
  every culture across the world. Campbell describes her as a true
  poet would. And, based on his descriptions, what woman could
  not understand the wild woman's attributes? Indeed, what
  woman would not want to live these out as her own, or has not
  thought of hoping to master them —including the part Campbell
  mentions in this book about having a wild abode to herself up in
  the mountains where she can, like the wild women, "maintain
  households, like human beings"? This image alone would make
  most women chortle about the heroic feminine desire to be of
  herself, unto herself, and of the domestic and yet of the mild na-
  tures, all at the same time.
  But ultimately, examining these and other figures in mythic
  tales of many kinds—isn't it odd?—the more one studies and
  learns, the more one sees the mythic journey as not one belong-
  ing to any gender per se, regardless of the gender of the heroes
  and heroines or the antagonists presented in tales. With enough
  story mileage on you, and with enough life lived in potholes as
  well as at pinnacles, and—without confusing the very real issues
  of parity and disparity between men and women in many cul-
  tures across the world—one begins to see that the mythic quest
  lvii
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  is the journey of the soul. It is one that has its yin and its yang,
  its hard and soft, its easy and challenging, its durable and its
  delicate—all the attributes, deficits, and more, portrayed by
  mythic persons and creatures in tales since time began.
  Growing New and Future Generations of Souls
  One of the things I have thought about a good deal as I reread
  The Hero with a Thousand Faces most recently is how Camp-
  bell's work, it seems, will still be relevant many decades forward
  in time. This is not an easy thing to effect. Kipping stories from
  their roots and contexts won't pass muster. Just telling a good
  story won't do it. This is because the energy-source of the story
  is not the story itself. The energy of mythos comes from some-
  thing underlying the story. What lies behind the story is the
  same as the energy-source that makes a car go. It is not the chas-
  sis, no matter how classy or shapely it might be. The primary
  force that makes the car go is not even in the engine.
  It is rather the spark that is thrown from one mysterious
  striking-place to that which can catch fire. The spark catches
  there, ignites, and flames upward. Yes, there is something more
  to story language than jiist words. Some venture to explain it this
  way, saying that there is something of the daemon in real time,
  that the angelic force souls said to come with when they are born
  on earth, is what dances under a work, any work, that strikes
  deep chords. In whatever terms or metaphors this process might
  be described by, it is what gives a work its timeless faculty.
  Once could say it is a phenomenon precisely related to the
  idea of the monomyth that Campbell defines; something larger
  than life infuses the human—if they can break themselves open
  and accept it. Then, that which infuses the human infuses the
  work, which then in turn infuses the culture. I do not think this
  phenomenon can be faked or manufactured, but I know that one
  can be called to it, and, if so, will be pressed to it, will be held to
  Iviii
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  it by many tethers—some beautiful and some fearsome—once
  one has agreed to serve.
  It can be said that in this way, by showing the unifying
  mythic factors from diverse cultures, Campbell's work speaks
  also to persons of different ages in the here and now. This in-
  cludes souls who were not even born when he first published
  this book and others of his works.
  In the midst of writing this piece, I had asked one of my
  grown children to read the first chapters of The Hero with a
  Thousand Faces. My youngest daughter is a young mother who
  wears kitten heels and the latest spiked-up hair. Her most keen
  interests are in house design, legal business, and in acting as a
  fierce activist for children. She carries her love of heritage in her
  strong ties to Mexico, and although she shares my love of the
  Gipsy Kings and Paco de Lucia flamenco, she also listens to
  music by musicians with no last names that I know little about,
  even though willing to learn.
  Like many of her generation, she loves to read, but will not
  sit still for writings that are overly ornamented with obscure ref-
  erences not explained clearly, or that hold no "relationship" to
  her mind and to what she values most in life. As a child, she
  once called a book she was assigned to read in Lit class "a dust
  sandwich."
  So in 2003, this child who was born in the early 1970s, began
  reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which Campbell com-
  pleted in 1948. She immediately connected to his ideas about the
  story of Oedipus. "A brokenhearted hero," she called him, and
  had her own lush interpretation of the myth. She was delighted
  to "think with .Joseph Campbell" about destiny as a mythic en-
  deavor. She added this book to others she has that are authored
  by people who, on her terms, "get it."
  I have seen too, from years of teaching sections of Campbell's
  work and the work of other writers concerned with spiritual and
  mythic life to high-school students, that, as it has ever been, the
  psyche cannot awaken to deeper motifs and grasp these all by
  itself. Most recently, while fulfilling a three-year commitment to
  teach and assist verv dear, very smart, and tough young people
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2OO4 EDITION
  recovering from the massacre at Columbine High School, I noted
  once again, often within just a few pages of focusing on the lan-
  guage and concepts of any ancient mythic journey, that even the
  badly injured can regain hope to restore their hearts. They are
  thus inspired to find new energy for their torn spirits, tying
  these matters to the spiritual belief-systems they have already, or
  seeking out new systems that make sense to them at the soul
  level. I know no more perfect definition of good healing than
  this: a return to spiritual nobility.
  With exposure to the ideas about mythic spirit, a person's
  view of the world expands and, at the same time, is often spiritu-
  ally validated too. Learning about the mythic gives the young,
  the naive, and the uninitiated, the wounded, and the adventur-
  ous the much-needed language of travail and repair, of opening
  and descent and rising again. It is difficult to evolve, inquire,
  and to "come back," when one does not have the words to de-
  scribe what ails one's own depths—what one longs for, and what
  one's own soul truly wants and needs.
  Throughout many of their pages, Campbell's works offer such
  a psychic kinship—for the newly arrived and newly awakened
  souls who are here now, even though he himself has long passed
  from this earth. How mythic is that? Also, very.
  The Shoulders We Stand On
  In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell speaks
  about how Freud and Jung were deeply committed students of
  the continuum of human behavior and the unconscious. He
  points to their special interest in the plausible call that rises
  within human beings —the call that causes individuals who have
  been living highly externalized lives to stop, take notice, and
  redirect themselves to a higher self—or else suffer becoming
  more and more lackluster and world-weary.
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  Hence the person who has tired of the curios offered by
  culture, or one who has been broken from a brittle shell and is
  wandering in shock—awakens slowly, or all at once—choosing to
  move toward a larger life that includes spirit and soul. Now, the
  person sets out on a journey downward and begins to map and
  find the resources of a richer interior life—one that can also in-
  form outer life. This quest has been understood, since time out of
  mind, as one undertaken in order to feel alive again, to remember
  and to keep what is holy in life. It is a journey to find a truer self-
  hood; one that cannot be easily corrupted by the outer world, or
  by time. The impulse fulfills a longing to unearth and reveal one's
  greatest and deepest shadows and gifts. It provides the balances
  required for a person to feel one thing especially—contentment.
  By his compilations and examinations of many of the world's
  heroic myths and stories, and by tying them to the processes of
  transformation as outlined in those stories, Campbell emphasizes
  that this kind of inquiry, to know the truest self, takes much
  time. It is true, there is no drive-through enlightenment. He pa-
  tiently tells about any number of mystical pathways. And, in his
  choice of myths to explore, he is sympathetic to many of the
  most impoverished protagonists in tales. They are the ones who
  have the most frail qualities or resources to begin with. Yet they
  too will find a heroic way through the jumble and tangle of the
  mysteries of transformation.
  Campbell supported having faith in this often ridiculed and
  diminished, but most highly valuable, self. By the end of many
  myths, this neglected self will often prove to be the trove of all
  manner of numinosity, pragmatics, foibles, and treasures—just
  right for the conflicts and heroics needed to meet aggressive
  challenges, and to give birth to the more tender, more strength-
  ened new self. There can be no doubt that Campbell was a
  champion of the pilgrim who endured.
  He understood how Freud and .Jung, and other thinkers of
  the twentieth-century Euro-American philosophical and psycho-
  logical disciplines, had held open the doors of perception, con-
  sciousness, and meaning for many people of their time. Often
  drawing on the works, words, and rituals of the ancient peoples,
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE BOO4 EDITION
  these men had become part of a new generation which, like all
  cultures and generations of thinkers and artists preceding them,
  pointed out—once again—the critical soulful needs and nourish-
  ments of and for their cultural worlds—in the attitudes and lan-
  guage of their time.
  Many other teachers, artists, and thinkers have come to earth
  since then, and more will continue to arrive. Some come also
  with the talents to see and speak of psychic matters in new and
  different ways for their times. Many of the current ones are the
  descendents of those tribal groups reported on in anthropology
  and ethnology, and so have posited many first-hand understand-
  ings and corrections for the tales and rituals that have sometimes
  lost shape in various ways over the centuries.
  These contemporary thinkers, many of them giants in their
  fields, will take up the work of their philosophical and spiritual
  elders. They are and will be the next generation rising up to
  help keep open those gigantic doors of perception. Since forever,
  the best amongst them neither "discover" nor "found" anything.
  They remember. They remember that they are remembering.
  They tell what has been since the beginning of time. As Camp-
  bell has put it many times: the Mythic is the one deed done by
  many, many people.
  This keeping open the way is, in every generation, an essen-
  tial, ethical, and righteous endeavor; for if the doorways that
  lead to cognition of the greater human are left to the drift of
  culture —any culture—those same doors will, by the weight of
  neglect, fall down and bar all ingress. Thereafter, the rich sto-
  ried knowledge and traditions about the inner relationship be-
  tween the human being and their souls would be severed instead
  of served. If one does not speak of a thing, it disappears. If story
  is repressed, forbidden, or forgotten—until it is spoken about
  again—it becomes lost to the world. If this disappearance of sto-
  ries were ever to occur utterly, humans would become the most
  bereft creatures on the face of the earth.
  We have stories in the northwoods about how the animals
  often act as kindred spirits—for one another, and sometimes for
  human beings too. For instance, there are stories told in our
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  family about the "starving times," that is, the winters "when
  nothing moves," and the snow-pack is hard and more than
  waist-high. Then, the smaller animals might waste away, for
  they cannot breach the walls of snow and ice.
  But also during these harsh times, the caribou, the elk, and
  the moose, with their big bodies, are able to shoulder their ways
  through the snow-pack. They act as the snowplows. To see a
  huge mammal do this is awesome. They leap and claw and paw.
  They kick and drill and drive hard. They butt up against, push
  with antlers, shoulders, every muscle of their haunches strain-
  ing, while the snow flies off in giant plates and the grunting of
  their voices make so much steam rise up into the cold air.
  Thus, these gigantic creatures literally make roadways
  through the frozen lands. Then the little creatures use the trail-
  blazings the bigger creatures have made with their bodies.
  These pathways will now allow others to go on with their lives,
  to hunt, to stay alive, to grow—and, especially, to find their way
  to the water.
  There are many humans who have had big shoulders too.
  And, as a result, others have found their ways through. I have a
  deep sense of those who have gone before me in life, those who
  blazed trails that were perhaps not easier, but kept the way open
  to the blessed water.
  Joseph Campbell is certainly like one of those big-shouldered
  caribou. From knowing him and his work, I know that this
  assertion of his place in time might cause him to act a little
  shuffle-toed and embarrassed. But in another way, because the
  reference to the caribou is mythic, it would delight him as well.
  With regard to the same motif, I am certain too that thousands
  of unknown others acted as the caribou for Joseph Campbell. It
  must never go without saying that the many "big shoulders" that
  supported him came from los antepasados, the ancestors, of us
  and others who belong to gifted, fierce, ethnic, and tribal people
  from all over the world—particularly those with "long memory"—
  that is, those who handed down psychic and spiritual legacies
  consciously from generation to generation, those who have, in
  some way, kept the rites, ceremonies, and stories alive. There
  
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 EDITION
  are many who have been caring for the mythic lines all these
  many millennia, treasuring them, preserving them, repairing
  them, telling them. By these means, the ancients have been in-
  strumental, and the moderns as well, in keeping open the life-
  lines that are needed by every last soul on earth.
  This is the main point, it seems to me, for anyone who has the
  calling of healer, storyteller, poet, artist, leader—as Walt Whit-
  man counseled, "to embrace all our contradictions"; and then,
  to keep the way open; to keep plowing through the coldest, and
  most difficult terrain; to keep alive the hearts of whatever one
  can; to give, insofar as one is able, every soul a chance to hear
  about, to find, to know that we still are, will always be, have al-
  ways been ... the most direct and open paths back to the water.
  Here All Will Dwell Free: so went the inscription over the door-
  way of a shelter for travelers on pilgrimage in the Grimms'
  story, "The Handless Maiden." Dwelling free means to follow
  the divine impulse, to live in a way that is not restricted to what
  others say and insist on, but to follow one's broadest, deepest
  sense about how to be, to grow, and live. Campbell himself
  dwelt free by nourishing whatever mythos he gathered into his
  heart and mind, and offering the rendering of them to others—
  through teaching and dancing and especially through "being
  alive with" others. He did not hold himself away from real life's
  experiences. In fact, he emphasized that such was the way to ex-
  perience the mythic—not just read or talk about it. Neither did
  he hold himself away from meaningful and heartfelt endeavors,
  which he termed "bliss."
  When Bill Moyers, the executive editor of the film series The
  Power of Myth, and the interviewer of Joseph Campbell, asked
  with such visible longing about how the journey is carried for-
  ward via the heroic deed, Campbell named two ways. He said:
  ". . . [One] is a physical deed, as in saving the life of another.
  But the second kind is spiritual. It is the one who has learned or
  found something in the supernormal range of human spiritual
  life, and then came back and communicated it."
  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2OO4 EDITION
  Joseph Campbell fits the second sense well, and, I have no
  doubt that, amongst many of his close readers, he fits the first
  description also —as one who saved the psychic lives of others by
  his dedication to reminding people that their lives are sacred.
  Consider this book a time-capsule, then: one in which the
  words, and the numen behind them, are as fresh as the day the
  author wrote them.
  Reader, turn the page now. Joseph Campbell is waiting for you,
  and as usual, the professor is in full mythic voice. . . .
  Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.
  Psychoanalyst, and author of The Gift of Story and
  Women Who Run With the Wolves
  
  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  THE INTRODUCTION to the Commemorative Edition is copyright
  © 2003 by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. All rights are reserved
  under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
  For permission to quote, excerpt, or reprint, contact: Rights and
  Permissions for C. P. Kstes, 1017 South Gaylord St., Suite A,
  Denver, Colo. 80209, USA.
  The bibliography for the Commemorative Edition was com-
  piled under the direction of Dr. Richard Buchen, Special Collec-
  tions Librarian and Curator of the Joseph Campbell and Marija
  Gimbutas Library at Pacifica Graduate Institute. This commem-
  orative edition is the first to include any bibliography for this
  seminal book, and Princeton University Press wishes to thank
  Dr. Buchen and his staff for generously contributing their time
  and expertise to this project.
  The image of G.I.Joe® used in the illustration on the book's
  jacket is by permission. G.I.Joe® is a trademark of Hasbro and
  is reproduced with permission © 2003 Hasbro. (All rights
  reserved.)
  The text has been set in Digital Monticello, created for
  Princeton University Press in 2002 by Matthew Carter; it is a
  revival of a font crafted in the early 1800s by Binny & Ronaldson.
  PROLOGUE
  The Monomyth
  
  THE MONOMYTH
  Crete, and Yucatan. Ethnologists are questioning the Ostiaks of
  the river Ob, the Boobies of Fernando Po. A generation of orien-
  talists has recently thrown open to us the sacred writings of the
  East, as well as the pre-Hebrew sources of our own Holy Writ.
  And meanwhile another host of scholars, pressing researches
  begun last century in the field of folk psychology, has been seek-
  ing to establish the psychological bases of language, myth, reli-
  gion, art development, and moral codes.
  Most remarkable of all, however, are the revelations that have
  emerged from the mental clinic. 'Hie bold and truly epoch-making
  writings of the psychoanalysts are indispensable to the student
  of mythology; for, whatever may be thought of the detailed and
  sometimes contradictory interpretations of specific cases and
  problems, Freud, Jung, and their followers have demonstrated
  irrefutably that the logic, the heroes, and the deeds of myth sur-
  vive into modern times. In the absence of an effective general
  mythology, each of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimen-
  tary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dream. The latest incarna-
  tion of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast,
  stand this afternoon on the corner of Forty-second Street and
  fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change.
  "I dreamed," wrote an American youth to the author of a
  syndicated newspaper feature, "that I was reshingling our roof.
  Suddenly I heard my father's voice on the ground below, calling
  to me. I turned suddenly to hear him better, and, as I did so, the
  hammer slipped out of my hands, and slid down the sloping
  roof, and disappeared over the edge. I heard a heavy thud, as of
  a body falling.
  "Terribly frightened, I climbed down the ladder to the
  ground. There was my father lying dead on the ground, with
  blood all over his head. I was brokenhearted, and began calling
  my mother, in the midst of my sobs. She came out of the house,
  and put her arms around me. 'Never mind, son, it was all an ac-
  cident,1 she said. 'I know you will take care of me, even if he is
  gone.' As she was kissing me, I woke up.
  "I am the eldest child in our family and am twenty-three years
  old. I have been separated from my wife for a year; somehow,
  M V T H A N D D R E A M
  we could not get along together. I love both my parents dearly,
  and have never had any trouble with my father, except that he
  insisted that I go back and live with my wife, and I couldn't be
  happy with her. And I never will."1
  The unsuccessful husband here reveals, with a really wonder-
  ful innocence, that instead of bringing his spiritual energies
  forward to the love and problems of his marriage, he has been
  resting, in the secret recesses of his imagination, with the now
  ridiculously anachronistic dramatic situation of his first and only
  emotional involvement, that of the tragicomic triangle of the
  nursery—the son against the father for the love of the mother.
  Apparently the most permanent of the dispositions of the human
  psyche are those that derive from the fact that, of all animals, we
  remain the longest at the mother breast. Human beings are born
  too soon; they are unfinished, unready as yet to meet the world.
  Consequently their whole defense from a universe of dangers is
  the mother, under whose protection the intra-utcrine period is
  prolonged.2 Hence the dependent child and its mother constitute
  for months after the catastrophe of birth a dual unit, not only
  physically but also psychologically/ Any prolonged absence of
  the parent causes tension in the infant and consequent impulses
  of aggression; also, when the mother is obliged to hamper the
  child, aggressive responses are aroused. Thus the first object of
  the child's hostility is identical with the first object of its love,
  1 Clement Wood, Dreams: Their Meaning and Practical Application (New
  York: Greenberg: Publisher, 1931), p. 124 "The dream material in this book,"
  states the author (p. viii), "is drawn primarily from the thousand and more
  dreams submitted to me each week for analysis, in connection with my daily
  feature syndicated throughout the newspapers of the country. This has been
  supplemented by dreams analysed by me in my private practice." In contrast to
  most of the dreams presented in the standard works on the subject, those in
  this popular introduction to Freud come from people not undergoing analysis.
  They are rcmarkablj ingenuous.
  -' Geza Roheim, The Origin and Function of Culture (Nervous and Mental
  Disease Monographs, No. 69, New York, 1943), pp. 17-25.
  1 D. T. Burlingham, "Die Einfuhlung des Kleinkindes in die Mutter,"
  Imago, XXI, p. 429; cited by Geza Roheim, War, Crime and the Covenant
  (Journal of Clinical Psvchopathologv, Monograph Series No 1 Monticdlo
  N.Y., 1945), jj.l.
  
  TII E M O N () M V T H
  and its first ideal (which thereafter is retained as the unconscious
  basis of all images of bliss, truth, beauty, and perfection) is that
  of the dual unity of the Madonna and Bambino.1
  The unfortunate father is the first radical intrusion of another
  order of reality into the beatitude of this earthly restatement of
  the excellence of the situation within the womb; he, therefore, is
  experienced primarily as an enemy. To him is transferred the
  charge of aggression that was originally attached to the "bad,"
  or absent mother, while the desire attaching to the "good," or pres-
  ent, nourishing, and protecting mother, she herself (normally)
  retains. This fateful infantile distribution of death {thanatos: de-
  strudo) and love (eros: libido) impulses builds the foundation of
  the now celebrated Oedipus complex, which Sigmund Freud
  pointed out some fifty years ago as the great cause of our adult
  failure to behave like rational beings. As Dr. Freud has stated it:
  "King Oedipus, who slew his father Laius and married his
  mother Jocasta, merely shows us the fulfilment of our own child-
  hood wishes. But, more fortunate than he, we have meanwhile
  succeeded, in so far as we have not become psychoneurotics, in
  detaching our sexual impulses from our mothers and in forget-
  ting our jealousy of our fathers."3 Or, as he writes again: "Every
  pathological disorder of sexual life is rightly to be regarded as an
  inhibition in development."6
  For many a man hath seen himself in dreams
  His mother's mate, but he who gives no heed
  To such like matters bears the easier fate.7
  4 Roheim, War, Crime and the Covenant, p. 3.
  3 Freud. The Interpretation of Dreams {translated by James Strachey, Stan-
  dard Edition, IV; London: The Hogarth Press, 1953), p. 262. (Oig. 1900.)
  s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, III: "The Transformations of Pu-
  berty" (translated by James Strachey, Standard Edition, VII; London: The
  Hogarth Press, 1953), p. 208. (Orig. 1905.)
  :'Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, 981-983.
  It has been pointed out that the father also can be experienced as a protector
  and the mother, then, as a temptress. This is the way from Oedipus to Hamlet.
  "O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite
  space, were it not that 1 have bad dreams" (Hamlet II. ii). "All neurotics,"
  writes Dr. Freud, "are either Oedipus or Hamlet."
  MYTH AND DREAM
  The sorry plight of the wife of the lover whose sentiments in-
  stead of maturing remain locked in the romance of the nursery
  may be judged from the apparent nonsense of another modern
  dream; and here we begin to feel indeed that we are entering the
  realm of ancient myth, but with a curious turn.
  "I dreamed," wrote a troubled woman, "that a big white horse
  kept following me wherever I went. I was afraid of him, and
  pushed him away. I looked back to see if he was still following
  me, and he appeared to have become a man. I told him to go in-
  side a barbershop and shave off his mane, which he did. When
  he came out he looked just like a man, except that he had horse's
  hoofs and face, and followed me wherever I went. He came
  closer to me, and I woke up.
  "I am a married woman of thirty-five with two children. I have
  been married for fourteen years now, and I am sure my husband
  is faithful to me."8
  The unconscious sends all sorts of vapors, odd beings, terrors,
  and deluding images up into the mind—whether in dream,
  broad daylight, or insanity; for the human kingdom, beneath the
  floor of the comparatively neat little dwelling that we call our
  consciousness, goes down into unsuspected Aladdin caves.
  There not only jewels but also dangerous jinn abide: the inconve-
  nient or resisted psychological powers that we have not thought
  or dared to integrate into our lives. And they may remain unsus-
  pected, or, on the other hand, some chance word, the smell of a
  landscape, the taste of a cup of tea, or the glance of an eye may
  touch a magic spring, and then dangerous messengers begin to
  appear in the brain. These are dangerous because they threaten
  the fabric of the security into which we have built ourselves and
  And as for the case of the daughter (which is one degree more complicated), the
  following passage will suffice tor the present thumbnail exposition. "I dreamed last
  night that my father stabbed my mother in the heart. She died. I knew no one
  blamed him for what he did, although 1 was crying bitterly. The dream seemed to
  change, and he and I seemed to be going on a trip together, and I was very
  happy. 1 hi.-, is 11if dreLini ot an unmarried voting woniati of tivfnT\-tour (\\ uud.
  op, cit., p. 130).
  s Wood, op. cit., pp. 92-93.
  
  THE MONOMYTH
  our family- But they are fiendishly fascinating too, for they carry
  keys that open the whole realm of the desired and feared adven-
  ture of the discovery of the self. Destruction of the world that we
  have built and in which we live, and of ourselves within it; but
  then a wonderful reconstruction, of the bolder, cleaner, more
  spacious, and fully human life—that is the lure, the promise and
  terror, of these disturbing night visitants from the mythological
  realm that we carry within.
  Psychoanalysis, the modern science of reading dreams, has
  tatight us to take heed of these unsubstantial images. Also it has
  found a way to let them do their work. The dangerous crises of
  self-development are permitted to come to pass under the pro-
  tecting eye of an experienced initiate in the lore and language of
  dreams, who then enacts the role and character of the ancient
  mystagogue, or guide of souls, the initiating medicine man of
  the primitive forest sanctuaries of trial and initiation. The doctor
  is the modern master of the mythological realm, the knower of
  all the secret ways and words of potency. His role is precisely
  that of the Wise Old Man of the myths and fairy tales whose
  words assist the hero through the trials and terrors of the weird
  adventure. He is the one who appears and points to the magic
  shining sword that will kill the dragon-terror, tells of the wait-
  ing bride and the castle of many treasures, applies healing balm
  to the almost fatal wounds, and finally dismisses the conqueror,
  back into the world of normal life, following the great adventure
  into the enchanted night.
  When we turn now, with this image in mind, to consider the
  numerous strange rituals that have been reported from the prim-
  itive tribes and great civilizations of the past, it becomes appar-
  ent that the purpose and actual effect of these was to conduct
  people across those difficult thresholds of transformation that
  demand a change in the patterns not only of conscious but
  also of unconscious life. The so-called rites of passage, which
  occupy such a prominent place in the life of a primitive society
  (ceremonials of birth, naming, puberty, marriage, burial, etc.),
  are distinguished by formal, and usually very severe, exercises of
  AND DMKAM
  FIGURE 1. Sileni and MM
  severance, whereby the mind is radically cut away from the at-
  titudes, attachments, and life patterns of the stage being left
  behind.g Then follows an interval of more or less extended re-
  tirement, during which are enacted rituals designed to introduce
  the life adventurer to the forms and proper feelings of his new
  estate, so that when, at last, the time has ripened for the return
  to the normal world, the initiate will be as good as reborn.10
  51 In such ceremonials as those of birth and burial, the significant effects
  are, of course, those experienced by the parents and relatives. All rites of pas-
  sage are intended to touch not only the candidate but also every member of
  his circle.
  10 A. van Gennep, Les rites depassage (Paris, 1909).
  
  THE MONOMYTH
  Most amazing is the fact that a great number of the ritual tri-
  als and images correspond to those that appear automatically in
  dream the moment the psychoanalyzed patient begins to abandon
  his infantile fixations and to progress into the future. Among the
  aborigines of Australia, for example, one of the principal features
  of the ordeal of initiation (by which the boy at puberty is cut
  away from the mother and inducted into the society and secret
  lore of the men) is the rite of circumcision. "When a little boy of
  the Murngin tribe is about to be circumcised, he is told by his
  fathers and by the old men, 'The Great Father Snake smells
  your foreskin; he is calling for it.' The boys believe this to be lit-
  erally true, and become extremely frightened. Usually they take
  refuge with their mother, mother's mother, or some other fa-
  vorite female relative, for they know that the men are organized
  to see that they are taken to the men's ground, where the great
  snake is bellowing. The women wail over the boys ceremonially;
  this is to keep the great snake from swallowing them."11—Now
  regard the counterpart from the unconscious. "One of my pa-
  tients," writes Dr. C. G. Jung, "dreamt that a snake shot out of a
  cave and bit him in the genital region. This dream occurred at
  the moment when the patient was convinced of the truth of the
  analysis and was beginning to free himself from the bonds of his
  mother-complex."1'2
  It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite
  to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in
  counteraction to those constant human fantasies that tend to tie
  it back. In fact, it may well be that the very high incidence of
  neuroticism among ourselves follows from the decline among
  us of such effective spiritual aid. We remain fixated to the un-
  exorcised images of our infancy, and hence disinclined to the
  11 Geza Koheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream (New York: International
  Universities Press, 1945), p. 178.
  w C. G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation (translated hy R. F. C. Hull, Col-
  lected Works, vol. 5: New York and London, 2nd edition, 1967), par. 585. (Orig.
  1911—12, Wandlunqen und Symbolc tier Libido, translated by Beatrice M. Hinkle
  OS Psychology of the Unconscious, 1916. Revised by Jung 1952.)
  MYTH AND DREAM
  necessary passages of our adulthood. In the United States there
  is even a pathos of inverted emphasis: the goal is not to grow
  old, but to remain young; not to mature away from Mother, but
  to cleave to her. And so, while husbands are worshiping at their
  boyhood shrines, being the lawyers, merchants, or masterminds
  their parents wanted them to be, their wives, even after fourteen
  years of marriage and two fine children produced and raised, are
  still on the search for love—which can come to them only from
  the centaurs, sileni, satyrs, and other concupiscent incubi of the
  rout of Pan, either as in the second of the above-recited dreams,
  or as in our popular, vanilla-frosted temples of the venereal god-
  dess, under the make-up of the latest heroes of the screen. The
  psychoanalyst has to come along, at last, to assert again the tried
  wisdom of the older, forward-looking teachings of the masked
  medicine dancers and the uitch-doctor-circumcisers; whereupon
  we find, as in the dream of the serpent bite, that the ageless initi-
  ation symbolism is produced spontaneously by the patient him-
  self at the moment of the release. Apparently, there is something
  in these initiatory images so necessary to the psyche that if they
  are not supplied from without, through myth and ritual, they
  will have to be announced again, through dream, from within —
  lest our energies should remain locked in a banal, long-outmoded
  toy-room, at the bottom of the sea.
  Sigmund Freud stresses in his writings the passages and
  difficulties of the first half of the human cycle of life—those of
  our infancy and adolescence, when our sun is mounting toward
  its zenith. C. G. Jung, on the other hand, has emphasized the
  crises of the second portion —when, in order to advance, the
  shining sphere must submit to descend and disappear, at last,
  into the night-womb of the grave. The normal symbols of our
  desires and fears become converted, in this afternoon of the bi-
  ography, into their opposites; for it is then no longer life but
  death that is the challenge. What is difficult to leave, then, is not
  the womb but the phallus—unless, indeed, the life-weariness has
  already seized the heart, when it will be death that calls with the
  promise of bliss that formerly was the lure of love. Full circle.
  
  r H E M 0 N 0 M V T H
  from the tomb of the womb to the womb of the tomb, we come:
  an ambiguous, enigmatical incursion into a world of solid matter
  that is soon to melt from us, like the substance of a dream. And,
  looking back at what had promised to be our own unique, un-
  predictable, and dangerous adventure, all we find in the end is
  such a series of standard metamorphoses as men and women
  have undergone in every quarter of the world, in all recorded
  centuries, and under every odd disguise of civilization.
  The story is told, for example, of the great Minos, king of
  the island empire of Crete in the period of its commercial su-
  premacy: how he hired the celebrated artist-craftsman Daedalus
  to invent and construct for him a labyrinth, in which to hide
  something of which the palace was at once ashamed and afraid.
  For there was a monster on the premises—which had been born
  to Pasiphae, the queen. Minos, the king, had been busy, it is said,
  with important wars to protect the trade routes; and meanwhile
  Pasiphae had been seduced by a magnificent, snow-white, sea-
  born bull. It had been nothing worse, really, than what Minos'
  own mother had allowed to happen: Minos1 mother was Europa,
  and it is well known that she was carried by a bull to Crete. The
  bull had been the god Zeus, and the honored son of that sacred
  union was Minos himself—now everywhere respected and gladly
  served. How then could Pasiphae have known that the fruit of
  her own indiscretion would be a monster: this little son with
  human body but the head and tail of a bull?
  Society has blamed the queen greatly; but the king was not
  unconscious of his own share of guilt. The bull in question had
  been sent by the god Poseidon, long ago, when Minos was con-
  tending with his brothers for the throne. Minos had asserted
  that the throne was his, by divine right, and had prayed the god
  to send up a bull out of the sea, as a sign; and he had sealed the
  prayer with a vow to sacrifice the animal immediately, as an
  offering and symbol of service. The bull had appeared, and
  Minos took the throne; but when he beheld the majesty of the
  beast that had been sent and thought what an advantage it
  would be to possess such a specimen, he determined to risk a
  MYTH AND DREAM
  merchant's substitution —of which he supposed the god would
  take no great account. Offering on Poseidon's altar the finest
  white bull that he owned, he added the other to his herd.
  The Cretan empire had greatly prospered under the sensible
  jurisdiction of this celebrated lawgiver and model of public
  virtue. Knossos, the capital city, became the luxurious, elegant
  center of the leading commercial power of the civilized world.
  The Cretan fleets went out to every isle and harbor of the Mediter-
  ranean; Cretan ware was prized in Babylonia and Egypt. The
  bold little ships even broke through the Gates of Hercules to the
  open ocean, coasting then northward to take the gold of Ireland
  and the tin of Cornwall,13 as well as southward, around the
  buige of Senegal, to remote Yorubaland and the distant marts of
  ivory, gold, and slaves.14
  But at home, the queen had been inspired by Poseidon with
  an ungovernable passion for the bull. And she had prevailed
  upon her husband's artist-craftsman, the peerless Daedalus, to
  frame for her a wooden cow that would deceive the bull—into
  which she eagerly entered; and the bull was deceived. She bore
  her monster, which, in due time, began to become a danger.
  And so Daedalus again was summoned, this time by the king, to
  construct a tremendous labyrinthine enclosure, with blind pas-
  sages, in which to hide the thing away. So deceptive was the in-
  vention, that Daedalus himself, when he had finished it, was
  scarcely able to find his way back to the entrance. Therein the
  Minotaur was settled: and he was fed, thereafter, on groups of
  living youths and maidens, carried as tribute from the conquered
  nations within the Cretan domain.13
  Thus according to the ancient legend, the primary fault was
  not the queen's but the king's; and he could not really blame
  her, for he knew what he had done. He had converted a public
  13 Harold Peake and Herbert John fleure, The Way of the Sea and Merchant
  Venturers in Bronze (Yale University Press, 1929 and 1931).
  14 Leo Frobenius, Das unbekannte Afrika (Munich: Oskar Beck, 1923),
  pp. 10-11.
  " Ovid, Metamorphoses, VIII, 132 IT.; IX, 736 ff.
  
  THE MONOMYTI1
  event to personal gain, whereas the whole sense of his investi-
  ture as king had been that he was no longer a mere private
  person. The return of the bull should have symbolized his
  absolutely selfless submission to the functions of his role. The
  retaining of it represented, on the other hand, an impulse to ego-
  centric self-aggrandizement. And so the king "by the grace of
  God1' became the dangerous tyrant Holdfast—out for himself.
  Just as the traditional rites of passage used to teach the individ-
  ual to die to the past and be reborn to the future, so the great
  ceremonials of investiture divested him of his private character
  and clothed him in the mantle of his vocation. Such was the
  ideal, whether the man was a craftsman or a king. By the sacri-
  lege of the refusal of the rite, however, the individual cut himself
  as a unit off from the larger unit of the whole community: and so
  the One was broken into the many, and these then battled each
  other—each out for himself—and could be governed only by force.
  The figure of the tyrant-monster is known to the mythologies,
  folk traditions, legends, and even nightmares, of the world; and
  his characteristics are everywhere essentially the same. He is the
  hoarder of the general benefit. He is the monster avid for the
  greedy rights of "my and mine." The havoc wrought by him is
  described in mythology and fain' tale as being universal through-
  out his domain. This may be no more than his household, his
  own tortured psyche, or the lives that he blights with the touch
  of his friendship and assistance; or it may amount to the extent of
  his civilization. The inflated ego of the tyrant is a curse to himself
  and his world—no matter how his affairs may seem to prosper.
  Self-terrorized, fear-haunted, alert at every hand to meet and bat-
  tle back the anticipated aggressions of his environment, which
  are primarily the reflections of the uncontrollable impulses to ac-
  quisition within himself, the giant of self-achieved independence
  is the world's messenger of disaster, even though, in his mind,
  he may entertain himself with humane intentions. Wherever he
  sets his hand there is a cry (if not from the housetops, then-
  more miserably—within every heart): a cry for the redeeming
  hero, the carrier of the shining blade, whose blow, whose touch,
  whose existence, will liberate the land.
  MYTH AND DREAM
  Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
  There is not even silence in the mountains
  But dry sterile thunder without rain
  There is not even solitude in the mountains
  But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
  From doors ofmudcracked housesvf'
  The hero is the man of self-achieved submission. But submis-
  sion to what? That precisely is the riddle that today we have to
  ask ourselves and that it is everywhere the primary virtue and
  historic deed of the hero to have solved. As Professor Arnold J.
  Toynbee indicates in his six-volume study of the laws of the rise
  and disintegration of civilizations,17 schism in the soul, schism in
  the body social, will not be resolved by any scheme of return to
  the good old days (archaism), or by programs guaranteed to
  render an ideal projected future (futurism), or even by the most
  realistic, hardheaded work to weld together again the deteriorat-
  ing elements. Only birth can conquer death—the birth, not of
  the old thing again, but of something new. Within the soul,
  within the body social, there must be—if we are to experience
  long survival —a continuous "recurrence of birth" (palingenesia)
  to nullify the unremitting recurrences of death. For it is by means
  of our own victories, if we are not regenerated, that the work of
  Nemesis is wrought: doom breaks from the shell of our very
  virtue. Peace then is a snare; war is a snare; change is a snare;
  permanence a snare. When our day is come for the victory of
  death, death closes in; there is nothing we can do, except be
  crucified—and resurrected; dismembered totally, and then reborn.
  Theseus, the hero-slayer of the Minotaur, entered Crete from
  without, as the symbol and arm of the rising civilization of the
  Greeks. That was the new and living thing. But it is possible
  also for the principle of regeneration to be sought and found
  within the very walls of the tyrant's empire itself. Professor
  16 T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company;
  London: Faber and Faber, 1922), 340-345.
  :T Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History (Oxford University Press, 1934),
  Vol. VI, pp. 169-175.
  15
  
  THE MONOMYTII
  Toynbee uses the terms "detachment" and "transfiguration" to
  describe the crisis by which the higher spiritual dimension is at-
  tained that makes possible the resumption of the work of cre-
  ation. The first step, detachment or withdrawal, consists in a
  radical transfer of emphasis from the external to the internal
  world, macro- to microcosm, a retreat from the desperations of
  the waste land to the peace of the everlasting realm that is
  within. But this realm, as we know from psychoanalysis, is pre-
  cisely the infantile unconscious. It is the realm that we enter
  in sleep. We carry it within ourselves forever. All the ogres and
  secret helpers of our nursery are there, all the magic of childhood.
  And more important, all the life-potentialities that we never
  managed to bring to adult realization, those other portions of
  ourself, are there; for such golden seeds do not die. If only a por-
  tion of that lost totality could be dredged up into the light of
  day, we should experience a marvelous expansion of our powers,
  a vivid renewal of life. We should tower in stature. Moreover, if
  we could dredge up something forgotten not only by ourselves
  but by our whole generation or our entire civilization, we should
  become indeed the boon-bringer, the culture hero of the day—a
  personage of not only local but world historical moment. In a
  word: the first work of the hero is to retreat from the world
  scene of secondary effects to those causal zones of the psyche where
  the difficulties really reside, and there to clarify the difficulties,
  eradicate them in his own case (i.e., give battle to the nursery
  demons of his local culture) and break through to the undistorted,
  direct experience and assimilation of what C. G. Jung has called
  "the archetypal images."18 This is the process known to Hindu
  and Buddhist philosophy as viveka, "discrimination."
  18 "Forms or images of a collective nature which occur practically all over the
  earth as constituents of myths and at the same time as autochthonous, individ-
  ual products of unconscious origin" (C. G. Jung, PSIJ, hology ami Religion [.Col-
  lected Works, vol. 11; New York and London, 1958], par. 88. Orig. written in
  English 1937. See also his Psychological Types, index.)
  As Dr. Jung points out (Psychology and Religion, par. 89), the theory of the
  archetypes is by no means his own invention. Compare Nietzsche;
  "In our sleep and in our dreairis we pa^s tlivnu^'li the whole thought of ear-
  lier humanity. I mean, in the same way that man reasons in his dreams, he
  16
  MYTH AND DREAM
  The archetypes to be discovered and assimilated are precisely
  those that have inspired, throughout the annals of human culture,
  the basic images of ritual, mythology, and vision. These "Eternal
  reasoned when in the w aking state many thousands of \ cars. . . . The dream car-
  ries us back into earlier states of human culture, and affords us a means of under-
  standing h better'1 (Friedrich Nietzsche, Human all too Human, Vol. I, 13; cited
  by Jung, Psi/t hohgy ami Religion, par. 89, n. 17).
  Compare Adolf Bastian's theory of the ethnic "Elementary Ideas," which, in
  their primal psychic character (corresponding to the Stoic Logoi spermatikoi),
  should be regarded as "the spiritual (or psychic) germinal dispositions out of
  which the whole social structure has been developed organically," and, as such,
  should serve as bases of inductive research (Ethniscke Elementargedanken in
  derLekre vom Mencken, Berlin, 1895, Vol. I, p. ix).
  Compare Franz Boas: "Since Waitz's thorough discussion of the question of
  the unity of the human species, there can be no doubt that in the main the
  mental characteristics of man are the same all over the world" (The Mind of
  Primitive Man, p. 104. Copyright, 1911 by The Macmulan Company and used
  with their permission). "Bastian was led to speak of the appalling monotony of the
  fundamental ideas of mankind all over the globe" (ibid., p. 155). "Certain patterns
  of associated ideas may be recognized in all types of culture" (ibid., p. 228).
  Compare Sir James d. Lrazer: "\\ e need not, uith some enquirers in an-
  cient and modern times, suppose that the Western peoples borrowed from the
  older civilization of the Orient the conception of the Dying and Reviving God,
  together with the solemn ritual, in which that conception was dramatically set
  forth before the eyes of the worshippers. More probably the resemblance
  which may be traced in this respect between the religions of the East and West
  is no more than what we commonly, though incorrectly, call a fortuitous coin-
  cidence, the effect of similar causes acting alike on the similar constitution of
  the human mind in different combines and imtLer dill ere ill. skies ( Th* (>ohi: ••
  Bough, one-volume edition, p. 386. Copyright, 1922 by The MacmiUan Com-
  pany and used with their permission).
  Compare Sigmund Freud: "I recognized the presence of symbolism in
  dreams from the very beginning. But it was only by degTees and as my experi-
  ence increased that I arrived at a full appreciation of its extent and significance,
  and I did so under the influence of . . . Wilhelm Stekel. . . . Stekel arrived at
  his interpretations of symbols by way of intuition, thanks to a peculiar gift for
  the direct understanding of them. . . . Advances in psycho-analytic experience
  have brought to our notice patients who have shown a direct understanding of
  dream-symbolism of this kind to a surprising extent. . . . This symbolism is not
  peculiar to dreams, hut is characteristic of unconscious ideation, in particular
  among the people, and it is to be found in folklore, and in popular myths, leg-
  ends, linguistic idioms,, proverbial wisdom and current jokes, to a more complete
  extent than in dreams." {The Interpretation of Dreams, translated by James
  Strachey, Standard Edition, V, pp. 350-351.)
  17
  
  THE MONOMYTH
  Ones of the Dream"lH are not to be confused with the personally
  modified symbolic figures that appear in nightmare and madness
  to the still tormented individual. Dream is the personalized
  myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are
  symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche.
  But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles
  of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions
  shown are directly valid for all mankind.
  The hero, therefore, is the man or woman who has been able
  to battle past his personal and local historical limitations to the
  generally valid, normally human forms. Such a one's visions,
  ideas, inspirations come pristine from the primary springs of
  human life and thought. Hence they are eloquent, not of the pres-
  ent, disintegrating society and psyche, but of the unquenched
  source through which society is reborn. The hero has died as a
  modern man; but as eternal man—perfected unspecific, universal
  man—he has been reborn. His second solemn task and deed
  therefore (as Toynbee declares and as all the mythologies of man-
  kind indicate) is to return then to us, transfigured, and teach the
  lesson he has learned of life renewed.20
  Dr. Jung points out that he has borrowed his term archetype from classic
  sources: Cicero, Pliny, the Corpus Hermeticum, Augustine, etc. (Psychology and
  Religion, par. 89). Bastian notes the correspondence of his own theory of "Ele-
  mentary Ideas" with the Stoic concept of the Logoi spermatikoi. The tradition of
  the "subjectively known forms'' (Sanskrit: antarjneya-rupa) is, in fact, coexten-
  sive with the tradition of myth, and is the key to the understanding and use of
  mythological images—as will appear abundantly in the following chapters.
  ^ This is Geza Roheim's translation of an Australian Aranda term, altjiranga
  mitjina, which refers to the mythical ancestors who wandered on the earth
  in the time called altjiranga nakala, "ancestor was." The word altjira means:
  (a) a dream, (b) ancestor, beings who appear in the dream, (c) a story (Roheim,
  The Eternal Ones of the Dream, pp. 210-211).
  20 It must be noted against Professor Toynbee, however, that he seriously mis-
  represents the mythological scene when he advertises Christianity as the only re-
  ligion teaching this second task. AW religions teach it, as do all mythologies and
  folk traditions everywhere. Professor Toynbee arrives at hi.s misconstruction by
  way of a trite and incorrect interpretation of the Oriental ideas of Nirvana, Bud-
  dha, and Bodhisattva; then contrasting these ideals, as he misinterprets them,
  with a very sophisticated rereading of the Christian idea of the City of God. This
  18
  MYTH AND DREAM
  "I was walking alone around the upper end of a large city,
  through shimmy, muddy streets lined with hard little houses,"
  writes a modern woman, describing a dream that she has had.
  "I did not know where I was, but liked the exploring. I chose
  one street which was terribly muddy and led across what must
  have been an open sewer. I followed along between rows of
  shanties and then discovered a little river flowing between me
  and some high, firm ground where there was a paved street.
  This was a nice, perfectly clear river, flowing over grass. I could
  see the grass moving under the water. There was no way to
  cross, so I went to a little house and asked for a boat. A man
  there said of course he could help me cross. He brought out a
  small wooden box which he put on the edge of the river and
  I saw at once that with this box I could easily jump across. I
  knew all danger was over and I wanted to reward the man richly.
  In thinking of this dream I have a distinct feeling that I did not
  have to go where I was at all but could have chosen a comfortable
  walk along paved streets. I had gone to the squalid and muddy
  district because I preferred adventure, and, having begun, I had
  to go on... . When I think of how persistently I kept going
  straight ahead in the dream, it seems as though I must have
  known there was something fine ahead, like that lovely, grassy
  river and the secure, high, paved road beyond. Thinking of it in
  those terms, it is like a determination to be born—or rather to be
  born again—in a sort of spiritual sense. 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."21
  The dreamer is a distinguished operatic artist, and, like all
  who have elected to follow, not the safely marked general high-
  ways of the day, but the adventure of the special, dimly audible
  call that comes to those whose ears are open within as well as
  is what leads him to the error of supposing that the salvation of the
  present world-situation might lie in a return to the arms of the Roman Catholic
  church,
  21 Frederick Pierce, Dreams and Personality (Copyright, 1931 by D. Appleton
  and Co., publishers), pp. 108-109.
  19
  
  THE MONOMYTH
  without, she has had to make her way alone, through difficulties
  not commonly encountered, "through shimmy, muddy streets";
  she has known the dark night of the soul, Dante's "dark wood,
  midway in the journey of our life," and the sorrows of the pits
  of hell:"
  Through me is the way into the woeful city,
  Through me is the way into eternal woe.
  Through me is the way among the Lost People.2'2
  It is remarkable that in this dream the basic outline of the uni-
  versal mythological formula of the adventure of the hero is re-
  produced, to the detail. These deeply significant motifs of the
  perils, obstacles, and good fortunes of the way, we shall find
  inflected through the following pages in a hundred forms. The
  crossing first of the open sewer,23 then of the perfectly clear river
  flowing over grass,24 the appearance of the willing helper at the
  critical moment,25 and the high, firm ground beyond the final
  stream (the Earthly Paradise, the Land over Jordan):36 these are
  22 Words written over the Gate of Hell:
  Per me si va nella citta dolente,
  I Cr Yftf SI L7J fldt Cit flilj I'J'lhyV,
  Per me si va tra lit Perduta Gente.
  -Dante, "Inferno," III, 1-3.
  The translation is by Charles Eliot Norton, The Divine Comedy of Dante
  Alighieri (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1902); this and
  the following quotations, by permission of the publishers.
  23 Compare Dante, "Inferno," XIV, 76-84, (op. cit,, Vol. I, p. 89): "a little
  brook, the redness of which still makes me shudder . . . which the sinful
  women share among them."
  2* Compare Dante, "Purgatorio," XXVIII, 22-30 (op. cit, Vol. II, p. 214,):
  "A stream . . . which with its little waves was bending toward the left the grass
  that sprang upon its bank. All the waters that are purest here on earth would
  seem to have some mixture in them, compared with that which hides nothing."'
  25 Dante's Virgil.
  ^ "Those who in old time sang of the Golden Age, and of its happy state, per-
  chance, upon Parnassus, dreamed of this place: here was the root of mankind in-
  nocent; here is always spring, and every fruit; this is the nectar of which each of
  them tells" ("Purgatorio," XXVIII, 139-144; op.rit.. Vol. II, p. 219).
  MYTH AND DREAM
  the everlastingly recurrent themes of the wonderful song of the
  soul's high adventure. And each who has dared to harken to
  and follow the secret call has known the perils of the dangerous,
  solitary transit:
  A sharpened edge of a razor, hard to traverse,
  A difficult path is this—poets declare!'21
  The dreamer is assisted across the water by the gift of a small
  wooden box, which takes the place, in this dream, of the more
  usual skiff or bridge. This is a symbol of her own special talent
  and virtue, by which she has been ferried across the waters of
  the world. The dreamer has supplied us with no account of her
  associations, so that we do not know what special contents the
  box would have revealed; but it is certainly a variety of Pandora's
  box—that divine gift of the gods to beautiful woman, filled with
  the seeds of all the trouble and blessings of existence, but also
  provided with the sustaining virtue, hope. By this, the dreamer
  crosses to the other shore. And by a like miracle, so will each
  whose work is the difficult, dangerous task of self-discovery and
  self-development be portered across the ocean of life.
  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 sym-
  bolic aids of society, the rites of passage, the grace-yielding sacra-
  ments, 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 desper-
  ate; 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
  3| Katha Upanishad, 3—14. (Unless otherwise noted, my quotations of the
  Upanishads will be taken from Robert Ernest Hume, The Thirteen Principal
  Upanishads, translated from the Sanskrit, Oxford University Press, 1931).
  The Upanishads are a class of Hindu treatise on the nature of man and
  the universe, forming a late part of the orthodox tradition of speculation. The
  
  THE MONOMYTH
  face the Minotaur, and the means then to find our way to free-
  dom when the monster has been met and slain?
  Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos, fell in love with the
  handsome Theseus the moment she saw him disembark from
  the boat that had brought the pitiful group of Athenian youths
  and maidens for the Minotaur. She found a way to talk with
  him, and declared that she would supply a means to help him
  back out of the labyrinth if he would promise to take her away
  from Crete with him and make her his wife. The pledge was
  given. Ariadne turned for help, then, to the crafty Daedalus, by
  whose art the labyrinth had been constructed and Ariadne's
  mother enabled to give birth to its inhabitant. Daedalus simply
  presented her with a skein of linen thread, which the visiting
  hero might fix to the entrance and unwind as he went into the
  maze. It is, indeed, very little that we need! But lacking that, the
  adventure into the labyrinth is without hope.
  FiciUBE 2. Minotauromachy
  MYTH AND DREAM
  The little is close at hand. Most curiously, the very scientist
  who, in the service of the sinful king, was the brain behind the
  horror of labyrinth, quite as readily can serve the purposes of
  freedom. But the hero-heart must be at hand. For centuries
  Daedahis has represented the type of the artist-scientist: that
  curiously disinterested, almost diabolic human phenomenon, be-
  yond the normal bounds of social judgment, dedicated to the
  morals not of his time but of his art. He is the hero of the way of
  thought — singlehearted, courageous, and full of faith that the
  truth, as he finds it, shall make us free.
  And so now we may turn to him, as did Ariadne. The flax for
  the linen of his thread he has gathered from the fields of the
  human imagination. Centuries of husbandry, decades of diligent
  culling, the work of numerous hearts and hands, have gone into
  the hackling, sorting, and spinning of this tightly twisted yarn.
  Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for
  the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thor-
  oughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-
  path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we
  shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall
  slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we
  shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had
  thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.
  Tragedy and Comedy
  "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy
  in its own way." With these fateful words, Count Leo Tolstoy
  opened the novel of the spiritual dismemberment of his modern
  heroine, Anna Karenina. During the seven decades that have
  elapsed since that distracted wife, mother, and blindly impas-
  sioned mistress threw herself beneath the wheels of the train—thus
  23
  
  THE MONOMYTH
  terminating, with a gesture symbolic of what already had hap-
  pened to her soul, her tragedy of disorientation—a tumultuous
  and unremitting dithyramb of romances, news reports, and un-
  recorded cries of anguish has been going up to the honor of the
  bull-demon of the labyrinth: the wrathful, destructive, madden-
  ing aspect of the same god who, when benign, is the vivifying
  principle of the world. Modern romance, like Greek tragedy, cel-
  ebrates the mystery of dismemberment, which is life in time. The
  happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the
  world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending:
  death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our
  heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved.
  "Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of
  whatever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it
  with the human sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the
  mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in
  human sufferings and unites it with the secret cause."28 As
  Gilbert Murray has pointed out in his preface to Ingram Bywater's
  translation of the Poetics of Aristotle,29 tragic katharsis (i.e., the
  "purification" or "purgation" of the emotions of the spectator of
  tragedy through his experience of pity and terror) corresponds to
  an earlier ritual katharsis ("a purification of the community from
  the taints and poisons of the past year, the old contagion of sin
  and death"), which was the function of the festival and mystery
  play of the dismembered bull-god, Dionysos. The meditating
  mind is united, in the mystery play, not with the body that is
  shown to die, but with the principle of continuous life that for
  a time inhabited it, and for that time was the reality clothed in
  the apparition (at once the sufferer and the secret cause), the
  substratum into which our selves dissolve when the "tragedy
  that breaks man's face"30 has split, shattered and dissolved our
  mortal frame.
  28 James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (The Modern
  Library; Random House, Inc.), p. £39.
  *'' Aristotle, On the Art of Poetry (translated by Ingram Bywater, with a pref-
  ace by Gilbert Murray, Oxford University Press, 1920), pp. 14-16.
  30 Robinson Jeffers^Roan Stallion (New York: Horace Liveright, 1925), p. 20.
  24
  TRAGEDY AND COMEDY
  Appear, appear, whatso thy shape or name,
  0 Mountain Bull, Snake of the Hundred Heads,
  Lion of the Burning flame!
  0 God, Beast, Mystery, come!31
  This death to the logic and the emotional commitments of our
  chance moment in the world of space and time, this recognition
  of, and shift of our emphasis to, the universal life that throbs and
  celebrates its victory in the very kiss of our own annihilation,
  this amor fati, "love of fate," love of the fate that is inevitably
  death, constitutes the experience of the tragic art: therein the joy
  of it, the redeeming ecstasy:
  My days have run, the servant I,
  Initiate, ofldaean Jove;
  Where midnight Zagreus roves, I rove;
  I have endured his thunder-cry;
  Fulfilled his red and bleeding feasts;
  Held the Great Mother's mountain flame;
  1 am set Free and named by name
  A Bacchos of the Mailed Priests.52
  Modern literature is devoted, in great measure, to a courageous,
  open-eyed observation of the sickeningly broken figurations that
  abound before us, aroimd us, and within. Where the natural im-
  pulse to complain against the holocaust has been suppressed—to
  cry out blame, or to announce panaceas—the magnitude of an
  art of tragedy more potent (for us) than the Greek finds realiza-
  tion: the realistic, intimate, and variously interesting tragedy of
  democracy, where the god is beheld crucified in the catastrophes
  not of the great houses only but of every common home, every
  scourged and lacerated face. And there is no make-believe about
  heaven, future bliss, and compensation, to alleviate the bitter
  31 Euripides, Bucchae, 1017 (translated by Gilbert Murray).
  Ja Euripides, The. Cretans, frg. 475, ap. Porphyry, De abstinentia, IV. 19,
  trans. Gilbert Murray. See discussion of this verse'by Jane Harrison, Prole-
  gomena to a study of Greek Religion (3rd edition, Cambridge University Press,
  1992), pp. 478-500.
  25
  
  THE MONOMYTH
  majesty, but only utter darkness, the void of unfulfillment, to re-
  ceive and eat back the lives that have been tossed forth from the
  womb only to fail.
  In comparison with all this, our little stories of achievement
  seem pitiful; Too well we know what bitterness of failure, loss,
  disillusionment, and ironic unfulfillment galls the blood of even
  the envied of the world! Hence we are not disposed to assign
  to comedy the high rank of tragedy. Comedy as satire is accept-
  able, as fun it is a pleasant haven of escape, but the fairy tale of
  happiness ever after cannot be taken seriously; it belongs to the
  never-never land of childhood, which is protected from the reali-
  ties that will become terribly known soon enough; just as the
  myth of heaven ever after is for the old, whose lives are behind
  them and whose hearts have to be readied for the last portal of
  the transit into night—which sober, modern Occidental judg-
  ment is founded on a total misunderstanding of the realities
  depicted in the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedies of
  redemption. These, in the ancient world, were regarded as of
  a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more diffi-
  cult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more
  complete.
  The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine
  comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a
  transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective
  world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis
  within the subject, is beheld as though transformed. Where
  formerly life and death contended, now enduring being is made
  manifest—as indifferent to the accidents of time as water boiling
  in a pot is to the destiny of a bubble, or as the cosmos to the ap-
  pearance and disappearance of a galaxy of stars. Tragedy is the
  shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms; com-
  edy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible.
  Thus the two are the terms of a single mythological theme and
  experience which includes them both and which they bound: the
  down-going and the up-coming (kathodos and anados), which
  together constitute the totality of the revelation that is life, and
  which the individual must know and love if he is to be purged
  THACEDY AND COMEDY
  (kathursis = purgatorio) of the contagion of sin (disobedience to
  the divine will) and death (identification with the mortal form).
  "All things are changing; nothing dies. The spirit wanders,
  comes now here, now there, and occupies whatever frame it
  pleases. . . . For that which once existed is no more, and that
  which was not has come to be; and so the whole round of motion
  is gone through again."1'1 "Only the bodies, of which this eternal,
  imperishable, incomprehensible Self is the indweller, are said to
  have an end."34
  It is the business of mythology proper, and of the fairy tale, to
  reveal the specific dangers and techniques of the dark interior
  way from tragedy to comedy. Hence the incidents are fantastic
  and "unreal": they represent psychological, not physical, tri-
  umphs. Even when the legend is of an actual historical person-
  age, the deeds of victory are rendered, not in lifelike, but in
  dreamlike figurations; for the point is not that such-and-such
  was done on earth; the point is that, before such-and-such could
  be done on earth, this other, more important, primary thing had
  to be brought to pass within the labyrinth that we all know and
  visit in our dreams. The passage of the mythological hero may
  be over-ground, incidentally; fundamentally it is inward—into
  depths where obscure resistances are overcome, and long lost,
  forgotten powers are revivified, to be made available for the
  transfiguration of the world. This deed accomplished, life no
  longer suffers hopelessly under the terrible mutilations of ubiq-
  uitous disaster, battered by time, hideous throughout space; but
  with its horror visible still, its cries of anguish still tumultuous,
  it becomes penetrated by an all-suffusing, all-sustaining love,
  and a knowledge of its own unconquered power. Something of the
  light that blazes invisible within the abysses of its normally opaque
  materiality breaks forth, with an increasing uproar. The dread-
  ful mutilations are then seen as shadows, only, of an immanent,
  33 Ovid, Met/tmorphases. XV, 165-167; 184-185 (translation by Frank Justus
  Miller, the Loeb Classical Library).
  51 Bhagavad Gita. 2:18 (translation by Swami Nikhilananda, New York,
  1944).
  27
  
  T H E MUNOMYTH
  imperishable eternity; time yields to glory; and the world sings
  with the prodigious, angelic, but perhaps finally monotonous,
  siren music of the spheres. Like happy families, the myths and
  the worlds redeemed are all alike.
  • 3 •
  The Hero and the God
  The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a
  magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage:
  separation—initiation—return: which might be named the nuclear
  unit of the monomyth."
  A hero ventures forth from the world of
  common day into a region of supernatural
  wonder: fabulous forces are there encoun-
  tered and a decisive victory is won: the hero
  comes back from this mysterious adventure
  with the power to bestow boons on his fel-
  low man.
  Prometheus ascended to the heavens, stole fire from the gods,
  and descended. Jason sailed through the Clashing Rocks into a
  sea of marvels, circumvented the dragon that guarded the Golden
  fleece, and returned with the fleece and the power to wrest his
  rightful throne from a usurper. Aeneas went down into the under-
  world, crossed the dreadful river of the dead, threw a sop to the
  three-headed watchdog Cerberus, and conversed, at last, with
  the shade of his dead father. All things were unfolded to him: the
  Viking Press, Inc., 1939), p. 581.
  THE HERO AND THE GOD
  destiny of souls, the destiny of Rome, which he was about to found,
  "and in what wise he might avoid or endure every burden."1'' He
  returned through the ivory gate to his work in the world.
  A majestic representation of the difficulties of the hero-task,
  and of its sublime import when it is profoundly conceived and
  solemnly undertaken, is presented in the traditional legend of
  the Great Struggle of the Buddha. The young prince Gautama
  Sakyamuni set forth secretly from his father's palace on the princely
  steed Kanthaka, passed miraculously through the guarded gate,
  rode through the night attended by the torches of four times
  sixty thousand divinities, lightly hurdled a majestic river eleven
  hundred and twenty-eight cubits wide, and then with a single
  sword-stroke sheared his own royal locks—whereupon the re-
  maining hair, two finger-breadths in length, curled to the right
  and lay close to his head. Assuming the garments of a monk, he
  moved as a beggar through the world, and during these years of
  apparently aimless wandering acquired and transcended the
  eight stages of meditation. He retired to a hermitage, bent his
  powers six more years to the great struggle, carried austerity to
  the uttermost, and collapsed in seeming death, but presently
  recovered. Then he returned to the less rigorous life of the
  ascetic wanderer.
  One day he sat beneath a tree, contemplating the eastern
  quarter of the world, and the tree was illuminated with his radi-
  ance. A young girl named Sujata came and presented milk-rice
  to him in a golden bowl, and when he tossed the empty bowl
  into a river it floated upstream. This was the signal that the
  moment of his triumph was at hand. He arose and proceeded
  along a road which the gods had decked and which was eleven
  hundred and twenty-eight cubits wide. The snakes and birds
  and the divinities of the woods and fields did him homage with
  flowers and celestial perfumes, heavenly choirs poured forth music,
  the ten thousand worlds were filled with perfumes, garlands,
  harmonies, and shouts of acclaim; for he was on his way to the
  great Tree of Enlightenment, the Bo Tree, under which he was to
  16 Virgil, Aeneid, VI, 892.
  
  THE MONOMVTH
  redeem the universe. He placed himself, with a firm resolve, be-
  neath the Bo Tree, on the Immovable Spot, and straightway was
  approached by Kama-Mara, the god of love and death.
  The dangerous god appeared mounted on an elephant and
  carrying weapons in his thousand hands. He was surrounded by
  his army, which extended twelve leagues before him, twelve to the
  right, twelve to the left, and in the rear as far as to the confines of
  the world; it was nine leagues high. The protecting deities of the
  universe took flight, but the Future Buddha remained unmoved
  beneath the Tree. And the god then assailed him, seeking to
  break his concentration.
  Whirlwind, rocks, thunder and flame, smoking weapons with
  keen edges, burning coals, hot ashes, boiling mud, blistering
  sands and fourfold darkness, the Antagonist hurled against the
  Savior, but the missiles were all transformed into celestial
  flowers and ointments by the power of Gautama's ten perfec-
  tions. Mara then deployed his daughters, Desire, Pining, and
  Lust, surrounded by voluptuous attendants, but the mind of the
  Great Being was not distracted. The god finally challenged his
  right to be sitting on the Immovable Spot, flung his razor-sharp
  discus angrily, and bid the towering host of the army to let fly at
  him with mountain crags. But the Future Buddha only moved
  his hand to touch the ground with his fingertips, and thus bid
  the goddess Earth bear witness to his right to be sitting where
  he was. She did so with a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thou-
  sand roars, so that the elephant of the Antagonist fell upon its
  knees in obeisance to the Future Buddha. The army was immedi-
  ately dispersed, and the gods of all the worlds scattered garlands.
  Having won that preliminary victory before sunset, the con-
  queror acquired in the first watch of the night knowledge of his
  previous existences, in the second watch the divine eye of omni-
  scient vision, and in the last watch understanding of the chain
  of causation. He experienced perfect enlightenment at the break
  of day.37
  L" This is tlii1 most import am sin^'l'L monK-nt ni < lr;i.-nl;il n,\ tiiology, a conn-
  T H E 
  H E R O 
  A N D 
  T H E 
  G O D
  Then for seven days Gautama—now the Buddha, the Enlight-
  ened—sat motionless in bliss; for seven days he stood apart and
  regarded the spot on which he had received enlightenment; for
  seven days he paced between the place of the sitting and the
  place of the standing; for seven days he abode in a pavilion fur-
  nished by the gods and reviewed the whole doctrine of causality
  and release; for seven days he sat beneath the tree where the girl
  Sujata had brought him milk-rice in a golden bowl, and there
  meditated on the doctrine of the sweetness of Nirvana; he re-
  moved to another tree and a great storm raged for seven days,
  but the King of Serpents emerged from the roots and protected
  the Buddha with his expanded hood; finally, the Buddha sat for
  seven days beneath a fourth tree enjoying still the sweetness of
  liberation. Then he doubted whether his message could be com-
  municated, and he thought to retain the wisdom for himself;
  but the god Brahma descended from the zenith to implore
  that he should become the teacher of gods and men. The Buddha
  was thus persuaded to proclaim the path.3a And he went back
  into the cities of men where he moved among the citizens of the
  Enlightenment (the Bo Tree) and Christ on Holy Rood (the Tree of Re-
  demption) are analogous figures, incorporating an archetypal World Savior,
  World Tree motif, which is of immemorial antiquity. Many other variants
  of the theme will be found among the episodes to come. The Immovable
  Spot and Mount Calvary are images of the World Navel, or World Axis
  (seep. 37, infra).
  The calling of the Earth to witness is represented in traditional Buddhist art
  by images of the Buddha, sitting in the classic Buddha posture, with the right
  hand resting on the right knee and its fingers lightly touching the ground.
  The point is that Buddhaiiood, Enlightenment, cannot br comiTiiiriicatrd.
  but only the way to Enlightenment. This doctrine of the incommunicability of
  the Truth which is beyond names and forms is basic to the great Oriental, as
  well as to the Platonic, traditions. Whereas the truths of science are communi-
  cable, being demonstrable hypotheses rationally founded on observable facts,
  ritual, mythology, and metaphysics are but guides to the brink of a transcendent il-
  lumination, die final step to which must be taken by each in his own silent experi-
  ence. Hence one of the Sanskrit terms for sage is muni, "the silent one." Sdkyamuni
  (one of the titles of Gautama Buddha) means "the silent one or sage {muni) of the
  Sakya clan." Though he is the founder of a widely taught world religion, the ulti-
  mate core of his doctrine remain? concealed, necessarily, in silence.
  31
  
  THE MONOMVTH
  world, bestowing the inestimable boon of the knowledge of
  the Way.39
  The Old Testament records a comparable deed in its legend
  of Moses, who, in the third month of the departure of Israel out
  of the land of Egypt, came with his people into the wilderness of
  Sinai; and there Israel pitched their tents over against the moun-
  tain. And Moses went up to God, and the Lord called unto him
  from the mountain. The Lord gave to him the Tables of the Law
  and commanded Moses to return with these to Israel, the people
  of the Lord.40
  Jewish folk legend declares that during the day of the revela-
  tion diverse rumblings sounded from Mount Sinai, "flashes of
  lightning, accompanied by an ever swelling peal of horns, moved
  the people with mighty fear and trembling. God bent the heav-
  ens, moved the earth, and shook the bounds of the world, so that
  the depths trembled, and the heavens grew frightened. His
  splendor passed through the four portals of fire, earthquake,
  storm, and hail. The kings of the earth trembled in their palaces.
  The earth herself thought the resurrection of the dead was about
  to take place, and that she would have to account for the blood
  of the slain she had absorbed, and for the bodies of the mur-
  dered whom she covered. The earth was not calmed until she
  heard the first words of the Decalogue.
  "The heavens opened and Mount Sinai, freed from the earth,
  rose into the air, so that its summit towered into the heavens,
  while a thick cloud covered the sides of it, and touched the feet
  of the Divine Throne. Accompanying God on one side, appeared
  twenty-two thousand angels with crowns for the Levites, the
  only tribe that remained true to God while the rest worshiped
  the Golden Calf. On the second side were sixty myriads, three
  thousand five hundred and fifty angels, each bearing a crown of
  lTO Greatly abridged from Jataka, Introduction, i, 58-75 (translated by Henry
  Clarke Warren, Buddhism in Translations (Harvard Oriental Series, 3')
  Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1896, pp. 56-87), and the
  Lalitavutara as rendered by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Buddha and the
  Gospel of Buddhism (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1916), pp. 24-38.
  4U Exodus, 19:3-5.
  32
  THE HERO AND THE GOD
  fire for each individual Israelite. Double this number of angels
  was on the third side; whereas on the fourth side they were sim-
  ply innumerable. For God did not appear from one direction,
  but from all simultaneously, which, however, did not prevent
  His glory from filling the heaven as well as the earth. In spite of
  these innumerable hosts there was no crowding on Mount Sinai,
  no mob, there was room for all.1'41
  As we soon shall see, whether presented in the vast, almost
  oceanic images of the Orient, in the vigorous narratives of the
  Greeks, or in the majestic legends of the Bible, the adventure of the
  hero normally follows the pattern of the nuclear unit above de-
  scribed: a separation from the world, a penetration to some source
  of power, and a life-enhancing return. The whole of the Orient has
  been blessed by the boon brought back by Gautama Buddha—his
  wonderful teaching of the Good Law—just as the Occident has
  been by the Decalogue of Moses. The Greeks referred fire, the first
  support of all human culture, to the world-transcending deed of
  their Prometheus, and the Romans the founding of their world-
  supporting city to Aeneas, following his departure from fallen Troy
  and his visit to the eerie underworld of the dead. Everywhere, no
  matter what the sphere of interest {whether religious, political, or
  personal), the really creative acts are represented as those deriving
  from some sort of dying to the world; and what happens in the in-
  terval of the hero's nonentity, so that he comes back as one reborn,
  made great and filled with creative power, mankind is also unani-
  mous in declaring. We shall have only to follow, therefore, a multi-
  tude of heroic figures through the classic stages of the universal
  adventure in order to see again what has always been revealed.
  This will help us to understand not only the meaning of those im-
  ages for contemporary life, but also the singleness of the human
  spirit in its aspirations, powers, vicissitudes, and wisdom.
  The following pages will present in the form of one composite
  adventure the tales of a number of the world's symbolic carriers
  of the destiny of F-veryman. The first great stage, that of the
  41 Louis Ginzbcrg, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia: The Jewish Pub-
  kation Society of America, 1911), Vol. Ill, pp. 90-94.
  
  THE MONOMYTH
  separation or departure, will be shown in Part I, Chapter I, in
  five subsections: (1) "The Call to Adventure," or the signs of the
  vocation of the hero; (2) "Refusal of the Call," or the folly of the
  flight from the god; (3) "Supernatural Aid," the unsuspected as-
  sistance that comes to one who has undertaken his proper adven-
  ture; (4) "The Crossing of the first Threshold"; and (5) "The
  Belly of the Whale," or the passage into the realm of night. The
  stage of the trials and victories of initiation will appear in Chap-
  ter II in six subsections: (1) "The Road of Trials," or the dan-
  gerous aspect of the gods; (2) "The Meeting with the Goddess"
  (Magna Mater), or the bliss of infancy regained; (3) "Woman as
  the Temptress," the realization and agony of Oedipus; (4)
  "Atonement with the Father"; (5) "Apotheosis"; and (6) "The
  Ultimate Boon."
  The return and reintegration with society, which is indispensable
  to the continuous circulation of spiritual energy into the world,
  and which, from the standpoint of the community, is the
  justification of the long retreat, the hero himself may find the most
  difficult requirement of all. For if he has won through, like the
  Buddha, to the profound repose of complete enlightenment, there
  is danger that the bliss of this experience may annihilate all recol-
  lection of, interest in, or hope for, the sorrows of the world; or else
  the problem of making known the way of illumination to people
  wrapped in economic problems may seem too great to solve. And
  on the other hand, if the hero, instead of submitting to all of the
  initiatory tests, has, like Prometheus, simply darted to his goal (by
  violence, quick device, or luck) and plucked the boon for the world
  that he intended, then the powers that he has unbalanced may
  react so sharply that he will be blasted from within and without—
  crucified, like Prometheus, on the rock of his own violated uncon-
  scious. Or if the hero, in the third place, makes his safe and willing
  return, he may meet with such a blank misunderstanding and
  disregard from those whom he has come to help that his career
  will collapse. The third of the following chapters will conclude
  the discussion of these prospects under six subheadings: (1)
  "Refusal of the Return," or the world denied; (2) "The Magic
  Flight," or the escape of Prometheus; (3) "Rescue from With-
  THF, HERO AND THE GOD
  out"; (4) "The Crossing of the Return Threshold," or the return
  to the world of common day; (5) "Master of the Two Worlds";
  and (6) "Freedom to Live," the nature and function of the ulti-
  mate boon.42
  The composite hero of the monomyth is a personage of excep-
  tional gifts. Frequently he is honored by his society, frequently
  unrecognized or disdained. He and/or the world in which he
  finds himself suffers from a symbolical deficiency. In fairy tales
  this may be as slight as the lack of a certain golden ring, whereas
  in apocalyptic vision the physical and spiritual life of the whole
  earth can be represented as fallen, or on the point of falling,
  into ruin.
  Typically, the hero of the fairy tale achieves a domestic, micro-
  cosmic triumph, and the hero of myth a world-historical, macro-
  cosmic triumph. Whereas the former—the youngest or despised
  child who becomes the master of extraordinar}' powers—prevails
  over his personal oppressors, the latter brings back from his ad-
  venture the means for the regeneration of his society as a whole.
  Tribal or local heroes, such as the emperor Huang Ti, Moses, or
  the A2tec Tezcatlipoca, commit their boons to a single folk; uni-
  versal heroes —Mohammed, Jesus, Gautama Buddha—bring a
  message for the entire world.
  Whether the hero be ridiculous or sublime, Greek or barbar-
  ian, gentile or Jew, his journey varies little in essential plan.
  Popular tales represent the heroic action as physical; the higher
  religions show the deed to be moral; nevertheless, there will be
  found astonishingly little variation in the morphology of the ad-
  venture, the character roles involved, the victories gained. If one
  or another of the basic elements of the archetypal pattern is
  omitted from a given fairy tale, legend, ritual, or myth, it is
  12 This circular adventure of the hero appears in a negative form in stories of
  the deluge type, where it is not the hero who goes to the power, but the power
  that rises against the hero, and again subsides. Deluge stories OCCUT in every
  quarter of the earth. They form an integral portion of the archetypal myth of
  the history of the world, and so belong properly to Fart II of the" present dis-
  cussion: "The Cosmogonic Cycle.'" The deluge hero is a symbol of the germi-
  nal vitality of man surviving even the worst tides of catastrophe and sin-'
  35
  
  THE MONOMVTH
  bound to be somehow or other implied—and the omission itself
  can speak volumes for the history and pathology of the example,
  as we shall presently see.
  Part II, "The Cosmogonic Cycle," unrolls the great vision of
  the creation and destruction of the world which is vouchsafed as
  revelation to the successful hero. Chapter I, Emanations, treats of
  the coming of the forms of the universe out of the void. Chapter II,
  The Virgin Birth, is a review of the creative and redemptive roles
  of the female power, first on a cosmic scale as the Mother of the
  Universe, then again on the human plane as the Mother of the
  Hero. Chapter III, Transformations of the Hero, traces the course
  of the legendary history of the human race through its typical
  stages, the hero appearing on the scene in various forms accord-
  ing to the changing needs of the race. And Chapter IV, Dissolu-
  tions, tells of the foretold end, first of the hero, then of the mani-
  fested world.
  The cosmogonic cycle is presented with astonishing consistency
  in the sacred writings of all the continents,41 and it gives to the
  adventure of the hero a new and interesting turn; for now it ap-
  pears that the perilous journey was a labor not of attainment but
  of reattainment, not discovery but rediscovery. The godly powers
  sought and dangerously won are revealed to have been within the
  heart of the hero all the time. He is "the king's son" who has come
  to know who he is and therewith has entered into the exercise of
  his proper power—"God's son," who has learned to know how
  nnich that title means. From this point of view the hero is symbol-
  ical of that divine creative and redemptive image which is hidden
  within us all, only waiting to be known and rendered into life.
  "For the One who has become many, remains the One undi-
  vided, but each part is all of Christ," we read in the writings of
  Saint Symeon the younger (949-1022 A.D.). "I saw Him in my
  house," the saint goes on. "Among all those everyday things He
  is The present volume is not concerned with the historical discussion of this
  circumstance. That task is reserved for a work now under preparation. The
  present volume is a comparative, not genetic, study. Its purpose is to show that
  essential parallels exist in the myths themselves as well as in the interpretations
  and applications that the sages have announced for them.
  not concerned with the historical discussion of this
  reserved for a work now under preparation. The
  ative, not genetic, study. Its purpose is to show that
  le myths themselves as well as in the interpretations
  ges have announced for them.
  36
  THE WORLD NAVEL
  appeared unexpectedly and became unutterably united and
  merged with me, and leaped over to me without anything in be-
  tween, as fire to iron, as the light to glass. And He made me like
  fire and like light. And I became that which I saw before and be-
  held from afar. I do not know how to relate this miracle to you. . . .
  I am man by nature, and God by the grace of God."44
  A comparable vision is described in the apocryphal Gospel of
  Eve. "I stood on a loftly mountain and saw a gigantic man and
  another a dwarf; and I heard as it were a voice of thunder, and
  drew nigh for to hear; and He spake unto me and said: I am
  thou, and thou art I; and wheresoever thou mayest be I am there.
  In all am I scattered, and whensoever thou wiliest, thou gather-
  est Me; and gathering Me, thou gatherest Thyself."45
  The two—the hero and his ultimate god, the seeker and the
  found—are thus understood as the outside and inside of a single,
  self-mirrored mystery, which is identical with the mystery of the
  manifest world. The great deed of the supreme hero is to come
  to the knowledge of this unity in multiplicity and then to make it
  known.
  The World Nave!
  The effect of the successful adventure of the hero is the unlock-
  ing and release again of the flow of life into the body of the
  world. The miracle of this flow may be represented in physical
  terms as a circulation of food substance, dynamically as a
  streaming of energy, or spiritually as a manifestation of grace.
  Such varieties of image alternate easily, representing three de-
  grees of condensation of the one life force. An abundant harvest
  44 Translated by Dom Ansgar Nelson, O.S.B., in The Soul Afire (New York:
  Pantheon Books, 1944), p. 303.
  44 Quoted by Epiphanius, Adversus kaereses, xxvi, 3.
  
  THE MONOMYTH
  is the sign of God's grace; God's grace is the food of the soul;
  the lightning bolt is the harbinger of fertilizing rain, and at the
  same time the manifestation of the released energy of God.
  Grace, food substance, energy: these pour into the living world,
  and wherever they fail, life decomposes into death.
  The torrent pours from an invisible source, the point of entry
  being the center of the symbolic circle of the universe, the Im-
  movable Spot to the Buddha legend,46 around which the world
  may be said to revolve. Beneath this spot is the earth-supporting
  head of the cosmic serpent, the dragon, symbolical of the waters of
  the abyss, which are the divine life-creative energy and substance
  of the demiurge, the world-generative aspect of immortal
  being.1' The tree of life, i.e., the universe itself, grows from this
  point. It is rooted in the supporting darkness; the golden sun
  bird perches on its peak; a spring, the inexhaustible well, bub-
  bles at its foot. Or the figure may be that of a cosmic mountain,
  with the city of the gods, like a lotus of light, upon its summit,
  and in its hollow the cities of the demons, illuminated by pre-
  cious stones. Again, the figure may be that of the cosmic man or
  woman (for example the Buddha himself, or the dancing Hindu
  goddess Kali) seated or standing on this spot, or even fixed to
  the tree (Attis, Jesus, Wotan); for the hero as the incarnation of
  God is himself the navel of the world, the umbilical point
  through which the energies of eternity break into time. Thus the
  World Navel is the symbol of the continuous creation: the mys-
  tery of the maintenance of the world through that continuous
  miracle of vivification which wells within all things.
  Among the Pawnees of northern Kansas and southern
  Nebraska, the priest, during the ceremonial of the Hako, draws
  a circle with his toe. "Hie circle represents a nest," such a priest
  is reported to have said, "and it is drawn by the toe because the
  eagle builds its nest with its claws. Although we are imitating
  the bird making its nest, there is another meaning to the action;
  4fi Supra, p. 30.
  X i l l s 
  i s 
  i l i e 
  s e r p e n t 
  t i i n t 
  p i ' u t i ' L ' t i <rl 
  ( l i r 
  1 3 I . L d t i n ; i , 
  r r i r - 
  l i t i l i 
  ^ ^
  ^ l ' ' • K 
  i i t ~ '
  L ] 
  l n ^
  •nliglitcnment. See supra, p. 31.
  THE WORLD NAVEL
  we are thinking of Tirawa making the world for the people to
  live in. If you go on a high hill and look around, you will see the
  sky touching the earth on every side, and within this circular en-
  closure the people live. So the circles we have made are not only
  nests, but they also represent the circle Tirawa-atius has made
  for the dwelling place of all the people. The circles also stand for
  the kinship group, the clan, and the tribe."411
  The dome of heaven rests on the quarters of the earth, some-
  times supported by four caryatidal kings, dwarfs, giants, ele-
  phants, or turtles. Hence, the traditional importance of the
  mathematical problem of the quadrature of the circle: it contains
  the secret of the transformation of heavenly into earthly forms.
  The hearth in the home, the altar in the temple, is the hub of the
  wheel of the earth, the womb of the Universal Mother whose fire
  is the fire of life. And the opening at the top of the lodge —or the
  crown, pinnacle, or lantern, of the dome—is the hub or midpoint
  of the sky: the sun door, through which souls pass back from
  time to eternity, like the savor of the offerings, burned in the fire
  of life, and lifted on the axis of ascending smoke from the hub of
  the earthly to that of the celestial wheel.49
  Thus filled, the sun is the eating bowl of God, an inex-
  haustible grail, abundant with the substance of the sacrifice,
  whose flesh is meat indeed and whose blood is drink indeed.""0
  At the same time it is the nourisher of mankind. The solar ray
  igniting the hearth symbolizes the communication of divine en-
  ergy to the womb of the world—and is again the axis uniting
  and turning the two wheels. Through the sun door the circula-
  tion of energy is continuous. God descends and man ascends
  M Alice C. fletcher, The Hako: A Pawnee Ceremony (Twenty-second Annual Re-
  port, Bureau of American Ethnology, part 2; Washington, 1904), pp. 243-244.
  "At the creation of the world," a Pawnee high priest said to Miss fletcher, in
  explanation of the divinities honored in the ceremony, "it was arranged that
  there should be lesser powers. Tirawa-atius, the mighty power, could not come
  near to man, could not be seen or fe!t by him, therefore lesser powers were per-
  mitted. They were to mediate between man and Tirawa" (ibid., p. 27).
  4L See Ananda K. (. iV'mai'aMVLivr.v h "Symbolism <">! th^ Dunie. I he JaJn/n
  Historical Quarterly, Vol. XIV, No. 1 (March, 1938).
  39
  
  THE MONOMYTH
  through k. "I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be
  saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture."'"1 "He that eateth
  my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.™2
  For a culture still nurtured in mythology the landscape, as
  well as every phase of human existence, is made alive with sym-
  bolical suggestion. The hills and groves have their supernatural
  protectors and are associated with popularly known episodes in
  the local history of the creation of the world. Here and there,
  furthermore, are special shrines. Wherever a hero has been
  born, has wrought, or has passed back into the void, the place is
  marked and sanctified. A temple is erected there to signify and
  inspire the miracle of perfect centeredness; for this is the place
  of the breakthrough into abundance. Someone at this point
  discovered eternity. The site can serve, therefore, as a support
  for fruitful meditation. Such temples are designed, as a rule, to
  simulate the four directions of the world horizon, the shrine
  or altar at the center being symbolical of the Inexhaustible
  Point. The one who enters the temple compound and proceeds
  to the sanctuary is imitating the deed of the original hero.
  His aim is to rehearse the universal pattern as a means of
  evoking within himself the recollection of the life-centering,
  life-renewing form.
  Ancient cities are built like temples, having their portals to
  the four directions, while in the central place stands the major
  shrine of the divine city founder. The citizens live and work
  within the confines of this symbol. And in the same spirit, the
  domains of the national and world religions are centered around
  the hub of some mother city: Western Christendom around
  Rome, Islam around Mecca. The concerted bowing, three times
  a day, of the Mohammedan community throughout the world,
  all pointing like the spokes of a world-extensive wheel to the
  centering Kaaba, constructs a vast, living symbol of the "sub-
  mission" (islam) of each and all to Allah's will. "For it is He,"
  we read in the Koran, "that will show you the truth of all that ye
  do."53 Or again: a great temple can be established anywhere.
  11 Ibid., 10:9. 
  '~2 Ibid., 6:56. 
  3"> Koran, 5:108.
  THE WORLD NAVEL
  Because, finally, the All is everywhere, and anywhere may become
  the seat of power. Any blade of grass may assume, in myth, the
  figure of the savior and conduct the questing wanderer into the
  sanctum sanctorum of his own heart.
  The World Navel, then, is ubiquitous. And since it is the
  source of all existence, it yields the world's plenitude of both
  good and evil. Ugliness and beauty, sin and virtue, pleasure and
  pain, are equally its production. "To God all things are fair and
  good and right," declares Heraclitus; "but men hold some things
  wrong and some right."34 Hence the figures worshiped in the
  temples of the world are by no means always beautiful, always
  benign, or even necessarily virtuous. Like the deity of the Book
  of Job, they far transcend the scales of human value. And like-
  wise, mythology does not hold as its greatest hero the merely
  virtuous man. Virtue is but the pedagogical prelude to the cul-
  minating insight, which goes beyond all pairs of opposites.
  Virtue quells the self-centered ego and makes the transpersonal
  centeredness possible; but when that has been achieved, what
  then of the pain or pleasure, vice or virtue, either of our own ego
  or of any other? Through all, the transcendent force is then per-
  ceived which lives in all, in all is wonderful, and is worthy, in all,
  of our profound obeisance.
  For as Heraclitus has declared: "The unlike is joined together,
  and from differences results the most beautiful harmony, and all
  things take place by strife."50 Or again, as we have it from the
  poet Blake: "The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the
  raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions
  of eternity too great for the eye of man."56
  The difficult point is made vivid in an anecdote from Yoruba-
  land (West Africa), which is told of the trickster-divinity Edshu.
  One day, this odd god came walking along a path between two
  fields. "He beheld in either field a farmer at work and proposed
  to play the two a turn. He donned a hat that was on the one side
  '4 Heraclitus., fragment 102.
  " Heraclitus, fragment 46.
  lfi William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, "Proverbs of Hell."
  
  THE MONOMVTII
  red but on the other white, green before and black behind [these
  being the colors of the four World Directions: i.e., Edshu was a
  personification of the Center, the axis mundi, or the World
  Navel]; so that when the two friendly farmers had gone home to
  their village and the one had said to the other, 'Did yon see that
  old fellow go by today in the white hat?' the other replied,
  'Why, the hat was red.' To which the first retorted, 'It was not;
  it was white." 'But it was red,' insisted the friend, 'I saw it with
  my own two eyes.' 'Well, you must be blind,' declared the first.
  'You must be drunk,' rejoined the other. And so the argument
  developed and the two came to blows. When they began to knife
  each other, they were brought by neighbors before the headman
  for judgment. Edshu was among the crowd at the trial, and
  when the headman sat at a loss to know where justice lay, the old
  trickster revealed himself, made known his prank, and showed the
  hat. 'The two could not help but quarrel,' he said. 'I wanted it
  that way. Spreading strife is my greatest joy.1"57
  Where the moralist would be filled with indignation and the
  tragic poet with pity and terror, mythology breaks the whole of
  life into a vast, horrendous Divine Comedy. Its Olympian laugh
  is not escapist in the least, but hard, with the hardness of life
  itself—which, we may take it, is the hardness of God, the
  Creator. Mythology, in this respect, makes the tragic attitude
  seem somewhat hysterical, and the merely moral judgment
  shortsighted. Yet the hardness is balanced by an assurance that
  all that we see is but the reflex of a power that endures, un-
  touched by the pain. Thus the tales are both pitiless and
  terrorless—suffused with the joy of a transcendent anonymity
  regarding itself in all of the self-centered, battling egos that are
  born and die in time.
  "7 Leo Frobenius. Und Afrika sprach. . . . (Berlin: Vita, Deutsches Verlagshaus,
  1912), pp. 243-245. Compare the strikingly similar episode recounted of
  Othin (Wotan) in the Prose Edda, "Skaldskaparmal" I ("Scandinavian Clas-
  sics," Vol. V, New York, 1929, p. 96). Compare also Jehovah's command in
  Exodus, 32:27: "Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from
  gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every
  man his comp;iTiii_>ti, ;iiid t^ erv man his neighbor.1*
  PART I
  The Adventure of the Hero
  4 2
  
  C
  H
  A
  P
  T
  E
  R 
  1
  Departure
  The Call to Adventure
  "LONG long ago, when wishing still could lead to something,
  there lived a king whose daughters all were beautiful, but the
  youngest was so beautiful that the sun itself, who had seen so
  many things, simply marveled every time it shone on her face:
  Now close to the castle of this king was a great dark forest, and
  in the forest under an old lime tree a spring, and when the day
  was very hot, the king's child would go out into the wood and sit
  on the edge of the cool spring. And to pass the time she would
  take a golden ball, toss it up and catch it; and this was her
  favorite plaything.
  "Now it so happened one day that the golden ball of the
  princess did not fall into the little hand lifted into the air, but
  passed it, bounced on the ground, and rolled directly into the
  water. The princess followed it with her eyes, but the ball disap-
  peared; and the spring was deep, so deep that the bottom could
  not be seen. Thereupon she began to cry, and her crying became
  louder and louder, and she was unable to find consolation. And
  while she was lamenting in this way, she heard someone call to
  her: 'What is the matter, Princess? You are crying so hard, a
  stone would be forced to pity you.' She looked around to see
  where the voice had come from, and there she beheld a frog,
  holding its fat, ugly head out of the water. 'Oh, it's you, old
  Water Plopper,' she said. 'I am crying over my golden ball,
  
  DEPARTURE
  which has fallen into the spring.' 'Be calm; don't cry,' answered
  the frog. 'I can surely be of assistance. But what will you give
  me if I fetch your toy for you?' 'Whatever you would like to
  have, dear frog,' she said; 'my clothes, my pearls and jewels,
  even the golden crown that I wear.' The frog replied, 'Your
  clothes, your pearls and jewels, and your golden crown, I do not
  want; but if you will care for me and let me be your companion
  and playmate, let me sit beside you at your little table, eat from
  your little golden plate, drink from your little cup, sleep in your
  little bed: if you will promise me that, I will go straight down
  and fetch your golden ball.' 'All right,' she said. 'I promise you
  anything you want, if you will only bring me back the ball.' But
  she thought: 'How that simple frog chatters! There he sits in the
  water with his own kind, and could never be the companion of a
  human being.'
  "As soon as the frog had obtained her promise, he ducked his
  head and sank, and after a little while came swimming up again;
  he had the ball in his mouth, and tossed it on the grass. The
  princess was elated when she saw her pretty toy. She picked it
  up and scampered away. 'Wait, wait,' called the frog, 'take me
  along; I can't run like you.1 But what good did it do, though he
  croaked after her as loudly as he could"? She paid not the slight-
  est heed, but hurried home, and soon had completely forgotten
  the poor frog—who must have hopped back again into his
  spring."1
  This is an example of one of the ways in which the adventure
  can begin. A blunder—apparently the merest chance—reveals
  an unsuspected world, and the individual is drawn into a rela-
  tionship with forces that are not rightly understood. As Freud
  has shown,2 blunders are not the merest chance. They are the re-
  sult of suppressed desires and conflicts. They are ripples on the
  surface of life, produced by unsuspected springs. And these may
  be very deep—as deep as the soul itself. The blunder may
  amount to the opening of a destiny. Thus it happens, in this
  1 Grimms'Fairy Talcs, No. 1, "The Frog King."
  a The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. (Standard Edn., VI; orig. 1901.)
  THE CALL TO ADVENTURE
  fairy tale, that the disappearance of the ball is the first sign of
  something coming for the princess, the frog is the second, and
  the unconsidered promise is the third.
  As a preliminary manifestation of the powers that are break-
  ing into play, the frog, coming up as it were by miracle, can be
  termed the "herald"; the crisis of his appearance is the "call to
  adventure." The herald's summons may be to live, as in the pres-
  ent instance, or, at a later moment of the biography, to die. It
  may sound the call to some high historical undertaking. Or it
  may mark the dawn of religious illumination. As apprehended
  by the mystic, it marks what has been termed "the awakening of
  the self."3 In the case of the princess of the fairy tale, it signified
  no more than the coming of adolescence. But whether small or
  great, and no matter what the stage or grade of life, the call
  rings up the curtain, always, on a mystery of transfiguration —a
  rite, or moment, of spiritual passage, which, when complete,
  amounts to a dying and a birth. The familiar life horizon has
  been outgrown; the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns
  no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand.
  Typical of the circumstances of the call are the dark forest, the
  great tree, the babbling spring, and the loathly, underestimated
  appearance of the carrier of the power of destiny. We recognize
  in the scene the symbols of the World Navel. The frog, the little
  dragon, is the nursery counterpart of the underworld serpent
  whose head supports the earth and who represents the life-pro-
  genitive, demiurgic powers of the abyss. He comes up with the
  golden sun ball, his dark deep waters having just taken it down:
  at this moment resembling the great Chinese Dragon of the
  Kast, delivering the rising sun in his jaws, or the frog on whose
  head rides the handsome young immortal, Han Hsiang, carrying
  in a basket the peaches of immortality. Freud has suggested
  that all moments of anxiety reproduce the painful feelings of the
  first separation from the mother—the tightening of the breath,
  1 Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, A Study in the Nature and Development of
  Man's Spiritual Consciousness (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1911), Part II,
  "The Mystic Way," Chapter II, "The Awakening of the Self."
  
  DEPARTURE
  congestion of the blood, etc., of the crisis of birth.4 Conversely,
  all moments of separation and new birth produce anxiety.
  Whether it be the king's child about to be taken from the felicity
  of her established dual-unity with King Daddy, or God's daugh-
  ter Eve, now ripe to depart from the idyl of the Garden, or again,
  the supremely concentrated Future Buddha breaking past the
  last horizons of the created world, the same archetypal images
  are activated, symbolizing danger, reassurance, trial, passage,
  and the strange holiness of the mysteries of birth.
  The disgusting and rejected frog or dragon of the fairy tale
  brings up the sun ball in its mouth; for the frog, the serpent, the
  rejected one, is the representative of that unconscious deep ("so
  deep that the bottom cannot be seen") wherein are hoarded all
  of the rejected, unadmitted, unrecognized, unknown, or unde-
  veloped factors, laws, and elements of existence. Those are the
  pearls of the fabled submarine palaces of the nixies, tritons, and
  water guardians; the jewels that give light to the demon cities of
  the underworld; the tire seeds in the ocean of immortality which
  supports the earth and surrounds it like a snake; the stars in the
  bosom of immortal night. Those are the nuggets in the gold
  hoard of the dragon; the guarded apples of the Hesperides; the
  filaments of the Golden Fleece. The herald or announcer of the
  adventure, therefore, is often dark, loathly, or terrifying, judged
  evil by the world; yet if one could follow, the way would be
  opened through the walls of day into the dark where the jewels
  glow. Or the herald is a beast (as in the fain' tale), representa-
  tive of the repressed instinctual fecundity within ourselves, or
  again a veiled mysterious figure—the unknown.
  The story is told, for example, of King Arthur, and how he
  made him ready with many knights to ride ahunting. "As soon
  as he was in the forest, the King saw a great hart afore him. This
  hart will I chase, said King Arthur, and so he spurred the horse,
  and rode after long, and so by fine force he was like to have smit-
  1 Sigrmind l-'reud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (translated by
  James Strachey, Standard Edition, XVI; London: The Hogarth Press, 1963),
  pp. 396-97. (Orig. 1916-17.)
  THE CALL TO ADVENTURE
  ten the hart; whereas the King had chased the hart so
  long, that his horse lost his breath, and fell down dead; then a
  yeoman fetched the King another horse. So the King saw the
  hart embushed, and his horse dead; he set him down by a foun-
  tain, and there he fell in great thoughts. And as he sat so, him
  thought he heard a noise of hounds, to the sum of thirty. And
  with that the King saw coming toward him the strangest beast
  that ever he saw or heard of; so the beast went to the well and
  drank, and the noise was in the beast's belly like unto the
  questyng of thirty couple hounds; but all the while the beast
  drank there was no noise in the beast's belly: and therewith the
  beast departed with a great noise, whereof the King had great
  marvel.'"
  Or we have the case—from a very different portion of the
  world—of an Arapaho girl of the North American plains. She
  spied a porcupine near a cottonwood tree. She tried to hit the
  animal, but it ran behind the tree and began to climb. The girl
  started after, to catch it, but it continued just out of reach.
  "Well!11 she said, "I am climbing to catch the porcupine, for
  I want those quills, and if necessary I will go to the top." The
  porcupine reached the top of the tree, but as she approached and
  was about to lay hands on it, the cottonwood tree suddenly
  lengthened, and the porcupine resumed his climb. Looking
  down, she saw her friends craning up at her and beckoning her
  to descend; but having passed under the influence of the porcu-
  pine, and fearful for the great distance between herself and the
  ground, she continued to mount the tree, until she became the
  merest speck to those looking from below, and with the porcu-
  pine she finally reached the sky.6
  "questyng heast" marks the beginning of the mysteries associated with the
  Quest of the Hoh Grail.
  6 George A. Dorsey and Alfred L. Kroeber, Traditions of the Arapaho (field
  Columbia Museum, Publication 81, Anthropological Scries. Vol. V; Chicago,
  1903), p. 300. Reprinted in Stith Thompson's Tales of the North American
  Indians (Cambridge, Mass., 1929), ]>. 128.
  49
  
  DEPARTURE
  FIGURE 3. Osiris in the Form of a Bull Transports
  His Worshiper to the Underworld
  Two dreams will suffice to illustrate the spontaneous appear-
  ance of the figure of the herald in the psyche that is ripe for
  transformation. The first is the dream of a young man seeking
  the way to a new world-orientation:
  "I am in a green land where many sheep are at pasture. It is
  the 'land of sheep.1 In the land of sheep stands an unknown
  woman and points the way."'
  7 C. G. Jung, Psychology ami Alchemy (Collected Works, vol. 12; New York
  and London, 1953), pars. 71, 73. (Orig. 1935.)
  THE CALL TO ADVENTURE
  The second is the dream of a young girl whose girl companion
  has lately died of consumption; she is afraid that she may have
  the disease herself.
  "I was in a blossoming garden; the sun was just going down
  with a blood-red glow. Then there appeared before me a black,
  noble knight, who spoke to me with a very serious, deep and
  frightening voice: 'Wilt thou go with me?' Without attending
  my answer, he took me by the hand, and carried me away."8
  Whether dream or myth, in these adventures there is an at-
  mosphere of irresistible fascination about the figure that appears
  suddenly as guide, marking a new period, a new stage, in the bi-
  ography. That which has to be faced, and is somehow profoundly-
  familiar to the unconscious—though unknown, surprising, and
  even frightening to the conscious personality—makes itself known;
  and what formerly was meaningful may become strangely emp-
  tied of value: like the world of the king's child, with the sudden
  disappearance into the well of the golden ball. Thereafter, even
  though the hero returns for a while to his familiar occupations,
  they may be found unfruitful. A series of signs of increasing
  force then will become visible, until —as in the following legend
  of "The Four Signs," which is the most celebrated example of
  the call to adventure in the literature of the world—the sum-
  mons can no longer be denied. The young prince Gautama
  Sakyamuni, the Future Buddha, had been protected by his fa-
  ther from all knowledge of age, sickness, death, or monkhood,
  lest he should be moved to thoughts of life renunciation; for it
  had been prophesied at his birth that he was to become either
  a world emperor or a Buddha. The king—prejudiced in favor
  of the royal vocation—provided his son with three palaces
  and forty thousand dancing girls to keep his mind attached to
  the world. But these only served to advance the inevitable; for
  while still relatively young, the youth exhausted for himself the
  fields of fleshly joy and became ripe for the other experience.
  8 Wilhelm Stekel, Die Sprache des Traurtws (Wiesbaden; Verlag von -I. F.
  Bergmann. 1911), p. 352. Dr. Stekel points out the relationship of the blood-
  red glow to the thought of the blood coughed up in consumption.
  
  DEPARTURE
  The moment he was ready, the proper heralds automatically
  appeared:
  "Now on a certain day the Future Buddha wished to go to the
  park, and told his charioteer to make ready the chariot. Accord-
  ingly the man brought out a sumptuous and elegant chariot,
  and, adorning it richly, he harnessed to it four state horses of the
  Sindhava breed, as white as the petals of the white lotus, and an-
  nounced to the Future Buddha that everything was ready. And
  the Future Buddha mounted the chariot, which was like to a
  palace of the gods, and proceeded toward the park,
  " 'The time for the enlightenment of the prince Siddhartha
  draweth nigh,' thought the gods; 'we must show him a sign1:
  and they changed one of their number into a decrepit old man,
  broken-toothed, gray-haired, crooked and bent of body, leaning
  on a staff, and trembling, and showed him to the Future Buddha,
  but so that only he and the charioteer saw him.
  "Then said the Future Buddha to the charioteer, 'Friend,
  pray, who is this man? Even his hair is not like that of other
  men.' And when he heard the answer, he said, 'Shame on birth,
  since to every one that is born old age must come.1 And agitated
  in heart, he thereupon returned and ascended his palace.
  " 'Why has my son returned so quickly?' asked the king.
  "'Sire, he has seen an old man,' was the reply; 'and because
  he has seen an old man, he is about to retire from the world.1
  " 'Do you want to kill me, that you say such things? Quickly
  get ready some plays to be performed before my son. If we can
  but get him to enjoying pleasure, he will cease to think of retir-
  ing from the world.' Then the king extended the guard to half a
  league in each direction.
  "Again on a certain day, as the Future Buddha was going to
  the park, he saw a diseased man whom the gods had fashioned;
  and having again made inquiry, he returned, agitated in heart,
  and ascended his palace.
  "And the king made the same inquiry and gave the same
  order as before; and again extending the guard, placed them for
  three quarters of a league around.
  THE CALL TO A D V E N T U R E
  "And again on a certain day, as the Future Buddha was going
  to the park, he saw a dead man whom the gods had fashioned;
  and having again made inquiry, he returned, agitated in heart,
  and ascended his palace.
  "And the king made the same inquiry and gave the same or-
  ders as before; and again extending the guard placed them for a
  league around.
  "And again on a certain day, as the Future Buddha was going
  to the park, he saw a monk, carefully and decently clad, whom
  the gods had fashioned; and he asked his charioteer, 'Pray, who
  is this man?' 'Sire, this is one who has retired from the world';
  and the charioteer thereupon proceeded to sound the praises of
  retirement from the world. The thought of retiring from the
  world was a pleasing one to the Future Buddha."5'
  This first stage of the mythological journey—which we have
  designated the "call to adventure" —signifies that destiny has
  summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of grav-
  ity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown. This
  fateful region of both treasure and danger may be variously rep-
  resented: as a distant land, a forest, a kingdom underground,
  beneath the waves, or above the sky, a secret island, lofty moun-
  taintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of
  strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable tor-
  ments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delight. The hero can
  go forth of his own volition to accomplish the adventure, as did
  Theseus when he arrived in his father's city, Athens, and heard
  the horrible history of the Minotaur; or he may be carried or
  sent abroad by some benign or malignant agent, as was
  Odysseus, driven about the Mediterranean by the winds of the
  angered god, Poseidon. The adventure may begin as a mere
  blunder, as did that of the princess of the fairy tale; or still
  again, one may be only casually strolling, when some passing
  '•' Reprinted by permission of the publishers from Henry Clarke Warren,
  Buddhism in Translations (Harvard Oriental Series, 3) Cambridge, Mass.:
  Harvard University Press, 1896, pp. 56-57.
  
  D K P A R T U i( E
  phenomenon catches the wandering eye and lures one away
  from the frequented paths of man. Examples might be multi-
  plied, ad infmitum, from every corner of the world.1"
  Refusal of the Call
  Often in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popu-
  lar tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; for it
  is always possible to turn the ear to other interests. 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 of dry stones and his
  life feels meaningless—even though, like King Minos, he may
  through titanic effort succeed in building an empire of renown.
  Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth
  of cyclopean walls to hide from him his Minotaur. All he can do
  is create new problems for himself and await the gradual ap-
  proach of his disintegration.
  "Because I have called, and ye refused . . . I also will laugh at
  your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your
  fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a
  whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you." "For
  10 In the above section, and throughout the following pages, I have made no
  attempt to exhaust the evidence. To have done so (after the manner, for example,
  of Frazer, in The Golden Bough) would have enlarged my chapters ppxliijioush
  without making the main line of the monomyth an;- clearer. Instead, I am giving
  in each section a few striking examples from a number of widely scattered, repre-
  sirTirnuv<r traditions. Durmg the course oi thr work 1 shift \\i\ M.mn.Trs gradually,
  so that the reader may savor the peculiar qualities, of the various styles. By the
  time lie coiii^s i" thij last piAi^e, he n'lll have reviewed an imtnense nuii"ibeiJ "I
  mythologies. Should he wish to prove whether all might have been cited for
  owrv section of rlir monomyth, he need unh Turn In sonic- of the source volumes
  enumerated in the footnotes and ramble through a few of the multitude of tales.
  REFUSAL OK THE CALL
  the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosper-
  ity of fools shall destroy them."11
  Time Jesum transeuntem et non revertentem: "Dread the pas-
  sage of Jesus, for he does not return."12
  The myths and folk tales of the whole world make clear that
  the refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to
  be one's own interest. The future is regarded not in terms of an
  unremitting scries of deaths and births, but as though one's
  present system of ideals, virtues, goals, and advantages were to
  be fixed and made secure. King Minos retained the divine bull,
  when the sacrifice would have signified submission to the will of
  the god of his society; for he preferred what he conceived to be
  his economic advantage. Thus he failed to advance into the life-
  role that he had assumed—and we have seen with what calamitous
  effect. The divinity itself became his terror; for, obviously, if one is
  oneself one's god, then God himself, the will of God, the power
  that would destroy one's egocentric system, becomes a monster.
  I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
  I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
  Of my own'mind; and in the mist of tears
  I hid from Him, and under running laughter}*
  One is harassed, both day and night, by the divine being that is
  the image of the living self within the locked labyrinth of one's
  own disoriented psyche. The ways to the gates have all been lost:
  there is no exit. One can only cling, like Satan, furiously, to one-
  self and be in hell; or else break, and be annihilate at last, in God.
  "Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
  I am He Whum thou seekest!
  Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."u
  " Proverbs, 1:24-27, 32.
  12 "Spiritual books occasionally quote [this) Latin saying which has terrified
  more than one soul" (Ernest Dimnet, The Art of Thinking, New York: Simon
  and Schuster, Inc., 1S29, pp. 203-204).
  11 Francis Thompson, The Hound of Heaven, opening lines.
  54
  
  DEPARTURE
  The same harrowing, mysterious voice was to be heard in the call
  of the Greek god Apollo to the fleeing maiden Daphne, daughter
  of the river Peneus, as he pursued her over the plain. "O nymph,
  O Peneus' daughter, stay!" the deity called to her—like the frog
  to the princess of the fairy tale; "I who pursue thee am no enemy.
  Thou knowest not whom thou fleest, and for that reason dost
  thou flee. Run with less speed, I pray, and hold thy flight. I, too,
  will follow with less speed. Nay, stop and ask who thy lover is."
  "He would have said more," the story goes, "but the maiden
  pursued her frightened way and left him with words unfinished,
  even in her desertion seeming fair. The winds bared her limbs, the
  opposing breezes set her garments aflutter as she ran, and a light
  air flung her locks streaming behind her. Her beauty was en-
  hanced by flight. But the chase drew to an end, for the youthful
  god would not longer waste his time in coaxing words, and, urged
  on by love, he pursued at utmost speed. Just as when a Gallic
  hound has seen a hare in an open plain, and seeks his prey on fly-
  ing feet, but the hare, safety; he, just about to fasten on her, now,
  even now thinks he has her, and grazes her very heels with his out-
  stretched muzzle; but she knows not whether or not she be already
  caught, and barely escapes from those sharp fangs and leaves be-
  hind the jaws just closing on her: so ran the god and maid, he sped
  by hope and she by fear. But he ran the more swiftly, borne on the
  wings of love, gave her no time to rest, hung over her fleeing
  shoulders and breathed on the hair that streamed over her neck.
  Now was her strength all gone, and, pale with fear and utterly
  overcome by the toil of her swift flight, seeing the waters of her fa-
  ther's river near, she cried: 'O father, help! If your waters hold di-
  vinity, change and destroy this beauty by which I pleased o'er
  well.' Scarce had she thus prayed when a down-dragging numb-
  ness seized her limbs, and her soft sides were begirt with thin
  bark. Her hair was changed to leaves, her arms to branches. Her
  feet, but now so swift, grew fast in sluggish roots, and her head
  was now but a tree's top. Her gleaming beauty alone remained."13
  u Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, 504-55.1 (translation by Frank Justus Miller, the
  Loeb Classical Library).
  REFUSAL 01" T H E CALL
  This is indeed a dull and unrewarding finish. Apollo, the sun,
  the lord of time and ripeness, no longer pressed his frightening
  suit, but instead, simply named the laurel his favorite tree and
  ironically recommended its leaves to the fashioners of victory
  wreaths. The girl had retreated to the image of her parent and
  there found protection—like the unsuccessful husband whose
  dream of mother love preserved him from the state of cleaving to
  a wife."
  The literature of psychoanalysis abounds in examples of such
  desperate fixations. What they represent is an impotence to put
  off the infantile ego, with its sphere of emotional relationships
  and ideals. One is bound in by the walls of childhood; the father
  and mother stand as threshold guardians, and the timorous soul,
  fearful of some punishment,1' fails to make the passage through
  the door and come to birth in the world without.
  Dr. Jung has reported a dream that resembles very closely the
  image of the myth of Daphne. The dreamer is the same young
  man who found himself (supra, p. 55) in the land of the sheep —
  the land, that is to say, of unindependence. A voice within him
  says, "I must first get away from the father"; then a few nights
  later: "a snake draws a circle about the dreamer, and he stands
  like a tree, grown fast to the earth."1*1 This is an image of the
  magic circle drawn about the personality by the dragon power of
  the fixating parent.19 Brynhild, in the same way, was protected
  in her virginity, arrested in her daughter state for years, by the
  circle of the fire of all-father Wotan. She slept in timelessness
  until the coming of Siegfried.
  Little Briar-rose (Sleeping Beauty) was put to sleep by a jeal-
  ous hag (an unconscious evil-mother image). And not only the
  child, her entire world went off to sleep; but at last, "after long,
  long years," there came a prince to wake her. "The king and
  queen (the conscious good-parent images), who had just come
  16 Supra, p. 5.
  17 Freud: castration complex.
  18 Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 58, 62.
  |1J The serpent (in mythology a symbol of the terrestrial waters) corresponds
  precisely to Daphne's father, the river Peneus.
  51
  
  DF.PARTUKE
  home and were entering the hall, began to fall asleep, and with
  them the whole estate. All the horses slept in the stalls, the dogs
  in the yard, the pigeons on the roof, the flies on the walls, yes,
  the fire that flickered on the hearth grew still and slumbered,
  and the roast ceased to simmer. And the cook, who was about to
  pull the hair of the scullery boy because he had forgotten some-
  thing, let him go and fell off to sleep. And the wind went down,
  and not a leaf stirred in the trees. Then around the castle a
  hedge of thorns began to grow, which became taller every year,
  and finally shut off the whole estate. It grew up taller than the
  castle, so that nothing more was seen, not even the weathercock
  on the roof."20
  A Persian city once was "enstoned to stone"—king and queen,
  soldiers, inhabitants, and all—because its people refused the call
  of Allah.21 Lot's wife became a pillar of salt for looking back,
  when she had been summoned forth from her city by Jehovah.22
  And there is the tale of the Wandering Jew, cursed to remain on
  earth until the Day of Judgment, because when Christ had
  passed him carrying the cross, this man among the people stand-
  ing along the way called, "Go faster! A little speed!" The unrec-
  ognized, insulted Savior turned and said to him, "I go, but you
  shall be waiting here for me when I return."21
  Some of the victims remain spellbound forever (at least, so far
  as we are told), but others are destined to be saved. Brynhild
  was preserved for her proper hero and little Briar-rose was res-
  cued by a prince. Also, the young man transformed into a tree
  dreamed subsequently of the unknown woman who pointed the
  way, as a mysterious guide to paths unknown.34 Not all who
  hesitate are lost. The psyche has many secrets in reserve. And
  these are not disclosed unless required. So it is that sometimes
  21 The Thousand Nights and One Night, Richard F. Burton translatioi
  (Bombay, 1885), Vol. 1, pp. 164-167.
  " Genesis, 19:26.
  2r> Werner Zirus, Ahasverus, di-r Ewige Jude (Staff- und MotivKes,(.-hichle de
  deutschen Literatur 6, Berlin and Leipzig, 1930), p. 1.
  ™ Supra, p. 54.
  58
  REFUSAL OF THE CALL
  the predicament following an obstinate refusal of the call proves
  to be the occasion of a providential revelation of some unsus-
  pected principle of release.
  Willed introversion, in fact, is one of the classic implements of
  creative genius and can be employed as a deliberate device. It
  drives the psychic energies into depth and activates the lost con-
  tinent of unconscious infantile and archetypal images. The result,
  of course; may be a disintegration of consciousness more or less
  complete (neurosis, psychosis: the plight of spellbound Daphne);
  but on the other hand, if the personality is able to absorb and
  integrate the new forces, there will be experienced an almost
  super-human degree of self-consciousness and masterful control.
  This is a basic principle of the Indian disciplines of yoga. It has
  been the way, also, of many creative spirits in the West.23 It can-
  not be described, quite, as an answer to any specific call. Rather,
  it is a deliberate, terrific refusal to respond to anything but the
  deepest, highest, richest answer to the as yet unknown demand
  of some waiting void within: a kind of total strike, or rejection of
  the offered terms of life, as a result of which some power of trans-
  formation carries the problem to a plane of new magnitudes,
  where it is suddenly and finally resolved.
  This is the aspect of the hero-problem illustrated in the won-
  drous Arabian Nights adventure of the Prince Kamar al-Zaman
  M See Otto Rank, Art and Artist, translated by Charles Francis Atkinson
  (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Int.. 1943), pp. 40-41: "If we compare the neu-
  rotic with the productive type, it is evident that the former suffers from an ex-
  cessive check on his Impulsive life. . . . Both are distinguished fundamentally
  from the average type, who accepts himself as he is, by their tendency to exer-
  cise their volition in reshaping themselves. There is. however, this difference:
  that the neurotic, in this voluntary remaking of his ego. does not get beyond
  the destructive preliminary work and is therefore unable to detach the whole
  creative process from his own person and transfer it to an ideological abstrac-
  tion. The productive artist also begins . . . with that re-creation of himself
  which results in an ideologically constructed ego; [but in his easel this ego is
  then in a position '<i ^hiii ;he cre^iu •: w ill-pi '\\~i-v from hi* own person to ideo-
  logical representations of that person and thus render it objective. It must be
  a d m i t t e d t n u t t h i s p r ' i c •-s i ^ l C: .] °i;;J;L^' if. iii 1i1 ii cl l'J u ! t h i n t h e l n d i v i n u a J h n n -
  self, and that not only in its constructive, but also in its destructive aspects.
  This explains why hardly any productive work gets through without morbid
  
  DEPARTURE
  and the Princess Budur. The young and handsome prince, the
  only son of King Shahriman of Persia, persistently refused the
  repeated suggestions, requests, demands, and finally injunctions,
  of his father, that he should do the normal thing and take to
  himself a wife. The first time the subject was broached to him,
  the lad responded: "O my father, know that I have no lust to
  marry nor doth my soul incline to women; for that concerning
  their craft and perfidy I have read many books and heard much
  talk, even as saith the poet:
  Now, an of women ask ye, I reply: —
  In their affairs I'm versed a doctor rare!
  When man 's head grizzles and his money dwindles,
  In their affection he hath naught for share.
  And another said:
  Rebel against women and so shalt thou serve Allah the more;
  The youth mho gives women the rein must forfeit all hope to soar.
  They'll baulk him when .seeking the strange device, Excelsior,
  Tho' waste he a thousand of'years in the study of science and lore."
  And when he had ended his verses he continued, "O my father,
  wedlock is a thing whereto I will never consent; no, not though
  I drink the cup of death."
  When the Sultan Shahriman heard these words from his son,
  light became darkness in his sight and he was full of grief; yet, for
  the great love he bore him, lie was unwilling to repeat his wishes
  and was not angry, but showed him all manner of kindness.
  After a year, the father pressed again his question, but the
  youth persisted in refusal, with further stanzas from the poets.
  The king consulted with his wazir, and the minister advised:
  "O king, wait another year and, if after that thou be minded to
  speak to him on the matter of marriage, speak not to him privily,
  but address him on a day of state, when all the emirs and wazirs
  are present with the whole of the army standing before thee. And
  when all are in crowd then send for thy son, Kamar al-Zaman,
  and summon him; and, when he cometh, broach to him the mat-
  ter of marriage before the wazirs and grandees and officers of
  REFUSAL OF THE CALL
  state and captains; for he will surely be bashful and daunted by
  their presence and will not dare to oppose thy will.1"
  When the moment came, however, and King Shahriman gave
  his command before the state, the prince bowed his head awhile,
  then raising it towards his father, and, being moved by youthful
  folly and boyish ignorance, replied: "But for myself I will never
  marry; no, not though I drink the cup of death! As for thee, thou
  art great in age and small of wit: hast thou not, twice ere this
  day and before this occasion, questioned me of the matter of
  marriage, and I refused my consent? Indeed thou dotest and art
  not fit to govern a flock of sheep!" So saying Kamar al-Zaman
  unclapsed his hands from behind his back and tucked up his
  sleeves above his elbows before his father, being in a fit of fury;
  moreover, he added many words to his sire, knowing not what
  he said, in the trouble of his spirits.
  The king was confounded and ashamed, since this befell in
  the presence of his grandees and soldier-officers assembled on a
  high festival and state occasion; but presently the majesty of
  kingship took him, and he cried out at his son and made him
  tremble. ITien he called to the guards standing before him and
  commanded, "Seize him!" So they came forward and laid hands
  on him and, binding him, brought him before his sire, who bade
  them pinion his elbows behind his back and in this guise make
  him stand before the presence. And the prince bowed down his
  head for fear and apprehension, and his brow and face were
  beaded and spangled with sweat; and shame and confusion trou-
  bled him sorely. Thereupon his father abused him and reviled
  him and cried, "Woe to thee, thou son of adultery and nursling
  of abomination! How durst thou answer me in this wise before
  my captains and soldiers'? But hitherto none hath chastised thee.
  Knowest thou not that this deed thou hast done were a disgrace
  to him had it been done by the meanest of my subjects?" And
  the king ordered his mamelukes to loose his elbow-bonds and
  imprison him in one of the bastions of the citadel.
  So they took the prince and thrust him into an old tower in
  which there was a dilapidated salon, and in its midst a ruined
  well, after having first swept it and cleansed its floor-rags and
  
  DEPARTURE
  set therein a couch on which they laid a mattress, a leathern rug,
  and a cushion. And then they brought a great lantern and a wax
  candle; for that place was dark, even by day. And lastly the
  mamelukes led Kamar al-Zaman thither, and stationed a eunuch
  at the door. And when all this was done, the prince threw himself
  on the couch, sad-spirited, and heavyhearted, blaming himself
  and repenting of his injurious conduct to his father.
  Meanwhile in the distant empire of China, the daughter of
  King Ghazur, lord of the Islands and the Seas and the Seven
  Palaces, was in like case. When her beauty had become known
  and her name and fame been bruited abroad in the neighboring
  countries, all the kings had sent to her father to demand her of
  him in marriage, and he had consulted her on the matter, but
  she had disliked the very word wedlock. "O my father," she had
  answered, "I have no mind to marry; no, not at all; for I am a
  sovereign lady and a queen suzerain ruling over men, and I have
  no desire for a man who shall rule over me." And the more suits
  she refused, the more her suitors' eagerness increased and all the
  royalties of the inner Islands of China sent presents and rarities
  to her father with letters asking her in marriage. So he pressed
  her again and again with advice on the matter of espousals; but
  she ever opposed to him refusals, till at last she turned upon him
  angrily and cried: "O my father, if thou name matrimony to me
  once more, I will go into my chamber and take a sword and,
  fixing its hilt on the ground, will set its point to my waist; then
  will I press upon it, till it come forth from my back, and so slay
  myself?'
  Now when the king heard these words, the light became dark-
  ness in his sight and his heart burned for her as with a flame of
  fire, because he feared lest she should kill herself; and he was
  filled with perplexity concerning her affair and the kings her
  suitors. So he said to her: "If thou be determined not to marry
  and there be no help for it: abstain from going and coming in
  and out." Then he placed her in a house and shut her up in a
  chamber, appointing ten old women as duennas to guard her,
  and forbade her to go forth to the Seven Palaces. Moreover, he
  made it appear that he was incensed against her, and sent letters
  SUPERNATURA
  to all the kings, giving them to know that she had been stricken
  with madness by the Jinn.2"
  With the hero and the heroine both following the negative
  way, and between them the continent of Asia, it will require a
  miracle to consummate the union of this eternally predestined
  pair. Whence can such a power come to break the life-negating
  spell and dissolve the wrath of the two childhood fathers?
  The reply to this question would remain the same throughout
  the mythologies of the world. For, as is written so frequently in
  the sacred pages of the Koran: "Well able is Allah to save." The
  sole problem is what the machinery of the miracle is to be. And
  that is a secret to be opened only in the following stages of this
  Arabian Nights' entertainment.
  • 
  3 
  •
  Supernatural Aid
  For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of
  the hero-journey is with a protective figure (often a little old
  crone or old man) who provides the adventurer with amulets
  against the dragon forces he is about to pass.
  An East African tribe, for example, the Wachaga of Tanganyika,
  tell of a very poor man named Kyazimba, who set out in desper-
  ation for the land where the sun rises. And he had traveled long
  and grown tired, and was simply standing, looking hopelessly in
  the direction of his search, when he heard someone approaching
  from behind. He turned and perceived a decrepit little woman.
  She came up and wished to know his business. When he had
  told her, she wrapped her garment around him, and, soaring
  from the earth, transported him to the zenith, where the sun
  pauses in the middle of the day. Then with a mighty din a great
  company of men came from eastward to that place, and in the
  u Abridged from Burton, op. cit,, Vol. Ill, pp. 213-228.
  
  DEPARTURE
  midst of them was a brilliant chieftain, who, when he had ar-
  rived, slaughtered an ox and sat down to feast with his retainers.
  The old woman asked his help for Kyazimba. The chieftain
  blessed the man and sent him home. And it is recorded that he
  lived in prosperity ever after.2'
  Among the American Indians of the Southwest the favorite
  personage in this benignant role is Spider Woman—a grand-
  motherly little dame who lives underground. The Twin War
  Gods of the Navaho on the way to the house of their father, the
  Sun, had hardly departed from their home, following a holy
  trail, when they came upon this wonderful little figure: "The
  boys traveled rapidly in the holy trail, and soon after sunrise,
  near Dsilnaotil, saw smoke arising from the ground. They went
  to the place where the smoke rose, and they found it came from
  the smoke hole of a subterranean chamber. A ladder, black from
  smoke, projected through the hole. Looking down into the cham-
  ber they saw an old woman, the Spider Woman, who glanced up
  at them and said: 'Welcome, children. Enter. Who are you, and
  whence do you come together walking?1 They made no answer,
  but descended the ladder. When they reached the floor she
  again spoke to them, asking: 'Wrhither do you two go walking
  together?1 'Nowhere in particular,' they answered; 'we came
  here because we had nowhere else to go.' She asked this ques-
  tion four times, and each time she received a similar answer.
  Then she said: 'Perhaps you would seek your father?' 'Yes,' they
  answered, 'if we only knew the way to his dwelling.' 'Ah!' said
  the woman, 'it is a long and dangerous way to the house of your
  father, the Sun. There are many monsters dwelling between
  here and there, and perhaps, when you get there, your father
  may not be glad to see you, and may punish you for coming. You
  must pass four places of danger—the rocks that crush the trav-
  eler, the reeds that cut him to pieces, the cane cactuses that tear
  him to pieces, and the boiling sands that overwhelm him. But I
  shall give you something to subdue your enemies and preserve
  your lives.' She gave them a charm called 'feather of the alien
  >7 Braofl Gutmann, Volksbuch der Wadschagga (Leipzig, 1914), p. 144..
  SUPERNATURAL AID
  gods,' which consisted of a hoop with two life-feathers (feathers
  plucked from a living eagle) attached, and another life-feather to
  preserve their existence. She taught them also this magic for-
  mula, which, if repeated to their enemies, would subdue their
  anger: 'Put your feet down with pollen. Put your hands down
  with pollen. Put your head down with pollen. Then your feet are
  pollen; your hands are pollen; your body is pollen; your mind is
  pollen; your voice is pollen. The trail is beautiful. Be still.'"2S
  The helpful crone and fairy godmother is a familiar feature of
  European fair)' lore; in Christian saints' legends the role is com-
  monly played by the Virgin. The Virgin by her intercession can
  win the mercy of the Father. Spider Woman with her web can
  control the movements of the Sun. The hero who has come
  under the protection of the Cosmic Mother cannot be harmed.
  The thread of Ariadne brought Theseus safely through the ad-
  venture of the labyrinth. This is the guiding power that runs
  through the work of Dante in the female figures of Beatrice and
  the Virgin, and appears in Goethe's Faust successively as
  Gretchen, Helen of Troy, and the Virgin. "Thou art the living
  fount of hope," prays Dante, at the end of his safe passage
  through the perils of the Three Worlds; "Lady, thou art so great
  and so availest, that whoso would have grace, and has not re-
  course to thee, would have his desire fly without wings. Thy be-
  nignity not only succors him who asks, but oftentimes freely
  foreruns the asking. In thee mercy, in thee pity, in thee mag-
  nificence, in thee whatever of goodness is in any creature, are
  united."29
  aB Washington Matthews, Navaho Legends (Memoirs of the American Folk-
  lore Society, Vol. V, New York, 1897), p. 109.
  Pollen is a symbol of spiritual energy among the American Indians of the
  Southwest. It is used profusely in all ceremonials, both to drive evil away and
  to mark out the symbolical path of life. (For a discussion of the Navaho" sym-
  bolism of the adventure of the hero, see Jeff King, Maud Oakes, and Joseph
  Campbell, Where the Two Came to Their Father, A Navaho War Ceremonial,
  Bollingen Series T, and edn., Princeton University Press, 1969, pp. 33-49.)
  25 Dante, "Paradiso," XXX11I, 12-21 (translation by Charles Eliot Norton,
  op. cit., Vol. Ill, p. 252; quoted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company,
  publishers).
  65
  
  DEPARTURE
  What such a figure represents is the benign, protecting power
  of destiny. The fantasy is a reassurance—a promise that the
  peace of Paradise, which was known first within the mother
  womb, is not to be lost; that it supports the present and stands
  in the future as well as in the past (is omega as well as alpha);
  that though omnipotence may seem to be endangered by the
  threshold passages and life awakenings, protective power is al-
  ways and ever present within the sanctuary of the heart and
  even immanent within, or just behind, the unfamiliar features of
  the world. One has only to know and trust, and the ageless
  guardians will appear. Having responded to his own call, and
  continuing to follow courageously as the consequences unfold,
  the hero finds all the forces of the unconscious at his side.
  Mother Nature herself supports the mighty task. And in so far
  as the hero's act coincides with that for which his society itself is
  ready, he seems to ride on the great rhythm of the historical
  process. "I feel myself," said Napoleon at the opening of his
  Russian campaign, "driven towards an end that I do not know.
  As soon as I shall have reached it, as soon as I shall become un-
  necessary, an atom will suffice to shatter me. Till then, not all
  the forces of mankind can do anything against me.1"0
  Not infrequently, the supernatural helper is masculine in
  form. In fairy lore it may be some little fellow of the wood, some
  wizard, hermit, shepherd, or smith, who appears, to supply the
  amulets and advice that the hero will require. The higher
  mythologies develop the role in the great figure of the guide, the
  teacher, the ferryman, the conductor of souls to the afterworld.
  In classical myth this is Hermes-Mercury; in Egyptian, usually
  3" See Oswald Spengter. The Decline of the Went, translated by Charles
  Francis Atkinson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1926-28), Vol. I, p. 144.
  "Supposing." mkls Spongier, "that Napoleon himself, as 'empirical person,'
  had fallen at Marengo—then that which he signified would have been actual-
  ized in some other form." The hero, who in this sense and to this degree has
  become depersonalized, incarnates, during the period of his epochal action, the
  dynamism of the culture process; "between himself as a fact and the other facts
  there is a harnioiu of mt:i;i physical Hi\ ilim" i /hid., p. 1 \2). I his corresponds
  Id r] llamas Otrlvle's idea of the Hero Kinii;, ;'is " \blenian (Oft Heroes, Hero-
  Worship and The Heroic in History, Lecture VI).
  SUPERNATURAL AID
  Thoth (the ibis god, the baboon god); in Christian, the Holy
  Ghost.31 Goethe presents the masculine guide in Faust as
  Mephistopheles—and not infrequently the dangerous aspect of
  the "mercurial" figure is stressed; for he is the lurer of the inno-
  cent soul into realms of trial. In Dante's vision the part is played
  by Virgil, who yields to Beatrice at the threshold of Paradise.
  Protective and dangerous, motherly and fatherly at the same
  time, this supernatural principle of guardianship and direction
  unites in itself all the ambiguities of the unconscious—thus sig-
  nifying the support of otir conscious personality by that other,
  larger system, but also the inscrutability of the guide that we are
  following, to the peril of all our rational ends.32
  The hero to whom such a helper appears is typically one who
  has responded to the call. The call, in fact, was the first an-
  nouncement of the approach of this initiatory priest. But even to
  those who apparently have hardened their hearts the super-
  natural guardian may appear; for, as we have seen: "Well able is
  Allah to save."
  During Hellenistic times an nmalgamatton of Hermes and 1 both was
  effected in the figure of Hermes Trismegistus, "Hermes Thrice Greatest," who
  Was regarded as the patron and teacher of all the arts, and especially of
  alchemy. The "hermetically" scaled retort, in which were placed the mystical
  metals, was regarded as a realm apart—a special region of heightened forces
  comparable to the mythological realm; and therein the metals underwent
  strange metamorphoses and transmutations, symbolical of the transfigurations
  of the soul under the tutelage of the supernatural. Hermes was the master of
  the ancient mysteries of initiation, and represented that coming-down of divine
  wisdom into the world which is represented also in the incarnations ol divine
  saviors (see infra, pp. 342-345). (See C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy,
  part III, "Religious Ideas in Alchemy." (Orig. 1936.) For the retort, set-
  par. 338. For Hermes Trismegistus, see par. 173 and index, s.v.
  ''- The following dream supplies a vivid example of the fusion of opposites in
  the unconscious: "I dreamed that 1 had gone into a street of brothels and to
  one of the girls. As I entered, she changed into a man, who was lying, half
  clothed, on a sofa. He said: 'It doesn't disturb you (that I am now a man)?'
  The man looked old, and he had white sideburns. He reminded me of a certain
  chief forester who was a good friend of my father." (Wilhelm Stekel, Die
  Sprache des Traumes, pp. 70-71.) "All dreams," Dr. Stekel observes, "have a
  bisexual tendency. Where the bisexuality cannot be perceived, it is hidden in
  the latent dream content" i ihid-, p. 71).
  67
  
  DEPARTURE
  And so it happened, as it were by chance, that in the ancient
  and deserted tower where Kamar al-Zaman, the Persian prince,
  lay sleeping, there was an old Roman well,33 and this was inhab-
  ited by a Jinniyah of the seed of Iblis the Accursed, by name
  Maymunah, daughter of Al-Dimiryat, a renowned king of the
  Jinn.34 And as Kamar al-Zaman continued sleeping till the first
  third of the night, Maymunah came up out of the Roman well
  and made for the firmament, thinking to listen by stealth to the
  converse of the angels; but when she reached the mouth of the
  well, and saw a light shining in the tower room, contrary to cus-
  tom, she marveled, drew nigh, entered within the door, and be-
  held the couch spread, whereon was a human form with a wax
  candle burning at his head and the lantern at his feet. She folded
  her wings and stood by the bed, and, drawing back the coverlid,
  discovered Kamar al-Zaman's face. And she was motionless for a
  full hour in admiration and wonderment, "Blessed be Allah,"
  she exclaimed when she recovered, "the best of Creators!" for
  she was of the true-believing Jinn.
  Then she promised herself that she would do no hurt to Kamar
  al-Zaman, and became concerned lest, resting in this desert
  place, he should be slain by one of her relatives, the Marids/5
  ir> The well is symbolical of the unconscious. Compare that of the fairy story
  of the Frog King, supra, pp. 45^17.
  14 Compare the frog of the fairy tale. In pre-Mohammedan Arabia the Jinn
  (singular: m. Jinni; / Jinniyah) were haunting-demons of the deserts and
  wilderness. Hairy and misformed, or else shaped as animals, ostriches, or ser-
  pents, they were very dangerous to unprotected persons. The Prophet Mohammed
  admitted "the existence of these heathen spirits (Koran, 37:158), and incorpo-
  rated them in the Mohammedan system, which recognizes three created intelli-
  gences under Allah: Angels formed of light, Jinn of subtle fire, and Man of the
  dust of the earth. The Mohammedan Jinn have the power of putting on any
  form they please, but not grosser than the essence of fire and smoke, and they
  can thus make themselves visible to mortals. There are three orders of Jinn:
  flyers, walkers, and divers. Many are supposed to have accepted the True
  Faith, and these are regarded as good; the rest are bad. The latter dwell
  and work in close association with the Fallen Angels, whose chief is Iblis ("the
  Despairer").
  35 An Ifrit {Ifritah) is a powerful Jinni (Jinniyah). The Marids are a particu-
  larly powerful and dangerous (.-lass of Jinn.
  SUPERNATURAL AID
  Bending over him, she kissed him between the eyes, and
  presently drew back the sheet over his face; and after a while she
  spread her wings and, soaring into the air, flew upwards till she
  drew near to the lowest of the heavens.
  Now as chance or destiny would have it, the soaring Ifritah
  Maymunah suddenly heard in her neighborhood the noisy flap-
  ping of wings. Directing herself by the sound, she found it com-
  ing from an Ifrit called Dahnash. So she swooped down on him
  like a sparrow hawk, and when he was aware of her and knew
  her to be Maymunah, the daughter of the king of the Jinn, he
  was sore afraid, and his side muscles quivered, and he implored
  her to forbear. But she challenged him to declare whence he
  should be coming at this hour of the night. He replied that he
  was returning from the Islands of the Inland Sea in the parts of
  China, the realms of King Ghayur, Lord of the Islands and the
  Seas and the Seven Palaces.
  "There," said he, "I saw a daughter of his, than whom Allah
  hath made none fairer in her time." And he launched into great
  praise of the Princess Budur. "She hath a nose,11 said he, "like
  the edge of a burnished blade and cheeks like purple wine or
  anemones blood-red: her lips as coral and cornelian shine and
  the water of her mouth is sweeter than old wine; its taste would
  quench hell's fiery pain. Her tongue is moved by wit of high de-
  gree and ready repartee: her breast is seduction to all that see
  (glory be to Him Who fashioned it and finished it!); and joined
  thereto are two upper arms smooth and rounded; even as saith
  of her the poet Al-Walahan:
  She hath wrists which, did her bangles not contain.
  Would run from out her sleeves in silvern rain."
  The celebration of her beauty continued, and when Maymunah
  had heard it all she remained silent in astonishment. Dahnash
  resumed, and described the mighty king, her father, his trea-
  sures, and the Seven Palaces, as well as the history of the daugh-
  ter's refusal to wed. "And I," said he, "O my lady, go to her
  every night and take my fill of feeding my sight on her face and I
  kiss her between the eyes: yet, of my love to her, I do her no
  69
  
  DEPARTURE
  hurt." He desired Maymunah to fly back with him to China and
  look on the beauty, loveliness, stature, and perfection of propor-
  tion of the princess. "And after, if thou wilt," said he, "chastise
  me or enslave me; for it is thine to bid and to forbid."
  Maymunah was indignant that anyone should presume to cel-
  ebrate any creature in the world, after the glimpse she had just
  had of Kamar al-Zaman. "Faugh! Faugh!" she cried. She laughed
  at Dahnash and spat in his face. "Verily, this night I have seen a
  young man," said she, "whom if thou saw though but in a dream,
  thou wouldst be palsied with admiration and spittle would flow
  from thy mouth." And she described his case. Dahnash ex-
  pressed his disbelief that anyone could be more handsome than
  the Princess Budur, and Maymunah commanded him to come
  down with her and look.
  "I hear and I obey," said Dahnash.
  And so they descended and alighted in the salon. Maymunah
  stationed Dahnash beside the bed and, putting out her hand,
  drew back the silken coverlet from Kamar al-Zaman's face, when
  it glittered and glistened and shimmered and shone like the ris-
  ing sun. She gazed at him for a moment, then turning sharply
  round upon Dahnash said: "Look, O accursed, and be not the
  basest of madmen; I am a maid, yet my heart he hath waylaid."
  "By Allah, O my Lady, thou art excusable," declared Dahnash;
  "but there is yet another thing to be considered, and that is, that
  the estate female differeth from the male. By Allah's might, this
  thy beloved is the likest of all created things to my mistress in
  beauty and loveliness and grace and perfection; and it is as
  though they were both cast alike in the mold of seemlihead.1'
  The light became darkness in Maymunah's sight when she
  heard those words, and she dealt Dahnash with her wing so
  fierce a buffet on the head as well-nigh made an end of him. "I
  conjure thee," she commanded, "by the light of my love's glori-
  ous countenance, go at once, O accursed, and bring hither thy
  mistress whom thou lovest so fondly and foolishly, and return in
  haste that we may lay the twain together and look at them both
  as they lie asleep side by side; so shall it appear to us which be
  the goodlier and more beautiful of the two."
  T HK C R O S S I N G 
  OF T H F. 
  F I R S T T H R E S H O L D
  And so, incidentally to something going on in a zone of which
  he was entirely unconscious, the destiny of the life-reluctant
  Kamar al-Zaman began to fulfil itself, without the cooperation of
  his conscious will.36
  The Crossing of the First Threshold
  With the personifications of his destiny to guide and aid him,
  the hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the
  "threshold guardian" at the entrance to the zone of magnified
  power. Such custodians bound the world in the four directions —
  also up and down—standing for the limits c the hero's present
  sphere, or life horizon. Beyond them is dark less, the unknown,
  and danger; just as beyond the parental watch is danger to the
  infant and beyond the protection of his society danger to the
  member of the tribe. The usual person is more than content, he
  is even proud, to remain within the indicated bounds, and popu-
  lar belief gives him every reason to fear so much as the first step
  into the unexplored. Thus the sailors of the bold vessels of
  Columbus, breaking the horizon of the medieval mind —sailing,
  as they thought, into the boundless ocean of immortal being that
  surrounds the cosmos, like an endless mythological serpent bit-
  ing its taiF—had to be cozened and urged on like children, be-
  cause of their fear of the fabled leviathans, mermaids, dragon
  kings, and other monsters of the deep.
  The folk mythologies populate with deceitful and dangerous
  presences every desert place outside the normal traffic of the vil-
  lage. For example, the Hottentots describe an ogre that has been
  occasionally encountered among the scrubs and dunes. Its eyes
  !" Adapted from Burton, op. cit.. Vol. HI, pp. 223-230.
  ~" Compare the serpent of the dream, supra, p. 38.
  
  DEPARTURE
  are set on its instep, so that to discover what is going on it has to
  get down on hands and knees, and hold up one foot. The eye
  then looks behind; otherwise it is gazing continually at the sky.
  This monster is a hunter of men, whom it tears to shreds with
  cruel teeth as long as fingers. The creature is said to hunt in
  packs.38 Another Hottentot apparition, the Hai-uri, progresses
  by leaping over clumps of scrub instead of going around them.39
  A dangerous one-legged, one-armed, one-sided figure—the half-
  man—invisible if viewed from the offside, is encountered in many
  parts of the earth. In Central Africa it is declared that such a half-
  man says to the person who has encountered him: "Since you
  have met with me, let us fight together." If thrown, he will plead:
  "Do not kill me. I will show you lots of medicines"; and then the
  lucky person becomes a proficient doctor. But if the half-man
  (called Chiruwi, "a mysterious thing") wins, his victim dies.40
  The regions of the unknown (desert, jungle, deep sea, alien
  land, etc.) are free fields for the projection of unconscious con-
  tent. Incestuous libido and patricidal destrudo are thence reflected
  back against the individual and his society in forms suggesting
  threats of violence and fancied dangerous delight—not only as
  ogres but also as sirens of mysteriously seductive, nostalgic beauty.
  :5B Leonhard S. Schultze, Aus Namaland und Kalahari (Jena, 1907), p. 392.
  w Ibid. pp. 404, 448.
  10 David Clement Scott, ,4 Cyclopaedic Dirtirmary of the Mimg'anja Lan-
  guage spoken in British Central Africa (Edinburgh, 1892), p. 97.
  Compare the following dream of a twelve-year-old boy: "One night I dreamt
  of a foot. I thought it was lying down on the floor and I, not expecting such a
  thing, fell over it. It seemed to be the same shape as my own foot. The foot
  suddenly jumped up and started running after me; I thought I jumped right
  through the window, ran round the yard out into the street, running along as
  fast as my legs would carry me. I thought I ran to Woolwich, and then it sud-
  drill", caught :ii<: Lint' '•hi'iik m<\ :iiirl thi?n I woke- up. I havr dtTamt about this
  foot several times."
  The boy had heard a report that his father, who was a sailor, had recently
  had an accident at sea in which he had broken his ankle (C. W. Kimmins, Chil-
  dren's Dreams, An Unexplored Land; London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd.,
  1937, p. 107).
  "The foot," writes Dr. Freud, "ii, an age-old sexual symbol which occurs
  even in mythology" (Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, p. 155). The
  name Oedipus, it' should be noted, means "the swollen footed."'
  72
  THE CROSSING OF THE FIRST THRESHOLD
  The Russian peasants know, for example, of the "Wild Women"
  of the woods who have their abode in mountain caverns where
  they maintain households, like human beings. They are hand-
  some females, with fine square heads, abundant tresses, and
  hairy bodies. They fling their breasts over their shoulders when
  they run and when they nurse their children. They go in groups.
  With unguents prepared from forest roots they can anoint and
  render themselves invisible. They like to danee or tickle people
  to death who wander alone into the forest, and anyone who acci-
  dentally chances upon their invisible dancing parties dies. On
  the other hand, for people who set out food for them, they reap
  the grain, spin, care for the children, and tidy up the house; and
  if a girl will comb out hemp for them to spin, they will give her
  leaves that turn to gold. They enjoy human lovers, have frequently
  married country youths, and are known to make excellent wives.
  But like all supernatural brides, the minute the husband offends
  in the least their wiiimsical notions of marital propriety, they
  disappear without a trace.41
  One more example, to illustrate the libidinous association of
  the dangerous impish ogre with the principle of seduction, is
  Dyedushka Vodyanoy, the Russian "Water Grandfather." He is
  an adroit shapeshifter and is said to drown people who swim at
  midnight or at noon. Drowned or disinherited girls he marries.
  He has a special talent for coaxing unhappy women into his
  tolls. He likes to dance on moonlit nights. Whenever a wife of
  his is about to have a baby, he comes into the villages to seek a
  midwife. But he can be detected by the water that oozes from
  the border of his garments. He is bald, tun bellied, puffy
  cheeked, with green clothing and a tall cap of reeds; but he can
  " Compare V. J. Mansikka, in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and
  Ethics, Vol. IV, p. 628; article "Demons and Spirits (Slavic)." The cluster of
  articles by a number of authorities, gathered together in this volume under the
  general heading "Demons and Spirits" (treating severally of the African,
  Oceanic, Assyro-Babv Ionian, Buddhist, Celtic, Chinese, Christian, Coptic,
  I'.UA prian, (j-rrr'k, Htrbreu, Indian. Jjin, J^i|iiiinse. Jewish. Moslem. Parisian,
  Roman, Slavic, Teutonic, and Tibetan varieties}, is an excellent introdnction to
  the subject.
  
  DEPARTURE
  also appear as an attractive young man, or as some personage
  well known in the community. This Water Master is not strong
  ashore, but in his own element he is supreme. He inhabits the
  deeps of rivers, streams, and ponds, preferring to be close beside
  a mill. During the day he remains concealed, like an old trout or
  salmon, but at night he surfaces, splashing and flopping like a
  fish, to drive his subaqueous cattle, sheep, and horses ashore to
  graze, or else to perch up on the mill wheel and quietly comb his
  long green hair and beard. In the springtime, when he rouses
  from his long hibernation, he smashes the ice along the rivers,
  piling up great blocks. Mill wheels he is amused to destroy. But
  in a favorable temper he drives his fishherds into the fisherman's
  net or gives warning of coming floods. The midwife who accom-
  panies him he pays richly with silver and gold. His beautiful
  daughters, tall, pale, and with an air of sadness, transparently
  costumed in green, torture and torment the drowned. They like
  to rock on trees, beautifully singing.12
  The Arcadian god Pan is the best known Classical example of
  this dangerous presence dwelling just beyond the protected zone
  of the village boundary. Sylvanus and Faunus were his Latin
  counterparts.*' He was the inventor of the shepherd's pipe, which
  he played for the dances of the nymphs, and the satyrs were his
  male companions.44 The emotion that he instilled in human be-
  ings who by accident adventured into his domain was "panic"
  fear, a sudden, groundless fright. Any trifling cause then—the
  break of a twig, the flutter of a leaf—would flood the mind with
  imagined danger, and in the frantic effort to escape from his own
  aroused unconscious the victim expired in a flight of dread. Yet
  Pan was benign to those who paid him worship, yielding the
  42 Ibid., p. 629. Compare the Lorelei. Markka's discussion of the Slavic
  forest-, field-, and water-spirits is based on Hanus Machal's comprehensive
  Ndkres slavanskiho bdjesbvi (Prague, 1891), an English abridgment of which
  will he found in Machal's Slavic Mythology (The Mythology of All Races,
  Vol. Ill, Boston, 1918).
  •" In Alexandrian times Pan was identified with the ithyphallic Egyptian di-
  vinity Min, who was, among other things, the guardian of desert roads.
  74
  Till': CROSSING OF THE FIRST THRESHOLD
  boons of the divine hygiene of nature: bounty to the farmers,
  herders, and fisherfolk who dedicated their first fruits to him,
  and health to all who properly approached his shrines of healing.
  Also wisdom, the wisdom of Omphalos, the World Navel, was
  his to bestow; for the crossing of the threshold is the first step
  into the sacred zone of the universal source. At Lykaion was an
  oracle, presided over by the nymph Erato, whom Pan inspired,
  as Apollo the prophetess at Delphi. And Plutarch numbers the
  ecstasies of the orgiastic rites of Pan along with the ecstasy of
  Cybele, the Bacchic frenzy of Dionysos, the poetic frenzy in-
  spired by the Muses, the warrior frenzy of the god Ares (=Mars),
  and, fiercest of all, the frenzy of love, as illustrations of that di-
  vine "enthusiasm" that overturns the reason and releases the forces
  of the destructive-creative dark.
  "I dreamed," stated a middle-aged, married gentleman, "that
  I wanted to get into a wonderful garden. But before it there was
  a watchman who would not permit me to enter. I saw that my
  friend, Fraulein Elsa, was within; she wanted to reach me her
  hand, over the gate. But the watchman prevented that, took me
  by the arm, and conducted me home. 'Do be sensible—after all!'
  he said. 'You know that you musn't do that.'"4''
  This is a dream that brings out the sense of the first, or pro-
  tective, aspect of the threshold guardian. One had better not
  challenge the watcher of the established bounds. And yet—it is
  only by advancing beyond those bounds, provoking the destruc-
  tive other aspect of the same power, that the individual passes,
  either alive or in death, into a new zone of experience. In the
  language of the pigmies of the Andaman Islands, the word
  
  D K P A R T U R E
  FIGURE 4. Ulysses and the Sirens
  oko-jumu ("dreamer," "one who speaks from dreams") desig-
  nates those highly respected and feared individuals who are
  distinguished from their fellows by the possession of supernat-
  ural talents, which can be acquired only by meeting with the
  spirits—directly in the jungle, through extraordinary dream, or
  by death and return.'*6 The adventure is always and everywhere
  a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the
  powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with
  them is risky; yet for anyone with competence and courage the
  danger fades.
  In the Banks Islands of the New Hebrides, if a young man
  coming back from his fishing on a rock, towards sunset, chances
  to see "a girl with her head bedecked with flowers beckoning to
  him from the slope of the cliff up which his path is leading him;
  he recognizes the countenance of some girl of his own or a
  neighboring village; he stands and hesitates and thinks she must
  be a mae;47 he looks more closely, and observes that her elbows
  '" A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders (2nd edition, Cambridge
  University Press, 1933), pp. 175-177.
  *' An amphibious sea *nskc marked with bands of dark and light color, al-
  ways more or IPSS dreaded whenever it is seen.
  THE CROSSING OF THE FIRST THRESHOLD
  and knees bend the wrong way; this reveals her true character,
  and he flies. If a young man can strike the temptress with a dra-
  caena leaf she turns into her own shape and glides away a
  snake." But these very snakes, the mae, so greatly feared, are be-
  lieved to become the familiars of those who have intercourse
  with them.1" Such demons—at once dangers and bestowers of
  magic power —every hero must encounter who steps an inch
  outside the walls of his tradition.
  Two vivid Oriental stories will serve to illuminate the ambigu-
  ities of this perplexing pass and show how, though the terrors
  will recede before a genuine psychological readiness, the over-
  bold adventurer beyond his depth may be shamelessly undone.
  The first is of a caravan leader from Benares, who made bold
  to conduct his richly loaded expedition of five hundred carts into
  a waterless demon wilderness. Forewarned of dangers, he had
  taken the precaution to set huge chatties filled with water in the
  carts, so that, rationally considered, his prospect of making the
  passage of not more than sixty desert leagues was of the best.
  But when he had reached the middle of the crossing, the ogre
  who inhabited that wilderness thought, "I will make these men
  throw away the water they took." So he created a cart to delight
  the heart, drawn by pure white young oxen, the wheels smeared
  with mud, and came down the road from the opposite direction.
  Both before him and behind marched the demons who formed
  his retinue, heads wet, garments wet, decked with garlands of
  water lilies both blue and white, carrying in their hands clusters
  of lotus flowers both red and white, chewing the fibrous stalks of
  water lilies, streaming with drops of water and mud. And when
  the caravan and the demon company drew aside to let each other
  pass, the ogre greeted the leader in a friendly manner. "Where
  are you going?" he politely asked. To which the caravan leader
  replied: "We, sir, are coming from Benares. But you are ap-
  proaching decked with water lilies both blue and white, with
  lotus flowers both red and white in your hands, chewing the
  1S R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, their Anthropology and Folklore
  (Oxford University Press, 1891), p. 189.
  77
  
  DEPARTURE
  fibrous stalks of water lilies, smeared with mud, with drops of
  water streaming from you. Is it raining along the road by which
  you came? Are the lakes completely covered with water lilies
  both blue and white, and lotus flowers both red and white?"
  The ogre: "Do you see that dark green streak of woods? Be-
  yond that point the entire forest is one mass of water; it rains all
  the time; the hollows are full of water; everywhere are lakes
  completely covered with lotus flowers both red and white." And
  then, as the carts passed one after another, he inquired: "What
  goods do you have in this cart—and in that? The last moves
  very heavily; what goods do you have in that?" "We have water
  in that," the leader answered. "You have acted wisely, of course,
  in bringing water thus far; but beyond this point you have no
  occasion to burden yourself. Break the chatties to pieces, throw
  away the water, travel at ease.11 The ogre went his way, and
  when out of sight, returned again to his own city of ogres.
  Now that foolish caravan leader, out of his own foolishness,
  took the advice of the ogre, broke the chatties, and caused the
  carts to move forward. Ahead there was not the slightest particle
  of water. For lack of water to drink the men grew weary. They
  traveled until sundown, and then unharnessed the carts, drew
  them up in a contracted circle, and tied the oxen to the wheels.
  There was neither water for the oxen nor gruel and boiled rice
  for the men. The weakened men lay down here and there and
  went to sleep. At midnight the ogres approached from the city of
  ogres, slew the oxen and men, every one, devoured their flesh,
  leaving only the bare bones, and, having so done, departed. The
  bones of their hands and all their other bones lay scattered about
  in the four directions and the four intermediate directions; five
  hundred carts stood as full as ever.15'
  The second story is of a different style. Tt is told of a young
  prince who had just completed his military studies under a
  world-renowned teacher. Having received, as a symbol of his
  4H Jataka, 1:1. Abridged from the translation by Eugene Watson Burlingamt
  Buddhist Parables (Yale University Press, 1922), pp. 32-34. Reprinted by per
  mission of the publishers.
  THE CROSSING OF THE FIRST THRESHOLD
  distinction, the title Prince Five-weapons, he accepted the five
  weapons that his teacher gave him, bowed, and, armed with the
  new weapons, struck out onto the road leading to the city of his
  father, the king. On the way he came to a certain forest. People
  at the mouth of the forest warned him. "Sir prince, do not enter
  this forest,1' they said; "an ogre lives here, named Sticky-hair; he
  kills every man he sees."
  But the prince was confident and fearless as a maned lion. He
  entered the forest just the same. When he reached the heart of
  it, the ogre showed himself. The ogre had increased his stature
  to the height of a palm tree; he had created for himself a head as
  big as a summer house with bell-shaped pinnacle, eyes as big as
  alms bowls, two tusks as big as giant bulbs or buds; he had the
  beak of a hawk; his belly was covered with blotches; his hands
  and feet were dark green. "Where are you going?" he demanded.
  "Halt! You are my prey!"
  Prince Five-weapons answered without fear, but with great
  confidence in the arts and crafts that he had learned. "Ogre,"
  said he, "I knew what I was about when I entered this forest.
  You would do well to be careful about attacking me; for with an
  arrow steeped in poison will I pierce your flesh and fell you on
  the spot!11
  Having thus threatened the ogre, the young prince fitted to
  his bow an arrow steeped in deadly poison and let fly. It stuck
  right in the ogre's hair. Then he let fly, one after another, fifty
  arrows. All stuck right to the ogre's hair. The ogre shook off'
  every one of those arrows, letting them fall right at his feet, and
  approached the young prince.
  Prince Five-weapons threatened the ogre a second time, and
  drawing his sword, delivered a masterly blow. The sword,
  thirty-three inches long, stuck right to the ogre's hair. Then the
  prince smote him with a spear. That also stuck right to his hair.
  Perceiving that the spear had stuck, he smote him with a club.
  That also stuck right to his hair.
  When he saw that the club had stuck, he said: "Master ogre,
  you have never heard of me before. I am Prince Five-weapons.
  When I entered this forest infested by you, I took no account of
  
  bows and suchlike weapons; when I entered this forest, I took
  account only of myself. Now I am going to beat you and pound
  you into powder and dust!" Having thus made known his deter-
  mination, with a yell he struck the ogre with his right hand. His
  hand stuck right to the ogre's hair. He struck him with his left
  hand. That also stuck. He struck him with his right foot. That
  also stuck. He struck him with his left foot That also stuck.
  Thought he: "I will beat you with my head and pound you into
  powder and dust!" He struck him with his head. That also stuck
  right to the ogre's hair.'0
  Prince Five-weapons, snared five times, stuck fast in five
  places, dangled from the ogre's body. But for all that, he was un-
  afraid, undaunted. As for the ogre, he thought: "This is some
  lion of a man, some man of noble birth—no mere man! For al-
  though he has been caught by an ogre like me, he appears nei-
  ther to tremble nor to quake! In all the time I have harried this
  road, I have never seen a single man to match him! Why, pray,
  is he not afraid"?" Not daring to eat him, he asked: "Youth, why
  are you not afraid? Why are you not terrified with the fear of
  death?"
  "Ogre, why should I be afraid? for in one life one death is ab-
  solutely certain. What's more, I have in my belly a thunderbolt
  for weapon. If you eat me, you will not be able to digest that
  weapon. It will tear your insides into tatters and fragments and
  will kill you. In that case we'll both perish. That's why I'm not
  afraid!"
  Prince Five-weapons, the reader must know, was referring to
  the Weapon of Knowledge that was within him. Indeed, this
  young hero was none other than the Future Buddha, in an earlier
  ^° It has been pointed out that this adventure of Prince Five-weapons is the
  earliest known example of the celebrated and well-nigh universal tar-baby
  story, of popular folklore. (See Aurelio M. Espinosa: "Notes on the Origin and
  History of the Tar-Baby Story," Journal of American Folklore, 43, 1930,
  pp. 129-209; "A New Classification of die Fundamental Elements of the Tar-
  Baby Story on the Basis of Two Hundred and Sixty-Seven Versions," ibid., 56,
  1943, pp. 31-37; and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, "A Note on the Stiekfast
  Motif," ibid., 57, 1944, pp. 128-131.)
  80
  THE CROSSING OF THE FIRST THRESHOLD
  incarnation."1' "What this youth says is true," thought the ogre,
  terrified with the fear of death. "From the body of this lion of a
  man, my stomach would not be able to digest a fragment of flesh
  even so small as a kidney bean. I'll let him go!" And he let
  Prince Five-weapons go. The Future Buddha preached the Doc-
  trine to him, subdued him, made him self-denying, and then
  transformed him into a spirit entitled to receive offerings in the
  forest. Having admonished the ogre to be heedful, the youth de-
  parted from the forest, and at the mouth of the forest told his
  story to human beings; then went his way.32
  As a symbol of the world to which the five senses glue us, and
  which cannot be pressed aside by the actions of the physical or-
  gans, Sticky-hair was subdued only when the Future Buddha, no
  longer protected by the five weapons of his momentary name and
  physical character, resorted to the unnamed, invisible sixth: the
  51 The thunderbolt (vajra) h one of the major symbols in Buddhist iconogra-
  phy, signifying the spiritual power of Buddhahood (indestructible enlighten-
  ment) which shatters the illusory realities of the world. The Absolute, or Adi
  Buddha, is represented in the images of Tibet as Vajra-Dhara (Tibetan: Dorje-
  Chang) "Holder of the Adamantine Bolt."
  In the figures of the gods that have come down from ancient Mesopotamia
  <Sumer and Akkad, Babylonia and Assyria) the thunderbolt, in the same form
  as the vajra, is a conspicuous dement (See Plate XXI); from these it was inher-
  ited by Zeus.
  We know also that among primitive peoples warriors may speak of their
  weapons as thunderbolts. Sicitl in coelo e! in terra: the initiated warrior is an
  agent of the CLi\ inc ^ il 1! i !ih* ii'LUiiin^ is not oul\ m mauiinl out also in MIH1!! u*il
  skills. Magic (the supernatural power of the thunderbolt), as well as physical
  fort-Y :md rhi^iiK'al poiMHi. £ivs the lethal rncrgy to his blows. \ ronsimimali'
  master would require no physical weapon at all; the power of his magic word
  would suffice.
  The parable of Prince five-weapons illustrates this theme. But it also teaches
  that the one who relies or prides himself upon his merely empirical, physical
  l Jhn r.'K'^r:l [•* •)ll":'Lltl' ' 1ILIUI~]LJ. 
  ' \\ ' 
  J1 L]YL' h r ' V 1 lli^ IlK'U 1]"L" i *i U lit r " . 
  \^ Tlteb Ol"-
  Coomaraswamy, "who can be involved in the coils of an aesthetic experience
  ["the five points" being the five senses], but is able, by an intrinsic moral supe-
  P ] I > 1 ' 1 T \ 
  . 
  1 
  i 
  > 
  I 
  l l l - f ' L l v i ' 
  I l l ' l l 
  v l l , 
  ;i 
  l l f 
  1 
  ' 
  \\ 
  r"i 
  t i ' 
  \ ~ t - ] ' " A \ t ? 
  il 
  t l l C ' l ' S 
  ^ 
  I 
  O l i 
  I ' l l 
  III 
  Of 
  \ 
  f ' i ^ l ' l l 
  '<*<1
  Folklore, 57, 1944, p. 129).
  5 2 Jataka, 5 5 : 1 . 2 7 2 - 2 7 5 . A d a p t e d , w i t h slight a b r i d g m e n t , from t h e transla-
  tion of Eugene Watson Burlingame, op. cit., pp. 41—li. Keprinted by permis-
  sion of Yale University Press, publishers.
  
  nEPARTUBE
  divine thunderbolt of the knowledge of the transcendent princi-
  ple, which is beyond the phenomenal realm of names and forms.
  Therewith the situation changed. He was no longer caught, but
  released; for that which he now remembered himself to be is
  ever free. The force of the monster of phenomenality was dis-
  pelled, and he was rendered self-denying. Self-denying, he be-
  came divine—a spirit entitled to receive offerings—as is the
  world itself when known, not as final, but as a mere name and
  form of that which transcends, yet is immanent within, all names
  and forms.
  The "Wall of Paradise," which conceals God from human
  sight, is described by Nicholas of Cusa as constituted of the "co-
  incidence of opposites," its gate being guarded by "the highest
  spirit of reason, who bars the way until he has been overcome.""
  The pairs of opposites (being and not being, life and death,
  beauty and ugliness, good and evil, and all the other polarities
  that bind the faculties to hope and fear, and link the organs of
  action to deeds of defense and acquisition) are the clashing rocks
  (Symplegades) that crush the traveler, but between which the
  heroes always pass. This is a motif known throughout the world.
  The Greeks associated it with two rocky islands of the Euxine
  Sea, which clashed together, driven by winds; but Jason, in the
  Argo, sailed between, and since that time they have stood apart.*1
  The Twin Heroes of the Navaho legend were warned of the
  same obstacle by Spider Woman; protected, however, by the
  pollen symbol of the path, and eagle feathers plucked from a liv-
  ing sun bird, they passed between."
  As the rising smoke of an offering through the sun door, so
  goes the hero, released from ego, through the walls of the
  world—leaving ego stuck to Sticky-hair and passing on.
  13 Nicholas of Cusa, De visione Dei, 9, II; cited hy Ananda K. Coomaraswamy,
  "On the One and Only Transmigrant" (Supplement to the Journal of the American
  Oriental Society, April-June, 1944), p. 25.
  :'4 Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII, 62; XV, 33H.
  ™ Supra, p. 64.
  THE BELLY OF THE WHALE
  The Belly of the Whale
  The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit
  into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb
  image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering
  or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the
  unknown, and would appear to have died.
  Mishe-Nahma, King of Fishes,
  In his wrath he darted upward,
  Flashing leaped into the sunshine,
  Opened his great jaws and swallowed
  Both canoe and Hiawatha56
  The Eskimo of Bering Strait tell of the trickster-hero Raven,
  how, one day, as he sat drying his clothes on a beach, he ob-
  served a whale-cow swimming gravely close to shore. He called:
  "Next time you come up for air, dear, open your mouth and shut
  your eyes." Then he slipped quickly into his raven clothes,
  pulled on his raven mask, gathered his fire sticks under his arm,
  and flew out over the water. The whale came up. She did as she
  had been told. Raven darted through the open jaws and straight
  into her gullet. The shocked whale-cow snapped and sounded;
  Raven stood inside and looked around."
  The Zulus have a story of two children and their mother swal-
  lowed by an elephant. When the woman reached the animal's
  stomach, "she saw large forests and great rivers, and many high
  is Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha, VIII. The adventures ascribed by
  Longfellow to the Iroquoh chieftain Hiawatha belong properly to the Algon-
  quin culture hero iVlanabozho. Hiawatha u;is an actual historical pi'i'^nna:^' i it
  the sixteenth century. See p. 274, note 1, infra.
  57 Leo Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes (Berlin, 1904), p. 85.
  
  II. The Captive Unicorn (trance)
  III. The Mother of the Gods (Nigeria)
  
  IV. The Deitv in War Dress (Bali)
  V. Sekhmet, The Goddess (Egypt)
  
  VI. Medusa (Ancient Rome)
  VII. The Sorcerer (Paleolithic Cave Painting, French Pyrenees)
  
  DEPARTURE
  lands; on one side there were many rocks; and there were many
  people who had built their village there; and many dogs and
  many cattle; all was there inside the elephant."58
  The Irish hero, finn MacCool, was swallowed by a monster of
  indefinite form, of the type known to the Celtic world as a peist.
  The little German girl, Red Ridinghood, was swallowed by
  a wolf. The Polynesian favorite, Maui, was swallowed by his
  great-great-grandmother, Hine-nui-te-po. And the whole Greek
  pantheon, with the sole exception of Zeus, was swallowed by its
  father, Kronos.
  The Greek hero Herakles, pausing at Troy on his way home-
  ward with the belt of the queen of the Amazons, found that the
  city was being harassed by a monster sent against it by the sea-
  god Poseidon. The beast would come ashore and devour people
  as they moved about on the plain. Beautiful Hesione, the daugh-
  ter of the king, had just been bound by her father to the sea
  rocks as a propitiatory sacrifice, and the great visiting hero
  agreed to rescue her for a price. The monster, in due time, broke
  to the surface of the water and opened its enormous maw. Her-
  akles took a dive into the throat, cut his way out through the
  belly, and left the monster dead.
  This popular motif gives emphasis to the lesson that the pas-
  sage of the threshold is a form of self-annihilation. Its resem-
  blance to the adventure of the Symplegades is obvious. But here,
  instead of passing outward, beyond the confines of the visible
  world, the hero goes inward, to be born again. The disappear-
  ance corresponds to the passing of a worshiper into a temple-
  where he is to be quickened by the recollection of who and what
  he is, namely dust and ashes unless immortal. The temple inte-
  rior, the belly of the whale, and the heavenly land beyond,
  above, and below the confines of the world, are one and the same.
  That is why the approaches and entrances to temples are flanked
  and defended by colossal gargoyles: dragons, lions, devil-slayers
  with drawn swords, resentful dwarfs, winged bulls. These are
  Jfi Henry Callaway, Nursery Tales and Traditions uf the Zulus (London.
  1868), p. 331.
  84
  I. The Monster Tamer (Sumer)
  
  VIII. The Universal Father, Viracocha, Weeping (Argentina)
  THE BELLY OF T H F. WHALE
  the threshold guardians to ward away all incapable of encounter-
  ing the higher silences within. They are preliminary embodi-
  ments of the dangerous aspect of the presence, corresponding to
  the mythological ogres that bound the conventional world, or to
  the two rows of teeth of the whale. They illustrate the fact that the
  devotee at the moment of entry into a temple undergoes a meta-
  morphosis. His secular character remains without; he sheds it,
  as a snake its slough. Once inside he may be said to have died to
  time and returned to the World Womb, the World Navel, the
  Earthly Paradise. The mere fact that anyone can physically walk
  past the temple guardians does not invalidate their significance;
  for if the intruder is incapable of encompassing the sanctuary,
  then he has effectually remained without. Anyone unable to un-
  derstand a god sees it as a devil and is thus defended from the
  approach. Allegorically, then, the passage into a temple and the
  hero-dive through the jaws of the whale are identical adven-
  tures, both denoting, in picture language, the life-centering, life-
  renewing act.
  "No creature," writes Ananda Coomaraswamy, "can attain a
  higher grade of nature without ceasing to exist."39 Indeed, the
  physical body of the hero may be actually slain, dismembered,
  and scattered over the land or sea—as in the Egyptian myth of
  the savior Osiris: he was thrown into a sarcophagus and com-
  mitted to the Nile by his brother Set,"0 and when he returned
  from the dead his brother slew him again, tore the body into
  fourteen pieces, and scattered these over the land. The Twin
  Heroes of the Navaho had to pass not only the clashing rocks,
  but also the reeds that cut the traveler to pieces, the cane
  cactuses that tear him to pieces, and the boiling sands that
  overwhelm him. The hero whose attachment to ego is already
  annihilate passes back and forth across the horizons of the
  's Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, "Akimcanna: Self-Naughting" (New Indian
  Antiquary, Vol. III. Bombay, 1940), p. 6, note 14, citing and discussing
  Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 63, 3.
  60 The sarcophagus or casket is an alternative for the belly of the whale.
  Compare Moses in the bulrushes.
  85
  
  DEPARTURE.
  world, in and out of the dragon, as readily as a king through all
  the rooms of his house. And therein lies his power to save; for
  his passing and returning demonstrate that through all the con-
  traries of phenomenality the Uncreate-Imperishable remains,
  and there is nothing to fear.
  And so it is that, throughout the world, men whose function it
  has been to make visible on earth the life-fructifying mystery of
  the slaying of the dragon have enacted upon their own bodies
  the great symbolic act, scattering their flesh, like the body of
  Osiris, for the renovation of the world. In Phrygia, for example,
  in honor of the crucified and resurrected savior Attis, a pine tree
  was cut on the twenty-second of March, and brought into the
  sanctuary of the mother-goddess, Cybele. There it was swathed
  like a corpse with woolen bands and decked with wreaths of vio-
  lets. The effigy of a young man was tied to the middle of the
  stem. Next day took place a ceremonial lament and blowing of
  trumpets. The twenty-fourth of March was known as the Day of
  Blood: the high priest drew blood from his arms, which he pre-
  sented as an offering; the lesser clergy whirled in a dervish-
  dance, to the sound of drums, horns, flutes, and cymbals, until,
  rapt in ecstasy, they gashed their bodies with knives to bespatter
  the altar and tree with their blood; and the novices, in imitation
  of the god whose death and resurrection they were celebrating,
  castrated themselves and swooned.1'1
  And in the same spirit, the king of the south Indian province
  of Quilacare, at the completion of the twelfth year of his reign,
  on a day of solemn festival, had a wooden scaffolding constructed,
  and spread over with hangings of silk. When he had ritually
  bathed in a tank, with great ceremonies and to the sound of
  music, he then came to the temple, where he did worship before
  the divinity. Thereafter, he mounted the scaffolding and, before
  the people, took some very sharp knives and began to cut off his
  own nose, and then his ears, and his lips, and all his members,
  61 Sir James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (one-volume edition), pp. 347—349.
  Copyright, 1922 by The Macmillan Company and used with their permission.
  86
  THE BELLY OK T H E WHALE
  FIGURE 5. The Night-Sea Journey
  Joseph in the Well: Entombment of Christ: Jonah and the Whale
  87
  
  DEPARTURE
  and as much of his flesh as he was able. He threw it away and
  round about, until so much of his blood was spilled that he
  began to faint, whereupon he summarily cut his throat.62
  62 Duarte Barbosa, A Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar in
  the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century (Hakluyt Society, London, 1866), p.
  172; cited by Frazer, op. cit., pp. 274-275. Reprinted by permission of The
  Macmillan Company, publishers.
  This is the sacrifice that King Minos refused when he withheld the bull from
  Poseidon. As Frazer has shown, ritual regicide was a general tradition in the
  ancient world. "In Southern India," he writes, "the king's reign and life termi-
  nated with the revolution of the planet Jupiter round the sun. In Greece, on
  the other hand, the king's fate seems to have hung in the balance at the end of
  every eight years . . . Without being unduly rash we may surmise that the trib-
  ute of seven youths and seven maidens whom the Athenians were bound to
  send to Minos every eight years had some connexion writh the renewal of the
  king's powrer for another octennial cycle" (ibid., p. 280). The bull sacrifice re-
  quired of King Minos implied that he would sacrifice himself, according to the
  pattern of the inherited tradition, at the close of his eight-year term. But he
  seems to have offered, instead, the substitute of the Athenian youths and maid-
  ens. That perhaps is how the divine Minos became the monster Minotaur, the
  self-annihilate king the tyrant Holdfast, and the hieratic state, wherein every
  man enacts his role, the merchant empire, wherein each is out for himself.
  Such practices of substitution seem to have become general throughout the an-
  tique world toward the close of the great period of the early hieratic states,
  during the third and second millenniums B.C.
  88
  C H A P T E R
  Initiation
  The Road of Trials
  ONCE having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream
  landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must
  survive a succession of trials. This is a favorite phase of the myth-
  adventure. It has produced a world literature of miraculous tests
  and ordeals. The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets,
  and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom he met before
  his entrance into this region. Or it may be that he here discovers
  for the first time that there is a benign power everywhere sup-
  porting him in his superhuman passage.
  One of the best known and most charming examples of the
  "difficult tasks" motif is that of Psyche's quest for her lost lover,
  Cupid.1 Here all the principal roles are reversed: instead of the
  lover trying to win his bride, it is the bride trying to win her
  lover; and instead of a cruel father withholding his daughter
  from the lover, it is the jealous mother, Venus, hiding her son,
  Cupid, from his bride. When Psyche pleaded with Venus, the
  goddess grasped her violently by the hair and dashed her head
  upon the ground, then took a great quantity of wheat, barley,
  millet, poppy seed, peas, lentils, and beans, mingled these all to-
  gether in a heap, and commanded the girl to sort them before
  night. Psyche was aided by an army of ants. Venus told her,
  1 Apuleius, The Golden Ass (Modern Library edition), pp. 131-141.
  89
  
  INITIATION
  next, to gather the golden wool of certain dangerous wild sheep,
  sharp of horn and poisonous of bite, that inhabited an inaccessible
  valley in a dangerous wood. Rut a green reed instructed her how
  to gather from the reeds round about the golden locks shed by
  the sheep in their passage. The goddess now required a bottle of
  water from a freezing spring high on a towering rock beset by
  sleepless dragons. An eagle approached, and accomplished the
  marvelous task. Psyche was ordered, finally, to bring from the
  abyss of the underworld a box full of supernatural beauty. But a
  high tower told her how to go down to the world below, gave her
  coins for Charon and sops for Cerberus, and sped her on her way.
  Psyche's voyage to the underworld is but one of innumerable
  such adventures undertaken by the heroes of fairy tale and myth.
  Among the most perilous are those of the shamans of the peo-
  ples of the farthest north (the Lapps, Siberians, Eskimo, and
  certain American Indian tribes), when they go to seek out and
  recover the lost or abducted souls of the sick. The shaman of the
  Siberians is clothed for the adventure in a magical costume rep-
  resenting a bird or reindeer, the shadow principle of the shaman
  himself, the shape of his soul. His drum is his animal—his eagle,
  reindeer, or horse; he is said to fly or ride on it. The stick that he
  carries is another of his aids. And he is attended by a host of
  invisible familiars.
  An early voyager among the Lapps has left a vivid description
  of the weird performance of one of these strange emissaries into
  the kingdoms of the dead.2 Since the yonder world is a place of
  everlasting night, the ceremonial of the shaman has to take place
  after dark. The friends and neighbors gather in the flickering,
  dimly lighted hut of the patient, and follow attentively the gestic-
  ulations of the magician. First he summons the helping spirits;
  these arrive, invisible to all but himself. Two women in ceremo-
  nial attire, but without belts and wearing linen hoods, a man with-
  out hood or belt, and a girl not as yet adult, are in attendance.
  3 Knud Leem, Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper (Copenhagen, 1767),
  pp. 475-^78. An English translation will be found in John Pinkerton, A General
  Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in AH Parts of
  the World (London, 1808), Vol. I, pp. 477-478.
  90
  THE ROAD OF TRIALS
  The shaman uncovers his head, loosens his belt and shoestrings,
  covers his face with his hands and begins to twirl in a variety of
  circles. Suddenly, with very violent gestures, he shouts: "Fit out
  the reindeer! Ready to boat!" Snatching up an ax, he begins strik-
  ing himself about the knees with it and swinging it in the direc-
  tion of the three women. He drags burning logs out of the fire
  with his naked hands. He dashes three times around each of the
  women and finally collapses, "like a dead man." During the whole
  time, no one has been permitted to touch him. While he reposes
  now in trance, he is to be watched so closely that not even a fly
  may settle upon him. His spirit has departed, and he is viewing
  the sacred mountains with their inhabiting gods. The women in
  attendance whisper to each other, trying to guess in what part of
  the yonder world he now may be.3 If they mention the correct
  mountain, the shaman stirs either a hand or a foot. At length he
  begins to return. In a low, weak voice he utters the words he has
  heard in the world below. Then the women begin to sing. The
  shaman slowly awakes, declaring both the cause of the illness and
  the manner of sacrifice to be made. Then he announces the length
  of time it will take for the patient to grow well.
  "On his laborious journey," reports another observer, "the
  shaman has to encounter and master a number of differing ob-
  stacles (pudak) which are not always easily overcome. After he
  has wandered through dark forests and over massive ranges of
  mountains, where he occasionally comes across the bones of other
  shamans and their animal mounts who have died along the way,
  he reaches an opening in the ground. The most difficult stages of
  the adventure now begin, when the depths of the underworld
  with their remarkable manifestations open before him. . . . After
  he has appeased the watchers of the kingdom of the dead and
  1 h e 
  w o m e n 
  m i i v 
  [ H J 
  i i n a ' i U ' 
  t > > 
  I * ' L ; i t i ' 
  t h i ' 
  s h n f n . i n 
  * • 
  [ ) O s K l " i ] 
  i ° i 
  t i l t 
  v u l l G ^ r
  world, in which case his spirit may fail to return to the body. Or the wandering
  spirit of an enemy shaman may engage him in battle or else lead him astray. It
  is said that there have been many shamans who failed to return. (E. J. .Tessen,
  Ajhandling om de Norske Finners og Lappers Hec/en-ikc Religion, p. 31. This
  work is included in Leem's volume, op. cit., as an appendix with independent
  pagination.)
  9L
  
  I N I T I A T I O N
  made his way past the numerous perils, he comes at last to the
  Lord of the Underworld, Erlik himself. And the latter rushes
  against him, horribly bellowing; but if the shaman is sufficiently
  skillful he can soothe the monster back again with promises of
  luxurious offerings. This moment of the dialogue with Erlik is
  the crisis of the ceremonial. The shaman passes into an ecstasy.1'4
  "In every primitive tribe," writes Dr. Geza Roheim, "we find
  the medicine man in the center of society and it is easy to show
  that the medicine man is either a neurotic or a psychotic or at
  least that his art is based on the same mechanisms as a neurosis
  or a psychosis. Human groups are actuated by their group ideals,
  and these are always based on the infantile situation.™ "The in-
  fancy situation is modified or inverted by the process of matura-
  tion, again modified by the necessary adjustment to reality, yet it
  is there and supplies those unseen Hbidinal ties without which
  no human groups could exist.1'0 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."7
  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,
  1 Unn Harva. l)i<: rcl/^iGxci \ or.'tt lUtuufit d' i ultmscheu 1 other ("Folklore
  Fellows Communications," No. 125, Helsinki, 1938), pp. 558-559; following
  G. N. Potanin, Occrki severo-zapadnay Mongolh (St. Petersburg, 1881),
  Vol. IV, pp. 64-65.
  1 Geza Roheim, The Origin and Function of Culture (Nervous and Mental
  Disease Monographs, No. 69), pp. 38-39.
  * Ibid., p. 38.
  1 Ibid.,-p. 51.
  THE ROAD OF TRIALS
  this is the second stage of the Way, that of the "purification of the
  self," when the senses are "cleansed and humbled,1' and the ener-
  gies and interests "concentrated upon transcendental things";8
  or in a vocabulary of more modern turn; this is the process of
  dissolving, transcending, or transmuting the infantile images of
  our personal past. In our dreams the ageless perils, gargoyles,
  trials, secret helpers, and instructive figures are nightly still en-
  countered; and in their forms we may see reflected not only the
  whole picture of our present case, but also the clue to what we
  must do to be saved.
  "I stood before a dark cave, wanting to go in," was the dream
  of a patient at the beginning of his analysis; "and I shuddered at
  the thought that I might not be able to find my way back."51 "I
  saw one beast after another," F.manuel Swedenborg recorded in
  his dream book, for the night of October 19-20, 1744, "and they
  spread their wings, and were dragons. I was flying over them, but
  one of them was supporting me."10 And the dramatist Friedrich
  Hebbel recorded, a century later (April 13, 1844): "In my dream
  I was being drawn with great force through the sea; there were
  terrifying abysses, with here and there a rock to which it was
  possible to hold."11 Themistocles dreamed that a snake wound
  itself around his body, then crept up to his neck and when it
  touched his face became an eagle that took him in its talons and,
  carrying him upward, bore him a long distance, and set him
  down on a golden herald's staff that suddenly appeared, so safely
  that he was all at once relieved of his great anxiety and fear.12
  u Undcrhill, op. cit.. Part II, Chapter III. Compare supra, p. 51, note 3.
  s Willielm Stekel, Fortschritte urid Technik der Traumdeutung, p. 124.
  10 Svedenborgs Drommar, 1774, "Jemte andra hans anteckningar efter
  original-handskrifter meddelade af G. E. Klemming" (Stockholm 1859),
  quoted in Ignaz Jezower, Das Buck der Trdume (Berlin: Ernst Roivohlt Verlug,
  1928), p. 97.
  Swedenborg's own comment on this dream was as follows: "Dragons of this
  kind, which do not reveal themselves as dragons until one sees their wings,
  symbolize false love. I am just now writing on this subject" (Jezower, p. 490).
  11 Jezower, op. cit., p. 166.
  " Plutarch, Tkemistoctes, 2(1; Jezower, op. cit., p. 18.
  93
  
  INITIATION
  The specific psychological difficulties of the dreamer frequently
  are revealed with touching simplicity and force:
  "I had to climb a mountain. There were all kinds of obstacles
  in the way. I had now to jump over a ditch, now to get over a
  hedge, and finally to stand still because I had lost my breath."
  This was the dream of a stutterer.13
  "I stood beside a lake that appeared to be completely still. A
  storm came up abruptly and high waves arose, so that my whole
  face was splashed1'; the dream of a girl afraid of blushing
  (ereutho-phobia), whose face, when she blushed, would become
  wet with perspiration.14
  "I was following a girl who was going ahead of me, along the
  dark street. I could see her from behind only and admired her
  beautiful figure. A mighty desire seized me, and I was running
  after her. Suddenly a beam, as though released from a spring,
  came across the street and blocked the way. I awoke with my
  heart pounding." The patient was a homosexual; the transverse
  beam, a phallic symbol,1"
  "I got into a car, but did not know how to drive. A man who
  sat behind me gave me instructions. Finally, things were going
  quite well and we came to a plaza, where there were a number of
  women standing. The mother of my fiancee received me with
  great joy." The man was impotent, but had found an instructor
  in the psychoanalyst.""
  "A stone had broken my windshield. I was now open to the
  storm and ram. Tears came to my eyes. Could I ever reach my
  destination in this car?" The dreamer was a young woman who
  had lost her virginity and could not get over it.17
  "I saw half of a horse King on the ground. It had only one wing
  and was trying to arise, but was unable to do so." The patient was
  a poet, who had to earn his daily bread by working as a journalist.151
  1J Stekel, Fartschritte und Technik drr Traumdeutung, p. 150.
  " Ibid., p. 153.
  aIbuL>p.4£.
  16 Ibid., p. 208.
  17Ibid., p. 216.
  18 Ibid., p. 224.
  THE ROAD OF TRIALS
  dr
  r was suffering from a
  "I was bitten by an infant." The dreamer was suffering from a
  psychosexual infantilism.1'-1
  "I am locked with my brother in a dark room. He has a large
  knife in his hand. I am afraid of him. 'You will drive me crazy
  and bring me to the madhouse,1 I tell him. He laughs with mali-
  cious pleasure, replying: 'You will always be caught with me. A
  chain is wrapped around the two of us.1 I glanced at my legs and
  noticed for the first time the thick iron chain that bound together
  my brother and myself." The brother, comments Dr. Stekel, was
  the patient's illness-^0
  "I am going over a narrow bridge," dreams a sixteen-year-old
  girl. "Suddenly it breaks under me and I plunge into the water.
  An officer dives in after me, and brings me, with his strong
  arms, to the bank. Suddenly it seems to me then that I am a
  dead body. The officer too looks very pale, like a corpse."21
  "The dreamer is absolutely abandoned and alone in a deep
  hole of a cellar. The walls of his room keep getting narrower and
  narrower, so that he cannot stir." In this image are combined the
  ideas of mother womb, imprisonment, cell, and grave.22
  "I am dreaming that I have to go through endless corridors.
  Then I remain for a long time in a little room that looks like the
  bathing pool in the public baths. They compel me to leave the
  pool, and I have to pass again through a moist, slippery shaft,
  until I come through a little latticed door into the open. I feel
  v'Ibid.,p. 
  159.
  lr> Ibid., p. 21.
  '2i Stekel, Die Sprache des Traumes, p. 200. "Naturally," writes Dr. Stekel.
  1 'to be dead' here means 'to be alive.' She begins to live'and the officer 'lives'
  with her. They die together. This throws a glaring light on the popular fantasy
  ofthe the double-suicide.11
  It should be noted also that this dream includes the well-nigh universal
  mythological image of the sword bridge (the razor's edge, supra, p. 19), which
  appears in the romance of Lancelot's rescue of Queen Guinevere from the
  castle of King Death (see Heinrich Zimmer, The King and the Corpse, ed.
  J. Campbell (New York: Bollingen Series, 1948), pp. 171-172; also U. L.
  Coomaraswamy, "The Perilous Bridge of Welfare," Harvard Journal of Asiatic
  Studies, 8).
  "- Stekel, Die Sprache des Traumes, p. 287.
  OK
  es, p. 287.
  95
  
  INITIATION
  tike one newly born, and I think: 'This means a spiritual rebirth
  for me, through my analysis.1 "23
  There can be no question: the psychological dangers through
  which earlier generations were guided by the symbols and spiri-
  tual exercises of their mythological and religious inheritance, we
  today (in so far as we are unbelievers, or, if believers, in so far as
  our inherited beliefs fail to represent the real problems of con-
  temporary life) must face alone, or, at best, with only tentative,
  impromptu, and not often very effective guidance. This is our
  problem as modern, "enlightened" individuals, for whom all
  gods and devils have been rationalized out of existence.^4 Never-
  theless, in the multitude of myths and legends that have been
  preserved to us, or collected from the ends of the earth, we may
  yet see delineated something of our still human course. To hear
  and profit, however, one may have to submit somehow to purga-
  tion and surrender. And that is part of our problem: just how
  to do that. "Or do ye think that ye shall enter the Garden of
  Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed away be-
  fore you?"21
  The oldest recorded account of the passage through the gates
  of metamorphosis is the Sumerian myth of the goddess Inanna's
  descent to the nether world.
  From the "great above" she set her mind toward
  the "great below,"
  The goddess, from the "great above" she set her
  mind toward the "great below,"
  ™ Ibid., p. 286.
  21 "The problem is not new," writes Dr. C. G. Jung, "for all ages before us
  have believed in gods in some form or other. Only an unparalleled impov-
  erishment of symbolism could enable us to rediscover the gods as psychic
  factors, that is, as archetypes of the unconscious. . . . Heaven has become for
  us the cosmic space of the physicists, and the divine empyrean a fair memory
  of things that once were. But 'the heart glows,' and a secret unrest gnaws at
  the roots of our being." ("Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious." ed. cit.,
  par. 50.)
  25 Koran, 2:214,
  THE ROAD OF TRIALS
  Inanna, from the "great above" she set her mind
  toward the "great below."
  My lady abandoned heaven, abandoned earth,
  To the nether world she descended,
  Inanna abandoned heaven, abandoned earth,
  To the nether world she descended,
  Abandoned lordship, abandoned ladyship,
  To the nether world she descended.
  She adorned herself with her queenly robes and jewels. Seven
  divine decrees she fastened at her belt. She was ready to enter
  the "land of no return," the nether world of death and darkness,
  governed by her enemy and sister goddess, Ereshkigal. In fear, lest
  her sister should put her to death, Inanna instructed Ninshubur,
  her messenger, to go to heaven and set up a hue and cry for her
  in the assembly hall of the gods if after three days she should
  have failed to return.
  Inanna descended. She approached the temple made of lapis
  lazuli, and at the gate was met by the chief gatekeeper, who de-
  manded to know who she was and why she had come. "I am the
  queen of heaven, the place where the sun rises," she replied. "If
  thou art the queen of heaven," he said, "the place where the sun
  rises, why, pray, hast thou come to the land of no return"? On the
  road whose traveler returns not, how has thy heart led thee?"
  Inanna declared that she had come to attend the funeral rites of
  her sister's husband, the lord Gugalanna; whereupon Neti, the
  gatekeeper, bid her stay until he should report to Ereshkigal.
  Neti was instructed to open to the queen of heaven the seven
  gates, but to abide by the custom and remove at each portal a
  part of her clothing.
  To the pure Inanna he says:
  "Come, Inanna, enter."
  Upon her entering the first gate,
  The shugurra, the "crown of the plain" of her head, was removed.
  "What, pray, is this?"
  
  I N I T I A T I O N
  "Extraordinarily, O Inanna, have the decrees of the
  nether world been perfected,
  0 Inanna, do not question the rites of the nether world."
  Upon her entering the second gate,
  The rod of lapis lazuli was removed.
  "What, pray, is this?"
  "Extraordinarily, 0 Inanna, have the decrees of
  the nether world been perfected,
  O Inanna, do not question the rites of the nether world."
  Upon her entering the third gate,
  The small lapis lazuli stones of her neck were removed.
  "What, pray, is thin?"
  "Extraordinarily, 0 Inanna, have the decrees of
  the nether world been perfected,
  0 Inanna, do not question the rites of the nether world."
  Upon her entering the fourth gate,
  The sparkling stones of her breast were removed.
  "What, pray, is this?"
  "Extraordinarily, O Inanna, have the decrees of
  the nether world been perfected,
  0 Inanna, do not question the rites of the nether world."
  Upon her entering the fifth gate.
  The gold ring of her hand was removed.
  "What, pray, is this?"
  "Extraordinarily, 0 Inanna, have the decrees of
  the nether world been perfected,
  O Inanna, do not question the rites of the nether world."
  Upon her entering the sixth gate,
  The breastplate of her breast was removed.
  "What, pray, is this?"
  "Extraordinarily, O Inanna, have the decrees of
  the nether world been perfected,
  O Inanna, do not question the rites of the nether world."
  THE ROAD OF TRIALS
  Upon her entering the seventh gate,
  All the garments of ladyship of her body were removed.
  "What, pray, is this?"
  "Extraordinarily, 0 Inanna, have the decrees of
  the nether world been perfected,
  0 Inanna, do not question the rites of the nether world."
  Naked, she was brought before the throne. She bowed low. The
  seven judges of the nether world, the Anunnaki, sat before the
  throne of Ereshkigal, and they fastened their eyes upon Inannai—
  the eyes of death.
  At their word, the word which tortures the spirit,
  The sick woman was turned into a corpse,
  The corpse was hung from a stake.26
  Inanna and Ereshkigal, the two sisters, light and dark respec-
  tively, together represent, according to the antique manner of
  symbolization, the one goddess in two aspects; and their con-
  frontation epitomizes the whole sense of the difficult road of trials.
  The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a
  myth or the dreamer of a dream, discovers and assimilates his op-
  posite (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.2'
  M S. N. Kramer, Sumeritin Mythology (American Philosophical Society
  Memoirs, Vol. XXI; Philadelphia, 1944}, pp. 86-93. The mythology of Sumer
  is of especial importance to us of the West; for it was the source of the
  Babylonian, Assyrian, Phoenician, and Biblical traditions, (the last giving rise
  to Mohammedanism and Christianity), as well a* an important ]nfiuence in the
  religions of the pagan Celts, Creeks, Romans, Slavs, and Cermans.
  27 Or, as James Joyce has phrased it: "equals of opposites, evolved by a one-
  same power of nature or ol spirit, as tlit: sole condition and means of its
  himundher manifestation and polarised for reunion by the symphysis of their
  antipathies" (I-'innegans Wake, p. 92].
  
  INITIATION
  The ordeal is a deepening of the problem of the first threshold
  and the question is still in balance: Can the ego put itself to death?
  For many-headed is this surrounding Hydra; one head cut off, two
  more appear—unless the right caustic is applied to the mutilated
  stump. The original departure into the land of trials represented
  only the beginning of the long and really perilous path of initiator)'
  conquests and moments of illumination. Dragons have now to be
  slain and surprising barriers passed—again, again, and again.
  Meanwhile there will be a multitude of preliminary victories, unre-
  tainable ecstasies, and momentary glimpses of the wonderful land.
  The Meeting with the Goddess
  The ultimate adventure, when all the barriers and ogres have
  been overcome, is commonly represented as a mystical marriage
  (Is 6<? ya/ios) of the triumphant hero-soul with the Queen God-
  dess of the World. This is the crisis at the nadir, the zenith, or at
  the uttermost edge of the earth, at the central point of the cos-
  mos, in the tabernacle of the temple, or within the darkness of
  the deepest chamber of the heart.
  In the west of Ireland they still tell the tale of the Prince of the
  Lonesome Isle and the Lady of Tubber Tintye. Hoping to heal
  the Queen of Erin, the heroic youth had undertaken to go for
  three bottles of the water of Tubber Tintye, the flaming fairy
  well. Following the advice of a supernatural aunt whom he en-
  countered on the way, and riding a wonderful, dirty, lean little
  shaggy horse that she gave to him, he crossed a river of fire and
  escaped the touch of a grove of poison trees. The horse with the
  speed of the wind shot past the end of the castle of Tubber Tintye;
  the prince sprang from its back through an open window, and
  came down inside, safe and sound.
  "The whole place, enormous in extent, was filled with sleep-
  ing giants and monsters of sea and land—great whales, long
  THE MEETING WITH THE GODDESS
  slippery eels, bears, and beasts of every form and kind. The
  prince passed through them and over them till he came to a
  great stairway. At the head of the stairway he went into a cham-
  ber, where he found the most beautiful woman he had ever seen,
  stretched on a couch asleep. Til have nothing to say to you,'
  thought he, and went on to the next; and so he looked into
  twelve chambers. In each was a woman more beautiful than the
  one before. But when he reached the thirteenth chamber and
  opened the door, the flash of gold took the sight from his eyes.
  He stood awhile till the sight came back, and then entered. In
  the great bright chamber was a golden couch, resting on wheels
  of gold. The wheels turned continually; the couch went round
  and round, never stopping night or day. On the couch lay the
  Queen of Tubber Tintye; and if her twelve maidens were beauti-
  ful, they would not be beautiful if seen near her. At the foot of
  the couch was Tubber Tintye itself—the well of fire. There was
  a golden cover upon the well, and it went around continually
  with the couch of the Queen.
  " 'Upon my word,1 said the prince, Til rest here a while.' And
  he went up on the couch and never left it for six days and
  nights."2*
  The Lady of the House of Sleep is a familiar figure in fairy
  tale and myth. We have already spoken of her, under the forms
  of Brynhild and little Briar-rose.29 She is the paragon of al!
  paragons of beauty, the reply to all desire, the bliss-bestowing
  goal of every hero's earthly and unearthly quest. She is mother,
  sister, mistress, bride. Whatever in the world has lured, what-
  ever has seemed to promise joy, has been premonitory of her
  existence—in the deep of sleep, if not in the cities and forests of
  the world. For she is the incarnation of the promise of perfec-
  tion; the soul's assurance that, at the conclusion of its exile in a
  world of organized inadequacies, the bliss that once was known
  will be known again; the comforting, the nourishing, the "good"
  '2V Jeremiah Curtin, Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland (Boston: Little, Brown
  and Company, 1890), pp. 101-106.
  25 Supra, pp. 57-58.
  
  I N I T I A T I O N
  mother—young and beautiful—who was known to us, and even
  tasted, in the remotest past. Time sealed her away, yet she is
  dwelling still, like one who sleeps in timelessness, at the bottom
  of the timeless sea.
  The remembered image is not only benign, however; for the
  "bad" mother too —(1) the absent, unattainable mother, against
  whom aggressive fantasies are directed, and from whom a counter-
  aggression is feared; (2) the hampering, forbidding, punishing
  mother; (3) the mother who would hold to herself the growing
  child trying to push away; and finally (4) the desired but forbid-
  den mother (Oedipus complex) whose presence is a lure to dan-
  gerous desire (castration complex)—persists in the hidden land
  of the adult's infant recollection and is sometimes even the
  greater force. She is at the root of such unattainable great god-
  dess figures as that of the chaste and terrible Diana—whose ab-
  solute ruin of the young sportsman Actaeon illustrates what a
  blast of fear is contained in such symbols of the mind's and
  body's blocked desire.
  Actaeon chanced to see the dangerous goddess at noon; that
  fateful moment when the sun breaks in its youthful, strong as-
  cent, balances, and begins the mighty plunge to death. He had
  left his companions to rest, together with his blooded dogs, after
  a morning of running game, and without conscious purpose had
  gone wandering, straying from his familiar hunting groves and
  fields, exploring through the neighboring woods. He discovered
  a vale, thick grown with cypresses and pine. He penetrated curi-
  ously into its fastness. There was a grotto within in, watered by
  a gentle, purling spring and with a stream that widened to a
  grassy pool. This shaded nook was the resort of Diana, and at
  that moment she was bathing among her nymphs, absolutely
  naked. She had put aside her hunting spear, her quiver, her un-
  strung bow, as well as her sandals and her robe. And one of the
  nude nymphs had bound up her tresses into a knot; some of the
  others were pouring water from capacious urns.
  When the young, roving male broke into the pleasant haunt, a
  shriek of female terror went up, and all the bodies crowded
  about their mistress, trying to hide her from the profane eye.
  THE MEETING WITH THE GODDESS
  But she stood above them, head and shoulders. The youth had
  seen, and was continuing to see. She glanced for her bow, but it
  was out of reach, so she quickly took up what was at hand,
  namely water, and flung it into Actaeon's face. "Now you are
  free to tell, if you can," she cried at him angrily, "that you have
  seen the goddess nude."
  Antlers sprouted on his head. His neck grew great and long,
  his eartips sharp. His arms lengthened to legs, and his hands
  and feet became hooves. Terrified, he bounded—marveling that
  he should move so rapidly. But when he paused for breath
  and drink and beheld his features in a clear pool, he reared
  back aghast.
  A terrible fate then befell Actaeon. His own hounds, catching
  the scent of the great stag, came baying through the wood. In a
  moment of joy at hearing them he paused, but then sponta-
  neously took fright and fled. The pack followed, gradually gain-
  ing. When they had come to his heels, the first of them flying at
  his flank, he tried to cry their names, but the sound in his throat
  was not human. They fixed him with their fangs. He went
  down, and his own hunting companions, shouting encourage-
  ment at the dogs, arrived in time to deliver the coup de grace.
  Diana, miraculously aware of the flight and death, could now
  rest appeased.30
  The mythological figure of the Universal Mother imputes to
  the cosmos the feminine attributes of the first, nourishing and
  protecting presence. The fantasy is primarily spontaneous; for
  there exists a close and obvious correspondence between the atti-
  tude of the young child toward its mother and that of the adult
  toward the surrounding material world.31 But there has been
  3U Ovid, Metamorphoses, III, 138-252.
  11 Cf. J. C. Flugel, The Psycho-Analytic Study of the Family ("The Interna-
  tional Psycho-Analytical Library," No. 3, 4th edition; London: The Hogarth
  Press, 1931), chapters sii and xiii.
  "There exists," Professor Flugel observes, "a very general association on the
  one hand betu een l lif notion •>] mind, -^pint or sou! unH llnj idtj;i of the father
  or ot masculinity; and on the oilier hand between the notion of the body or of
  matter (materia-that which belongs to the mother) and the idea of the mother
  or of the feminine principle. The repression of the emotions and feelings
  103
  
  INITIATION
  also, in numerous religious traditions, a consciously controlled
  pedagogical utilization of this archetypal image for the purpose
  of the purging, balancing, and initiation of the mind into the
  nature of the visible world.
  In the Tantric books of medieval and modern India the abode
  of the goddess is called Mani-dvipa, "The Island of Jewels."32
  Her couch-and-throne is there, in a grove of wish-fulfilling trees.
  The beaches of the isle are of golden sands. They are laved by
  the still waters of the ocean of the nectar of immortality. The
  goddess is red with the fire of life; the earth, the solar system,
  relating To the mother [in our Judeo-Christian monotheism] has, in virtue of this
  association, produced a tendency to adopt an attitude of distract, COT
  or hostility towards the human body, the Earth, and the whole material Uni
  with a corresponding tendency to exalt and overemphasize the spiritual elements,
  whether in man or in the general scheme of things. It seems very probable that a
  good many of the more pronounicdlv idealistic tendtwii's in philosophy may owe
  much of their attractiveness in many minds to a sublimation of this reaction
  against the mother, while the more dogmatic and narrow forms of materialism
  may perhaps in their turn represent a return of the repressed feelings originally
  connected with the mother" (ibid., p. 145, note 2).
  ;- The sacred writings (Shastras) of Hinduism are divided into four classes:
  (1) Shruti, which are regarded as direct divine revelation; these include the
  four Vedas (ancient books of psalms) and certain of the Upanishads (ancient
  books of philosophy); (2) Smriti, which include the traditional teachings of the
  orthodox SLI^I1^. caiK'iiK'L'.l instructions I or domestic ceiviiiiji:!..]!'., ;md ctruuri
  works of secular ami religious kiu ; {i') Purfinn. which aiv the Hindu mytho-
  logical and epic works par excellence; these treat of cosmogonic, theological,
  astronomical, and physical knowledge; and (4) Tantra, texts describing tech-
  niques and rituals for the worship of deities, and for the attainment of supranor-
  mal power. Among the Tantras are a group of particularly important scriptures
  (called Agamas) which are supposed to have been revealed directly by the
  Universal" God Shiva and his Goddess Parvati. (They are termed, therefore,
  "The Fifth Veda.") These support a mystical tradition known specifically as
  "The Tantra. which hus exercised :i pLTv:i--;[\ <- in Rue rice ori the later forms of
  Hindu and Buddhist iconography. Tantric symbolism was carried by medieval
  Buddhism out of India into Tibet, China, and Japan.
  The following description of the Island of Jewels is based on Sir John
  Woodroffe, Shakti and Shakta (London and Madras, 1929), p. 39, and
  Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, ed. by
  J. Campbell (New York: Bollingen Series, 1946), pp. 197-211. For an illustra-
  tion of the mystical island, see Zimmer, Figure 66.
  104
  THE MEETING WITH THE GODDESS
  the galaxies of far-extending space, all swell within her womb.
  For she is the world creatrix, ever mother, ever virgin. She en-
  compasses the encompassing, nourishes the nourishing, and is
  the life of everything that lives.
  She is also the death of even-thing that dies. The whole round
  of existence is accomplished within her sway, from birth,
  through adolescence, maturity, and senescence, to the grave. She
  is the womb and the tomb: the sow that eats her farrow. Thus
  she unites the "good" and the "bad," exhibiting the two modes
  of the remembered mother, not as personal only, but as univer-
  sal. The devotee is expected to contemplate the two with equal
  equanimity. Through this exercise his spirit is purged of its in-
  fantile, inappropriate sentimentalities and resentments, and his
  mind opened to the inscrutable presence which exists, not pri-
  marily as "good" and "bad" with respect to his childlike human
  convenience, his weal and woe, but as the law and image of the
  nature of being.
  The great Hindu mystic of the last century, Ramakrishna
  (1836-1886), was a priest in a temple newly erected to the Cos-
  mic Mother at Dakshineswar, a suburb of Calcutta. The temple
  image displayed the divinity in her two aspects simultaneously,
  the terrible and the benign. Her four arms exhibited the symbols
  of her universal power: the upper left hand brandishing a bloody
  saber, the lower gripping by the hair a severed human head; the
  upper right was lifted in the "fear not" gesture, the lower ex-
  tended in bestowal of boons. As necklace she wore a garland of
  human heads; her kilt was a girdle of human arms; her long
  tongue was out to lick blood. She was Cosmic Power, the total-
  ity of the universe, the harmonization of all the pairs of oppo-
  sites, combining wonderfully the terror of absolute destruction
  with an impersonal yet motherly reassurance. As change, the
  river of time, the fluidity of life, the goddess at once creates, pre-
  serves, and destroys. Her name is Kali, the Black One; her title:
  The Ferry across the Ocean of Existence.31
  3J The Gospel of Sri Ramakriskna, translated into English with an imroduc-
  :ion by Swami Nikhilananda (New York, 1942), p. 9.
  
  INITIATION
  One quiet afternoon Ramakrishna beheld a beautiful woman
  ascend from the Ganges and approach the grove in which he
  was meditating. He perceived that she was about to give birth
  to a child. In a moment the babe was born, and she gently
  nursed it. Presently, however, she assumed a horrible aspect,
  took the infant in her now ugly jaws and crushed it, chewed
  it. Swallowing it, she returned again to the Ganges, where
  she disappeared.34
  Only geniuses capable of the highest realization can support
  the mil revelation of the sublimity of this goddess. For lesser
  men she reduces her effulgence and permits herself to appear in
  forms concordant with their undeveloped powers. Fully to be-
  hold her would be a terrible accident for any person not spiritu-
  ally prepared: as witness the unlucky case of the lusty young
  buck Actaeon. No saint was he, but a sportsman unprepared for
  the revelation of the form that must be beheld without the nor-
  mal human {i.e., infantile) over- and undertones of desire, sur-
  prise, and fear.
  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 transfigura-
  tions: she can never be greater than himself, though she can al-
  ways 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 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.
  V1 Ibid., pp. 21-22.
  THE MEETING WITH THE GODDESS
  A story, for example, is told of the five sons of the Irish king
  Eochaid: of how, having gone one day ahunting, they found them-
  selves astray, shut in on every hand. Thirsty, they set off, one by
  one, to look for water. Fergus was the first: "and he lights on a
  well, over which he finds an old woman standing sentry. The
  fashion of the hag is this: blacker than coal every joint and seg-
  ment of her was, from crown to ground; comparable to a wild
  horse's tail the grey wiry mass of hair that pierced her scalp's
  upper surface; with her sickle of a greenish looking tusk that
  was in her head, and curled till it touched her ear, she could lop
  the verdant branch of an oak in full bearing; blackened and
  smoke-bleared eyes she had; nose awry, wide-nostrilled; a wrin-
  kled and freckled belly, variously unwholesome; warped crooked
  shins, garnished with massive ankles and a pair of capacious shov-
  els; knotty knees she had and livid nails. The beldame's whole de-
  scription in fact was disgusting. 'That's the way it is, is it"?' said
  the lad, and 'that's the very way,' she answered. 'Is it guarding
  the well thou art?' he asked, and she said: 'it is.' 'Dost thou li-
  cence me to take away some water?' 'I do,' she consented, 'yet
  only so that I have of thee one kiss on my cheek.1 'Not so,' said
  he. 'Then water shall not be conceded by me.' 'My word I give,1
  he went on, 'that sooner than give thee a kiss I would perish of
  thirst!1 Then the young man departed to the place where his
  brethren were, and told them that he had not gotten water."
  Olioll, Brian, and Fiachra, likewise, went on the quest and
  equally attained to the identical well. Each solicited the old thing
  for water, but denied her the kiss.
  Finally it was'Niall who went, and he came to the very well.
  " 'Let me have water, woman!1 he cried. 'I will give it,1 said she,
  'and bestow on me a kiss.' He answered: 'forby giving thee a
  kiss, I will even hug thee!' Then he bends to embrace her, and
  gives her a kiss. Which operation ended, and when he looked at
  her, in the whole world was not a young woman of gait more
  graceful, in universal semblance fairer than she: to be likened to
  the last-fallen snow lying in trenches every portion of her was,
  from crown to sole; plump and queenly forearms, fingers long
  
  INITIATION
  and taper, straight legs of a lovely hue she had; two sandals of
  the white bronze betwixt her smooth and soft white feet and the
  earth; about her was an ample mantle of the choicest fleece pure
  crimson, and in the garment a brooch of white silver; she had
  lustrous teeth of pearl, great regal eyes, mouth red as the rowan-
  berry. 'Here, woman, is a galaxy of charms,' said the young man.
  'That is true indeed.' 'And who art tfaou?' he pursued. '"Royal
  Rule" am I,' she answered, and uttered this:
  "'KingofTara! I am Royal Rule 
  '
  " 'Go now,' she said, 'to thy brethren, and take with thee
  water; moreover, thine and thy children's for ever the kingdom
  and supreme power shall be. ... And as at the first thou hast seen
  me ugly, brutish, loathly—in the end, beautiful — even so is royal
  rule: for without battles, without fierce conflict, it may not be
  won; but in the result, he that is king of no matter what shows
  comely and handsome forth.'"3'1
  Such is royal rule? Such is life itself. The goddess guardian of
  the inexhaustible well—whether as Fergus, or as Actaeon, or as
  the Prince of the Lonesome Isle discovered her—requires that
  the hero should be endowed with what the troubadours and
  minnesingers termed the "gentle heart." Not by the animal desire
  of an Actaeon, not by the fastidious revulsion of such as Fergus,
  can she be comprehended and rightly served, but only by gentle-
  ness: aware ("gentle sympathy") it was named in the romantic
  courtly poetry of tenth- to twelfth-century Japan.
  Within the gentle heart Love shelters himself.
  As birds within the green shade of the grove.
  Before the gentle heart, in nature's scheme.
  Love was not, nor the gentle heart ere Love.
  For with the sun, at once,
  35 Standish H. O'Grady, Siha Gaddka (London: Williams and Norgate,
  1892), Vol. II, pp. 370-372. Variant versions will be found in Chaucer's
  Canterbury Tales, "The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe"; in (Sower's Tale ofFlorent;
  in the mid-fifteenth-century poem, The Weddyngc of Sir Gawen and Dame
  Ragnell; and in the seven tee nth-century ballad, The Marriage of Sir Gawaine.
  See W. F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster, Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's
  Canterbury Tales (Chicago. 1941).
  THE MEETING WITH THE GODDESS
  So sprang the light immediately; nor was
  Its birth before the sun's.
  And Love hath his effect in gentleness
  Of very self; even as
  Within the middle fire the heat's excess.36
  The meeting with the goddess (who is incarnate in every woman)
  is the final test of the talent of the hero to win the boon of love
  (charity: amor fati), which is life itself enjoyed as the encase-
  ment of eternity.
  And when the adventurer, in this context, is not a youth but a
  maid, she is the one who, by her qualities, her beauty, or her
  yearning, is fit to become the consort of an immortal. Then the
  FIGURE 6. Isis in the Form of a Hawk Joins Osiris in the Underworld
  3fi Guido Guinicelli di Magnano (1-230-75?), Of the Gen Ik Heart, translation
  by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Dante and his Circle (edition of 1874; London:
  Ellis and White), p. 291.
  
  I N I T I A T I O N
  heavenly husband descends to her and conducts her to his bed—
  whether she will or no. And if she has shunned him, the scales fall
  from her eyes; if she has sought him, her desire finds its peace.
  The Arapaho girl who followed the porcupine up the stretch-
  ing tree was enticed to the camp-circle of the people of the sky.
  There she became the wife of a heavenly youth. It was he who,
  under the form of the luring porcupine, had seduced her to his
  supernatural home.
  The king's daughter of the nursery tale, the day following the
  adventure at the well, heard a thumping at her castle door: the
  frog had arrived to press her to her bargain. And in spite of her
  great disgust, he followed her to her chair at table, shared the
  meal from her little golden plate and cup, even insisted on going
  to sleep with her in her little silken bed. In a tantrum she
  plucked him from the floor and flung him at the wall. When he
  fell, he was no frog but a king's son with kind and beautiful
  eyes. And then we hear that they were married and were driven
  in a beautiful coach back to the young man's waiting kingdom,
  where the two became a king and queen.
  Or once again: when Psyche had accomplished all of the
  difficult tasks, Jupiter himself gave to her a draft of the elixir of
  immortality; so that she is now and forever united with Cupid,
  her beloved, in the paradise of perfected form.
  The Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches celebrate
  the same mystery in the Feast of the Assumption:
  "The Virgin Mary is taken up into the bridal chamber of hea-
  ven, where the King of Kings sits on his starry throne."
  "O Virgin most prudent, whither goest thou, bright as the
  morn? all beautiful and sweet art thou, O daughter of Zion, fair
  as the moon, elect as the sun.""
  '" Antiphons for the Least of file Assumption oi (htj Blcs^il \ ir^in M;nn\
  (August IS), at Vespers: from the Roman Missal.
  WOMAN AS T H K T E M P T R K S S
  • 3 "
  Woman as the Temptress
  The mystical marriage with the queen goddess of the world repre-
  sents 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 pos-
  session 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.
  Thus phrased, in extremest terms, the problem may sound re-
  mote from the affairs of normal human creatures. 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. The whole sense of the ubiquitous myth of the hero's pas-
  sage is that it shall serve as a general pattern for men and
  women, wherever they may stand along the scale. Therefore it is
  formulated in the broadest terms. The individual has only to dis-
  cover his own position with reference to this general human for-
  mula, and let it then assist him past his restricting walls. Who
  and where are his ogres"? Those are the reflections of the un-
  solved enigmas of his own humanity. What are his ideals'? Those
  are the symptoms of his grasp of life.
  In the office of the modern psychoanalyst, the stages of the
  hero-adventure come to light again in the dreams and hallucina-
  tions of the patient. Depth beyond depth of self-ignorance is
  fathomed, with the analyst in the role of the helper, the initiatory
  priest. And always, after the first thrills of getting under way,
  the adventure develops into a journey of darkness, horror, dis-
  gust, and phantasmagoric fears.
  The crux of the curious difficulty lies in the fact that our con-
  scious views of what life ought to be seldom correspond to what
  111
  
  INITIATION
  life really is. Generally we refuse to admit within ourselves, or
  within our friends, the fullness of that pushing, self-protective,
  malodorous, carnivorous, lecherous fever which is the very na-
  ture of the organic cell. Rather, we tend to perfume, whitewash,
  and reinterpret; meanwhile imagining that all the flies in the
  ointment, all the hairs in the soup, are the faults of some un-
  pleasant someone else.
  But when it suddenly dawns on us, or is forced to our atten-
  tion, that everything we think or do is necessarily tainted with
  the odor of the flesh, then, not uncommonly, there is experienced
  a moment of revulsion: life, the acts of life, the organs of life,
  woman in particular as the great symbol of life, become intolera-
  ble to the pure, the pure, pure soul.
  O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
  Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
  Or that the Everlasting had notfix'd
  His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! 0 God! God!
  So exclaims the great spokesman of this moment, Hamlet:
  How weary, stale, fiat, and unprofitable
  Seem to me all the uses of this world!
  Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an umueeded garden,
  That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
  Possess it merely. That it should come to this!39
  The innocent delight of Oedipus in his first possession of the
  queen turns to an agony of spirit when he learns who the woman is.
  Like Hamlet, he is beset by the moral image of the father. Like
  Hamlet, he turns from the fair features of the world to search the
  darkness for a higher kingdom than this of the incest and adul-
  tery ridden, luxurious and incorrigible mother. The seeker of the
  life beyond life must press beyond her, surpass the temptations
  of her call, and soar to the immaculate ether beyond.
  For a God called him —called him many times,
  From many sides at once: "Ho, Oedipus,
  ™ Hamlet, I, ii, 129-137.
  WOMAN AS THE TEMPI'K E S S
  Thou Oedipus, why are we tarrying?
  It is full long that thou art stayed for; come!"™
  Where this Oedipus-Hamlet revulsion remains to beset the
  soul, there the world, the body, and woman above all, become
  the symbols no longer of victory but of defeat. A monastic-
  puritanical, world-negating ethical system then radically and im-
  mediately transfigures all the images of myth. No longer can the
  hero rest in innocence with the goddess of the flesh; for she is
  become the queen of sin.
  "So long as a man has any regard for this corpse-like body,1'
  writes the Hindu monk Shankaracharya, "he is impure, and
  suffers from his enemies as well as from birth, disease and death;
  but when he thinks of himself as pure, as the essence of the
  Good, and the Immovable, he becomes free. . . . Throw far away
  this limitation of a body which is inert and filthy by nature.
  Think of it no longer. For a thing that has been vomited (as you
  should vomit forth your body) can excite only disgust when it is
  recalled again to mind.1140
  This is a point of view familiar to the West from the lives and
  writings of the saints.
  "When Saint Peter observed that his daughter, Petronilla, was
  too beautiful, he obtained from God the favor that she should fall
  sick of a fever. Now one day when his disciples were by him,
  Titus said to him: 'You who cure all maladies, why do you not
  fix it so that Petronilla can get up from her bed?' And Peter
  replied to him: 'Because I am satisfied with her condition as it
  is.' This was by no means as much as to say he had not the
  power to cure her; for, immediately, he said to her: 'Get up,
  Petronilla, and make haste to wait on us.1 The young girl, cured,
  got up and came to serve them. But when she had finished, her
  father said to her: 'Petronilla, return to your bed!' She returned,
  and was straightway taken again with the fever. And later, when
  M Oedipus Coloneus, 1615-17.
  40 Shankaracharya, Vhxkachudumani, 396 and 414, translated by Swami
  Madhavananda (Mayavati. 1932).
  
  INITIATION
  she had begun to be perfect in her love of God, her father re-
  stored her to perfect health.
  "At that time a noble gentleman named Flaccus, struck by her
  beauty, came to bid for her hand in marriage. She replied: 'If
  you wish to marry me, send a group of young girls to conduct me
  to your home!' But when these had arrived, Petronilla directly
  set herself to fast and pray. Receiving communion, she lay back
  in her bed, and after three days rendered her soul up to God."41
  "As a child Saint Bernard of Clairvaux suffered from head-
  aches. A young woman came to visit him one day, to soothe his
  sufferings with her songs. But the indignant child drove her
  from the room. And God rewarded him for his zeal; for he got
  up from his bed immediately, and was cured.
  "Now the ancient enemy of man, perceiving little Bernard to
  be of such wholesome disposition, exerted himself to set traps
  for his chastity. When the child, however, at the instigation of
  the devil, one day had stood staring at a lady for some time, sud-
  denly he blushed for himself, and entered the icy water of a pond
  in penance, where he remained until frozen to his bones. An-
  other time, when he was asleep, a young girl came naked to his
  bed. Bernard, becoming aware of her, yielded in silence the part
  of the bed in which he lay, and rolling over to the other side re-
  turned to steep. Having stroked and caressed him for some time,
  the unhappy creaUire presently was so taken with shame, in
  spite of her shamelessness, that she got up and fled, full of hor-
  ror at herself and of admiration for the young man.
  "Still again, when Bernard together with some friends one
  time had accepted the hospitality of the home of a certain wealthy
  lady, she, observing his beauty, was seized with a passion to
  sleep with him. She arose that night from her bed, and came and
  placed herself at the side of her guest. But he, the minute he felt
  someone close to him, began to shout: 'Thief! Thief!' Immedi-
  ately thereupon, the woman scurried away, the entire house was
  " Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, LXXVI, "Saint Pctronitla, Vir-
  gin." (Compare the tale of Daphne, p. 56 supra.) The later Church, unwilling ti
  think of St. Peter as having begotten a child, speaks of Petronilla as his ward.
  WOMAN AS THE TEMPTHKSS
  on its feet, lanterns were lit, and everybody hunted around for
  the burglar. But since none was found, all returned to their beds
  and to sleep, with the sole exception of this lady, who, unable to
  close her eyes, again arose and slipped into the bed of her guest.
  Bernard began to shout: 'Thief!' And again the alarms and
  investigations! After that, even a third time this lady brought
  herself to be spurned in like fashion; so that finally she gave up
  her wicked project, out of either fear or discouragement. On the
  road next day the companions of Bernard asked him why he had
  had so many dreams about thieves. And he replied to them: 'I
  had really to repel the attacks of a thief; for my hostess tried to
  rob me of a treasure, which, had I lost it, I should never have
  been able to regain.'
  "All of which convinced Bernard that it was a pretty risky
  thing to live together with the serpent. So he planned to be quit
  of the world and enter the monastic order of the Cistercians."42
  Not even monastery walls, however, not even the remoteness
  of the desert, can defend against the female presences; for as
  long as the hermit's flesh clings to his bones and pulses warm,
  the images of life are alert to storm his mind. Saint Anthony,
  practising his austerities in the Egyptian Thebaid, was troubled
  by voluptuous hallucinations perpetrated by female devils at-
  tracted to his magnetic solitude. Apparitions of this order, with
  loins of irresistible attraction and breasts bursting to be touched,
  are known to all the hermit-resorts of history. uAh! bel ermitel bel
  ermite! . . . Si tu posais ton doigt sur mon epaule, ce serait comme
  une trainee de feu dans tes veines. La possession de la moindre
  place de mon corps t'emplira d'une joieplus ve'he'mente que la con-
  quete d'un empire. Avance tes l&ures. . . . "4S
  Writes the New Englander, Cotton Mather: "The Wilderness
  through which we are passing to the Promised Land is all filled
  with Fiery flying serpents. But, blessed be God, none of them
  have hitherto so fastened upon us as to confound us utterly!
  All our way to Heaven ties by Dens of Lions and the Mounts of
  -Ibid., CXV1L
  13 Gustavo Flaubert, La tentation dc Saint Antoine (La reine de Saba).
  
  I N I T I A T I O N
  Leopards; there are incredible Droves of Devils in our way 
  We
  are poor travellers in a world which is as well the Devil's Field,
  as the Devil's Gaol; a world in which every Nook whereof, the
  Devil is encamped with Bands of Robbers to pester all that have
  their faces looking Zionward."44
  Atonement with the Father
  "The Bow of God's Wrath is bent, and the Arrow made ready
  on the String; and Justice bends the Arrow at your Heart, and
  strains the Bow; and it is nothing but the mere Pleasure of God,
  and that of an angry God, without any Promise or Obligation at
  all, that keeps the Arrow one Moment from being made drunk
  with your Blood. . . . "
  With these words Jonathan Edwards threatened the hearts of
  his New England congregation by disclosing to them, unmiti-
  gated, the ogre aspect of the father. He riveted them to the pews
  with images of the mythological ordeal; for though the Puritan
  prohibited the graven image, yet he allowed himself the verbal.
  "The Wrath," Jonathan Edwards thundered, "the Wrath of God
  is like great Waters that are dammed for the present; they in-
  crease more and more, and rise higher and higher till an Outlet
  is given; and the longer the Stream is stopt, the more rapid and
  mighty is its Course when once it is let loose. 'Tis true, that Judg-
  ment against your evil Works has not been executed hitherto;
  the Floods of God's Vengeance have been withheld; but your
  Guilt in the mean Time is constantly increasing, and you are
  every Day treasuring up more Wrath; the Waters are continu-
  ally rising, and waxing more and more mighty; and there is noth-
  ing but the mere Pleasure of God that holds the Waters back
  " Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World (Boston, 1693), p. 63.
  ATONEMENT WITH THE FATHER
  that are unwilling to be stopt, and press hard to go forward; if
  God should only withdraw his Hand from the Flood-gate, it
  would immediately fly open, and the fiery Floods of the Fierce-
  ness of the Wrath of God would rush forth with inconceivable
  Fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent Power; and if
  your Strength were Ten thousand Times greater than it is, yea
  Ten thousand Times greater than the Strength of the stoutest,
  sturdiest Devil in Hell, it would be nothing to withstand or en-
  dure it. . . . 'n
  Having threatened with the element water, Pastor Jonathan
  next turns to the image of fire. "The God that holds you over the
  Pit of Hell, much as one holds a Spider or some lothsome Insect
  over the Fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his Wrath
  towards you burns like Fire; he looks upon you as Worthy of
  nothing else but to be cast into the Fire; he is of purer Eyes than
  to bear to have you in his Sight; you are Ten thousand Times so
  abominable in his Eyes as the most hateful venomous Serpent is
  in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stub-
  born Rebel did his Prince; and yet 'tis nothing but his Hand
  that holds you from falling into the Fire every Moment. . . .
  "O Sinner! . . . You hang by a slender Thread, with the Flames
  of Divine Wrath flashing about it, and ready every Moment to
  singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no Interest in any
  Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to
  keep off the Flames of Wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that
  you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to
  spare you one Moment. . . . "
  But now, at last, the great resolving image of the second
  birth—only for a moment, however:
  "Thus are all you that never passed under a great Change of
  Heart, by the mighty Power of the Spirit of GOD upon your
  souls, all that were never born again, and made new Creatures,
  and raised from being dead in Sin, to a State of new, and before
  altogether unexperienced Light and Life (however you may have
  reformed your Life in many Things, and may have had religious
  Affections, and may keep up a Form of Religion in your Families
  and Closets, and in the House of God, and may be strict in it)
  
  INITIATION
  you are thus in the Hands of an angry God; 'tis nothing but his
  mere Pleasure that keeps you from being this Moment swal-
  lowed up in everlasting Destruction."*'1
  "God's mere pleasure," which defends the sinner from the
  arrow, the flood, and the flames, is termed in the traditional vo-
  cabulary of Christianity God's "mercy"; and "the mighty power
  of the spirit of God," by which the heart is changed, that is
  God's "grace." In most mythologies, the images of mercy and
  grace are rendered as vividly as those of justice and wrath, so
  that a balance is maintained, and the heart is buoyed rather than
  scourged along its way. "Fear not!" says the hand gesture of the
  god Shiva, as he dances before his devotee the dance of the uni-
  versal destruction.46 "Fear not, for all rests well in God. The
  forms that come and go—and of which your body is but one-
  are the flashes of my dancing limbs. Know Me in all, and of
  what shall you be afraid?" The magic of the sacraments (made
  ;-; Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Boston, 1742).
  40 Plate IX. The symbolism of this eloquent image has been well expounded
  by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Siva (New York, 1917).
  pp. 56-66, and by Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and
  Civilization, pp. 151-175. Briefly: the extended right hand holds the drum, the
  beat of which is the beat of time, time being the first principle of creation; the
  extended left holds the flame, which is the flame of the destruction of the cre-
  ated world; the second right hand is held in the gesture of "fear not," while the
  second left, pointing to the lifted left foot, is held in a position symbolizing
  "elephant1' (the elephant is the "breaker of the way through the jungle of the
  world," i.e., the divine guide): the right foot is planted on the back of a dwarf,
  the demon "Non-knowing," which signifies the passage of souls from God into
  matter, but the left is lifted, showing the release of the soul: the left is the foot
  to which the "elephant-hand" is pointing and supplies the reason for the assur-
  ance, "Fear not." The God's head is balanced, serene and still, in the midst of
  the dynamism of creation and destruction which is symbolized by the rocking
  arms and the rhythm of the slowly stamping right heel. This means that at the
  center all is still. Shiva's right earring is a man's, his left, i woman's; for the
  God includes and is beyond the pairs of opposites. Shiva's facial expression is
  neither sorrowful nor joyous, but is the visage of the Unmoved Mover, beyond,
  yet present within, the world's bliss and pain. The wildly streaming locks rep-
  resent the long-untended hair of the Indian Yogi, now flying in the dance of
  life; for the presence known in the joys and sorrows of "life, and that found
  non-dual, Being-Consciousness-Uliss. Shiva's bracelets, arm sands, ankle rings.
  L18
  ATONEMENT WITH THE FATHER
  effective through the passion of Jesus Christ, or by virtue of the
  meditations of the Buddha), the protective power of primitive
  amulets and charms, and the supernatural helpers of the myths
  and fairy tales of the world, are mankind's assurances that the
  arrow, the flames, and the flood are not as brutal as they seem.
  For the ogre aspect of the father is a reflex of the victim's own
  ego —derived from the sensational nursery scene that has been
  and brahminical thread,* are living serpents. This means that he is made beautiful
  by the Serpent Power—the mysterious Creative Energy of God, which is the ma-
  terial and the formal cause of his own self-manifestation in, and as, the universe
  with all its beings. In Shiva's hair may be seen a skull, symbolic of death, the fore-
  head-ornament of the Lord of Destruction, as well as a crescent moon, symbolic of
  birth and increase, which are his other boons to the world. Also, there is in his hair
  the flower of a datura—from which plant an intoxicant is prepared (compare the
  wine of Dionysos and the wine of the Mass). A little image of the goddess Ganges
  is hidden in Ms locks; for it is he who receives on his head the impact of the de-
  scent of the divine Ganges from heaven, letting the life- and salvation-be storing
  waters then flow gently to the earth for the physical and spiritual refreshment of
  mankind. The dance posture of the God may be visualized as the symbolic syllable
  AUM a^t or £b which is the verbal equivalent of the four states of consciousness
  and their fields of experience. (A: waking consciousness; U: dream consciousness;
  M: dreamless sleep: the silence around the sacred syllable is the Unmanifest Tran-
  scendent. For a discussion of this syllable, cf, infra, pp. 245-247, and note 16,
  p. 257.) Tlie God is thus within the worshiper as we!! as without.
  Such a figure illustrates the function and value of a graven image, and show-s
  why long sermons are unnecessary among idol-worshipers. The devotee is per-
  mitted to soak in the meaning of'the divine symbol in deep silence and in his
  own good time. Furthermore, just as the god wears arm bands and ankle rings.
  so does the devotee; and these mean what the god's mean. They are made of
  gold instead of serpents, gold (the metal that does not corrode) symbolizing
  immortality; i.e., immortality is the mysterious creative energy of God, which
  is the beauty of the body.
  Many other details of life and local custom are similarly duplicated, inter-
  preted, and thus validated, in the details of the anthropomorphic idols. In this
  way, the whole of life is made into a support for meditation. One lives in the
  niiclst ot a silent sermon all the time.
  * The brahminical thread is a cotton thread worn by the members of the three
  upper castes (the so-called twice-born) of India. It is passed over the head and
  right arm, so diat it rests on the left shoulder and runs across the body (chest and
  back) to the right hip. This symbolizes the second birth of the twice-born, the
  thread itself representing the threshold, or sun door, so that the twice-born is
  dwelling at once in time and eternity.
  U 9
  
  left behind, but projected before; and the fixating idolatry of
  that pedagogical nonthing is itself the fault that keeps one steeped
  in a sense of sin, sealing the potentially adult spirit from a better
  balanced, more realistic view of the father, and therewith of
  the world. Atonement (at-one-ment) consists in no more than
  the abandonment of that self-generated double monster—the
  dragon thought to be God (superego)4' and the dragon thought
  to be Sin (repressed id). But this requires an abandonment of
  the attachment to ego itself; and that is what is difficult. One
  must have a faith that the father is merciful, and then a reliance
  on that mercy. Therewith, the center of belief is transferred out-
  side of the bedeviling god's tight scaly ring, and the dreadful
  ogres dissolve.
  It is in this ordeal that the hero may derive hope and assur-
  ance from the helpful female figure, by whose magic (pollen
  charms or power of intercession) he is protected through all the
  frightening experiences of the father's ego-shattering initiation.
  For if it is impossible to trust the terrifying father-face, then
  one's faith must be centered elsewhere (Spider Woman, Blessed
  Mother); and with that reliance for support, one endures the
  crisis—only to find, in the end, that the father and mother reflect
  each other, and are in essence the same.
  When the Twin Warriors of the Navaho, having departed
  from Spider Woman with her advice and protective charms, had
  made their perilous way between the rocks that crush, through
  the reeds that cut to pieces, and the cactus plants that tear to
  pieces, and then across the boiling sands, they came at last to
  the house of the Sun, their father. The door was guarded by
  two bears. These arose and growled; but the words that Spider
  Woman had taught the boys made the animals crouch down
  again. After the bears, there threatened a pair of serpents, then
  winds, then lightnings: the guardians of the ultimate thresh-
  old.48 All were readily appeased, however, with the words of
  the prayer.
  *; Or "interego" (see supra, p. 75, note 45).
  ia Compare the numerous thresholds crossed by Inanna, supra, pp. 96—95
  ATONEMENT WITH THE FATHER
  Built of turquoise, the house of the Sun was great and square,
  and it stood on the shore of a mighty water. The boys entered it,
  and they beheld a woman sitting in the west, two handsome young
  men in the south, two handsome young women in the north. The
  young women stood up without a word, wrapped the newcomers
  in four sky-coverings, and placed them on a shelf. The boys lay
  quietly. Presently a rattle hanging over the door shook four times
  and one of the young women said, "Our father is coming."
  The bearer of the sun strode into his home, removed the sun
  from his back, and hung it on a peg on the west wall of the
  room, where it shook and clanged for some time, going "tla, tla,
  tla, tla.1" He turned to the older woman and demanded angrily:
  "Who were those two that entered here today?" But the woman
  did not reply. The young people looked at one another. The
  bearer of the sun put his question angrily four times before the
  woman said to him at last: "It would be well for you not to say
  too much. Two young men came hither today, seeking their fa-
  ther. You have told me that you pay no visits when you go
  abroad, and that you have met no woman but me. Whose sons,
  then, are these?" She pointed to the bundle on the shelf, and the
  children smiled significantly at one another.
  The bearer of the sun took the bundle from the shelf, unrolled
  the four robes (the robes of dawn, blue sky, yellow evening
  light, and darkness), and the boys fell out on the floor. He im-
  mediately seized them. Fiercely, he flung them at some great
  sharp spikes of white shell that stood in the east. The boys
  tightly clutched their life-feathers and bounded back. The man
  hurled them, equally, at spikes of turquoise in the south, haliotis
  in the west, and black rock in the north.49 The boys always
  v-' Four symbolical colors, representing the points of the compass, play a
  prominent role in Navaho iconography and cult. They are white, blue, yellow,
  and black, signifying, respecti\ely, easl, south, west, and north. These corre-
  spond to the red, white, Ejreen, and black on the hat of the African trickster di-
  vinity Edshu (see p. 42, supra); for the House of the Father, like the Father
  himself, symbolizes the Center.
  The Twin Heroes arc tested against the symbols of the four directions, to dis-
  cover whether they partake of the faults and limitations of any one of the quarters.
  
  INITIATION
  clutched their life-feathers tightly and came bounding back. "I wish
  it were indeed true," said the Sun, "that they were my children."
  The terrible father assayed then to steam the boys to death in
  an overheated sweatlodge. They were aided by the winds, who
  provided a protected retreat within the lodge in which to hide.
  "Yes, these are my children," said the Sun when they emerged —
  but that was only a ruse; for he was still planning to trick them.
  The final ordeal was a smoking-pipe filled with poison. A spiny
  caterpillar warned the boys and gave them something to put into
  their mouths. They smoked the pipe without harm, passing it
  back and forth to one another till it was finished. They even said
  it tasted sweet. The Sun was proud. He was completely satisfied.
  "Now, my children," he asked, "what is it you want from me?
  Why do you seek me?" The Twin Heroes had won the full
  confidence of the Sun, their father.70
  The need for great care on the part of the father, admitting to
  his house only those who have been thoroughly tested, is illus-
  trated by the unhappy exploit of the lad Phaethon, described in
  a famous tale of the Greeks. Born of a virgin in Ethiopia and
  taunted by his playmates to search the question of his father, he
  set off across Persia and India to find the palace of the Sun—for
  his mother had told him that his father was Phoebus, the god
  who drove the solar chariot.
  "The palace of the Sun stood high on lofty columns, bright
  with glittering gold and bronze that shone like fire. Gleaming
  ivory crowned the gables above; the double folding doors were
  radiant with burnished silver. And the workmanship was more
  beautiful than the materials."
  Climbing the steep path, Phaethon arrived beneath the roof.
  And he discovered Phoebus sitting on an emerald throne, sur-
  rounded by the Hours and the Seasons, and by Day, Month,
  Year, and Century. The bold youngster had to halt at the thresh-
  old, his mortal eyes unable to bear the light; but the father
  gently spoke to him across the hall.
  }, op. cit., pp. 110-113.
  ATONEMENT WITH THE FATHER
  "Why have you come?" the father asked. "What do you seek,
  O Phaethon —a son no father need deny'?"
  The lad respectfully replied: "O my father (if thou grantest me
  the right to use that name)! Phoebus! Light of the entire world!
  Grant me a proof, my father, by which all may know me for thy
  true son."
  The great god set his glittering crown aside and bade the boy
  approach. He gathered him into his arms. Then he promised,
  sealing the promise with a binding oath, that any proof the lad
  desired would be granted.
  What Phaethon desired was his father's chariot, and the right
  to drive the winged horses for a day.
  "Such a request," said the father, "proves my promise to have
  been rashly made." He put the boy a little away from him and
  sought to dissuade him from the demand, "In your ignorance,1'
  said he, "you are asking for more than can be granted even to
  the gods. Each of the gods may do as he will, and yet none, save
  myself, has the power to take his place in my chariot of fire; no,
  not even Zeus."
  Phoebus reasoned. Phaethon was adamant. Unable to retract
  the oath, the father delayed as long as time would allow, but was
  finally forced to conduct his stubborn son to the prodigious
  chariot: its axle of gold and the pole of gold, its wheels with
  golden tires and a ring of silver spokes. The yoke was set with
  chrysolites and jewels. The Hours were already leading the four
  horses from their lofty stalls, breathing fire and filied with am-
  brosial food. They put upon them the clanking bridles; the great
  animals pawed at the bars. Phoebus anointed Phaethon's face
  with an ointment to protect it against the flames and then placed
  on his head the radiant crown.
  "If, at least, you can obey your father's warnings," the divinity
  advised, "spare the lash and hold tightly to the reins. The horses
  go fast enough of themselves. And do not follow the straight
  road directly through the five zones of heaven, but turn off at the
  fork to the left—the tracks of my wheels you will clearly see.
  Furthermore, so that the sky and earth may have equal heat, be
  careful to go neither too high nor too low; for if you go too high
  123
  
  you will burn up the skies, and if you go too low ignite the earth.
  In the middle is the safest path.
  "But hurry! While I am speaking, dewy Night has reached
  her goal on the western shore. We are summoned. Behold, the
  dawn is glowing. Boy, may P'ortune aid and conduct you better
  than you can guide yourself. Here, grasp the reins."
  Tethys, the goddess of the sea, had dropped the bars, and the
  horses, with a jolt, abruptly started; cleaving with their feet
  the clouds; beating the air with their wings; outrunning all the
  winds that were rising from the same eastern quarter. Immedi-
  ately—the chariot was so light without its accustomed weight —
  the car began to rock about like a ship tossing without ballast on
  the waves. The driver, panic-stricken, forgot the reins, and knew
  nothing of the road. Wildly mounting, the team grazed the
  heights of the sky and startled the remotest constellations. The
  Great and Little Bear were scorched. The Serpent lying curled
  about the polar stars grew warm, and with the heat grew dan-
  gerously fierce. Bootes took flight, encumbered with his plough.
  The Scorpion struck with his tail.
  The chariot, having roared for some time through unknown
  regions of the air, knocking against the stars, next plunged down
  crazily to the clouds just above the ground; and the Moon be-
  held, in amazement, her brother's horses running below her
  own. The clouds evaporated. The earth burst into flame. Moun-
  tains blazed; cities perished with their walls; nations were reduced
  to ashes. That was the time the peoples of Ethiopia became
  black; for the blood was drawn to the surface of their bodies by
  the heat. Libya became a desert. The Nile fled in terror to the
  ends of the earth and hid its head, and it is hidden yet.
  Mother Earth, shielding her scorched brow with her hand,
  choking with hot smoke, lifted her great voice and called upon
  Jove, the father of all things, to save his world. "Look around!"
  she cried at him. "The heavens are asmoke from pole to pole.
  Great Jove, if the sea perish, and the land, and all the realms of
  the sky, then we arc back again in the chaos of the beginning!
  Take thought! Take thought for the safety of our universe! Save
  from the flames whatever yet remains!"
  ATONEMENT WITH T H F. FATHER
  Jove, the Almighty Father, hastily summoned the gods to wit-
  ness that unless some measure were quickly taken all was lost.
  Thereupon he hurried to the zenith, took a thunderbolt in his
  right hand, and flung it from beside his ear. The car shattered;
  the horses, terrified, broke loose; Phaethon, fire raging in his
  hair, descended like a falling star. And the river Po received his
  burning frame.
  The Naiads of that land consigned his body to a tomb, where-
  upon this epitaph:
  Here Phaethon lies: in Phoebus' car he fared,
  And though he greatly failed, more greatly dared.51
  This tale of indulgent parenthood illustrates the antique idea
  that when the roles of life are assumed by the improperly initi-
  ated, chaos supervenes. When the child outgrows the popular
  idyl of the mother breast and turns to face the world of special-
  ized adult action, it passes, spiritually, into the sphere of the
  father—who becomes, for his son, the sign of the future task,
  and for his daughter, of the future husband. Whether he knows
  it or not, and no matter what his position in society, the father is
  the initiating priest through whom the young being passes on
  into the larger world. And just as, formerly, the mother repre-
  sented the "good" and "evil," so now does he, but with this
  complication —that there is a new element of rivalry in the pic-
  ture: the son against the father for the mastery of the universe,
  and the daughter against the mother to be the mastered world.
  The traditional idea of initiation combines an introduction of
  the candidate into the techniques, duties, and prerogatives of his
  vocation with a radical readjustment of his emotional relation-
  ship to the parental images. The mystagogue (father or father-
  substitute) is to entrust the symbols of office only to a son who has
  been effectually purged of all inappropriate infantile cathexes—for
  whom the just, impersonal exercise of the powers will not be ren-
  dered impossible by unconscious (or perhaps even conscious and
  rationalized) motives of self-aggrandizement, personal preference,
  ">' Ovid, up. cit., II (adapted from Miller; Loeb Library).
  125
  
  I N I T 1 A T I O N
  or resentment. Ideally, the invested one has been divested of his
  mere humanity and is representative of an impersonal cosmic
  force. He is the twice-born: he has become himself the father.
  And he is competent, consequently, now to enact himself the
  role of the initiator, the guide, the sun door, through whom one
  may pass from the infantile illusions of "good" and "evil" to an
  experience of the majesty of cosmic law, purged of hope and fear,
  and at peace in the understanding of the revelation of being.
  "Once I dreamed," declared a little boy, "that I was captured
  by cannon balls [sic]. They all began to jump and yell. I was
  surprised to see myself in my own parlor. There was a fire, and a
  kettle was over it full of boiling water. They threw me into it
  and once in a while the cook used to come over and stick a fork
  into me to see if I was cooked. Then he took me out and gave me
  to the chief, who was just going to bite me when I woke up."'2
  "I dreamed that I was at table with my wife," states a civilized
  gentleman. "During the course of the meal I reached over and took
  our second child, a baby, and in a matter-of-fact fashion proceeded
  to put him into a green soup bowl, full of hot water or some hot
  liquid; for he came out cooked thoroughly, like chicken fricassee.
  "I laid the viand on a bread board at the table and cut it up
  with my knife. When we had eaten all of it except a small part
  like a chicken gizzard I looked up, worried, to my wife and asked
  her, 'Are you sure you wanted me to do this? Did you intend to
  have him for supper"?'
  "She answered, with a domestic frown, 'After he was so well
  cooked, there was nothing else to do.' I was just about to finish
  the last piece, when I woke up."S3
  This archetypal nightmare of the ogre father is made actual in
  the ordeals of primitive initiation. The boys of the Australian
  Murngin tribe, as we have seen, are first frightened and sent run-
  ning to their mothers. The Great Father Snake is calling for their
  foreskins.34 This places the women in the role of protectresses.
  i( Wood, op. cit.
  j4 Supra, p. 8.
  pp. 218-219.
  ATONEMENT WITH THE FATHER
  A prodigious horn is blown, named Yurlunggur, which is sup-
  posed to be the call of the Great Father Snake, who has emerged
  from his hole. When the men come for the boys, the women
  grab up spears and pretend not only to fight but also to wail and
  cry, because the little fellows are going to be taken away and
  "eaten." The men's triangular dancing ground is the body of the
  Great Father Snake. There the boys are shown, during many
  nights, numerous dances symbolical of the various totem ances-
  tors, and are taught the myths that explain the existing order of
  the world. Also, they are sent on a long journey to neighboring
  and distant clans, imitative of the mythological wanderings of
  the phallic ancestors.55 In this way, "within" the Great Father
  Snake as it were, they are introduced to an interesting new ob-
  ject world that compensates them for their loss of the mother;
  and the male phallus, instead of the female breast, is made the
  central point (axis mundi) of the imagination.
  The culminating instruction of the long series of rites is the
  release of the boy's own hero-penis from the protection of its
  foreskin, through the frightening and painful attack upon it of
  the circumciser.1'' Among the Arunta, for example, the sound of
  the bull-roarers is heard from all sides when the moment has ar-
  rived for this decisive break from the past. It is night, and in the
  weird light of the fire suddenly appear the circumciser and his
  assistant. The noise of the bull-roarers is the voice of the great
  demon of the ceremony, and the pair of operators are its appari-
  tion. With their beards thrust into their mouths, signifying anger,
  their legs widely extended, and their arms stretched forward, the
  " W. Lloyd Warner, A Black Civilization (New York and London: Harper
  and Brothers, 1937], pp. 260-285.
  •"'' "The father [i.e., circumciser] is the one who separates the child from the
  mother," writes Dr. Rohcim. "What is cut off the boy is really the mother. . . .
  The glans in the foreskin is the child in the mother" (Geza Roheim, The Eter-
  nal Ones of the Dream, pp. 72-73].
  It is interesting to note the continuance to this day of the rite of circumcision
  in the Hebrew and Mohammedan cults, where the feminine element has been
  scrupulously purged from the official, strictly monotheistic mythology. "God
  frn'^ivrth noi lin MM nt 1'imiij^ otli'.-i s^iicK with Him," we read in the Kin'an.
  "The Pagans, leaving Allah, call but upon female deities" (Koran, 4:116, 117).
  127
  
  I N I T I A T I O N
  two men stand perfectly still, the actual operator in front, hold-
  ing in his right hand the small flint knife with which the operation
  is to be conducted, and his assistant pressing close up behind
  him, so that the two bodies are in contact with each other. Then
  a man approaches through the firelight, balancing a shield on his
  head and at the same time snapping the thumb and first finger of
  each hand. The bull-roarers are making a tremendous din,
  which can be heard by the women and children in their distant
  camp. The man with the shield on his head goes down on one
  knee just a little in front of the operator, and immediately one of
  the boys is lifted from the ground by a number of his uncles,
  who carry him feet foremost and place him on the shield, while
  in deep, loud tones a chant is thundered forth by all the men.
  The operation is swiftly performed, the fearsome figures retire
  immediately from the lighted area, and the boy, in a more or less
  dazed condition, is attended to, and congratulated by the men to
  whose estate he has now just arrived. "You have done well,"
  they say; "you did not cry out.1157
  The native Australian mythologies teach that the first initiation
  rites were carried out in such a way tiiat all the young men were
  killed-58 The ritual is tiius shown to be, among other things, a dra-
  matized expression of the Oedipal aggression of the elder genera-
  tion; and the circumcision, a mitigated castration.59 But the rites
  provide also for the cannibal, patricidal impulse of die younger,
  rising group of males, and at the same time reveal the benign self-
  giving aspect of the archetypal father; for during the long period of
  symbolical instruction, there is a time when the initiates are forced
  to live only on the fresh-drawn blood of the older men. "The na-
  tives," we are told, "are particularly interested in the Christian com-
  munion rite, and having heard about it from missionaries they
  compare it to the blood-drinking rituals of their own."150
  •; Sir Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Arunta (London: Macmillan
  and Co., 1927), Vol. I. pp. 201-203.
  58 Roheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, pp. 49 ff.
  ''* Ibid.,\>. 75.
  50 Ibid., p. 227. citing R. and C. Berndt, "A Preliminary Report of Field Work
  in the Ooldea Region, Western South Australia," Oceania, XII (1942), p. 323.
  128
  ATONEMENT WITH THE FATHER
  "In the evening the men come and take their places according
  to tribal precedence, the boy lying with his head on his father's
  thighs. He mast make no movement or he will die. The father
  blindfolds him with his hands because if the boy should witness
  the following proceedings it is believed that his father and mother
  will both die. The wooden vessel or a bark vessel is placed near
  one of the boy's mother's brothers, who, having tied his arm
  lightly, pierces the upper part with a nosebone and holds the
  arm over the vessel until a certain amount of blood has been taken.
  The man next to him pierces his arm, and so on, until the vessel
  is filled. It may hold two quarts or so. The boy takes a long
  draught of the blood. Should his stomach rebel, the father holds
  his throat to prevent his ejecting the blood, because if it happens
  his father, mother, sisters, and brothers would all die. The remain-
  der of the blood is thrown over him.
  "From this time on, sometimes for a whole moon, the boy is
  allowed no other food than human blood, Yamminga, the mythi-
  cal ancestor, having made this law. . . . Sometimes the blood is
  dried in the vessel and then the guardian cuts it in sections with
  his nose bone, and it is eaten by the boy, the two end sections
  first. The sections must be regularly divided or the boy will die."61
  Frequently the men who give their blood faint and remain in a
  state of coma for an hour or more because of exhaustion/'2 "In
  former times," writes another observer, "this blood (drunk cere-
  monially by the novices) was obtained from a man who was
  killed for the purpose, and portions of his body were eaten."63
  "Here," comments Dr. Roheim, "we come as near to a ritual rep-
  resentation of the killing and eating of the primal father as we
  can ever get."64
  (>1 Roheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, pp. 227-228, citing D. Bates, The
  Passing of the Aborigines (1939), pp. 41-43.
  fiJ Roheim, The Eternal Ones of the- Dream, p. 231.
  '" R. H. Mathews, "The Walloonggura Ceremony," Queensland (ieogmphi-
  cal Journal, N. S., XV (1899-1900), p. 70; cited by Roheim, The Eternal Ones
  of the Dream, p. 232.
  04 In one recorded case, two of the boys looked vip when they were not sup-
  posed to. "Then the old men went forward, each with a stoni1 knite in hand.
  Stooping over the two boys they opened veins in each. Out flowed the blood,
  129
  
  I N IT1AT1ON
  There can be no doubt that no matter how unilluminatcd the
  stark-naked Australian savages may seem to us, their symbolical
  ceremonials represent a survival into modern times of an incredi-
  bly old system of spiritual instruction, the far-flung evidences of
  which are to be found not only in all the lands and islands bor-
  dering the Indian Ocean, but also among the remains of the ar-
  chaic centers of what we tend to regard as our own very special
  brand of civilization.65 Just how much the old men know, it is
  difficult to judge from the published accounts of our Occidental
  observers. But it can be seen from a comparison of the figures of
  Australian ritual with those familiar to us from higher cultures,
  that the great themes, the ageless archetypes, and their opera-
  tion upon the soul remain the same.
  and the other men aU raised a death cry. The boys were lifeless. The old wirree-
  nuns (medicine men). clipping their stone knives in the blood, touched with them
  the lips of all present. . . . The bodies of the Boorah victims were cooked. Each
  man who had been to five Boorahs ate a piece of this flesh; no others were allowed
  to see this done" (K. Langloh Farker, l~hs Euahlayi Tribe, 1905, pp. 72-73; cited
  by Roheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, p. 232).
  ^ For an astounding revelation of the survival in contemporary Melanesia of
  a symbolic system essentially identical with that of the Egypto-Babylonian,
  Trojan-CreUm "Irdjvrmtb cim'.plex 'A the MTI'PC! niiilritniLiis] R.r... L'L Jr.bn
  Layard, Stone Men ofMalekula (London: Chatto and Windus, 1942). W. F. J.
  Knight, in his Cumaean Gates (Oxford, 1936), has discussed the evident rela-
  tionship of the Malekulan "journey of the soul to the underworld" with the
  classical descent of Aeneas, and the Babylonian of Gilgamesh. W. J. Perry.
  The Children of the Sun (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1923), thought he
  could recognize evidences of this cultuTe-continuity running all the way from
  Egypt and Sumer out through the Oceanic area" to North America. Many
  scholars have pointed out the dose correspondences between the details of the
  classical Greek and primitive Australian rites of initiation, notably Jane Harri-
  son, Themis, A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (2nd revised edi-
  tion; Cambridge University Press, 1927).
  It is still uncertain by what means and in what eras the mythological and
  cultural patterns of the various archaic civilizations may have been dissemi-
  nated to the farthest corners of the earth; yet it can be stated categorically that
  tew (if :myj <.>f the so-culled "primitive cultures'* studied b\ our anthropologist1-!
  represent autochthonous growths. They are, rather, local adaptations, provin-
  cial degenerations, and immensely old fossilizations, of folkways that were de-
  veloped in very different lands, often under much less simple circumstances,
  and by other races.
  13-
  ATONEMENT WITH THE FATHER
  Come, 0 Dithyramb™,
  Enter this my male womb.66
  This cry of Zeus, the Thunder-hurler, to the child, his son,
  Dionysos, sounds the leitmotif of the Greek mysteries of the ini-
  tiatory second birth. "And bull-voices roar thereto from some-
  where out of the unseen, fearful semblances, and from a drum an
  image as it were of thunder underground is borne on the air
  heavy with dread.1"17 The word "Dithyrambos" itself, as an epi-
  thet of the killed and resurrected Dionysos, was understood by
  the Greeks to signify "him of the double door," him who had
  survived the awesome miracle of the second birth. And we know
  that the choral songs (dithyrambs) and dark, blood-reeking rites
  in celebration of the god—associated with the renewal of vegeta-
  tion, the renewal of the moon, the renewal of the sun, the renewal
  of the soul, and solemnized at the season of the resurrection of
  the year god—represent the ritual beginnings of the Attic tragedy.
  Throughout the ancient world such myths and rites abounded:
  the deaths and resurrections of Tammuz, Adonis, Mithra, Vir-
  bius, Attis, and Osiris, and of their various animal representa-
  tives (goats and sheep, bulls, pigs, horses, fish, and birds) are
  known to every student of comparative, religion; the popular
  carnival games of the Whitsuntide Louts, Green Georges, John
  Barleycorns, and Kostrubonkos, Carrying-out -Winter, Bringing-
  in-Summer, and Killing of the Christmas Wren, have continued
  the tradition, in a mood of frolic, into our contemporary calen-
  dar;''8 and through the Christian church (in the mythology of
  the Fall and Redemption, Crucifixion and Resurrection, the
  "second birth" of baptism, the initiatory blow on the cheek at
  60 Euripides. The liacchae, 526 f.
  "7 Aeschylus, Frg. 57 (Nauck); cited by Jane Harrison (Themis, p. oij in ner
  discussion 'of the role of the bull-roarer in classical and Australian rites of initi-
  ation. For an introduction to the subject of the bull-roarer, see Andrew Lang,
  Custom OIK! \l'ith I2IKI n-.Kri"! i-cliuon; I Guidon: L,<.nit^"Li]aris. (.iri'L-n, and Co.,
  1885), pp. 29-44.
  'i8 All of these are described and discussed at length by Sir James G. Frazer
  in The Golden Bough.
  131
  s, p. 61) in her
  f 
  ii
  
  I N1T1ATION
  confirmation, the symbolical eating of the Flesh and drinking of
  the Blood) solemnly, and sometimes effectively, we are united to
  those immortal images of initiatory might, through the sacra-
  mental operation of which, man, since the beginning of his day
  on earth, has dispelled the terrors of his phenomenality and won
  through to the all-transfiguring vision of immortal being. "For if
  the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprin-
  kling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how
  much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal
  Spirit oftered himself without spot to God, purge your con-
  science from dead works to serve the living God?"61*
  There is a folktale told by the Basumbwa of East Africa, of a
  man whose dead father appeared to him, driving the cattle of
  Death, and conducted him along a path that went into the ground,
  as into a vast burrow. They came to an extensive area where
  there were some people. The father hid the son and went off to
  sleep. The Great Chief, Death, appeared the next morning. One
  side of him was beautiful; but the other side was rotten, mag-
  gots were dropping to the ground. His attendants were gather-
  ing the maggots. The attendants washed the sores, and when
  they had finished, Death said: "The one born today: if he goes
  trading, he will be robbed. The woman who conceives today:
  she will die with the child conceived. The man who cultivates
  today: his crops have perished. The one who is to go into the
  jungle has been eaten by the lion."
  Death thus pronounced the universal curse, and returned to
  rest. But the following morning, when he appeared, his atten-
  dants washed and perfumed the beautiful side, massaging it with
  oil. When they had finished, Death pronounced the blessing:
  "The one born today: may he become wealthy. May the woman
  who conceives today give birth to a child who will live to be old.
  The one born today: let him go into the market; may he strike
  good bargains; may he trade with the blind. The man who is to
  enter the jungle: may he kill game; may he discover even ele-
  phants. Because today I pronounce the benediction."
  "1J Hebrews, 9:1.3-14.
  ATONEMENT WITH THE FATHER
  The father then said to the son: "If you had arrived today,
  many things would have come into your possession. But now it
  is clear that poverty has been ordained for you. Tomorrow you
  had better go."
  And the son returned to his home.'0
  The Sun in the Underworld, Lord of the Dead, is the other
  side of the same radiant king who rules and gives the day; for
  "Who is it that sustains you from the sky and from the earth?
  And who is it that brings out the living from the dead and the
  dead from the living? And who is it that rules and regulates all
  affairs?"71 We recall the Wachaga tale of the very poor man, Kyaz-
  imba, who was transported by a crone to the zenith, where the
  Sun rests at noon;73 there the Great Chief bestowed on him
  prosperity. And we recall the trickster-god Edshu, described in
  a tale from the other coast of Africa:73 spreading strife was his
  greatest joy. These are differing views of the same dreadful Prov-
  idence. In him are contained and from him proceed the contra-
  dictions, good and evil, death and life, pain and pleasure, boons
  and deprivation. As the person of the sun door, he is the fountain-
  head of all the pairs of opposites. "With Him are the keys of the
  Unseen. ... In the end, unto Him will be your return; then will
  He show you the truth of all that ye did."'4
  The mystery of the apparently self-contradictory father is ren-
  dered tellingly in the figure of a great divinity of prehistoric
  Peru, named Viracocha. His tiara is the sun; he grasps a thun-
  derbolt in either hand; and from his eyes descend, in the form of
  tears, the rains that refresh the life of the valleys of the world.
  Viracocha is the Universal God, the creator of all things; and
  yet, in the legends of his appearances upon the earth, he is shown
  70 Le P. A. Capus des Pe res-B lanes, "Contes, Chants et Proverbes des Ba-
  sumbwa dans VAfriqiie Orientale," Zeitschrift fur afiikaniscke und oceanische
  Sprachen, Vol. Ill (Berlin, 1897), pp. 363-364.
  71 Koran, 10:31.
  '- Suprti, p. 63.
  T:> Supra, p. 42. The Basumbwa (tale of the Great Chief, Death) and the
  Wachaga (tale of Kyazimba) are East African peoples; the Yoruba (talc of
  Edshu) inhabit the West Coast colony of Nigeria.
  71 Koran, 6:59, 60.
  133
  
  I N I T I A T I O N
  wandering as a beggar, in rags and reviled. One is reminded of
  the Gospel of Mary and Joseph at the inn-doors of Bethlehem,75
  and of the classical story of the begging of Jove and Mercury at
  the home of Baucis and Philemon.76 One is reminded also of the
  unrecognized Edshu. This is a theme frequently encountered in
  mythology; its sense is caught in the words of the Koran:
  "wither-soever ye turn, there is the Presence of Allah."77
  "Though He is hidden in all things," say the Hindus, "that Soul
  shines not forth; yet He is seen by subtle seers with superior,
  subtle intellect."7a "Split the stick," runs a Gnostic aphorism,
  "and there is Jesus."
  Viracocha, therefore, in this manner of manifesting his ubiq-
  uity, participates in the character of the highest of the universal
  gods. Furthermore his synthesis of sun-god and storm-god is fa-
  miliar. We know it through the Hebrew mythology of Yahweh,
  in whom the traits of two gods are united (Yahweh, a storm-god,
  and El, a solar); it is apparent in the Navaho personification of
  the father of the Twin Warriors; it is obvious in the character
  of Zeus, as well as in the thunderbolt and halo of certain forms
  of the Buddha image. The meaning is that the grace that pours
  into the universe through the sun door is the same as the energy
  of the bolt that annihilates and is itself indestructible: the delu-
  sion-shattering light of the Imperishable is the same as the light
  that creates. Or again, in terms of a secondary polarity of nature:
  the fire blazing in the sun glows also in the fertilizing storm; the
  energy behind the elemental pair of opposites, fire and water, is
  one and the same.
  But the most extraordinary and profoundly moving of the
  traits of Viracocha, this nobly conceived Peruvian rendition of
  the universal god, is the detail that is peculiarly his own, namely
  that of the tears. The living waters are the tears of God.
  Herewith the world-discrediting insight of the monk, "All life is
  7i Luke, 2:7.
  rri Ovid, Metamorphoses, VIII, 618-724.
  "Koran, 2:115.
  7" Katha Upanishad, 3:12.
  ATONEM KN1
  VITH THE FATH ER
  sorrowful," is combined with the world-begetting affirmative of
  the father: "Life must be!" In full awareness of the life anguish
  of the creatures of his hand, in full consciousness of the roaring
  wilderness of pains, the brain-splitting fires of the deluded, self-
  ravaging, lustful, angry universe of his creation, this divinity ac-
  quiesces in the deed of supplying life to life. To withhold the
  seminal waters would be to annihilate; yet to give them forth is
  to create this world that we know. For the essence of time is
  flux, dissolution of the momentarily existent; and the essence of
  life is time. In his mercy, in his love for the forms of time, this
  demiurgic man of men yields countenance to the sea of pangs;
  but in his full awareness of what he is doing, the seminal waters
  of the life that he gives are the tears of his eyes.
  The paradox of creation, the coming of the forms of time out
  of eternity, is the germinal secret of the father. It can never be
  quite explained. Therefore, in every system of theology there is
  an umbilical point, an Achilles tendon which the finger of mother
  life has touched, and where the possibility of perfect knowledge
  has been impaired. The problem of the hero is to pierce himself
  (and therewith his world) precisely through that point; to shat-
  ter and annihilate that key knot of his limited existence.
  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 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.
  In the Biblical story of Job, the Lord makes no attempt to jus-
  tify in human or any other terms the ill pay meted out to his vir-
  tuous servant, "a simple and upright man, and fearing God, and
  avoiding evil." Nor was it for any sins of their own that Job's
  servants were slain by the Chaldean troops, his sons and daugh-
  ters crushed by a collapsing roof. When his friends arrive to
  console him, they declare, with a pious faith in God's justice,
  that Job must have done some evil to have deserved to be so
  frightfully afflicted. But the honest, courageous, horizon-searching
  
  INITIATION
  sufferer insists that his deeds have been good; whereupon the
  comforter, Elihu, charges him with blasphemy, as naming him-
  self more just than God.
  When the Lord himself answers Job out of the whirlwind, He
  makes no attempt to vindicate His work in ethical terms, but
  only magnifies His Presence, bidding Job do likewise on earth
  in human emulation of the way of heaven: "Gird up thy loins
  now like a man; I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto
  me. Wilt thou also disannul my judgment? Wilt thou condemn
  me, that thou mayst be righteous'? Hast thou an arm like God?
  or canst thou thunder with a voice like him? Deck thyself now
  with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and
  beauty. Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one
  that is proud and abase him. Look on every one that is proud, and
  bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place. Hide
  them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret. Then I
  will also confess unto thee that thine own hand can save thee.":fl
  There is no word of explanation, no mention of the dubious
  wager with Satan described in chapter one of the Rook of Job;
  only a thunder-and-lightning demonstration of the fact of facts,
  namely that man cannot measure the will of God, which derives
  from a center beyond the range of human categories. Categories,
  indeed, are totally shattered by the Almighty of the Book of Job,
  and remain shattered to the last. Nevertheless, to Job himself
  the revelation appears to have made soul-satisfying sense. He
  was a hero who, by his courage in the fiery furnace, his unreadi-
  ness to break down and grovel before a popular conception of
  the character of the All Highest, had proven himself capable of
  facing a greater revelation than the one that satisfied his friends.
  We cannot interpret his words of the last chapter as those of a
  man merely intimidated. They are the words of one who has
  seen something surpassing anything that has been said by way of
  justification. "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but
  now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent
  ATONEMENT WITH THE FATHER
  in dust and ashes."80 The pious comforters are humbled; Job is
  rewarded with a fresh house, fresh servants, and fresh daughters
  and sons. "After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and
  saw his sons, and his sons1 sons, even four generations. So Job
  died, being old and full of days."81
  For the son who has grown really to know the father, the ago-
  nies of the ordeal are readily borne; the world is no longer a vale
  of tears but a bliss-yielding, perpetual manifestation of the Pres-
  ence. Contrast with the wrath of the angry God known to .Jonathan
  Edwards and his flock, the following tender lyric from the mis-
  erable east-European ghettos of that same century:
  Oh, Lord of the Universe
  I will sing Thee a song.
  Where canst Thou be found,
  And where canst Thou not be found?
  Where Jpass—there art Thou.
  Where I remain—there, too, Thou art.
  Thou, Thou, and only Thou.
  Doth it go well— 'tis thanks to Thee.
  Doth it go ill—ah, 'tis also thanks to Thee.
  Thou art, Thou hast been, and Thou wilt be.
  Thou didst reign, Thou reignest, and Thou wilt reign.
  Thine is Heaven, Thine is Earth.
  Thoufillest the high regions,
  And Thoufillest the low regions.
  Wheresoever I turn, Thou, oh Thou, art there?2
  80 Ibid., 42:5-6.
  81 Ibid., 4-2:16-17.
  a- Leon Stein, "Hassidic Music," The Chicago Jewish Forum, Vol. II, No. 1
  (Fall, 194.3), p. 16.
  
  I N I T I A T 1 ON
  Apotheosis
  One of the most powerful and beloved of the Bodhisattvas of the
  Mahayana Buddhism of Tibet, China, and Japan is the Lotus
  Bearer, Avalokiteshvara, "The Lord Looking Down in Pity,1' so
  called because he regards with compassion all sentient creatures
  suffering the evils of existence."3 To him goes the millionfold-
  repeated prayer of the prayer wheels and temple gongs of Tibet:
  Om mani padme hum, "The jewel is in the lotus." To him go
  perhaps more prayers per minute than to any single divinity
  known to man; for when, during his final life on earth as a
  human being, he shattered for himself the bounds of the last
  threshold (which moment opened to him the timelessness of the
  void beyond the frustrating mirage-enigmas of the named and
  bounded cosmos), he paused: he made a vow that before enter-
  ing the void he would bring all creatures without exception to
  enlightenment; and since then he has permeated the whole tex-
  ture of existence with the divine grace of his assisting presence,
  so that the least prayer addressed to him, throughout the vast
  Hinayana Buddhism (the Buddhism surviving in Ceylon, Burma, ar
  Siam) reverses the Buddha as a human hero, a supreme saint and sag
  Mahayana Buddhism, on the other hand (the Buddhism of the north), regan
  the Enlightened One as a world savior, an incarnation of the universal princ
  A Bodhisattva is a personage on the point of Buddhahood: according to tl
  Hinayana view, an adept who will become a Buddha in a subsequent "reinca
  nation; according to the Mahayana view (as the following paragraphs w
  show), a type of world savior, representing particularly the universal princip
  of compassion. The word bodhisattva (Sanskrit) means: "whose being i
  Mahayana Buddhism has developed a pantheon of many Bodhisattvas ar
  many past and future Buddhas. These all inflect the manifested powers of t\
  transcendent, one and only Adi-Buddha ("Primal Buddha") (compare note 5
  p. 81, supra), who is the highest conceivable source and ultimate boundary .
  all being, suspended in the void of nonbeing like a wonderful bubble.
  138
  APOTHEOSIS
  spiritual empire of the Buddha, is graciously heard. Under
  differing forms he traverses the ten thousand worlds, and ap-
  pears in the hour of need and prayer. He reveals himself in
  human form with two arms, in superhuman forms with four
  arms, or with six, or twelve, or a thousand, and he holds in one
  of his left hands the lotus of the world.
  Like the Buddha himself, this godlike being is a pattern of the
  divine state to which the human hero attains who has gone be-
  yond the last terrors of ignorance. "When the envelopment of
  consciousness has been annihilated, then he becomes free of all
  fear, beyond the reach of change.'1"' This is the release potential
  within us all, and which anyone can attain—through herohood;
  for, as we read: "All things are Buddha-things'1;8"3 or again (and
  this is the other way of making the same statement): "All beings
  are without self.1'
  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 en-
  close him, he encloses them—and with profound repose. And
  since he is what all of us may be, his presence, his image, the
  mere naming of him, helps. "He wears a garland of eight thousand
  rays, in which is seen fully reflected a state of perfect beauty.
  The color of his body is purple gold. His palms have the mixed
  color of five hundred lotuses, while each finger tip has eighty-
  four thousand signet-marks, and each mark eighty-four thou-
  sand colors; each color has eighty-four thousand rays which are
  soft and mild and shine over all things that exist. With these
  jewel hands he draws and embraces all beings. The halo sur-
  rounding his head is studded with five hundred Buddhas, miracu-
  lously transformed, each attended by five hundred Bodhisattvas,
  who are attended, in turn, by numberless gods. And when he puts
  his feet down to the ground, the flowers of diamonds and jewels
  that are scattered cover even-thing in all directions. The color of
  Bi Prajna-Paramita-Hrldaya Sutra; "Sacred Books of the East," Vol. XLIX,
  Part II, p. 148; also, p. 154.
  ss Vajracchcdika ("The Diamond Cutter"), 17; ibid., p. 134.
  
  INITIATION
  his face is gold. While in his towering crown of gems stands a
  Buddha, two hundred and fifty miles high." 8|'
  In China and Japan this sublimely gentle Bodhisattva is rep-
  resented nut only in male form, but also as female. Kwan Yin of
  China, Kwannon of Japan—the Madonna of the Far East—is
  precisely this benevolent regarder of the world. She will be
  found in every Buddhist temple of the farthest Orient. She is
  blessed alike to the simple and to the wise; for behind her vow
  there lies a profound intuition, world-redeeming, world-sustaining.
  The pause on the threshold of Nirvana, the resolution to forego
  until the end of time (which never ends) immersion in the un-
  troubled pool of eternity, represents a realization that the dis-
  tinction between eternity and time is only apparent—made, per-
  force, by the rational mind, but dissolved in the perfect knowledge
  of the mind that has transcended the pairs of opposites. What is
  understood is that time and eternity are two aspects of the same
  experience-whole, two planes of the same nondual ineffable; i.e.,
  the jewel of eternity is in the lotus of birth and death: om mani
  padme hum.
  The first wonder to be noted here is the androgynous charac-
  ter of the Bodhisattva: masculine Avalokiteshvara, feminine Kwan
  Yin. Male-female gods are not uncommon in the world of myth.
  They emerge always with a certain mystery; for they conduct
  the mind beyond objective experience into a symbolic realm where
  duality is left behind. Awonawilona, chief god of the pueblo of
  Zuni, the maker and container of all, is sometimes spoken of as
  he, but is actually he-she. The Great Original of the Chinese
  chronicles, the holy woman T'ai Yuan, combined in her person the
  masculine Yang and the feminine Yin."' The cabalistic teachings of
  Sfi Amilayur-Dkyana Sutra, 19; ibid., pp. 182-183.
  87 Tang, the light, active, masculine principle, and Tin, the dark, passive, and
  feminine, in their interaction underlie and constitute the whole world of forms
  ("the ten thousand things"). They proceed from and together make manifest
  Tao: the source and law of being. Tao means "road," or "way." Tao is the way
  or course of natun-. ck-sun\. cosmic "rclrf: 'luj Absoluts made manifest, 'lao is
  therrliirr also "truth.1 "rly;li1 conduct." ) tm^ Lind ) t/i together LIS 1 no are de-
  pleted thus: ^ Tao underlies the cosmos. Tao inhahits every created thing.
  140
  APOTHEOSIS
  the medieval Jews, as well as the Gnostic Christian writings of
  the second century, represent the Word Made Flesh as androgy-
  nous-which was indeed the state of Adam as he was created, be-
  fore the female aspect, Eve, was removed into another form. And
  among the Greeks, not only Hermaphrodite (the child of Hermes
  and Aphrodite),wtl but Eros too, the divinity of love {the first of
  the gods, according to Plato),89 were in sex both female and male.
  "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God
  created he him; male and female created he them.""0 The ques-
  tion may arise in the mind as to the nature of the image of God;
  but the answer is already given in the text, and is clear enough.
  "When the Holy One, Blessed be He, created the first man, He
  created him androgynous.'"-11 The removal of the feminine into
  another form symbolizes the beginning of the fall from perfec-
  tion into duality; and it was naturally followed by the discovery
  of the duality of good and evil, exile from the garden where God
  walks on earth, and thereupon the building of the wall of
  Paradise, constituted of the "coincidence of opposites,""2 by which
  Man (now man and woman) is cut oft' from not only the vision
  but even the recollection of the image of God.
  This is the Biblical version of a myth known to many lands. It
  represents one of the basic ways of symbolizing the mystery of
  creation: the devolvcment of eternity into time, the breaking of
  the one into the two and then the many, as well as the generation
  of new life through the reconjunction of the two. This image
  sa "To men 1 am Hermes; to women I appear as Aphrodite: I bear the em-
  blems of both my parents" {Anthoiogia Graeca ad Fidem Codices, Vol. II).
  "One part of him is his sire's, all else he has of his mother" (Martial, Epi-
  grams, 4, 174; Loeb Library, Vol. II, p. 501).
  Ovid's account of Hermaphrodites appears in the Metamorphoses, IV, 288 (T.
  Hampton Young. Genital Abnormalities, Ifpriiutphrudilism, and Related Adrenal
  Diseases (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1937), Chapter I, "Hermaphro-
  ditism in Literature and Art."
  w Symposium.
  5(1 Genesis. 1:27.
  L" Midrash, commentary on Genesis, Rabbah 8:1.
  98 Supra, p. H6.
  141
  
  stands at the beginning of the cosmogonic cycle,5*3 and with equal
  propriety at the conclusion of the hero-task, at the moment when
  the wall of Paradise is dissolved, the divine form found and rec-
  ollected, and wisdom regained.94
  Tiresias, the blinded seer, was both male and female: his eyes
  were closed to the broken forms of the light-world of the pairs of
  opposites, yet he saw in his own interior darkness the destiny of
  Oedipus."5 Shiva appears united in a single body with Shakti,
  his spouse-he the right side, she the left—in the manifestation
  known as Ardhanarisha, "The Half-Woman Lord."96 The ances-
  tral images of certain African and Melanesian tribes show on
  one being the breasts of the mother and the beard and penis of
  the father.97 And in Australia, about a year following the ordeal
  of the circumcision, the candidate for full manhood undergoes a
  second ritual operation-that of subincision (a slitting open of the
  underside of the penis, to form a permanent cleft into the urethra).
  The opening is termed the "penis womb." It is a symbolical male
  vagina. The hero has become, by virtue of the ceremonial, more
  than man.98
  The blood for ceremonial painting and for gluing white
  bird's-down to the body is derived by the Australian fathers
  from their subincision holes. They break open again the old
  33 Infra, pp. 268-270.
  marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself"
  (Ulysses, Modern Library edition, p. 210).
  95 Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus. See also, Ovid, Metamorphoses, III, 324 ff.,
  511, and 516. For other examples of the hermaphrodite as priest, god, or seer,
  see Herodotus, 4, 67 (Rawlinson edition, Vol. Ill, pp. 46-47); Theophrastus,
  Charactcres, 16.10-11; and J. Pinkerton's Voyage and Travels, chapters 8,
  p. 427; "A New Account of the East Indies," by Alexander Hamilton. These
  are cited by Young, op. cit., pp. 2 and 9.
  yt' See Zimmer. Myth.' u.>\c! Symbol: in Indian Art and Civilization, Figure 70.
  57 See Plate X.
  !)ti Sec B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia
  (London, 1899), p. 263; Roheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, pp. 164-165.
  The subincision produces artificially a hypospadias resembling that of a certain
  class of hermaphrodites. (See the portrait of the hermaphrodite Marie Ange, in
  Young, op, cit., p. 20.)
  142
  APOTHEOSIS
  wounds, and let it flow.93 It symbolizes at once the menstrual
  blood of the vagina and the semen of the male, as well as urine,
  water, and male milk. The flowing shows that the old men have
  the source of life and nourishment within themselves;100 i.e., that
  they and the inexhaustible world fountain are the same."11
  The call of the Great Father Snake was alarming to the child;
  the mother was protection. But the father came. He was the guide
  and initiator into the mysteries of the unknown, As the original
  intruder into the paradise of the infant with its mother, the fa-
  ther is the archetypal enemy; hence, throughout life all enemies
  are symbolical {to the unconscious) of the father. "Whatever is
  killed becomes the father."109 Hence the veneration in head-
  hunting communities (in New Guinea, for example) of the heads
  brought home from vendetta raids.103 Hence, too, the irresistible
  compulsion to make war: the impulse to destroy the father is
  continually transforming itself into public violence. The old men
  of the immediate community or race protect themselves from
  their growing sons by the psychological magic of their totem
  ceremonials. They enact the ogre father, and then reveal them-
  selves to be the feeding mother too. A new and larger paradise is
  thus established. But this paradise does not include the tradi-
  tional enemy tribes, or races, against whom aggression is still
  systematically projected. All of the "good" father-mother content
  ™ Roheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, p. 94.
  100 Ibid., pp. 218-219.
  1U1 Compare the following view of the Bodhisattva Darmakara: "Out of his
  mouth there breathed a sweet and more than heavenly smell of sandal-wood.
  From all the pores of his hair there arose the smell of lotus, and he was pleas-
  ing to everybody, gracious and beautiful; endowed with the fulness of the best
  bright color. As his body was adorned with all the good signs and marks, there
  arose from the pores of his hair and from the palms of his hands all sorts of
  precious ornaments in the shape of all kinds of flowers, incense, scents, gar-
  lands, ointments, umbrellas, flags, and banners, and in the shape of all kinds of
  instrumental music. And there appeared also, streaming forth from the palms
  of his hands, all kinds of viands and drink, food, hard and soft, and sweet-
  meats, and all kinds of eni<>yiivjni> and pleasures (1 he Larger Sitkhav/rh-
  Vywha, 10; "Sacred Books of the East," Vol. XLIX, Part 11, pp.'"26-27).
  "a Ibid., pp. 48-68.
  
  INITIATION
  is saved for home, while the "bad" is flung abroad and about:
  "for who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy
  the armies of the living God?"104 "And slacken not in follow-
  ing up the enemy: if ye are suffering hardships, they are suffer-
  ing similar hardships; but ye have hope from Allah, while they
  have none."105
  Totem, tribal, racial, and aggressively missionizing cults rep-
  resent only partial solutions of the psychological problem of
  subduing hate by love; they only partially initiate. Ego is not an-
  nihilated 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 pro-
  tection of his god. And there takes place, then, that dramatic di-
  vorce of the two principles of love and hate which the pages of
  history so bountifully illustrate. Instead of clearing his own heart
  the zealot tries to clear the world. The laws of the City of God
  are applied only to his in-group (tribe, church, nation, class, or
  what not) while the fire of a perpetual holy war is hurled (with
  good conscience, and indeed a sense of pious service) against
  whatever uncircumcised, barbarian, heathen, "native," or alien
  people happens to occupy the position of neighbor.1015
  The world is full of the resultant mutually contending bands:
  totem-, flag-, and party-worshipers. Even the so-called Chris-
  tian nations—which are supposed to be following a "World"
  Redeemer-are better known to history for their colonial barbar-
  ity and internecine strife than for any practical display of that
  unconditioned love, synonymous with the effective conquest of
  ego, ego's world, and ego's tribal god, which was taught by their
  professed supreme Lord: "I say unto you, Love your enemies,
  do good to them which hate you. Bless them that curse you, and
  104 I Samuel, 17:26.
  105 Koran 4:104.
  "*> "For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love,
  this is an old rule" (from the Buddhist Dhammapada, 1:5; "Sacred Books of
  the East," Vol. X, Part I. p. 5; translation by Mas Miiller).
  144
  APOTHEOSIS
  pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto him that
  smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that
  taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to
  every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy
  goods ask them not again. And as ye would that men should do
  to you, do ye also to them likewise. For if ye love them which
  love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that
  love them. And if ye do good to them which do good to you,
  what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same. And if ye
  lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye"?
  for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.
  But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for
  nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be
  the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthank-
  ful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also
  is merciful."10'
  Once we have broken free of the prejudices of our own provin-
  cially limited ecclesiastical, tribal, or national rendition of the
  world archetypes, it becomes possible to understand that the
  supreme initiation is not that of the local motherly fathers, who
  then project aggression onto the neighbors for their own defense.
  •07 Luke, 6:27-36.
  Compare the following Christian letter:
  In the Tear of Our Lord 1682
  To ye aged and beloved, Mr. John Higginson:
  There be now at sea a ship called Welcome, which has on board 100 or more
  of the heretics and malignants called Quakers, with W. Perm, who is the chief
  scamp, at the head of them. The General Court has accordingly given sacred
  orders to Master Malachi Huscott, of the brig Porpoise, to waylay the said
  Welcome slyly as near the Cape of Cod as may be, and make captive the said
  Penn and his" ungodly crew, so that the Lord may be glorified and not mocked
  on the soil oi this iiew country " ill] ihir Ik-alb''li \\ or ship ot > hi M1 people. Much
  spoil can be made of selling the whole lot to Barbadoes, where slaves fetch good
  pnecs in rum ;in<] ^i.iii;ir :usd u i_- ^1ILI]1 not only rl<"> the Lord i^ri-nt good h\ pun-
  ishing the wicked, but we shall make great good for His Minister and people.
  Yours in the bowels of Christ.
  COTTON MATHEK
  (Reprinted by Professor Robert Phillips, American Government and Its Prob-
  lems, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1941. and by Dr. Karl Menninger, Love
  Against Hate, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1942, p. 211.)
  
  INITIATION
  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 chil-
  dren.IOS Such comparatively trivial matters as the remaining de-
  tails of the credo, the techniques of worship, and devices of
  episcopal organization (which have so absorbed the interest of
  Occidental theologians that they are today seriously discussed as
  the principal questions of religion),10" are merely pedantic snares,
  unless kept ancillary to the major teaching. Indeed, where not so
  kept, they have a regressive effect: they reduce the father image
  back again to the dimensions of the totem. And this, of course, is
  what has happened throughout the Christian world. One would
  think that we had been called upon to decide or to know whom,
  of all of us, the Father prefers. Whereas, the teaching is much
  less nattering: "Judge not, that ye be not judged."110 The World
  Savior's cross, in spite of the behavior of its professed priests, is
  a vastly more democratic symbol than the local flag.111
  108 Matthew, 22:37-40; Mark, 12:28-34; Luke, 10:25-37. Jesus is also re-
  ported to have commissioned his apostles to "teach all nations" (Matthew,
  28:19), but not to persecute and pillage, or turn over to the "secular arm"
  those who would not hear. ''Behold, 1 send you forth as sheep in the midst of
  wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves'1 (ibid., 10:16).
  100 Dr. Karl Menninger has pointed out {op. cit., pp. 195-196) that though
  Jewish rabbis, Protestant ministers, and Catholic priests can sometimes be
  brought to reconcile, on a broad basis, their theoretical differences, yet when-
  ever they begin to describe the rules and regulations by which eternal life is to
  be achieved, they hopelessly differ. "Up to this point the program is impecca-
  ble," writes Dr. Menninger. "But if no one knows for certain what the rules
  and regulations are, it all becomes an absurdity." The reply to this, of course, is
  that given by Ramakrishna: "God has made different religions to suit different
  aspirants, times, and countries. All doctrines are only so many paths; but a
  path is by no means God Himself. Indeed, one can reach God if one follows
  any of the paths with whole hearted devotion.... One may eat a cake with
  icing either straight or side wise. It will taste sweet either way" (The Gospel of
  Sri Rumakriskna, New York, 1941. p. 559).
  110 Matthew, 7:1.
  111 "And as troops of robbers wait for a man, so the company of priests mur-
  der in the way of consent. . . . They make the king glad with their wickedness,
  and the princes with their lies" (Hosea, 6:9; 7:3).
  146
  APOTHEOSIS
  The understanding of the ftnal-and critical-implications of the
  world-redemptive words and symbols of the tradition of Christen-
  dom has been so disarranged, during the tumultuous centuries
  that have elapsed since St. Augustine's declaration of the holy war
  of the Civitas Dei against the Civitas Diaboli, that the modern
  thinker wishing to know the meaning of a world religion (i.e., of a
  doctrine of universal love) must turn his mind to the other great
  (and much older) universal communion: that of the Buddha, where
  the primary word still is peace-peace to ail beings.112
  The following Tibetan verses, for example, from two hymns
  of the poet-saint Milarepa, were composed about the time that
  Pope Urban II was preaching the First Crusade:
  Amid the City of Illusoriness of the Six World-Planes
  The chief factor is the sin and obscuration born of evil works;
  Therein the being followeth dictates of likes and dislikes,
  Andfindeth ne'er the time to know Equality:
  Avoid, O my son, likes and dislikes.m
  If ye realize the Emptiness of All Things, Compassion
  will arise within your hearts;
  If ye lose all differentiation between yourselves and others, fit
  to serve others ye will be;
  And when in serving others ye shall win success, then shall ye
  meet with me;
  And finding me, ye shall attain to Buddhahood.lu
  terms of the holy war and thus obscured. It is certainly true that there, as well
  as here, mam have known that thf pvipiT *\' kl ot luirttr i^ not ufo^m pineal
  but psychological (compare Rumi, Mathnawi, 2. 2525: "What is 'beheading'?
  Slaying the carnal sou! in the holy war."); nevertheless, the popular and ortho-
  dox expression of both the Mohammedan and the Christian doctrines has been
  Sll tfL]'< HL]nll> t l~\i\ t II 
  Tl II1] I' l'\ 3 V<*l"\ 
  M'pli] h,t ILHII^LI II'Lilting tO illSCtTT] in Cit PICT'
  111 "The Hymn of the Final Precepts of the Great Saint and Bodhisattva
  Milarepa" (ca. 1051-1135 A.D.), from the Jetsiin-Kahbum, or Biographical His-
  tory of Jetsiin-Milarepa, according to Lama Kazi Oawa-Samdup's English
  rendering, edited by W. Y. Evans-Wentz, Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa (Oxford
  University Press, 1928), p. 285.
  "" "The Hymn of the Yogic Precepts of Milarepa,1' ibid., p. 27.1.
  147
  
  INITIATION
  Peace is at the heart of all because Avalokiteshvara-Kwannon, the
  mighty Bodhisattva, Boundless Love, includes, regards, and dwells
  within (without exception) every sentient being. The perfection of
  the delicate wings of an insect, broken in the passage of time, he
  regards—and he himself is both their perfection and their disinte-
  gration. The perennial agony of man, self-torturing, deluded, tan-
  gled in the net of his own tenuous delirium, frustrated, yet having
  within himself, undiscovered, absolutely unutilized, the secret of re-
  lease; this too he regards—and is. Serene above man, the angels;
  below man, the demons and unhappy dead: these all are drawn to
  the Bodhisattva by the rays of his jewel hands, and they are he, as
  he is they. The bounded, shackled centers of consciousness, myriad-
  fold, on every plane of existence (not only in this present universe,
  limited by the Milky Way, but beyond, into the reaches of space),
  galaxy beyond galaxy, world beyond world of universes, coming
  into being out of the timeless pool of the void, bursting into life, and
  like a bubble therewith vanishing: time and time again: lives by the
  multitude: all suffering: each bounded in the tenuous, tight circle of
  itself—lashing, killing, hating, and desiring peace beyond victory:
  these all are the children, the mad figures of the transitory yet inex-
  haustible, long world dream of the All-Regarding, whose essence is
  the essence of Emptiness: "The Lord Looking Down in Pity."
  But the name means also: "The Lord Who is Seen Within."115
  We are all reflexes of the image of the Bodhisattva. The sufferer
  "The Emptiness of All Things" (Sanskrit: s'unyatd, "vnidness") refers, an the
  one hand, to the illusory nature of the phenomenal world, and on the other, to the
  impropriety of attributing such qualities as we may know from our experience of
  the phenomenal world to the Imperishable.
  in the Heavenly Radiance of the Voidness,
  I m'.'r' f'.V111;t<''/] 
  :'.." •'!•;. ' ' ' . '•/ t'lltiV (if fOHi't'p?.
  Yet It pervadeth nil objects of knowledge;
  Obeisance to the Immutable Voidness.
  ("Hymn of Milarepa in praise of his teacher," ibid. p. 137.)
  "' Avalokita (Sanskrit) = "looking down," but also, "seen"; isvara = ''Lord";
  hence, both "The Lord Looking Down [in Pity]." and "The Lord Seen
  IWithin]" (n and i combine into e in Sanskrit; hence Avalokitesvara). See
  W. Y. Evans-Wentz, Tibetan Toga and Secret Doctrine (Oxford University
  Press, 1935), p. 233, note 2.
  148
  APOTHEOSIS
  within us is that divine being. We and that protecting father are
  one. This is the redeeming insight. That protecting father is
  every man we meet. And so it must be known that, though this
  ignorant, limited, self-defending, suffering body may regard it-
  self as threatened by some other—the enemy—that one too is
  the God. The ogre breaks us, but the hero, the fit candidate, un-
  dergoes the initiation "like a man''; and behold, it was the fa-
  ther: we in Him and He in as.116 The dear, protecting mother of
  our body could not defend us from the Great Father Serpent;
  the mortal, tangible body that she gave us was delivered into his
  frightening power. But death was not the end. New life, new
  birth, new knowledge of existence (so that we live not in this
  physique only, but in all bodies, all physiques of the world, as
  the Bodhisattva) was given us. That father was himself the
  womb, the mother, of a second birth.11'
  This is the meaning of the image of the bisexual god. He is
  the mystery of the theme of initiation. We are taken from the
  mother, chewed into fragments and assimilated to the world-
  annihilating body of the ogre for whom all the precious forms
  and beings are only the courses of a feast; but then, miraculously
  reborn, we are more than we were. If the God is a tribal, racial,
  national, or sectarian archetype, we are the warriors of his cause;
  but if he is a lord of the universe itself, we then go forth as
  knowers to whom all men are brothers. And in either case, the
  childhood parent images and ideas of "good" and "evil11 have
  been surpassed. We no longer desire and fear; we are what was
  11S The same idea is frequently expressed in the Upanishads; viz., "This self
  gives itself to that self, that self gives itself to this self. Thus they gain each
  other. In this form he gains yonder world, in that form he experiences this
  world1' (Aitareya Aranyaka, 2. 3. 7). It is known also to the mystics of Islam:
  i.e., that'which I was I am no more, the transcendent Cod is his own mirror.
  1 say that I am my own mirror: tor 'u^ Ciod that speaks uuh m\ u>n£ur\ ^ind
  I have vanished" (Bayazid, as cited in The Legacy of Mam, T. W. Arnold and
  A. Guillaume, editors, Oxford Press, 1931, p. 216).
  117 "I came forth from Bayazid-ness as a snake from its skin. Then 1 looked.
  I saw that lover, beloved, and love are one, lor in the world of unity all can he
  one" (Bayazki,/w. cit.).
  149
  
  INITIATION
  desired and feared. All the gods, Bodhisattvas, and Buddhas
  have been subsumed in us, as in the halo of the mighty holder of
  the lotus of the world.
  "Come," therefore, "and let us return unto the Lord: for he
  hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind
  us up. After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will
  raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know, if
  we follow on to know the Lord: his going forth is prepared as
  the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter
  and former rain unto the earth."118
  This is the sense of the first wonder of the Bodhisattva: the
  androgynous character of the presence. Therewith the two ap-
  parently opposite mythological adventures come together: the
  Meeting with the Goddess, and the Atonement with the Father.
  For in the first the initiate learns that male and female are (as
  phrased in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad) "two halves of a split
  pea";liy whereas in the second, the Father is found to be an-
  tecedent to the division of sex: the pronoun "He" was a manner
  of speech, the myth of Sonship a guiding line to be erased. And
  in both cases it is found (or rather, recollected) that the hero
  himself is that which he had come to find.
  The second wonder to be noted in the Bodhisattva myth is its
  annihilation of the distinction between life and release-from-life—
  which is symbolized (as we have observed) in the Bodhisattva's
  renunciation of Nirvana. Briefly, Nirvana means "the Extinguish-
  ing, of the Threefold Fire of Desire, Hostility, and Delusion."120
  118 Hosea, 6: 1-3.
  m Brihadaranyaku. Upaniskad, 1. 4. 3. Cf. infra, p. 257.
  120 "The verb nirva (Sanskrit) is, literally, 'to blow out,' not transitively, but
  as a fire ceases to draw. . . . Deprived of fuel, the fire of life is 'pacified,' i.e.,
  ' jUi-m'hrd, \vli<-n 'hr :in mi has br^-r. i'Hi']i< il. our aTT;>in-> lo \\\r xp<"UT •: 11 Xin UULI."
  'despiration in God.1 . . . It is by ceasing to feed our fires that the peace is
  reached, of which it is well said in another tradition that 'it passeth under-
  standing' " (Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Hinduism and Buddhism; New York:
  The Philosophical Library, no date, p. 63). The word "de-spiration" is con-
  trived from a literal Latinization of the Sanskrit "'nirvana*'; nir = "out, forth,
  autward, out of, out from, a\^il^^ aiva\ Iroin"; VCLTUI = "blown'1; ntt-^wtia =
  "blown out, gone out, extinguished."
  150
  APOTHEOSIS
  As the reader will recall: in the legend of the Temptation under
  the Bo Tree (supra, pp. 31-32) the antagonist of the Future
  Buddha was Kama-Mara, literally "Desire —Hostility,1' or "Love
  and Death," the magician of Delusion. He was a personification
  of the Threefold Fire and of the difficulties of the last test, a final
  threshold guardian to be passed by the universal hero on his
  supreme adventure to Nirvana. Having subdued within himself
  to the critical point of the ultimate ember the Threefold Fire,
  which is the moving power of the universe, the Savior beheld
  reflected, as in a mirror all around him, the last projected fan-
  tasies of his primitive physical will to live like other human be-
  ings—the will to live according to the normal motives of desire
  and hostility, in a delusory ambient of phenomenal causes, ends,
  and means. He was assailed by the last fury of the disregarded
  flesh. And this was the moment on which all depended; for from
  one coal could arise again the whole conflagration.
  This greatly celebrated legend affords an excellent example of
  the close relationship maintained in the Orient between myth,
  psychology, and metaphysics. The vivid personifications prepare
  the intellect for the doctrine of the interdependence of the inner
  and the outer worlds. No doubt the reader has been struck by a
  certain resemblance of this ancient mythological doctrine of the
  dynamics of the psyche to the teachings of the modern Freudian
  school. According to the latter, the life-wish (eros or libido, cor-
  responding to the Buddhist Kama, "desire") and the death-wish
  (thanatos or destrudo, which is identical with the Buddhist Mara,
  "hostility or death") are the two drives that not only move the
  individual from within but also animate for him the surrounding
  world.121 Moreover, the unconsciously grounded delusions from
  which desires and hostilities arise are in both systems dispelled
  by psychological analysis (Sanskrit: viveka) and illumination
  (Sanskrit: vidyd). Yet the aims of the two teachings-the tradi-
  tional and the modern-are not exactly the same.
  121 Sigmund Freud. Beyond the Pleasure Principle (translated by James
  Stvachey; Standard Edition, XVIII; London: The Hogarth Press, 1955). Set
  also Karl Menninger, Love against Hate, p. 262.
  
  INITIATION
  Psychoanalysis is a technique to cure excessively suffering in-
  dividuals of the unconsciously misdirected desires and hostilities
  that weave around them their private webs of unreal terrors and
  ambivalent attractions; the patient released from these finds
  himself able to participate with comparative satisfaction in the
  more realistic fears, hostilities, erotic and religious practices,
  business enterprises, wars, pastimes, and household tasks
  offered to him by his particular culture. But for the one who has
  deliberately undertaken the difficult and dangerous journey be-
  yond the village compound, these interests, too, are to be re-
  garded as based on error. Therefore the aim of the religious
  teaching is not to cure the individual back again to the general
  delusion, but to detach him from delusion altogether; and this
  not by readjusting the desire (eras) and hostility (thanatos)—for
  that would only originate a new context of delusion-but by ex-
  tinguishing the impulses to the very root, according to the
  method of the celebrated Buddhist Eightfold Path:
  Right Belief, Right Intentions,
  Right Speech, Right Actions,
  Right Livelihood, Right Endeavoring,
  Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration.
  With the final "extirpation of delusion, desire, and hostility"
  (Nirvana) the mind knows that it is not what it thought: thought
  goes. The mind rests in its true state. And here it may dwell
  until the body drops away.
  Stars, darkness, a lamp, a phantom, dew, a bubble,
  A dream, a flash of lightning, and a cloud:
  Thus we should look upon all that was made.1'22
  The Bodhisattva, however, does not abandon life. Turning his
  regard from the inner sphere of thought-transcending truth
  (which can be described only as "emptiness," since it surpasses
  speech) outward again to the phenomenal world, he perceives
  123 Vajracchedika, 32; "Sacred Books of the East," op. cit., p. 144.
  152
  APOTHEOSIS
  without the same ocean of being that he found within. "Form is
  emptiness, emptiness indeed is form. Emptiness is not different
  from form, form is not different from emptiness. What is form,
  that is emptiness; what is emptiness, that is form. And the same
  applies to perception, name, conception, and knowledge."123
  Having surpassed the delusions of his formerly self-assertive,
  self-defensive, self-concerned ego, he knows without and within
  the same repose. What he beholds without is the visual aspect of
  the magnitudinous, thought-transcending emptiness on which
  his own experiences of ego, form, perceptions, speech, concep-
  tions, and knowledge ride. And he is filled with compassion for
  the self-terrorized beings who live in fright of their own night-
  mare. He rises, returns to them, and dwells with them as an ego-
  less center, through whom the principle of emptiness is made
  manifest in its own simplicity. And this is his great "compas-
  sionate act"; for by it the truth is revealed that in the under-
  standing of one in whom the Threefold Fire of Desire, Hostility,
  and Delusion is dead, this world is Nirvana. "Gift waves" go out
  from such a one for the liberation of us all. "This our worldly life
  is an activity of Nirvana itself, not the slightest distinction exists
  between them."124
  And so it may be said that the modern therapeutic goal of the
  cure back to life is attained through the ancient religious disci-
  pline, after all; only the circle traveled by the Bodhisattva is a
  large one; and the departure from the world is regarded not as a
  fault, but as the first step into that noble path at the remotest
  turn of which illumination is to be won concerning the deep
  emptiness of the universal round. Such an ideal is well known,
  1J5 The smaller Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya Sutra; ibid., p. 153.
  1'' Nagarjuna. Madhijuinik/i Skastra.
  "What is immortal and what is mortal arc harmoniously blended, for the;'
  arc not one, nor arc they separate" (Ashvaghosha).
  "Thi.s view," writes Dr. Coomaraswamy, citing these texts, "is expressed
  with dramatic force in the aphorism, Yas klesas so bodhi, yas samsaras tut
  nirvdnam. 'That which is sin is also Wisdom, the realm of Becoming is also
  Nirvana'" (Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Buddha am! the Gospel of Buddhism;
  New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, [916, p. 24-5).
  
  INITIATION
  also, to Hinduism: the one freed in life (jivan mukta), desirelcss,
  compassionate, and wise, "with the heart concentrated by yoga,
  viewing all things with equal regard, beholds himself in all be-
  ings and all beings in himself. In whatever way he leads his life,
  that one lives in God."125
  The story is told of a Confucian scholar who besought the
  twenty-eighth Buddhist patriarch, Bodhidharma, "to pacify his
  soul." Bodhidharma retorted, "Produce it and I will pacify it."
  The Confucian replied, "That is my trouble, I cannot find it."
  Bodhidharma said, "Your wish is granted." The Confucian un-
  derstood and departed in peace.12"
  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. These are the immortals. The Taoist landscape paintings
  of China and Japan depict supremely the heavenliness of this
  terrestrial state. The four benevolent animals, the phoenix, the
  unicorn, the tortoise, and the dragon, dwell amongst the willow
  gardens, the bamboos, and the plums, and amid the mists of sa-
  cred mountains, close to the honored spheres. Sages, with
  craggy bodies but spirits eternally young, meditate among these
  peaks, or ride curious, symbolic animals across immortal tides,
  or converse delightfully over teacups to the flute of Lan Ts'ai-ho.
  The mistress of the earthly paradise of the Chinese immortals
  is the fairy goddess Hsi Wang Mu, "The Golden Mother of the
  Tortoise.1' She dwells in a palace on the K'un-lun Mountain,
  which is surrounded by fragrant flowers, battlements of jewels,
  1JS Bhagavad Gita, 6:29, 31.
  This represents the perfect fulfillment of what Miss Evelyn Underhill
  termed "the goal of the Mystic Way: the True Unitive Life: the state of Divine
  Fecundity: Deification" (op. cit., passim). Miss Underhill, however, like Pro-
  fessor Toynbee (supra, p. 16, note 17), make the popular mistake of supposing
  that this ideal is peculiar to Christianity. "It is safe to say,'" writes Professor
  Salmon;1, "that Occidental judgment 1ms been falsified, up to the present, by
  the need for self-assertion" (Alfred Salmony, "Die Rassenfrage in der Indien-
  forsd-mng," Snzialisttsche Xfoiiatsfiefte, 8, Berlin, 1926, p. 534).
  C oomarasivainy, Hinduism mid Buddhism* p. 74.
  154
  APOTHF.OSIS
  and a garden wall of gold.127 She is formed of the pure quintes-
  sence of the western air. Her guests at her periodical "Feast of
  the Peaches" (celebrated when the peaches ripen, once in every
  sis thousand years) are served by the Golden Mother's gracious
  daughters, in bowers and pavilions by the Lake of Gems. Waters
  play there from a remarkable fountain. Phoenix marrow, dragon
  liver, and other meats are tasted; the peaches and the wine be-
  stow immortality. Music from invisible instruments is heard,
  songs that are not from mortal lips; and the dances of the visible
  damsels are the manifestations of the joy of eternity in time.128
  The tea ceremonies of Japan are conceived in the spirit of
  the Taoist earthly paradise. The tearoom, called "the abode of
  fancy," is an ephemeral structure built to enclose a moment of po-
  etic intuition. Called too "the abode of vacancy," it is devoid of
  ornamentation. Temporarily it contains a single picture or
  flower-arrangement. The teahouse is called "the abode of the un-
  symmetrical": the unsymmetrical suggests movement; the pur-
  posely unfinished leaves a vacuum into which the imagination of
  the beholder can pour.
  The guest approaches by the garden path, and must stoop
  through the low entrance. He makes obeisance to the picture or
  flower-arrangement, to the singing kettle, and takes his place on
  the floor. The simplest object, framed by the controlled simplic-
  ity of the tea house, stands out in mysterious beauty, its silence
  holding the secret of temporal existence. Each guest is permitted
  to complete the experience in relation to himself. The members
  of the company thus contemplate the universe in miniature, and
  become aware of their hidden fellowship with the immortals.
  The great tea masters were concerned to make of the divine
  wonder an experienced moment; then out of the teahouse the
  influence was carried into the home; and out of the home distilled
  m This is the wall of Paradise, see supra, pp. 82 and 141. We are now in-
  side. Hsi Wang Mo is the feminine aspect of the Lord who walks in the Gar-
  den, who created man in his own image, male and female (Genesis, 1:27).
  138 Cf. E. T. C. Werner, A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology (Shanghai.
  1932), p. 163.
  155
  
  1 N ITIAT1ON
  into the nation.12'-1 During the long and peaceful Tokugawa pe-
  riod (1603-1868), before the arrival of Commodore Perry in
  1854, the texture of Japanese life became so imbued with
  significant formal ization that existence to the slightest detail was
  a conscious expression of eternity, the landscape itself a shrine.
  Similarly, throughout the Orient, throughout the ancient world,
  and in the pre-Columbian Amerieas, society and nature represented
  to the mind the inexpressible. "The plants, rocks, fire, water, all
  are alive. They watch us and see our needs. They see when we
  have nothing to protect us," declared an old Apache storyteller,
  "and it is then that they reveal themselves and speak to us.1'130
  This is what the Buddhist calls "the sermon of the inanimate."
  A certain Hindu ascetic who lay down to rest beside the holy
  Ganges, placed his feet up on a Shiva-symbol (a "lingam," a
  combined phallus and vulva, symbolizing the union of the God
  with his Spouse). A passing priest observed the man reposing
  thus and rebuked him. "How can you dare to profane this sym-
  bol of God by resting your feet on it?" demanded the priest. The
  ascetic replied, "Good sir, I am sorry; but will you kindly take
  my feet and place them where there is no such sacred lingam'?"
  The priest seized the ankles of the ascetic and lifted them to the
  right, but when he set them down a phallus sprang from the
  ground and they rested as before. He moved them again; another
  phallus received them. "Ah, I see!" said the priest, humbled; and
  he made obeisance to the reposing saint and went his way.
  The third wonder of the Bodhisattva myth is that the first
  wonder (namely, the bisexual form) is symbolical of the second
  (the identity of eternity and time). For in the language of the di-
  vine pictures, the world of time is the great mother womb. The
  life therein, begotten by the father, is compounded of her dark-
  ness and his light.131 We are conceived in her and dwell removed
  129 See Okakura Kakuzo, The Book of Tea (New York, 1906). See also
  Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism (London, 1927), and Lafcadio
  Hearn, Japan (New York, 1904,).
  130 Morris Edward Opler, Myths and Tales of the Jiraritla Apache India?is
  (Memoirs of the American Folklore Society, VoL XXXI, 1938), p. 110.
  151 Compare supra, p. 143, note 101.
  156
  APOTHEOSIS
  from the father, but when we pass from the womb of time at
  death {which is our birth to eternity) we are given into his
  hands. The wise realize, even within this womb, that they have
  come from and are returning to the father; while the very wise
  know that she and he are in substance one.
  This is the meaning of those Tibetan images of the union of
  the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas with their own feminine aspects
  that have seemed so indecent to many Christian critics. Accord-
  ing to one of the traditional ways of looking at these supports of
  meditation, the female form (Tibetan: yum) is to be regarded as
  time and the male {yab) as eternity. The union of the two is pro-
  ductive of the world, in which all things are at once temporal
  and eternal, created in the image of this self-knowing male-
  female God. The initiate, through meditation, is led to the recol-
  lection of this Form of forms {yab-yum) within himself. Or on
  the other hand, the male figure may be regarded as symbolizing
  the initiating principle, the method; in which case the female de-
  notes the goal to which initiation leads. But this goal is Nirvana
  (eternity). And so it is that both the male and the female are to
  be envisioned, alternately, as time and eternity. That is to say,
  the two are the same, each is both, and the dual form {yab-yum)
  is only an effect of illusion, which itself, however, is not different
  from enlightenment.1-12
  ""2 Comparatively, the Hindu goddess Kali (supra, p. 105) is shown standing
  on the prostrate form of the god Shiva, her spouse. She brandishes the sword
  of death, i.e., spiritual discipline. The hlood-dripping human head tells the
  devotee that he that loseth his life for her sake shall find it. The gestures of
  "fear not" and "bestowing boons" teach that she protects her children, that the
  pairs of opposites of the universal agony are not what they seem, arid that for
  one centered in eternity the phantasmagoria of temporal ''goods" and "evils" is
  but a reflex of the mind—as the goddess herself, though apparently trampling
  down the god. is act nail j his blissful dream.
  Beneath the goddess of the Island of Jewels (see supra, pp. 103-104) two
  aspects of the god are represented: the one, face upward, in union with her, is
  the creative, world-enjoying aspect; but the other, turned away, is the dens
  absconditua, the divine essence in and by itself, beyond event and change,
  inactive, dormant, v oicl. bi'vond even the wonder of the hermaphroditic
  mystery. (See Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization,
  pp. 210-214.)
  157
  
  IN ITIAT1ON
  This is a supreme statement of the great paradox by which the
  wall of the pairs of opposites is shattered and the candidate ad-
  mitted to the vision of the God, who when he created man in his
  own image created him male and female. In the male's right
  hand is held a thunderbolt that is the counterpart of himself,
  while in his left he holds a bell, symbolizing the goddess. The
  thunderbolt is both the method and eternity, whereas the bell is
  "illumined mind1'; its note is the beautiful sound of eternity that
  is heard by the pure mind throughout creation, and therefore
  within itself.133
  Precisely the same bell is rung in the Christian Mass at the
  moment when God, through the power of the words of the con-
  secration, descends into the bread and wine. And the Christian
  reading of the meaning also is the same: Et Verbum carofactum
  est,lM i.e., "The Jewel is in the Lotus": Om manipadme hum.155
  m Compare the dram of creation in the hand of the Hindu Dancing Shiva,
  supra, p. 118, note 46.
  134 "And the Word was made flesh"; verse of the Angelus, celebrating the
  13:1 In this chapter the* following have been equated:
  The Void 
  The World
  Eternity 
  Time
  Truth 
  IUusSLs
  Enlightenment 
  Compassion
  The God 
  The Goddess
  The Enemy 
  The Friend
  Heath 
  Birth
  The Thunderbolt 
  The Bell
  The Jewel 
  The Lotus
  Subject 
  Object
  Yab 
  Yum
  Vang 
  Yin
  Supreme Buddha
  Bodhisattva
  J i m Mukta
  The Word Made Flesh
  Compare the Kaushhaki Upanishad, 1:4, describing the hero who has reached
  11 ji• 
  or£il"]T7iii-\^ n r l c l ! 
  ' ' I I I s " 
  ; i s 
  • m^ 
  ( I n V I r i ( r 
  ;i 
  ' ] ] ' i r i i > l 
  I >• ik^. 
  ' l r i \ v n 
  U D O n 
  t h e
  THE ULTIMATE BOON
  • 6 •
  The Ultimate Boon
  When the Prince of the Lonesome Island had remained six
  nights and days on the golden couch with the sleeping Queen of
  Tubber Tintye, the couch resting on wheels of gold and the
  wheels turning continually—the couch going round and round,
  never stopping night or day—on the seventh morning he said,
  "'It is time for me now to leave this place.1 So he came down
  and filled the three bottles with water from the flaming well. In
  the golden chamber was a table of gold, and on the table a leg of
  mutton with a loaf of bread; and if all the men of Erin were to
  eat for a twelvemonth from the table, the mutton and the bread
  would be in the same form after the eating as before.
  "The Prince sat down, ate his fill of the loaf and the leg of
  mutton, and left them as he had found them. Then he rose up,
  took his three bottles, put them in his wallet, and was leaving
  the chamber, when he said to himself: 'It would be a shame to
  go away without leaving something by which the Queen may
  know who was here while she slept.' So he wrote a letter, saying
  that the son of the King of Erin and the Queen of the Lonesome
  Island had spent six days and nights in the golden chamber of
  Tubber Tintye, had taken away three bottles of water from the
  flaming well, and had eaten from the table of gold. Putting his
  letter under the pillow of the Queen, he went out, stood in the
  open window, sprang on the back of the lean and shaggy little
  horse, and passed the trees and the river unharmed."136
  The ease with which the adventure is here accomplished
  signifies that the hero is a superior man, a born king. Such ease
  two chariot wheels, thus he looks down upon day and night, thus upon good
  deeds and evil deeds, and upon all the pairs of opposites. This one, devoid of
  good deeds, devoid of evil deeds, a knower of God, unto very God he goes.11
  lifi Curtin, op. cit., pp. 106-107.
  159
  
  distinguishes numerous fairy tales and alt legends of the deeds of
  incarnate gods. Where the usual hero would face a test, the elect
  encounters no delaying obstacle and makes no mistake. The well
  is the World Navel, its flaming water the indestructible essence
  of existence, the bed going round and round being the World
  Axis. The sleeping castle is that ultimate abyss to which the de-
  scending consciousness submerges in dream, where the individ-
  ual life is on the point of dissolving into undifferentiated energy:
  and it would be death to dissolve; yet death, also, to lack the fire.
  The motif (derived from an infantile fantasy) of the inexhaustible
  dish, symbolizing the perpetual life-giving, form-building pow-
  ers of the universal source, is a fairy-tale counterpart of the mytho-
  logical image of the cornucopian banquet of the gods. While the
  bringing together of the two great symbols of the meeting with
  the goddess and the fire theft reveals with simplicity and clarity
  the status of the anthropomorphic powers in the realm of myth.
  They are not ends in themselves, but guardians, embodiments,
  or bestowers, of the liquor, the milk, the food, the fire, the grace,
  of indestructible life.
  Such imagery can be readily interpreted as primarily, even
  though perhaps not ultimately, psychological; for it is possible to
  observe, in the earliest phases of the development of the infant,
  symptoms of a dawning "mythology" of a state beyond the vicis-
  situdes of time. These appear as reactions to, and spontaneous
  defenses against, the body-destruction fantasies that assail the
  child when it is deprived of the mother breast.137 "The infant re-
  acts with a temper tantrum and the fantasy that goes with the
  temper tantrum is to tear everything out of the mother's bod)-. . . .
  The child then fears retaliation for these impulses, i.e., that
  everything will be scooped out of its own inside."'3)i Anxieties
  for the integrity of its body, fantasies of restitution, a silent, deep
  requirement for indestructibility and protection against the
  137 See Melanie Klein, The Psychoanalysis of Children. The International
  Psycho-Analytical Library. No. 27 (1937).
  '•iK Roheim, War, Crime, and the Covenant, pp. 137-138.
  THE ULTIMATE BOON
  "bad" forces from within and without, begin to direct the shaping
  psyche; and these remain as determining factors in the later neu-
  rotic, and even normal, life activities, spiritual efforts, religious
  beliefs, and ritual practices of the adult.
  The profession, for example, of the medicine man, this nucleus
  of all primitive societies, "originates . . . on the basis of the in-
  fantile body-destruction fantasies, by means of a series of de-
  fence mechanisms."09 In Australia a basic conception is that the
  spirits have removed the intestines of the medicine man and sub-
  stituted pebbles, quartz crystals, a quantity of rope, and some-
  times also a little snake endowed with power.140 "The first
  formula is abreaction in fantasy (my inside has already been de-
  stroyed) followed by reaction-formation (my inside is not some-
  thing corruptible and full of faeces, but incorruptible, full of
  quartz crystals). The second is projection: 'It is not I who am
  trying to penetrate into the body but foreign sorcerers who
  shoot disease-substances into people.1 The third formula is resti-
  tution: 'I am not trying to destroy people's insides, I am healing
  them.' At the same time, however, the original fantasy element
  of the valuable body-contents torn out of the mother returns in
  the healing technique: to suck, to pull, to rub something out of
  the patient."141
  Another image of indestructibility is represented in the folk
  idea of the spiritual "doubte"-an external soul not afflicted by
  the losses and injuries of the present body, but existing safely in
  some place removed.142 "My death," said a certain ogre, "is far
  from here and hard to find, on the wide ocean. In that sea is an
  island, and on the island there grows a green oak, and beneath
  the oak is an iron chest, and in the chest is a small basket, and in
  the basket is a hare, and in the hare is a duck, and in the duck is
  m Roheim, The Origin and Function of Culture, p. 50.
  110 Ibid., pp. 48-50.
  141 Ibid., p. 50. Compare the indestructibility of the Siberian shaman (supra,
  pp. 90-91), drawing coals out of the fire with his, bare hands and beating his
  legs with an ax.
  1+2 See Frazer's discussion of the external soul, op. cit., pp. 667-691.
  
  INITIATION
  an egg; and he who finds the egg and breaks it, kills me at
  the same time."143 Compare the dream of a successful modern
  businesswoman: "I was stranded on a desert island. There was a
  Catholic priest there also. He had been doing something about
  putting boards from one island to another so people could pass.
  We passed to another island and there asked a woman where I'd
  gone. She replied that I was diving with some divers. Then
  I went somewhere to the interior of the island where was a body
  of beautiful water full of gems and jewels and the other T was
  down there in a diving suit. I stood there looking down and
  watching myself,"144 There is a charming Hindu tale of a king's
  daughter who would marry only the man that found and awak-
  ened her double, in the Land of the Lotus of the Sun, at the bot-
  tom of the sea.14S The initiated Australian, after his marriage, is
  conducted by his grandfather to a sacred cave and there shown a
  small slab of wood inscribed with allegorical designs: "This," he
  is told, "is your body; this and you are the same. Do not take it
  to another place or you will feel pam."U(i The Manicheans and
  the Gnostic Christians of the first centuries A.D. taught that when
  the soul of the blessed arrives in heaven it is met by saints and
  angels bearing its "vesture of light," which has been preserved
  for it.
  The supreme boon desired for the Indestructible Body is un-
  interrupted residence in the Paradise of the Milk that Never
  liiIbid.,p. 671.
  144 Pierce, Dreams and Personality (D. Appleton and Co.), p. 298.
  145 "The Descent of the Sun," in F. W. Bain, A Digit of the Mom (New
  York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1910), pp. 213-325.
  1411 Roheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, p. 237. This talisman is the so-
  called tjurunga (or churinga) of the young man's totem ancestor. The youth
  received another tjurunga at the time of his circumcision, representing his ma-
  ternal totem ancestor. Still earlier, at the time of his birth, a protective tju-
  runga was placed in his cradle. The bull-roarer is a variety of tjurunga. "The
  tjurunga," writes Dr. Roheim, "is a material double, and certain supeT-natural
  beings most intimately connected with the tjurunga in Central Australian be-
  lief are invisible doubles of the natives. . . . Like the tjurunga, these supernatu-
  ral:; are called the arpuna mborka (other body) of the real human beings whom
  they protect" {ibid., p. 98).
  162
  THK ULTIMATE BOON
  Fails: "Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye
  that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for
  her: that ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her
  consolations; that ye may milk out, and be delighted with the
  abundance of her glory. For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will
  extend peace to her like a river . . . then shall ye suck, ye shall be
  borne upon her sides, and be dandled upon her knees."147 Soul
  and body food, heart's ease, is the gift of "All Heal," the nipple
  inexhaustible. Mt. Olympus rises to the heavens; gods and he-
  roes banquet there on ambrosia (a, not, PQOTO^, mortal), In
  Wotan's mountain hall, four hundred and thirty-two thousand
  heroes consume the unditninished flesh of Sachrimnir, the Cos-
  mic Boar, washing it down with a milk that runs from the ud-
  ders of the she-goat Heidrun: she feeds on the leaves of Yggdrasil,
  the World Ash. Within the fairy hills of Erin, the deathless
  Tuatha De Danaan consume the self-renewing pigs of Manan-
  nan, drinking copiously of Guibne's ale. In Persia, the gods in
  the mountain garden on Mt. Hara Berezaiti drink immortal
  haoma, distilled from the Gaokerena Tree, the tree of life. The
  Japanese gods drink sake, the Polynesian ave, the Aztec gods
  drink the blood of men and maids. And the redeemed of Yahweh,
  FIGURE 7. Isis Giving Bread and Water to the Soul
  147 Isaiah, fili: 10-12.
  
  in their roof garden, are served the inexhaustible, delicious flesh
  of the monsters Behemoth, Leviathan, and Ziz, while drinking
  the liquors of the four sweet rivers of paradise.14"
  It is obvious that the infantile fantasies which we all cherish
  still in the unconscious play continually into myth, fairy tale, and
  the teachings of the church, as symbols of indestructible being.
  This is helpful, for the mind feels at home with the images, and
  seems to be remembering something already known. But the cir-
  cumstance is obstructive too, for the feelings come to rest in the
  symbols and resist passionately every effort to go beyond. 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. "O ye," writes
  Dante, departing from the Terrestrial Paradise, "O ye who in a
  little bark, desirous to listen, have followed behind my craft which
  singing passes on, turn to see again your shores; put not out
  upon the deep; for haply, losing me, ye would remain astray.
  The water which I take was never crossed. Minerva breathes, and
  Apollo guides me, and nine Muses point out to me the Bears.'114"
  Here is the line beyond which thinking does not go, beyond
  which all feeling is truly dead: like the last stop on a mountain
  railroad from which climbers step away, and to which they re-
  turn, there to converse with those who love mountain air but
  cannot risk the heights. The ineffable teaching of the beatitude
  beyond imagination comes to us clothed, necessarily, in figures
  reminiscent of the imagined beatitude of infancy; hence the de-
  ceptive childishness of the tales. Hence, too, the inadequacy of
  any merely psychological reading.150
  l4B Ginsberg, op. cit-. Vol. I, pp. 20, 26-30. See the extensive notes an the
  Messianic banquet in Ginzberg, Vol. V, pp. 43-46.
  14S Dante, "Paradiso," II, 1-9. Translation by Norton, op. cit-, Vol. Ill, p 10'
  by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers.
  1S0 In the published psychoanalytical literature, the dream sources of the
  symbols are analyzed, as well as their latent meanings for the unconscious, and
  the effects of their operation upon the psyche; but the farther fact that great
  teachers have employed them consciously as metaphors remains unregarded:
  the tacit assumption heing that the great teachers of the past were neurotics
  (except, of course, a number of the Greeks and Romans) who mistook their
  THE ULTIMATE BOON
  The sophistication of the humor of the infantile imagery,
  when inflected in a skillful mythological rendition of metaphysi-
  cal doctrine, emerges magnificently in one of the best known of
  the great myths of the Oriental world: the Hindu account of the
  primordial battle between the titans and the gods for the liquor
  of immortality. An ancient earth being, Kashyapa, "The Turtie
  Man," had married thirteen of the daughters of a still more an-
  cient demiurgic patriarch, Daksha, "The Lord of Virtue." Two
  of these daughters, Diti and Aditi by name, had given birth re-
  spectively to the titans and the gods. In an unending series of
  family battles, however, many of these sons of Kashyapa were
  being slain. But now the high priest of the titans, by great aus-
  terities and meditations, gained the favor of Shiva, Lord of the
  Universe. Shiva bestowed on him a charm to revive the dead.
  This gave to the titans an advantage which the gods, in the next
  battle, were quick to perceive. They retired in confusion to con-
  sult together, and addressed themselves to the high divinities
  Brahma and Vishnu.151 They were advised to conclude with their
  brother-enemies a temporary truce, during which the titans should
  be induced to help them churn the Milky Ocean of immortal life
  for its butter—Amrita, (a, not, mrita, mortal) "the nectar of
  deathlessness." Flattered by the invitation, which they regarded
  as an admission of their superiority, the titans were delighted to
  participate; and so the epochal co-operative adventure at the be-
  ginning of the four ages of the world cycle began. Mount Man-
  dara was selected as the churning stick. Vasuki, the King of
  Serpents, consented to become the churning rope with which to
  uncriricised fantasies for revelation. In the same spirit, the revelations of psy-
  choanalysis rtre r;juari.lf-d !)v n"ifin\ laymen to \K: production-^ of the "salacious
  mind" of Dr. Freud.
  151 Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, respectively Creator, Preserver, and De-
  stroyer, constitute a trinity in Hinduism, as three aspects of the operation of
  the one creative substance. After the seventh century B.C., Brahma, declining
  in importance, became merely the creative agent of Vishnu. Thus Hinduism
  today is divided into two main camps, one devoted primarily to the creator-
  to the eternal. But these two arc ultimately one. In the present myth, it is
  through their joint operation that the elixir of life is obtained-
  
  INITIATION
  twirl it. Vishnu himself, in the form of a tortoise, dove into the
  Milky Ocean to support with his back the base of the mountain.
  The gods laid hold of one end of the serpent, after it had been
  wrapped around the mountain, the titans the other. And the
  company then churned for a thousand years.
  The first thing to arise from the surface of the sea was a black,
  poisonous smoke, called Kalakuta, "Black Summit," namely the
  highest concentration of the power of death. "Drink me," said
  Kalakuta; and the operation could not proceed until someone
  should be found capable of drinking it up. Shiva, sitting aloof and
  afar, was approached. Magnificently, he relaxed from his posi-
  tion of deeply indrawn meditation and proceeded to the scene of
  the churning of the Milky Ocean. Taking the tincture of death
  in a cup, he swallowed it at a gulp, and by his yoga-power held
  it in his throat. The throat turned blue. Hence Shiva is addressed
  as "Blue Neck," Niiakantha.
  The churning now being resumed, presently there began
  coming up out of the inexhaustible depths precious forms of con-
  centrated power. Apsarases (nymphs) appeared, Lakshmi the god-
  dess of fortune, the milk-white horse named Uchchaihshravas,
  "Neighing Aloud," the pearl of gems, Kaustubha, and other ob-
  jects to the number of thirteen. Last to appear was the skilled
  physician of the gods, Dhanvantari, holding in his hand the moon,
  the cup of the nectar of life.
  Now began immediately a great battle for possession of the in-
  valuable drink. One of the titans, Rahu, managed to steal a sip,
  but was beheaded before the liquor passed his throat; his body
  decayed but the head remained immortal. And this head now
  goes pursuing the moon forever through the skies, trying again
  to seize it. When it succeeds, the cup passes easily through its
  mouth and out again at its throat: that is why we have eclipses
  of the moon.
  But Vishnu, concerned lest the gods should lose the advan-
  tage, transformed himself into a beautiful dancing damsel. And
  while the titans, who were lusty fellows, stood spellbound by the
  girl's charm, she took up the moon-cup of Amrita, teased them
  with it for a moment, and then suddenly passed it over to the
  166
  THE ULTIMATE BOON
  gods. Vishnu immediately again transformed himself into a
  mighty hero, joined the gods against the titans, and helped drive
  away the enemy to the crags and dark canyons of the world be-
  neath. The gods now dine on the Amrita forever, in their beauti-
  ful palaces on the summit of the central mountain of the world,
  Mount Sumeru.1S2
  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. Their entertaining
  myths transport the mind and spirit, not up to, but past them,
  into the yonder void; from which perspective the more heavily
  freighted theological dogmas then appear to have been only ped-
  agogical lures: their function, to cart the unadroit intellect away
  from its concrete clutter of facts and events to a comparatively
  rarefied zone, where, as a final boon, all existence — whether
  heavenly, earthly, or infernal—may at last be seen transmuted
  into the semblance of a lightly passing, recurrent, mere child-
  hood dream of bliss and fright. "From one point of view all those
  divinities exist," a Tibetan lama recently replied to the question
  of an understanding Occidental visitor, "from another they are
  not real."133 This is the orthodox teaching of the ancient Tantras:
  "AH of these visualized deities are but symbols representing the
  various things that occur on the Path";134 as well as a doctrine
  of the contemporary psychoanalytical schools,155 And the same
  lK Ramayana, I, 45, Mahabharata, I, 18, Matsya Purana, 249-251, and
  many other texts. See Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civiliza-
  tion, pp. 105 ff.
  153 Marco Pallis, Peaks and Lamas (4th edition; London: Cassell and Co.,
  1946), p. 324.
  '" Shri-Chakra-Sambhara Tantra, translated from the Tibetan by Lama Kazi
  Dawa-Samdup, edited by Sir John Woodroffe (pseudonym Arthur Avalon),
  Volume VII of "Tantric Texts" (London, 1919), p. 41. "Should doubts arise as
  to the divinity of these visualized deities," the text continues, "one should say,
  'This Goddess is only the recollection of the body,1 and remember that the
  Deities constitute the Path" (loc. cit.). For a word about Tantra, cf. supra,
  p. 104, note 32, and pp. 170-171 (Tantric Buddhism).
  155 Compare, e.g., C. G. Jung, "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious"
  (orig. 1934; Collected Works, vol. 'J, part i; New York and London, 1959).
  167
  
  I N I T I A T I O N
  meta-theological insight seems to be what is suggested in Dante's
  final verses, where the illuminated voyager at last is able to lift
  his courageous eyes beyond the beatific vision of Father, Son,
  and Holy Ghost, to the one Kternal Light.1""1
  The gods and goddesses then are to be understood as embodi-
  ments and custodians of the elixir of Imperishable Being but not
  themselves the Ultimate in its primary state. What the hero seeks
  through his intercourse with them is therefore not finally them-
  selves, but their grace, i.e., the power of their sustaining sub-
  stance. This miraculous energy-substance and this alone is the
  Imperishable; the names and forms of the deities who everywhere
  embody, dispense, and represent it come and go. This is the
  miraculous energy of the thunderbolts of Zeus, Yahweh, and the
  Supreme Buddha, the fertility of the rain of Viracocha, the virtue
  announced by the bell rung in the Mass at the consecration,107
  and the light of the ultimate illumination of the saint and sage.
  Its guardians dare release it only to the duly proven.
  But the gods may be oversevere, overcautious, in which case
  the hero must trick them of their treasure. Such was the problem
  of Prometheus. When in this mood even the highest gods appear
  as malignant, life-hoarding ogres, and the hero who deceives,
  slays, or appeases them is honored as the savior of the world.
  Maui of Polynesia went against Mahu-ika, the guardian of fire,
  to wring from him his treasure and transport it back to mankind.
  Maui went straight up to the giant Mahu-ika and said to him:
  "Clear away the brush from this level field of ours so that we
  may contend together in friendly rivalry." Maui, it must be told,
  was a great hero and a master of devices.
  "Mahu-ika inquired, 'What feat of mutual prowess and emu-
  lation shall it be?'
  "There are perhaps many," writes Dr. J. C. Fliigel, "who would still retain the
  notion of a quasi-anthropomorphic Father-God as an extra-mental reality, even
  though tile purelv mental origin of such a God has become apparent" (The I'.iycho-
  anuhjliv Study of the Fitmihj, p. 236).
  '"'6 "Paradiso," XXXIII, 82 IT.
  v'7 See supra, p. 161.
  168
  THE ULTIMATE BOON
  " 'The feat of tossing,' Maui replied.
  "To this Mahu-ika agreed; then Maui asked, 'Who shall begin?'
  "Mahu-ika answered, 'I shall.'
  "Maui signified his consent, so Mahu-ika took hold of Maui
  and tossed him up in the air; he rose high above and fell right
  down into Mahu-ika's hands; again Mahu-ika tossed Maui up,
  chanting: 'Tossing, tossing—up you go!'
  "Up went Maui, and then Mahu-ika chanted this incantation:
  'Up you
  Up you go
  Up you go
  Up you go
  Up you go
  Up you go
  Up you go
  Up you go
  Up you go
  Up you go
  •o the first level,
  to the second level,
  to the third level,
  to the fourth level,
  to the fifth level,
  to the sixth level,
  to the seventh level,
  to the eighth level,
  to the ninth level,
  to the tenth level!'
  "Maui turned over and over in the air and started to come
  down again, and he fell right beside Mahu-ika; then Maui said,
  'You're having all the fun!'
  '"Why indeed!" Mahu-ika exclaimed. 'Do you imagine you
  can send a whale flying up into the air?1
  " 'I can try!1 Maui answered.
  "So Maui took hold of Mahu-ika and tossed him up, chanting:
  'Tossing, tossing—up you go!'
  "Up flew Mahu-ika, and now Maui chanted this spell:
  'Up you go to the first level,
  Up you go to the second level,
  Up you go to the third level,
  Up you go to the fourth level,
  Up you go to the fifth level.
  Up you go to the sixth level,
  Up you go to the seventh level.
  169
  
  I N I T I A T I O N
  THE ULTIMATE BOON
  FIGURE 8. The Conquest of the Monster;
  David and Goliath: The Harrowing of Hell: Samson and the Lio
  Up you go to the eighth level,
  Up you go to the ninth level,
  Up you go—way up in the air!'
  "Mahu-ika turned over and over in the air and commenced to
  fall back; and when he had nearly reached the ground Maui called
  out these magic words: 'That man up there—may he fall right
  on his head!1
  "Mahu-ika fell down; his neck was completely telescoped to-
  gether, and so Mahu-ika died." At once the hero Maui took
  hold of the giant Mahu-ika's head and cut it off, then he pos-
  sessed himself of the treasure of the flame, which he bestowed
  upon the world.158
  The greatest tale of the elixir quest in the Mesopotamian, pre-
  Biblica! tradition is that of Gilgamesh, a legendary king of the
  Sumerian city of Erech, who set forth to attain the watercress of
  immortality, the plant "Never Grow Old." After he had passed
  safely the lions that guard the foothills and the scorpion men
  who watch the heaven-supporting mountains, he came, amidst
  the mountains, to a paradise garden of flowers, fruits, and pre-
  cious stones. Pressing on, he arrived at the sea that surrounds the
  world. In a cave beside the waters dwelt a manifestation of the
  Goddess Ishtar, Siduri-Sabitu, and this woman, closely veiled,
  closed the gates against him. But when he told her his tale, she
  admitted him to her presence and advised him not to pursue his
  quest, but to learn and be content with the mortal joys of life:
  Gilgamesh, why dost thou run about this way?
  The life that thou art seeking, thou wilt never find.
  When the gods created man,
  they put death upon mankind,
  and held life in their own hands.
  Fill thy belly, Gilgamesh;
  day and night enjoy thyself;
  prepare each day some pleasant occasion.
  158 J. F. Stimson, The Legends of Maui and Tuhaki {Bernice P. Bishop Mu-
  seum BuDetin, No. 127; Honolulu, 1934), pp. 19-21.
  
  I N I T I A T I O N
  Day and night be frolicsome and gay;
  let thy clothes be handsome,
  thy head shampooed, thy body bathed.
  Regard the little one who takes thy hand.
  Let thy wife be happy against thy bosom.119
  But when Gilgamesh persisted, Siduri-Sabitu gave him permis-
  sion to pass and apprised him of the dangers of the way.
  The woman instructed him to seek the ferryman Ursanapi,
  whom he found chopping wood in the forest and guarded by a
  group of attendants. Gilgamesh shattered these attendants (they
  were called "those who rejoice to live," "those of stone") and the
  ferryman consented to convey him across the waters of death. It
  was a voyage of one and one-half months. The passenger was
  warned not to touch the waters.
  Now the far land that they were approaching was the residence
  of Utnapishtim, the hero of the primordial deluge,160 here abiding
  with his wife in immortal peace. From afar Utnapishtim spied
  the approaching little craft alone on the endless waters, and he
  wondered in his heart:
  Why are "those of stone" of the boat shattered,
  And someone who is not of my service sailing in the boat?
  That one who is coming: is he not a man?
  Gilgamesh, on landing, had to listen to the patriarch's long
  recitation of the story of the deluge. Then Utnapishtim bid his
  visitor sleep, and he slept for six days. Utnapishtim had his wife
  ls'-' This passage, missing from the standard Assyrian edition of the legend,
  appears in a much earlier Babylonian fragmentary text (see Bruno Meissner,
  "Ein altbabylonisches Fragment des Gilgamo.sepo'i," Mitleiiungt-ii tier l-'orderasi-
  atiscken Gesellsckaft, VII, 1; Berlin, 1902, p. 9). It has been frequently re-
  marked that the advice of the sibyl is hedonistic, but it should be noted also
  that the passage represents an initiatory test, not the moral philosophy of the
  ancient Babylonians. As in India, c.-nuiri'^ later, \vln-n Li Miirl^nt ^approaches ;i
  teacher to ask the secret of immortal life, he is first put off with a description of
  the joys of the mortal (viz., Katha Upanishad, 1: 21, 23-25). Only if he persists
  i s l i e a d m i t t < ~ ' : i
  1 ' t i n 
  11
  1 • \ i l ! • i!> i
  11)0 Babylonian prototype of the Biblical Noah.
  THE ULTIMATE BOON
  bake seven loaves and place them by the head of Gilgamesh as he
  lay asleep beside the boat. And Utnapishtim touched Gilgamesh,
  and he awoke, and the host ordered the ferryman Ursanapi to
  give the giiest a bath in a certain pool and then fresh garments.
  Following that, Utnapishtim announced to Gilgamesh the secret
  of the plant.
  Gilgamesh, something secret I will disclose to thee,
  and give thee thine instruction:
  That plant is like a brier in the field;
  its thorn, like that of the rose, will pierce thy hand.
  Bat if thy hand attain to that plant,
  thou wilt return to thy native land.
  The plant was growing at the bottom of the cosmic sea.
  Ursanapi ferried the hero out again into the waters. Gilgamesh
  tied stones to his feet and plunged.161 Down he rushed, beyond
  every bound of endurance, while the ferryman remained in the
  boat. And when the diver had reached the bottom of the bottom-
  less sea, he plucked the plant, though it mutilated his hand, cut
  off the stones, and made again for the surface. When he broke
  the surface and the ferryman had hauled him back into the boat,
  he announced in triumph:
  Ursanapi, this plant is the one . . .
  By which Man may attain to full vigor.
  I will bring it back to Erech of the sheep-pens. . . .
  Its name is: "In his age, Man becomes young again. "
  I will eat of it and return to the condition of my youth.
  They proceeded across the sea. When they had landed, Gil-
  gamesh bathed in a cool water-hole and lay down to rest. But
  i6L though the hero w as warned against touching these waters on the jour-
  nev out, he now can enter them with impunity. This is a measure oi the power
  gained through his visit with the old Lord and Lady of the Everlasting Island.
  Utnapishtim-Noah, the flood hero, is an archetypal father figure; his island,
  the World Navel, is a prefigurement of the later Greco-Roman "Islands of the
  Blessed."
  
  INITIATION
  while he slept, a serpent smelled the wonderful perfume of the
  plant, darted forth, and carried it away. Elating it, the snake im-
  mediately gained the power of sloughing its skin, and so renewed
  its youth. But Gilgamesh, when he awoke, sat down and wept,
  "and the tears ran down the wall of his nose."1S2
  To this very day, the possibility of physical immortality
  charms the heart of man. The Utopian play by Bernard Shaw,
  Back to Methuselah, produced in 1921, converted the theme into
  a modern socio-biological parable. Four hundred years earlier
  the more literal-minded Juan Ponce de Leon discovered Florida
  in a search for the land of "Bimini," where he had expected to
  find the fountain of youth. While centuries before and far away,
  the Chinese philosopher Ko Hung .spent the latter years of a
  long lifetime preparing pills of immortality. "Take three pounds
  of genuine cinnabar," Ko Hung wrote, "and one pound of white
  honey. Mix them. Dry the mixture in the sun. Then roast it over
  a fire until it can be shaped into pills. Take ten pills the size of a
  hemp seed every morning. Inside of a year, white hair will turn
  black, decayed teeth will grow again, and the body will become
  sleek and glistening. If an old man takes this medicine for a long
  period of time, he will develop into a young man. The one who
  takes it constantly will enjoy eternal life, and will not die."163 A
  friend one day arrived to pay a visit to the solitary experimenter
  and philosopher, but all he found were Ko thing's empty clothes.
  lfi3 The above rendering is based on P. Jensen, Assyrisch-babylonische Mythen
  undEpen (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, VI, I; Berlin, 1900), pp. 116-273. The
  verses quoted appear on pp. 223, 251, 251-253. Jensen's version is a line-for-line
  i r;]ii'hl;iun]i i •! I he principal cAtnilf lir\ih :m \-^vn:ir \ •• i"1-'! • ;] Iroui KIIIL; \'-hurb;i-
  nipal's library {668-626 B.C.}. Fragments of the very much older Babylonian
  version {see supra, p. 175) and still more ancient Sumerian original (third mil-
  lennium B.C.) have also been discovered and deciphered.
  163 Ko Hung (also known as Pao Pu Tzu>, Nei P'ien, Chapter VII (transla-
  tion quoted from Obed Simon Johnson, A Study of Chinese Alchemy, Shanghai.
  1928, p. 63).
  Ko Hung evolved several other very interesting receipts, one bestowing a
  body "buoyant and luxurious," another the ability to walk on water. For a dis-
  cussion of the place of Ko Hung in Chinese philosophy, see Alfred Forke, "Ko
  Hung, der Philosoph imd Alchimist," Archil) fur Geschichte der Philasophie.
  XLI, 1-2 (Berlin, 1932), pp. 115-126.
  174
  The old man was gone; he had passed into the realm of the
  immortals.104
  The research for physical immortality proceeds from a misun-
  derstanding of the traditional teaching. On the contrary, the basic
  problem is: to enlarge the pupil of the eye, so that the body with
  its attendant personality will no longer obstruct the view. Im-
  mortality is then experienced as a present fact: "It is here! It
  is here!"1"5
  "All things are in process, rising and returning. Plants come
  to blossom, but only to return to the root. Returning to the root
  is like seeking tranquility. Seeking tranquility is like moving to-
  ward destiny. To move toward destiny is like eternity. To know
  eternity is enlightenment, and not to recognize eternity brings
  disorder and evil.
  "Knowing eternity makes one comprehensive; comprehension
  makes one broadminded; breadth of vision brings nobility; no-
  bility is like heaven.
  "The heavenly is like Tao. Tao is the Eternal. The decay of
  the body is not to be feared."166
  The Japanese have a proverb: "The gods only laugh when
  men pray to them for wealth." The boon bestowed on the wor-
  shiper is always scaled to his stature and to the nature of his dom-
  inant desire: the boon is simply a symbol of life energy stepped
  down to the requirements of a certain specific case. The irony, of
  course, lies in the fact that, whereas the hero who has won the
  favor of the god may beg for the boon of perfect illumination,
  what he generally seeks are longer years to live, weapons with
  which to slay his neighbor, or the health of his child.
  The Greeks tell of King Midas, who had the luck to win from
  Bacchus the offer of whatsoever boon he might desire. He asked
  that everything he touched should be turned to gold. When he
  went his way, he plucked, experimentally, the twig of an oak tree
  lfi* Herbert A. Giles, A Chinese Hhgra(>hkul Dictionary (I.(melon and Shanghai.
  1898), p. 372.
  lfi(1 Lao-tse, Tao Teh King, 16 (translation by Dwight Goddard, Laotzu'a Tao
  and Wu Wei; New York. 1919, p. 18). Compare pages 118-119, note 46, supra.
  175
  
  ] N IT1ATION
  and it was immediately gold; he took up a stone, it had turned to
  gold; an apple was a golden nugget in his hand. Ecstatic, he or-
  dered prepared a magnificent feast to celebrate the miracle. But
  when he sat down and set his fingers to the roast, it was trans-
  muted; at his lips the wine became liquid gold. And when his
  little daughter, whom he loved beyond anything on earth, came
  to console him in his misery, she became, the moment he em-
  braced her, a pretty golden statue.
  The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the
  agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philos-
  ophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individ-
  ual 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. Fi-
  nally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a
  realization transcending all experiences of form—all symboliza-
  tions, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void.
  So it is that when Dante had taken the last step in his spiritual
  adventure, and came before the ultimate symbolic vision of the
  Triune God in the Celestial Rose, he had still one more illumina-
  tion to experience, even beyond the forms of the Father, Son, and
  Holy Ghost. "Bernard," he writes, "made a sign to me, and
  smiled, that I should look upward; but I was already, of myself,
  such as he wished; for my sight, becoming pure, was entering
  more and more, through the radiance of the lofty Light which in
  Itself is true. Thenceforward my vision was greater than our
  speech, which yields to such a sight, and the memory yields to
  such excess."16'
  "There goes neither the eye, nor speech, nor the mind: we
  know It not; nor do we see how to teach one about It. Different
  It is from all that are known, and It is beyond the unknown as
  well."168
  ""'• "Paradiso," XXXIII, 49-57 (translation by Norton, op. cit., Vol. Ill, pp.
  253-254, by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers).
  1M Kena Upanisfuut, 1:3 (translation by Swami Sharvananda; Sri Ramakrishna
  Math; Mylapore, Madras, 19.12).
  THE ULTIMATE BOON
  This is the highest and ultimate crucifixion, not only of the
  hero, but of his god as well. Here the Son and the Father alike
  are annihilated —as personality-masks over the unnamed. For
  just as the figments of a dream derive from the life energy of one
  dreamer, representing only fluid splittings and complications of
  that single force, so do all the forms of all the worlds, whether
  terrestrial or divine, reflect the universal force of a single in-
  scrutable mystery: the power that constructs the atom and con-
  trols the orbits of the stars.
  That font of life is the core of the individual, and within him-
  self he will find it—if he can tear the coverings away. The pagan
  Germanic divinity Othin (Wotan) gave an eye to split the veil of
  light into the knowledge of this infinite dark, and then under-
  went for it the passion of a crucifixion:
  / ween that I hung on the ivindy tree,
  Hung therefor nights full nine;
  With the spear I was wounded, and offered I was
  To Othin, myself to myself,
  On the tree that none may ever know
  What root beneath it runs.169
  The Buddha's victory beneath the Bo Tree is the classic Ori-
  ental example of this deed. With the sword of his mind he
  pierced the bubble of the universe—and it shattered into nought.
  The whole world of natural experience, as well as the continents,
  heavens, and hells of traditional religious belief, exploded-
  together with their gods and demons. But the miracle of miracles
  was that though all exploded, all was nevertheless thereby re-
  newed, revivified, and made glorious with the effulgence of true
  being. Indeed, the gods of the redeemed heavens raised their
  voices in harmonious acclaim of the man-hero who had pene-
  trated beyond them to the void that was their life and source:
  "Flags and banners erected on the eastern rim of the world let
  their streamers fly to the western rim of the world; likewise
  1<i? Poetic Edda, "Hovamol," 139 (translation by Henry Adams Bellows; The
  176
  
  IN 1T1AT10N
  those erected on the western rim of the world, to the eastern rim
  of the world; those erected on the northern rim of the world, to
  the southern rim of the world; and those erected on the southern
  rim of the world, to the northern rim of the world; while those
  erected on the level of the earth let theirs fly until they beat
  against the Brahma-world; and those of the Brahma-world let
  theirs hang down to the level of the earth. Throughout the ten
  thousand worlds the flowering trees bloomed; the fruit trees
  were weighted down by the burden of their fruit; trunk-lotuses
  bloomed on the trunks of trees; branch-lotuses on the branches
  of trees; vine-lotuses on the vines; hanging-lotuses in the sky;
  and stalk-lotuses burst through the rocks and came up by sev-
  ens. The system of ten thousand worlds was like a bouquet of
  flowers sent whirling through the air, or like a thick carpet of
  flowers; in the intermundane spaces the eight-thousand-league-
  long hells, which not even the light of seven suns had formerly
  been able to illumine, were now flooded with radiance; the
  eighty-four-thousand-league-deep ocean became sweet to the
  taste; the rivers checked their flowing; the blind from birth re-
  ceived their sight; the deaf from birth their hearing; the crippled
  from birth the use of their limbs; and the bonds and fetters of
  captives broke and fell off."1'0
  170 Jataka, Introduction, i, 75 (reprinted by permission of the publishers
  from Henry Clarke Warren, Buddhism in Translations (Harvard Oriental
  Series, 3) Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1896, pp. 82-83).
  178
  C H A P T E R
  Return
  Refusal of the Return
  WHEN the hero-quest has been accomplished, through penetra-
  tion to the source, or through the grace of some male or female,
  human or animal, personification, the adventurer still must re-
  turn with his life-transmuting trophy. The full round, the norm
  of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the
  labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his
  sleeping princess, back into the kingdom of humanity, where the
  boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the na-
  tion, the planet, or the ten thousand worlds.
  But the responsibility has been frequently refused. Even the
  Buddha, after his triumph, doubted whether the message of re-
  alization could be communicated, and saints are reported to have
  passed away while in the supernal ecstasy. Numerous indeed are
  the heroes fabled to have taken up residence forever in the blessed
  isle of the unaging Goddess of Immortal Being.
  A moving tale is told of an ancient Hindu warrior-king named
  Muchukunda. He was born from his father's left side, the father
  having swallowed by mistake a fertility potion that the Brah-
  mins had prepared for his wife;1 and in keeping with the promis-
  ing symbolism of this miracle, the motherless marvel, fruit of the
  
  male womb, grew to be such a king among kings that when the
  gods, at one period, were suffering defeat in their perpetual con-
  test with the demons, they called upon him for help. He assisted
  them to a mighty victory, and they, in their divine pleasure,
  granted him the realization of his highest wish. But what should
  such a king, himself almost omnipotent, desire? What greatest
  boon of boons could be conceived of by such a master among
  men? King Muchukunda, so runs the story, was very tired after
  his battle: all he asked was that he might be granted a sleep with-
  out end, and that any person chancing to arouse him should be
  burned to a crisp by the first glance of his eye.
  The boon was bestowed. In a cavern chamber, deep within
  the womb of a mountain, King Muchukunda retired to sleep,
  and there slumbered through the revolving eons. Individuals,
  peoples, civilizations, world ages, came into being out of the
  void and dropped back into it again, while the old king, in his
  state of subconscious bliss, endured. Timeless as the Freudian
  unconscious beneath the dramatic time world of our fluctuating
  ego-experience, that old mountain man, the drinker of deep
  sleep, lived on and on.
  His awakening came—but with a surprising turn that throws
  into new perspective the whole problem of the hero-circuit, as
  well as the mystery of a mighty king's request for sleep as the
  highest conceivable boon.
  Vishnu, the Lord of the World, had become incarnate in the
  person of a beautiful youth named Krishna, who, having saved
  the land of India from a tyrannical race of demons, had assumed
  the throne. And he had been ruling in Utopian peace, when a
  horde of barbarians suddenly invaded from the northwest. Kri-
  shna the king went against them, but, in keeping with his divine
  nature, won the victory playfully, by a simple ruse. Unarmed and
  garlanded with lotuses, he came out of his stronghold and
  tempted the enemy king to pursue and catch him, then dodged
  into a cave. When the barbarian followed, he discovered some-
  one lying there in the chamber, asleep.
  "Oh!" thought he. "So he has lured me here and now feigns to
  be a harmless sleeper."
  180
  IX. Shiva, Lord of the Cosmic Dance (South India)
  
  XI. Bodhisattva (China)
  X. Androgynous Ancestor
  (Sudan)
  
  XII. Bodhisattva (Tibet)
  XIII. The Branch of Immortal Life (Assyria)
  
  XV. The Return (Ancient Rome)
  
  XVI. The Cosmic Lion Goddess, Holding the Sun (North India)
  REFUSAL OF THE RETURN
  He kicked the figure lying on the ground before him, and it
  stirred. It was King Muchukunda. The figure rose, and the eyes
  that had been closed for unnumbered cycles of creation, world
  history, and dissolution, opened slowly to the light. The first
  glance that went forth struck the enemy king, who burst into a
  torch of flame and was reduced immediately to a smoking heap
  of ash. Muchukunda turned, and the second glance struck the
  garlanded, beautiful youth, whom the awakened old king straight-
  way recognized by his radiance as an incarnation of God. And
  Muchukunda bowed before his Savior with the following prayer:
  "My Lord God! When I lived and wrought as a man, I lived
  and wrought—straying restlessly; through many lives, birth
  after birth, I sought and suffered, nowhere knowing cease or rest.
  Distress I mistook for joy. Mirages appearing over the desert I
  mistook for refreshing waters. Delights I grasped, and what I ob-
  tained was miser}7. Kingly power and earthly possession, riches
  and might, friends and sons, wife and followers, everything that
  lures the senses: I wanted them all, because I believed that these
  would bring me beatitude. But the moment anything was mine
  it changed its nature, and became as a burning fire.
  "Then I found my way into the company of the gods, and they
  welcomed me as a companion. But where, still, surcease? Where
  rest? The creatures of this world, gods included, all are tricked,
  my Lord God, by your playful ruses; that is why they continue
  in their futile round of birth, life agony, old age, and death. Be-
  tween lives, they confront the lord of the dead and are forced to
  endure hells of every degree of pitiless pain. And it all comes
  from you!
  "My Lord God, deluded by your playful ruses, I too was a prey
  of the world, wandering in a labyrinth of error, netted in the
  meshes of ego-consciousness. Now, therefore, I take refuge in
  your Presence—the boundless, the adorable—desiring only free-
  dom from it all."
  When Muchukunda stepped from his cave, he saw that men,
  since his departure, had become reduced in stature. He was as a
  giant among them. And so he departed from them again, retreated
  to the highest mountains, and there dedicated himself to the
  181
  
  ascetic practices that should finally release him from his last at-
  tachment to the forms of being.2
  Muchukunda, in other words, instead of returning, decided to
  retreat one degree still further from the world. And who shall
  say that his decision was altogether without reason?
  • 2 •
  The Magic Flight
  If the hero in his triumph wins the blessing of the goddess or the
  god and is then explicitly commissioned to return to the world
  with some elixir for the restoration of society, the final stage of
  his adventure is supported by all the powers of his supernatural
  patron. On the other hand, if the trophy has been attained
  against the opposition of its guardian, or if the hero's wish to re-
  turn to the world has been resented by the gods or demons, then
  the last stage of the mythological round becames a lively, often
  comical, pursuit. This flight may be complicated by marvels of
  magical obstruction and evasion.
  The Welsh tell, for instance, of a hero, Gwion Bach, who
  found himself in the Land Under Waves. Specifically, he was at
  the bottom of Lake Bala, in Merionethshire, in the north of
  Wales. And there lived at the bottom of this lake an ancient
  giant, Tegid the Bald, together with his wife, Caridwen. The
  latter, in one of her aspects, was a patroness of grain and fertile
  crops, and in another, a goddess of poetry and letters. She was
  2 Vishnu Purana, 23; Bhagavata Parana, 10:51; Har'rcansha, 114. The above
  is based on the rendering by Heinrich Zimmer, Maya, der indixche Mythos
  (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1936), pp. 89-99.
  Compare with Krishna, as the World Magician, the African Edshu (pp. 41-12,
  supra). Compare, also, the Polynesian trickster, Maui.
  THE MAGIC FLIGHT
  the owner of an immense kettle and desired to prepare therein a
  brew of science and inspiration. With the aid of necromantic
  books she contrived a black concoction which she then set over a
  fire to brew for a year, at the end of which period three blessed
  drops should be obtained of the grace of inspiration.
  And she put our hero, Gwion Bach, to stir the cauldron, and a
  blind man named Morda to keep the fire kindled beneath it,
  "and she charged them that they should not suffer it to cease
  boiling for the space of a year and a day. And she herself, ac-
  cording to the books of the astronomers, and in planetary hours,
  gathered every day of all charm-bearing herbs. And one day, to-
  wards the end of the year, as Caridwen was culling plants and
  making incantations, it chanced that three drops of the charmed
  liquor flew out of the cauldron and fell upon the finger of Gwion
  Bach. And by reason of their great heat he put his finger in his
  mouth, and the instant he put those marvel-working drops into
  his mouth he foresaw everything that was to come, and per-
  ceived that his chief care must be to guard against the wiles of
  Caridwen, for vast was her skill. And in very great fear he fled
  towards his own land. And the cauldron burst in two, because
  all the liquor within it except the three charm-bearing drops was
  poisonous, so that the horses of Gwyddno Garanhir were poi-
  soned by the water of the stream into which the liquor of the
  cauldron ran, and the confluence of that stream was called the
  Poison of the Horses of Gwyddno from that time forth.
  "Thereupon came in Caridwen and saw all the toil of the
  whole year lost. And she seized a billet of wood and struck the
  blind Morda on the head until one of his eyes fell out upon his
  cheek. And he said, 'Wrongfully hast thou disfigured me, for
  I am innocent. Thy loss was not because of me.1 'Thou speakest
  truth,' said Caridwen, 'it was Gwion Bach who robbed me.'
  "And she went forth after him, running. And he saw her, and
  changed himself into a hare and fled. But she changed herself
  into a greyhound and turned him. And he ran towards a river,
  and became a fish. And she in the form of an otter-bitch chased
  him under the water, until he was fain to turn himself into a bird
  
  of the air. She, as a hawk, followed him and gave him no rest in
  the sky. And just as she was about to stoop upon him, and he
  was in fear of death, he espied a heap of winnowed wheat on the
  floor of a barn, and he dropped among the wheat, and turned
  himself into one of the grains. Then she transformed herself into
  a high-crested black hen, and went to the wheat and scratched it
  with her feet, and found him out and swallowed him. And, as
  the story says, she bore him nine months, and when she was de-
  livered of him, she could not find it in her heart to kill him, by
  reason of his beauty. So she wrapped him in a leathern bag, and
  cast him into the sea to the mercy of God, on the twenty-ninth
  day of April."3
  The flight is a favorite episode of the folk tale, where it is de-
  veloped under many lively forms.
  The Buriat of Irkutsk (Siberia), for example, declare that
  Morgon-Kara, their first shaman, was so competent that he could
  •' "Taliesin,'1 translated by Lady Charlotte Guest in The Mabinogion (Ever
  man's Library, No. 97. pp. 263-264).
  Taliesin, "Chief of the Bards of the West," may have been an actual histoi
  C!il persnnagr of the si\th (vnuiry \.]J.. I'dntr-mporarv with the chieftain wl
  became the "King Arthur" of later romance. The bard's legend and poems su
  vive in a thirteenth-century manuscript, "The Book of Taliesin," which is 01
  of the "Four Ancient Book's of Wales." A mabinog (Welsh) is a bard's appre
  tice. The term mubinogi, "juvenile instruction," denotes the traditional mat
  rial (myths, legends, poems, etc.) taught to a mabinog, and which it was h
  duty to acquire by heart. Mabinogion, the plural of mabinogi, was the nan
  given by Lady Charlotte Guest to her translation (1838-49) of eleven r
  mances from the "Ancient Books."
  The bardic lore of Wales, like that of Scotland and Ireland, descends from
  very old and abundant pagan-Celtic fund of myth. This was transformed ai
  revivified by the Christian missionaries and chroniclers (fifth century and fc
  lowing), who recorded the old stories and sought pain-takingly to co-ordina
  them with the Bible. During the tenth century, a brilliant period of Toman
  production, cenU-nri^" prntiLinh !i: Iretaiid, converted the inheritance into ;
  important contemporary lorce. Celtic hards went out to the courts ot Christu
  Europe; Celtic themes were rehearsed by the pagan Scandinavian scalds,
  great part of our European fairy lore, as well as the foundation of tl
  Arthurian tradition, traces back to this first great creative period of Occideni
  romance. (See Gertrude Schoepperle, Tristan and liolt, A Study of the Sourt
  of the Romance, London and Frankfort a. M., 1913.)
  184
  THE MAGIC FLIGHT
  bring back souls from the dead. And so the Lord of the Dead
  complained to the High God of Heaven, and God decided to
  pose the shaman a test. He got possession of the soul of a certain
  man and slipped it into a bottle, covering the opening with the
  ball of his thumb. The man grew ill, and his relatives sent for
  Morgon-Kara. The shaman looked everywhere for the missing
  soul. He searched the forest, the waters, the mountain gorges,
  the land of the dead, and at last mounted, "sitting on his drum,"
  to the world above, where again he was forced to search for a
  long time. Presently he observed that the High God of Heaven
  was keeping a bottle covered with the ball of his thumb, and,
  studying the circumstance, perceived that inside the bottle was
  the very soul he had come to find. The wily shaman changed
  himself into a wasp. He flew at God and gave him such a hot
  sting on the forehead that the thumb jerked from the opening
  and the captive got away. Then the next thing God knew, there
  was this shaman, Morgon-Kara, sitting on his drum again, and
  going down to earth with the recovered soul. The flight
  in this case, however, was not entirely successful. Becoming
  terribly angry, God immediately diminished the power of the
  shaman forever by splitting his drum in two. And so that is why
  shaman drums, which originally (according to this story of the
  Buriat) were fitted with two heads of skin, from that day to this
  have had only one.4
  A popular variety of the magic flight is that in which objects
  are left behind to speak for the fugitive and thus delay pursuit.
  The New Zealand Maori tell of a fisherman who one day came
  home to find that his wife had swallowed their two sons. She
  was lying groaning on the floor. He asked her what the trouble
  was, and she declared that she was ill. He demanded to know
  where the two boys were, and she told him they had gone away.
  But he knew that she was lying. With his magic, he caused her
  4 Harva, op. cit, pp. 543-544; quoting "Pervyi buryatskii saman Morgon-
  Kara," Isvestiya Vo/itoC-iio Sibd-skaga Otdeln RUSMII-JO fleogrujice^kago Obsce.itva
  XI, 1-2 (Irkutsk, 1880), pp. 87 ff.
  
  to disgorge them: they came out alive and whole. Then that man
  was afraid of his wife, and he determined to escape from her as
  soon as he could, together with the boys.
  When the ogress went to fetch water, the man, by his magic,
  caused the water to decrease and retreat ahead of her, so that she
  had to go a considerable way. Then by gestures he instructed
  the huts, the clumps of trees growing near the village, the filth
  dump, and the temple on top of the hill to answer for him when
  his wife should return and call. He made away with the boys to
  his canoe, and they hoisted sail. The woman came back, and, not
  finding anyone about, began to call. First the filth pit replied.
  She moved in that direction and called again. The houses an-
  swered; then the trees. One after another, the various objects in
  the neighborhood responded to her, and she ran, increasingly
  bewildered, in every direction. She became weak and began to
  pant and sob and then, at last, realized what had been done
  to her. She hastened to the temple on the hilltop and peered out
  to sea, where the canoe was a mere speck on the horizon.3
  Another well-known variety of the magic flight is one in
  which a number of delaying obstacles are tossed behind by the
  wildly fleeing hero. "A little brother and sister were playing by
  a spring, and as they did so suddenly tumbled in. There was a
  waterhag down there, and this waterhag said, 'Now I have you!
  Now you shall work your heads off for me!1 And she carried
  them away with her. She gave to the little girl a tangle of filthy
  flax to spin and made her fetch water in a bottomless tub; the
  boy had to chop a tree with a blunt ax; and all they ever had to
  eat were stone-hard lumps of dough. So at last the children be-
  came so impatient that they waited until one Sunday, when the
  hag had gone to church, and escaped. When church let out, the
  hag discovered that her birds had flown, and so made after them
  with mighty bounds.
  "But the children espied her from afar, and the little girl
  threw back a hairbrush, which immediately turned into a big
  5 John White, The Ancient History of the Maori, his Mythology and Tradi-
  tions (Wellington, 1886-89), Vol. II, pp. 167-171.
  THE MAGIC FLIGHT
  brush-mountain with thousands and thousands of bristles over
  which the hag found it very difficult to climb; nevertheless, she
  finally appeared. As soon as the children saw her, the boy threw
  back a comb, which immediately turned into a big comb-mountain
  with a thousand times a thousand spikes; but the hag knew how
  to catch hold of these, and at last she made her way through.
  Then the little girl threw back a mirror, and this turned into a
  mirror-mountain, which was so smooth that the hag was unable
  to get over. Thought she: 'I shall hurry back home and get my ax
  and chop the mirror-mountain in two.1 But by the time she got
  back and demolished the glass, the children were long since far
  away, and the waterhag had to trudge back again to her spring."6
  FIGURE 9a. Gorgon-Sister Pursuing Perseus,
  Who is Fleeing with the Head of Medusa
  
  FIGURE 9b. Perseus Fleeing with the Head of .Medusa in His Wallet
  The powers of the abyss are not to be challenged lightly. In
  the Orient, a great point is made of the danger of undertaking
  the psychologically disturbing practices of yoga without compe-
  tent supervision. The meditations of the postulant have to be ad-
  justed to his progress, so that the imagination may be defended
  at every step by devatas (envisioned, adequate deities) until the
  moment comes for the prepared spirit to step alone beyond. As
  Dr. Jung has very wisely observed: "The incomparably useful
  function of the dogmatic symbol [is that] it protects a person
  from a direct experience of God as long as he does not mischie-
  vously expose himself. But if... he leaves home and family,
  lives too long alone, and gazes too deeply into the dark mirror,
  then the awful event of the meeting may befall him. Yet even
  then the traditional symbol, come to full flower through the
  THE MAGIC FLIGHT
  centuries, may operate like a healing draught and divert the fatal
  incursion of the living godhead into the hallowed spaces of the
  church."7 The magic objects tossed behind by the panic-ridden
  hero—protective interpretations, principles, symbols, rational-
  izations, anything—delay and absorb the power of the started
  Hound of Heaven, permitting the adventurer to come back into
  his fold safe and with perhaps a boon. But the toll required is
  not always slight.
  One of the most shocking of the obstacle flights is that of the
  Greek hero, Jason. He had set forth to win the Golden Fleece.
  Putting to sea in the magnificent Argo with a great company of
  warriors, he had sailed in the direction of the Black Sea, and,
  though delayed by many fabulous dangers, arrived, at last,
  miles beyond the Bosporus, at the city and palace of King
  Aeetes. Behind the palace was the grove and tree of the dragon-
  guarded prize.
  Now the daughter of the king, Medea, conceived an overpow-
  ering passion for the illustrious foreign visitor and, when her
  father imposed an impossible task as the price of the Golden
  Fleece, compounded charms that enabled him to succeed. The
  task was to plough a certain field, employing bulls of flaming
  breath and brazen feet, then to sow the field with dragon's teeth
  and slay the armed men who should immediately spring into
  being. But with his body and armor anointed with Medea's
  charm, Jason mastered the bulls; and when the army sprang
  from the dragon seed, he tossed a stone into their midst, which
  turned them face to face, and they slew each other to the man.
  The infatuated young woman conducted Jason to the oak
  from which hung the Fleece. The guarding dragon was distin-
  guished by a crest, a three-forked tongue, and nastily hooked
  fangs; but with the juice of a certain herb the couple put the
  formidable monster to sleep. Then Jason snatched the prize,
  Medea ran with him, and the Argo put to sea. But the king was
  soon in swift pursuit. And when Medea perceived that his sails
  were cutting down their lead, she persuaded Jason to kill Apsyrtos,
  • C. G. Juns. The Integration of the Personality (New York, VJ39), p. 59.
  189
  
  her younger brother whom she had carried off, and toss the
  pieces of the dismembered body into the sea. This forced King
  Aeetes, her father, to put about, rescue the fragments, and go
  ashore to give them decent burial. Meanwhile the Argo ran with
  the wind and passed from his ken.''
  In the Japanese "Records of Ancient Matters" appears an-
  other harrowing tale, but of very different import: that of the
  descent to the underworld of the primeval all-father Izanagi, to
  recover from the land of the Yellow Stream his deceased sister-
  spouse Izanami. She met him at the door to the lower world, and
  he said to her: "Thine Augustness, my lovely younger sister!
  The lands that I and thou made are not yet finished making; so
  come back!" She replied: "Lamentable indeed that thou earnest
  not sooner! I have eaten of the food of the Land of the Yellow
  Stream. Nevertheless, as I am overpowered by the honor of the
  entry here of Thine Augustness, my lovely elder brother, I wish
  to return. Moreover, I will discuss the matter particularly with
  the deities of the Yellow Stream. Be careful, do not look at me!"
  She retired into the palace; but as she tarried there very long,
  he could not wait. He broke off one of the end-teeth of the comb
  that was stuck in the august left bunch of his hair, and, lighting
  it as a little torch, he went in and looked. What he saw were
  maggots swarming, and Izanami rotting.
  Aghast at the sight, Izanagi fled back. Izanami said: "Thou
  hast put me to shame."
  Izanami sent the Ugly Female of the nether world in pursuit.
  Izanagi in full flight took the black headdress from his head and
  cast it down. Instantly it turned into grapes, and, while his pur-
  suer paused to eat them, he continued on his rapid way. But she
  resumed the pursuit and gained on him. He took and broke the
  multitudinous and close-toothed comb in the right bunch of his
  hair and cast it down. Instantly it turned into bamboo sprouts,
  and, while she pulled them up and ate them, he fled.
  Then his younger sister sent in pursuit of him the eight thun-
  der deities with a thousand and five hundred warriors of the
  8 See Apollonios of Rhodes, Argonautika: the flight is recounted in Book IV.
  iyo
  Yellow Stream. Drawing the ten-grasp saber that was augustly
  girded on him, he fled, brandishing this behind him. But the
  warriors still pursued. Reaching the frontier pass between the
  world of the living and the land of the Yellow Stream, he took
  three peaches that were growing there, waited, and when the
  army came against him, hurled them. The peaches from the
  world of the living smote the warriors of the land of the Yellow
  Stream, who turned and fled.
  Her Augustness Izanami, last of all, came out herself. So he
  drew up a rock which it would take a thousand men to lift, and
  with it blocked up the pass. And with the rock between them,
  they stood opposite to one another and exchanged leave-takings.
  Izanami said: "My lovely elder brother, Thine Augustness! If
  thou dost behave like this, henceforth I shall cause to die every
  day one thousand of thy people in thy realm." Izanagi answered:
  "My lovely younger sister, Thine Augustness! If thou dost so,
  then I will cause every day one thousand and five hundred women
  to give birth."9
  Having moved a step beyond the creative sphere of all-father
  Izanagi into the field of dissolution, Izanami had sought to pro-
  tect her brother-husband. When he had seen more than he could
  bear, he lost his innocence of death but, with his august will to
  live, drew up as a mighty rock that protecting veil which we all
  have held, ever since, between our eyes and the grave.
  The Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and hundreds of
  analogous tales throughout the world, suggest, as does this ancient
  legend of the farthest East, that in spite of the failure recorded, a
  possibility exists of a return of the lover with his lost love from
  beyond the terrible threshold. It is always some little fault, some
  slight yet critical symptom of human frailty, that makes impossi-
  ble the open interrelationship between the worlds; so that one is
  tempted to believe, almost, that if the small, marring accident
  could be avoided, all would be well. In the Polynesian versions
  '" Ko-ji~ki, -Records of Ancient Matters" (,\.D. 712), adapted from the trans-
  lation by C. H. Chamberlain, Transactions of The Asiatic Society of Japan,
  Vol. X, Svipplement (Yokohama, 1882), pp. 24-28.
  191
  
  of the romance, however, where the fleeing couple usually es-
  cape, and in the Greek satyr-play of Alcestis, where we also have
  a happy return, the effect is not reassuring, but only superhu-
  man. The myths of failure touch us with the tragedy of life, but
  those of success only with their own incredibility. And yet, it' the
  mono-myth is to fulfill its promise, not human failure or super-
  human success but human success is what we shall have to be
  shown. That is the problem of the crisis of the threshold of the
  return. We shall first consider it in the superhuman symbols and
  then seek the practical teaching for historic man.
  Rescue from Without
  The hero may have to be brought back from his supernatural ad-
  venture by assistance from without. That is to say, the world
  may have to come and get him. For the bliss of the deep abode is
  not lightly abandoned in favor of the self-scattering of the wak-
  ened state. "Who having cast off the world," we read, "would
  desire to return again? He would be only there.""' And yet, in so
  far as one is alive, life will call. Society is jealous of those who re-
  main away from it, and will come knocking at the door. If the
  hero—like Muchukunda—is unwilling, the disturber suffers an
  ugly shock; but on the other hand, if the summoned one is only
  delayed —sealed in by the beatitude of the state of perfect being
  (which resembles death} —an apparent rescue is effected, and
  the adventurer returns.
  When Raven of the Eskimo tale had darted with bis fire
  sticks into the belly of the whale-cow, he discovered himself at
  the entrance of a handsome room, at the farther end of which
  " Jaimuniya Cpanhkad Brahmana, 3. 28. 5.
  192
  RESCUE FROM WITHOUT
  burned a lamp. He was surprised to see sitting there a beautiful
  girl. The room was dry and clean, the whale's spine supporting
  the ceiling and the ribs forming the walls. From a tube that ran
  along the backbone, oil dripped slowly into the lamp.
  When Raven entered the room, the woman looked up and
  cried: "How did you get here? You are the first man to enter this
  place." Raven told what he had done, and she bade him take a
  seat on the opposite side of the room. This woman was the soul
  (inua) of the whale. She spread a meal before the visitor, gave
  him berries and oil, and told him, meanwhile, how she had gath-
  ered the berries the year before. Raven remained four days as
  guest of the inua in the belly of the whale, and during the entire
  period was trying to ascertain what kind of tube that could be,
  running along the ceiling. Every time the woman left the room,
  she forbade him to touch it. But now, when she again went out,
  he walked over to the lamp, stretched out his claw and catight on
  it a big drop, which he licked off with his tongue. It was so sweet
  that he repeated the act, and then proceeded to catch drop after
  drop, as fast as they fell. Presently, however, his greed found this
  too slow, and so he reached up, broke off a piece of the tube, and
  ate it. Hardly had he done so, when a great gush of oil poured
  into the room, extinguished the light, and the chamber itself
  began to roll heavily back and forth. This rolling went on for four
  days. Raven was almost dead with fatigue and with the terrible
  noise that stormed around him all the while. But then everything
  quieted down and the room lay still; for Raven had broken one of
  the heart-arteries, and the whale-cow had died. The inua never
  returned. The body of the whale was washed ashore.
  But now Raven was a prisoner. While he pondered what he
  should do, he heard two men talking, up on the back of the ani-
  mal, and they decided to summon all the people from the village
  to help with the whale. Very soon they had cut a hole in the
  upper part of the great body.11 When it was large enough, and
  all the people had gone off with pieces of meat to earn- them high
  11 In many myths of the hero ii
  peck open the side of bis prison.
  the whale's beilv he
  sfu«l bv birds that
  
  up on the shore, Raven stepped out unnoticed. But no sooner
  had he reached the ground than he remembered he had left his
  fire sticks within. He took off his coat and mask, and pretty soon
  the people saw a small, black man, wrapped up in a queer animal
  skin approaching them. They looked at him curiously. The man
  offered to help, rolled up his sleeves, and set to work.
  In a little while, one of the people working in the interior of
  the whale shouted, "Look what I have found! Fire sticks in the
  belly of the whale!" Raven said, "My, but this is bad! My daugh-
  ter once told me that when fire sticks are found inside a whale
  that people have cut open, many of these people will die! I'm for
  running!" He rolled down his sleeves again and made away. The
  people hurried to follow his example. And so that was how
  Raven, who then doubled back, had, for a time, the whole feast
  to himself.12
  FIGURE 10. The Resurrection of Osiris
  12 Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnetlgottes, pp. 85-87.
  194
  RESCUE FROM WITHOUT
  One of the most important and delightful of the myths of the
  Shinto tradition of Japan —already old when chronicled in the
  eighth century A.D. in the "Records of Ancient Matters" —is that
  of the drawing forth of the beautiful sun-goddess Amaterasu
  from a heavenly rock-dweiling during the critical first period
  of the world. This is an example in which the rescued one is
  somewhat reluctant. The storm-god Susanowo, the brother of
  Amaterasu, had been misbehaving inexcusably. And though she
  had tried every means to appease him and had stretched forgive-
  ness far beyond the limit, he continued to destroy her rice fields
  and to pollute her institutions. As a final insult, he broke a hole
  in the top of her weaving-hall and let fall through it a "heavenly
  piebald horse which he had flayed with a backward flaying," at
  sight of which all the ladies of the goddess, who were busily
  weaving the august garments of the deities, were so much alarmed
  that they died of fear.
  Amaterasu, terrified at the sight, retired into a heavenly cave,
  closed the door behind her, and made it fast. This was a terrible
  thing for her to do; for the permanent disappearance of the sun
  would have meant as much as the end of the universe—the end,
  before it had even properly begun. With her disappearance the
  whole plain of high heaven and all the central land of reed plains
  became dark. Evil spirits ran riot through the world; numerous
  portents of woe arose, and the voices of the myriad of deities
  were like unto the flies in the fifth moon as they swarmed.
  Therefore the eight millions of gods assembled in a divine
  assembly in the bed of the tranquil river of heaven and bid one
  of their number, the deity named Thought-Includer, to devise a
  plan. As the result of their consultation, many things of divine
  efficacy were produced, among them a mirror, a sword, and
  cloth offerings. A great tree was set up and decorated with jew-
  els; cocks were brought that they might keep up a perpetual
  crowing; bonfires were lit; grand liturgies were recited. The
  mirror, eight feet long, was tied to the middle branches of the
  tree. And a merry, noisy dance was performed by a young
  goddess called Uzume. The eight millions of divinities were so
  
  amused that their laughter rilled the air, and the plain of high
  heaven shook.
  The sun-goddess in the cave heard the lively uproar and was
  amazed. She was curious to know what was going on. Slightly
  opening the door of the heavenly rock-dwelling, she spoke thus
  from within: "I thought that owing to my retirement the plain of
  heaven would be dark, and likewise the central land of reed
  plains would all be dark: how then is it that Uzume makes
  merry, and that likewise the eight millions of gods all laugh?"
  Then Uzume spoke, saying: "We rejoice and are glad because
  there is a deity more illustrious than Thine Augustness." While
  she was thus speaking, two of the divinities pushed forward the
  mirror and respectfully showed it to the sun-goddess, Amaterasu;
  whereupon she, more and more astonished, gradually came forth
  from the door and gazed upon it. A powerful god took her au-
  gust hand and drew her out; whereupon another stretched a
  rope of straw (called the shimenawa) behind her, across the en-
  trance, saying: "Thou must not go back further in than this!"
  Thereupon both the plain of high heaven and the central land
  of reed plains again were light.13 The sun may now retreat, for
  a time, every night—as does life itself, in refreshing sleep; but
  by the august shimenawa she is prevented from disappearing
  permanently.
  The motif of the sun as a goddess, instead of as a god, is a rare
  and precious survival from an archaic, apparently once widely
  diffused, mythological context. The great maternal divinity of
  South Arabia is the feminine sun, Hat. The word in German for
  the sun (die Sonne) is feminine. Throughout Siberia, as well as
  in North America, scattered stories survive of a female sun. And
  in the fairy tale of Red Ridinghood, who was eaten by the wolf
  but rescued from its belly by the hunter, we may have a remote
  echo of the same adventure as that of Amaterasu. Traces remain
  in many lands; but only in Japan do we find the once great
  mythology still effective in civilization; for the Mikado is a direct
  13 Ko-ji-ki, after Chamberlain, op. cit., pp. 52—59.
  RESCUE FROM W I T H O U T
  descendant of the grandson of Amaterasu, and as ancestress of the
  royal house she is honored as one of the supreme divinities of the
  national tradition of Shinto.11 In her adventures may be sensed a
  different world-feeling from that of the now better-known mytholo-
  gies of the solar god: a certain tenderness toward the lovely gift of
  light, a gentle gratitude for things made visible—such as must once
  have distinguished the religious mood of many peoples.
  11 Shinto, "The Way of the Gods," the tradition native to the Japanese as
  distinguished from the imported Butsudo, or "Way of the Buddha," is a way
  of devotion to the guardians of life and custom (local spirits, ancestral powers,
  heroes, the divine king, one's living parents, and one's living children) as dis-
  tinguished from the powers that yield release from the round (Bodhisattvas
  and Buddhas). The way of worship is primarily that of preserving and culti-
  vating purity of heart: "What is ablution"? It is not merely cleansing the body
  with holy water, but following the Right and Moral Way" (Tomobe-no-Yasutaka,
  Shinto-Shoden-Kuju). "What pleases the Deity is virtue and sincerity, not any
  number of material offerings" (Shinto-Gobusho).
  Amaterasu, ancestress of the Royal House, is the chief divinity of the numer-
  ous folk pantheon, yet herself only the highest manifestation of the unseen,
  transcendent yet immanent, Universal God: "The Eight Hundred Myriads of
  Gods are but differing manifestations of one unique Deity, Kunitokotachi-no-
  Kami, The Eternally Standing Divine Being of the Earth, The Great Unity of
  All Things in the Universe, The Primordial Being of Heaven and Earth, eter-
  nally existing from the beginning to the end of the world" (Izawa-Nagahide,
  Shinto-Ameno-Nuboko-no-Ki). "What deity does Amaterasu worship in absti-
  nence in the Plain of High Heaven? She worships her own Self within as a
  Deity, endeavoring to cultivate divine virtue in her own person by means of
  inner purity and thus becoming one with the Deity" (Ichijo-Kaneyoshi, Nihon-
  shoki-Sanso).
  Since the Deity is immanent in all things, all things are to be regarded as di-
  vine, from the pots and pans of the kitchen to the Mikado: this is Shinto, "The
  Way of the Gods." The Mikado being in the highest position receives the
  greatest reverence, but not reverence different in kind from that bestowed
  upon all things. "The awe-inspiring Deity manifests Itself, even in the single
  leaf of a tree or a delicate blade of grass" (Urabe-no-Kanekuni). The function
  of reverence in Shinto is to honor that Deity in all things; the function of pu-
  rity to sustain Its manifestation in oneself—following the august model of the
  divine self-worship of the goddess Amaterasu. "With the unseen God who
  seeth all secret things in the silence, the heart of the man sincere communes
  from the earth below" (from a poem by the Emperor Meiji). — All of the quota-
  tions above will be found in Genchi Kato, What is Shinto? (Tokyo: Maruzen
  Company Ltd., 1935): see also Lafcadio Hearn, Japan, An Interpretation (New
  York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1904).
  196
  197
  
  R K S C U E FROM WITH O U T
  The mirror, the sword, and the tree, we recognize. The mir-
  ror, reflecting the goddess and drawing her forth from the au-
  gust repose of her divine nonmanifestation, is symbolic of the
  world, the field of the reflected image. Therein divinity is
  pleased to regard its own glory, and this pleasure is itself in-
  ducement to the act of manifestation or "creation." The sword is
  the counterpart of the thunderbolt. The tree is the World Axis
  in its wish-fulfilling, fruitful aspect—the same as that displayed
  in Christian homes at the season of the winter solstice, which is
  the moment of the rebirth or return of the sun, a joyous custom
  inherited from the Germanic paganism that has given to the
  modern German language its feminine Sonne. The dance of
  Uzume and the uproar of the gods belong to carnival: the world
  left topsy-turvy by the withdrawal of the supreme divinity, but
  joyous for the coming renewal. And the shimenawa, the august
  rope of straw that was stretched behind the goddess when she
  reappeared, symbolizes the graciousness of the miracle of the
  light's return. This shimenawa is one of the most conspicuous,
  important, and silently eloquent, of the traditional symbols of
  the folk religion of Japan. Hung above the entrances of the
  temples, festooned along the streets at the New Year festival, it
  denotes the renovation of the world at the threshold of the re-
  turn. If the Christian cross is the most telling symbol of the
  mythological passage into the abyss of death, the shimenawa is
  the simplest sign of the resurrection. The two represent the
  mystery of the boundary between the worlds—the existent
  nonexistent line.
  Amaterasu is an Oriental sister of the great Inanna, the supreme
  goddess of the ancient Sumerian cuneiform temple-tablets, whose
  descent we have already followed into the lower world. Inanna,
  Ishtar, Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus: those were the names she
  bore in the successive culture periods of the Occidental develop-
  ment—associated, not with the sun, but with the planet that car-
  ries her name, and at the same time with the moon, the heavens,
  and the fruitful earth. In Egypt she became the goddess of the Dog
  Star, Sirius, whose annual reappearance in the sky announced the
  earth-fructifying flood season of the river Nile.
  198
  Inanna, it will be remembered, descended from the heavens
  into the hell region of her sister-opposite, the Queen of Death,
  Ereshkigal. And she left behind Ninshubur, her messenger, with
  instructions to rescue her should she not return. She arrived
  naked before the seven judges; they fastened their eyes upon
  her, she was turned into a corpse, and the corpse —as we have
  seen—was hung upon a stake.
  After three days and three nights had passed,1'
  Inanna's messenger Ninshubur,
  Her messenger of favorable words,
  Her carrier of supporting words,
  Filled the heaven with complaints for her,
  Cried for her in the assembly shrine,
  Rushed about for her in the house of the gods. . . .
  Like a pauper in a single garment he dressed for her,
  To the Ekur, the house ofEnlil, all alone he directed his step.
  This is the beginning of the rescue of the goddess, and illus-
  trates the case of one who so knew the power of the zone into
  which she was entering that she took the precaution to have her-
  self aroused. Ninshubur went first to the god Enlil; but the god
  said that, Inanna having gone from the great above to the great
  below, in the nether world the decrees of the nether world should
  prevail. Ninshubur next went to the god Nanna; but the god
  said that she had gone from the great above to the great below,
  and that in the nether world the decrees of the nether world
  should prevail. Ninshubur went to the god Enki; and the god
  Enki devised a plan.16 He fashioned two sexless creatures and
  Compare the Christian Credo: "He descended into Hell, the third day He
  rose again from the dead. . . ."
  16 Enlil was the Sumerian air-god, Nanna the moon-god, Enki the water-god
  and god of wisdom. At the time of the composition of our document (third mil-
  lennium B.C.) Enlil was the chief divinity of the Sumerian pantheon. He was
  quick to anger. He was the sender of the Flood. Nanna was one of his sons. In
  the myths the benign god Enki appears typically in the role of the helper. He is
  the patron and adviser both of Gilgamesh and of the flood hero, Atarhasis-
  Utnapishtim-Noah. The motif of Enki its. Enlil is carried on by Classical
  mythology in the counterplay of Poseidon vs. Zeus (Neptune vs. Jove).
  199
  
  RETU UN
  entrusted to them the "food of life" and "water of life" with in-
  structions to proceed to the nether world and sprinkle this food
  and water sixty times on Inanna's suspended corpse.
  Upon the corpse hung from a stake they directed the fear
  of the rays of fire,
  Sixty times the food of life, sixty times the water of life,
  they sprinkled upon it,
  Inanna arose.
  Inanna ascends from the nether world,
  The Anunnaki fled,
  And whoever of the nether world may have descended
  peacefully to the nether world;
  When Inanna ascends from the nether world,
  Verily the dead hasten ahead of her.
  Inanna ascends from the nether world,
  The small demons like reeds,
  The large demons like tablet styluses,
  Walked at her side.
  Who walked in front of her, held a staff in the hand,
  Who walked at her side, carried a weapon on the loin.
  They who preceded her,
  They who preceded Inanna,
  Were beings who know not food, who know not water,
  Who eat not sprinkled flour,
  Who drink not libated wine,
  Who take away the wife from the loins of man,
  Who take away the child from the breast of the nursing mother.
  Surrounded by this ghostly, ghastly crowd, Inanna wandered
  through the land of Sumer, from city to city.17
  These three examples from widely separated culture areas—
  Raven, Amaterasu, and Inanna—sufficiently illustrate the rescue
  Kramer, op. cit., pp. 87, 95. The conclusion of the poem, this valuable
  document of the sources of the myths and symbols of our civilization, is
  forever lost.
  THE CROSSING OF THE RETIUHN THRESHOLD
  from without. They show in the final sttagcs of the adventure the
  continued operation of the supernatural assisting force that has
  been attending the elect through the w/hole course of his ordeal.
  His consciousness having succumbed, Ithe unconscious neverthe-
  less supplies its own balances, and he is born back into the world
  from which he came. Instead of holding to and saving his ego, as
  in the pattern of the magic flight, he Hoses it, and yet, through
  grace, it is returned.
  This brings us to the final crisis of the round, 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 iinto the land of common
  day. Whether rescued from without, driven from within, or gen-
  tly carried along by the guiding divinities, he has yet to re-enter
  with his boon the long-forgotten atniiosphere where men who
  are fractions imagine themselves to be complete. He has yet to
  confront society with his ego-shatteriing, life-redeeming elixir,
  and take the return blow of reasonable queries, hard resentment,
  and good people at a loss to comprehend.
  The Crossing of the Retn rn Threshold
  The two worlds, the divine and the human, can be pictured only
  as distinct from each other—different as life and death, as day
  and night. The hero adventures out of the land we know into
  darkness; there he accomplishes his adventure, or again is simply-
  lost to us, imprisoned, or in danger; and his return is described
  as a coming back out of that yonder zone. Nevertheless—and
  here is a great key to the understanding of myth and symbol —
  the two kingdoms are actually one. The realm of the gods is a
  forgotten dimension of the world we know. And the exploration
  of that dimension, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole
  2 0 0
  201
  
  sense of the deed of the hero. The values and distinctions that in
  normal life seem important disappear with the terrifying assimi-
  lation of the self into what formerly was only otherness. As in
  the stories of the cannibal ogresses, the fearfulness of this loss of
  personal individuation can be the whole burden of the transcen-
  dental experience for unqualified souls. But the hero-soul goes
  boldly in —and discovers the hags converted into goddesses and
  the dragons into the watchdogs of the gods.
  There must always remain, however, from the standpoint of
  normal waking consciousness, a certain baffling inconsistency
  between the wisdom brought forth from the deep, and the pru-
  dence usually found to be effective in the light world. Hence the
  common divorce of opportunism from virtue and the resultant
  degeneration of human existence. Martyrdom is for saints, but
  the common people have their institutions, and these cannot be
  left to grow like lilies of the field; Peter keeps drawing his
  sword, as in the garden, to defend the creator and sustainer of
  the world.18 The boon brought from the transcendent deep be-
  comes quickly rationalized into nonentity, and the need becomes
  great for another hero to refresh the word.
  How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and
  incorrectly learned a thousand thousand times, throughout the
  millenniums of mankind's prudent folly? That is the hero's ulti-
  mate difficult task. How render back into light-world language
  the speech-defying pronouncements of the dark? How represent
  on a two-dimensional surface a three-dimensional form, or in a
  three-dimensional image a multi-dimensional meaning? How
  translate into terms of "yes" and "no" revelations that shatter
  into meaninglessness every attempt to define the pairs of oppo-
  sites? How communicate to people who insist on the exclusive
  evidence of their senses the message of the all-generating void?
  Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative
  threshold. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as
  real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment,
  the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of
  18 Matthew, 26:51; Mark, 14:47; John, 18:10.
  202
  THE CROSSING OF THE RETURN THRESHOLD
  & 
  t 
  b fe
  FIGURE 11. The Reappearance of the Hero
  Samson with the Temple-Doors: Christ Arisen: Jonah
  203
  
  RETURN
  life. Why re-enter such a world? Why attempt to make plausi-
  ble, or even interesting, to men and women consumed with pas-
  sion, the experience of transcendental bliss"? As dreams that
  were momentous by night may seem simply silly in the light of
  day, so the poet and the prophet can discover themselves playing
  the idiot before a jury of sober eyes. The easy thing is to commit
  the whole community to the devil and retire again into the heav-
  enly rock-dwelling, close the door, and make it fast. But if some
  spiritual obstetrician has meanwhile drawn the shimenawa across
  the retreat, then the work of representing eternity in time, and
  perceiving in time eternity, cannot be avoided.
  The story of Rip van Winkle is an example of the delicate case
  of the returning hero. Rip moved into the adventurous realm un-
  consciously, as we all do every night when we go to sleep. In
  deep sleep, declare the Hindus, the self is unified and blissful;
  therefore deep sleep is called the cognitional state.IS But though
  we are refreshed and sustained by these nightly visits to the
  source-darkness, our lives are not reformed by them; we return,
  like Rip, with nothing to show for the experience but our whiskers.
  "He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean, well-
  oiled fowling-piece, he found an old firelock lying by him, the
  barrel incrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock
  worm-eaten. . . . As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the
  joints, and wanting his usual activity. . . . As he approached the
  village, he met a number of people, but none whom he knew;
  which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself ac-
  quainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too,
  was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed.
  They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and, when-
  ever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their
  chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip in-
  voluntarily to do the same, when, to his astonishment, he found
  his beard had grown a foot long. . . . He began to doubt whether
  both he and the world around him were not bewitched. . . .
  19 Mandukya Upanishad, 5.
  204
  THE CROSSING OF THE RETURN THRESHOLD
  "The appearance of Rip, with his long, grizzled beard, his rusty
  fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and the army of women and
  children that had gathered at his heels, soon attracted the atten-
  tion of the tavern politicians. They crowded round him, eyeing
  him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled
  up to him, and, drawing him partly aside, inquired on which
  side he voted. Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but
  busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe,
  inquired in his ear whether he was a Federal or a Democrat.
  Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question, when a
  knowing, self-important old gentleman in a sharp cocked hat
  made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and
  left with his elbows as he passed, and, planting himself before
  van Winkle—with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his
  cane; his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his
  very soul—demanded in an austere tone what brought him to the
  election with a gun on his shoulder and a mob at his heels, and
  whether he meant to breed a riot in the village. 'Alas! gentlemen,'
  cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, 'I am a poor, quiet man, a native
  of the place, and a loyal subject to the King, God bless him!'
  "Here a general shout burst from the bystanders: 'A Tory, a
  Tory! A spy! A refugee! Hustle him! Away with him!' It was
  with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked
  hat restored order."20
  More dispiriting than the fate of Rip is the account of what
  happened to the Irish hero Oisin when he returned from a long
  sojourn with the daughter of the King of the Land of Youth.
  Oisin had done better than poor Rip; he had kept his eyes open
  in the adventurous realm. He had descended consciously (awake)
  into the kingdom of the unconscious (deep sleep) and had incor-
  porated the values of the subliminal experience into his waking
  personality. A transmutation had been effected. But precisely
  because of this highly desirable circumstance, the dangers of his
  return were the greater. Since his entire personality had been
  20 Washington Irving, 'Che Sketch Book, "Rip van Winkle."
  205
  
  brought into accord with the powers and forms of timelessness,
  all of him stood to be refuted, blasted, by the impact of the forms
  and powers of time.
  Oisin, the son of Finn MacCool, one day was out hunting with
  his men in the woods of Erin, when he was approached by the
  daughter of the King of the Land of Youth. Oisin's men had gone
  ahead with the day's kill, leaving their master with his three dogs
  to shift for himself. And the mysterious being had appeared to him
  with the beautiful body of a woman, but the head of a pig. She de-
  clared that the head was due to a Druidic spell, promising that it
  would vanish the very minute he would marry her. "Well, if that is
  the state you are in," said he, "and if marriage with me will free
  you from the spell, I'll not leave the pig's head on you long."
  Without delay the pig's head was dispatched and they set out
  together for Tir na n-Og, the Land of Youth. Oisin dwelt there
  as a king many happy years. But one day he turned and declared
  to his supernatural bride: "'I wish I could be in Erin to-day to
  see my father and his men.'
  "'If you go,' said his wife, 'and set foot on the land of Erin,
  you'll never come back here to me, and you'll become a blind old
  man. How long do you think it is since you came here?'
  " 'About three years,' said Oisin.
  " 'It is three hundred years,' said she, 'since you came to this
  kingdom with me. If you must go to Erin, I'll give you this white
  steed to carry you; but if you come down from the steed or touch
  the soil of Erin with your foot, the steed will come back that
  minute, and you'll be where he left you, a poor old man.'
  " 'I'll come back, never fear,' said Oisin. 'Have I not good rea-
  son to come back? But I must see my father and my son and my
  friends in Erin once more; I must have even one look at them.'
  "She prepared the steed for Oisin and said, 'This steed will
  carry you wherever you wish to go.'
  "Oisin never stopped till the steed touched the soil of Erin;
  and he went on till he came to Knock Patrick in Munster, where
  he saw a man herding cows. In the field where the cows were
  grazing there was a broad flat stone.
  206
  THE CROSSING OF THE RETURN THRESHOLD
  " 'Will you come here,' said Oisin to the herdsman, 'and turn
  over this stone?'
  "'Indeed, then, I will not,' said the herdsman; 'for I could not
  lift it, nor twenty men more like me.'
  "Oisin rode up to the stone, and, reaching down, caught it
  with his hand and turned it over. Underneath the stone was the
  great horn of the Fenians (borabu), which circled round like a
  sea-shell, and it was the rule that when any of the Fenians of
  Erin blew the borabu, the others would assemble at once from
  whatever part of the country they might be in at the time.21
  " 'Will you bring this horn to me?' asked Oisin of the herdsman.
  "'I will not,' said the herdsman; 'for neither I nor many more
  like me could raise it from the ground.'
  "With that Oisin moved near the horn, and reaching down
  took it in his hand; but so eager was he to blow it, that he forgot
  everything, and slipped in reaching till one foot touched the earth.
  In an instant the steed was gone, and Oisin lay on the ground a
  blind old man."22
  The equating of a single year in Paradise to one hundred of
  earthly existence is a motif well known to myth. The full round
  of one hundred signifies totality. Similarly, the three hundred
  and sixty degrees of the circle signify totality; accordingly the
  Hindu Puranas represent one year of the gods as equal to three
  hundred and sixty of men. From the standpoint of the Olympians,
  eon after eon of earthly history rolls by, revealing ever the har-
  monious form of the total round, so that where men see only
  change and death, the blessed behold immutable form, world
  without end. But now the problem is to maintain this cosmic
  81 The Fenians were the men of Finn MacCool, giants all. Oisin, who was
  the son of Finn MacCool, had been one of their number. But their day now had
  long passed, and the inhabitants of the land were no longer the great ones of
  old. Such legends of archaic giants are common to folk traditions everywhere; see,
  for instance, the myth recounted above (pp. 179-180) of King Muchukunda.
  Comparable are the protracted lives of the Hebrew patriarchs: Adam lived nine
  hundred and thirty years, Seth nine hundred and twelve, Enos nine hundred
  and five, etc., etc. (Genesis, 5).
  -- Curtin, op. cit., pp. 332-333.
  207
  
  standpoint in the face of an immediate earthly pain or joy. The
  taste of the fruits of temporal knowledge draws the concentra-
  tion of the spirit away from the center of the eon to the periph-
  eral crisis of the moment. The balance of perfection is lost, the
  spirit falters, and the hero falls.
  The idea of the insulating horse, to keep the hero out of im-
  mediate touch with the earth and yet permit him to promenade
  among the peoples of the world, is a vivid example of a basic
  precaution taken generally by the carriers of supernormal power.
  Montezuma, Emperor of Mexico, never set foot on the ground;
  he was always carried on the shoulders of noblemen, and if he
  lighted anywhere they laid a rich tapestry for him to walk upon.
  Within his palace, the king of Persia walked on carpets on which
  no one else might tread; outside of it he was never seen on foot
  but only in a chariot or on horseback. Formerly neither the kings
  of Uganda, nor their mothers, nor their queens might walk on
  foot outside of the spacious enclosures in which they lived.
  Whenever they went forth they were carried on the shoulders of
  men of the Buffalo clan, several of whom accompanied any of
  these royal personages on a journey and took it in turn to bear
  the burden. The king sat astride the bearer's neck with a leg
  over each shoulder and his feet tucked under the bearer's arms.
  When one of these royal carriers grew tired, he shot the king
  onto the shoulders of a second man without allowing the royal
  feet to touch the ground.23
  Sir James George Frazer explains in the following graphic
  way the fact that over the whole earth the divine personage may
  not touch the ground with his foot. "Apparently holiness, magi-
  cal virtue, taboo, or whatever we may call that mysterious qual-
  ity which is supposed to pervade sacred or tabooed persons, is
  conceived by the primitive philosopher as a physical substance
  or fluid, with which the sacred man is charged just as a Leyden
  jar is charged with electricity; and exactly as the electricity in
  the jar can be discharged by contact with a good conductor, so
  23 From Sir James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, one-volume edition,
  pp. 593—594. Copyright, 1922 by The Macmillan Company and used with
  their permission.
  208
  THE CROSSING OF THE RETURN THRESHOLD
  the holiness or magical virtue in the man can be discharged and
  drained away by contact with the earth, which on this theory serves
  as an excellent conductor for the magical fluid. Hence in order to
  preserve the charge from running to waste, the sacred or tabooed
  personage must be carefully prevented from touching the ground;
  in electrical language he must be insulated, if he is not to be emp-
  tied of the precious substance or fluid with which he, as a vial, is
  filled to the brim. And in many cases apparently the insulation of
  the tabooed person is recommended as a precaution not merely for
  his own sake but for the sake of others; for since the virtue of holi-
  ness is, so to say, a powerful explosive which the smallest touch
  may detonate, it is necessary in the interest of the general safety to
  keep it within narrow bounds, lest breaking out it should blast,
  blight, and destroy whatever it comes into contact with."24
  There is, no doubt, a psychological justification for the pre-
  caution. The Englishman dressing for dinner in the jungles of
  Nigeria feels that there is reason in his act. The young artist
  wearing his whiskers into the lobby of the Ritz will be glad to ex-
  plain his idiosyncrasy. The Roman collar sets apart the man of
  the pulpit. A twentieth-century nun floats by in a costume from
  the Middle Ages. The wife is insulated, more or less, by her ring.
  The tales of W. Somerset Maugham describe the metamor-
  phoses that overcome the bearers of the white man's burden who
  neglect the taboo of the dinner jacket. Many folksongs give testi-
  mony to the dangers of the broken ring. And the myths—for ex-
  ample, the myths assembled by Ovid in his great compendium,
  the Metamorphoses—recount again and again the shocking trans-
  formations that take place when the insulation between a highly
  concentrated power center and the lower power field of the sur-
  rounding world is, without proper precautions, suddenly taken
  away. According to the fairy lore of the Celts and Germans, a
  gnome or elf caught abroad by the sunrise is turned immediately
  into a stick or a stone.
  The returning hero, to complete his adventure, must survive
  the impact of the world. Rip van Winkle never knew what he
  24 Ibid., pp. 594-595. By permission of The Macmillan Company, publishers.
  209
  
  RETURN
  had experienced; his return was a joke. Oisin knew, but he lost
  his centering in it and so collapsed. Kamar al-Zaman had the
  best luck of all. He experienced awake the bliss of deep sleep,
  and returned to the light of day with such a convincing talisman
  of his unbelievable adventure that he was able to retain his self-
  assurance in the face of every sobering disillusionment.
  While he was sleeping in his tower, the two Jinn, Dahnash and
  Maymunah, transported from distant China the daughter of the
  Lord of the Islands and the Seas and the Seven Palaces. Her name
  was the Princess Budur. And they placed this young woman asleep
  beside the Persian prince, in the very bed. The Jinn uncovered
  the two faces, and perceived that the couple were as like as twins.
  "By Allah," declared Dahnash, "O my lady, my beloved is the
  fairer." But Maymunah, the female spirit, who loved Kamar al-
  Zaman, retorted: "Not so, the fairer one is mine." Whereupon they
  wrangled, challenging and counterchallenging, until Dahnash at
  last suggested they should seek an impartial judge.
  Maymunah smote the ground with her foot, and there came
  out of it an Ifrit blind in one eye, humpbacked, scurvy-skinned,
  with eye-orbits slit up and down his face; and on his head were
  seven horns; four locks of hair fell to his heels; his hands were
  like pitchforks and his legs like masts; and he had nails like the
  claws of a lion, feet like the hoofs of the wild ass. The monster
  respectfully kissed the ground before Maymunah and inquired
  what she would have him do. Instructed that he was to judge be-
  tween the two young persons lying on the bed, each with an arm
  under the other's neck, he gazed long upon them, marveling at
  their loveliness, then turned to Maymunah and Dahnash, and
  declared his verdict.
  "By Allah, if you will have the truth," he said, "the two are of
  equal beauty. Nor can I make any choice between them, on ac-
  count of their being a man and a woman. But I have another
  thought, which is that we wake each of them in turn, without
  the knowledge of the other, and whichever is the more enam-
  ored shall be judged inferior in comeliness."
  It was agreed. Dahnash changed himself to the form of a flea
  and bit Kamar al-Zaman on the neck. Starting from sleep, the
  210
  THE CROSSING OF THE RETURN THRESHOLD
  youth rubbed the bitten part, scratching it hard because of the
  smart, and meanwhile turned a little to the side. He found lying
  beside him something whose breath was sweeter than musk and
  whose skin softer than cream. He marveled. He sat up. He looked
  better at what was beside him and discerned that it was a young
  woman like a pearl or shining sun, like a dome seen from afar on
  a well-built wall.
  Kamar al-Zaman attempted to wake her, but Dahnash had
  deepened her slumber. The youth shook her. "O my beloved,
  awake and look at me," he said. But she never stirred. Kamar al-
  Zaman imagined Budur to be the woman whom his father wished
  him to marry, and he was filled with eagerness. But he feared
  that his sire might be hiding somewhere in the room, watching,
  so he restrained himself, and contented himself with taking the
  seal-ring from her little finger and slipping it on his own. The
  Ifrits then returned him to his sleep.
  In contrast with the performance of Kamar al-Zaman was that
  of Budur. She had no thought or fear of anyone watching.
  Furthermore, Maymunah, who had awakened her, with female
  malice had gone high up her leg and bitten hard in a place that
  burned. The beautiful, noble, glorious Budur, discovering her
  male affinity beside her, and perceiving that he had already-
  taken her ring, unable either to rouse him or to imagine what he
  had done to her, and ravaged with love, assailed by the open
  presence of his flesh, lost all control, and attained to a climax of
  helpless passion. "Lust was sore upon her, for that the desire
  of women is fiercer than the desire of men, and she was ashamed of
  her own shamelessness. Then she plucked his seal-ring from his
  finger, and put it on her own instead of the ring he had taken, and
  bussed his inner lips and hands, nor did she leave any part of him
  unkissed; after which she took him to her breast and embraced
  him, and, laying one of her hands under his neck and the other
  under his armpit, nestled close to him and fell asleep at his side."
  Dahnash therefore lost the argument. Budur was returned to
  China. Next morning when the two young people awoke with
  the whole of Asia now between them, they turned to right and to
  left, but discovered no one at their side. They cried out to their
  211
  
  RETURN
  respective households, belabored and slew people round about,
  and went entirely mad. Kamar al-Zaman lay down to languish;
  his father, the king, sat down at his head, weeping and mourning
  over him, and never leaving him, night or day. But the Princess
  Budur had to be manacled; with a chain of iron about her neck,
  she was made fast to one of her palace windows.23
  The encounter and separation, for all its wildness, is typical of
  the sufferings of love. For when a heart insists on its destiny, re-
  sisting the general blandishment, then the agony is great; so too
  the danger. Forces, however, will have been set in motion be-
  yond the reckoning of the senses. Sequences of events from the
  corners of the world will draw gradually together, and miracles
  of coincidence bring the inevitable to pass. The talismanic ring
  from the soul's encounter with its other portion in the place of
  recoUectedness betokens that the heart was there aware of what
  Rip van Winkle missed; it betokens too a conviction of the wak-
  ing mind that the reality of the deep is not belied by that of com-
  mon day. This is the sign of the hero's requirement, now, to knit
  together his two worlds.
  The remainder of the long story of Kamar al-Zaman is a history
  of the slow yet wonderful operation of a destiny that has been
  summoned into life. Not everyone has a destiny: only the hero
  who has plunged to touch it, and has come up again—with a ring.
  Master of the Two Worlds
  Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from
  the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the causal
  deep and back—not contaminating the principles of the one
  with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one
  25 Adapted from Burton, op. cit., Ill, pp. 231-256.
  212
  MASTER OK THE TWO WORLDS
  by virtue of the other—is the talent of the master. The Cosmic
  Dancer, declares Nietzsche, does not rest heavily in a single spot,
  but gaily, lightly, turns and leaps from one position to another.
  It is possible to speak from only one point at a time, but that
  does not invalidate the insights of the rest.
  The myths do not often display in a single image the mystery
  of the ready transit. Where they do, the moment is a precious
  symbol, full of import, to be treasured and contemplated. Such a
  moment was that of the Transfiguration of the Christ.
  "Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth
  them up into an high mountain apart, and was transfigured be-
  fore them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was
  white as the light. And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses
  and Elias talking with him. Then answered Peter, and said unto
  Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here; if thou wilt, let us make
  here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one
  for Elias.26 While he yet spoke, behold, a bright cloud overshad-
  owed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This
  is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him. And
  when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore
  afraid. And Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and
  be not afraid. And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw
  no man, save Jesus only. And as they came down from the moun-
  tain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until
  the Son of man be risen again from the dead."27
  Here is the whole myth in a moment: Jesus the guide, the
  way, the vision, and the companion of the return. The disciples
  are his initiates, not themselves masters of the mystery, yet in-
  troduced to the full experience of the paradox of the two worlds
  in one. Peter was so frightened he babbled.28 Flesh had dissolved
  26 "For he wist not what to say; for they were sore afraid" (Mark, 9:6).
  27 Matthew, 17:1-9.
  28 A certain element of comic relief can be felt in Peter's immediate project (an-
  nounced even while the vision was before his eyes) to convert the ineffable into a
  stone foundation. Only six days before, Jesus had said to him: "thou art Peter;
  and upon this rock 1 will build my church,11 then a moment later: "thou savorest
  not the things that be of God, but those that be of men" (Matthew, 16:18, 23).
  213
  
  RETURN
  before their eyes to reveal the Word. They fell upon their faces,
  and when they arose the door again had closed.
  It should be observed that this eternal moment soars beyond
  Kamar al-Zaman's romantic realization of his individual destiny.
  Not only do we have here a masterly passage, back and forth,
  across the world threshold, but we observe a profounder, very
  much profounder, penetration of the depths. Individual destiny
  is not the motive and theme of this vision; for the revelation was
  beheld by three witnesses, not one: it cannot be satisfactorily elu-
  cidated simply in psychological terms. Of course, it may be dis-
  missed. We may doubt whether such a scene ever actually took
  place. But that would not help us any; for we are concerned, at
  present, with problems of symbolism, not of historicity- We do
  not particularly care whether Rip van Winkle, Kamar al-Zaman,
  or Jesus Christ ever actually lived. Their stories are what con-
  cern us: and these stories are so widely distributed over the
  world—attached to various heroes in various lands—that the
  question of whether this or that local carrier of the universal
  theme may or may not have been a historical, living man can be
  of only secondary moment. The stressing of this historical ele-
  ment will lead to confusion; it will simply obfuscate the picture
  message.
  What, then, is the tenor of the image of the transfiguration?
  That is the question we have to ask. But in order that it may be
  confronted on universal grounds, rather than sectarian, we had
  better review one further example, equally celebrated, of the ar-
  chetypal event.
  The following is taken from the Hindu "Song of the Lord,"
  the Bhagavad Gita.29 The Lord, the beautiful youth Krishna, is
  an incarnation of Vishnu, the Universal God; Prince Arjuna is
  his disciple and friend.
  Arjuna said: "O Lord, if you think me able to behold it, then,
  O master of yogis, reveal to me your Immutable Self." The Lord
  ~' The principal text of modern Hindu devotional religiosity: an ethical dia-
  logue of eighteen chapters, appearing in Book VI of the Mahabharata, which is
  the Indian counterpart of the Iliad.
  214
  MASTER OF THE TWO WORLDS
  said: "Behold my forms by the hundreds and the thousands-
  manifold and divine, various in shape and hue. Behold all the
  gods and angels; behold many wonders that no one has ever
  seen before. Behold here today the whole universe, the moving
  and the unmoving, and whatever else you may desire to see, all
  concentrated in my body.—But with these eyes of yours you
  cannot see me. I give you a divine eye; behold, now, my sover-
  eign yoga-power."
  Having spoken thus, the great Lord of yoga revealed to Ar-
  juna his supreme form as Vishnu, Lord of the Universe: with
  many faces and eyes, presenting many wondrous sights, bedecked
  with many celestial ornaments, armed with many divine uplifted
  weapons; wearing celestial garlands and vestments, anointed with
  divine perfumes, all-wonderful, resplendent, boundless, and with
  faces on all sides. If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst
  forth at once in the sky, that would be like the splendor of the
  Mighty One. There in the person of the God of gods, Arjuna be-
  held the whole universe, with its manifold divisions, all gathered
  together in one. Then, overcome with wonder, his hair standing
  on end, Arjuna bowed his head to the Lord, joined his palms in
  salutation, and addressed Him:
  "In Thy body, O Lord, I behold all the gods and all the di-
  verse hosts of beings—the Lord Brahma, seated on the lotus, all
  the patriarchs and the celestial serpents. I behold Thee with myr-
  iads of arms and bellies, with myriads of faces and eyes; I behold
  Thee, infinite in form, on every side, but I see not Thy end nor Thy
  middle nor Thy beginning, O Lord of the Universe, O Universal
  Form! On all sides glowing like a mass of radiance I behold
  Thee, with Thy diadem, mace, and discus, blazing everywhere
  like burning fire and the burning sun, passing all measure and
  difficult to behold. Thou art the Supreme Support of the Uni-
  verse; Thou art the undying Guardian of the Eternal Law;
  Thou art, in my belief, the Primal Being."
  This vision was opened to Arjuna on a battlefield, the moment
  just before the blast of the first trumpet calling to combat. With
  the god as his charioteer, the great prince had driven out into
  the field between the two battle-ready peoples. His own armies
  215
  
  RETURN
  had been assembled against those of a usurping cousin, but now
  in the enemy ranks he beheld a multitude of men whom he knew
  and loved. His spirit failed him. "Alas," he said to the divine
  charioteer, "we are resolved to commit a great sin, in that we are
  ready to slay our kinsmen to satisfy our greed for the pleasure
  of a kingdom! Far better would it be for me if the sons of
  Dhritarashtra, weapons in hand, should slay me in battle, un-
  armed and unresisting. I will not fight." But thereupon the
  comely god had summoned him to courage, pouring out to him
  the wisdom of the Lord, and in the end had opened to him this
  vision. The prince beholds, dumbfounded, not only his friend
  transformed into the living personification of the Support of
  the Universe, but the heroes of the two armies rushing on a
  wind into the deity's innumerable, terrible mouths. He exclaims
  in horror:
  "When I look upon Thy blazing form reaching to the skies
  and shining with many colors, when I see Thee with Thy mouth
  opened wide and Thy great eyes glowing bright, my inmost soul
  trembles in fear, and I find neither courage nor peace, O Vishnu!
  When I behold Thy mouths, striking terror with their tusks,
  like Time's all-consuming fire, I am disoriented and find no
  peace. Be gracious, O Lord of the Gods, O Abode of the Uni-
  verse! All these sons of Dhritarashtra, together with the hosts
  of monarchs, and Bhishma, Drona, and Kama, and the warrior
  chiefs of our side as well, enter precipitately thy tusked and ter-
  rible mouths, frightful to behold. Some are seen caught between
  Thy teeth, their heads crushed to powder. As the torrents of
  many rivers rush toward the ocean, so do the heroes of the mor-
  tal world rush into Thy fiercely flaming mouths. As moths rush
  swiftly into a blazing fire to perish there, even so do these crea-
  tures swiftly rush into Thy mouths to their own destruction.
  Thou lickest Thy lips, devouring all the worlds on every side
  with Thy flaming mouths. Thy fiery rays fill the whole universe
  with their radiance and scorch it, O Vishnu! Tell me who Thou
  art, that wearest this frightful form. Salutations to Thee, O God
  Supreme! Have mercy. I desire to know Thee, who art the Pri-
  mal One; for I do not understand Thy purpose."
  216
  MASTER OF THE TWO WORLDS
  The Lord said: "I am mighty, world-destroying Time, now en-
  gaged here in slaying these men. Even without you, all these
  warriors standing arrayed in the opposing armies shall not live.
  Therefore stand up and win glory; conquer your enemies and
  enjoy an opulent kingdom. By Me and none other have they al-
  ready been slain; be an instrument only, O Arjuna. Kill Drona and
  Bhishma and Jayadratha and Kama, and the other great warriors
  as well, who have already been killed by Me. Be not distressed by
  fear. Fight, and you shall conquer your foes in the battle."
  Having heard these words of Krishna, Arjuna trembled, folded
  his hands in adoration, and bowed down. Overwhelmed with
  fear, he saluted Krishna and then addressed Him again, with fal-
  tering voice.
  ". . . Thou art the first of gods, the ancient Soul; Thou art the
  supreme Resting-place of the universe; Thou art the Knower
  and That which is to be known and the Ultimate Goal. And by
  Thee is the world pervaded, O Thou of infinite form. Thou art
  Wind and Death and Fire and Moon and the Lord of Water.
  Thou art the First Man and the Great-grandsire. Salutations,
  salutations to Thee! . . . I rejoice that I have seen what was
  never seen before; but my mind is also troubled with fear. Show
  me that other form of Thine. Be gracious, O Lord of Gods, O
  Abode of the Universe. I would see Thee as before, with Thy
  crown and Thy mace and the discus in Thy hand. Assume again
  Thy four-armed shape, O Thou of a thousand arms and of end-
  less shapes."
  The Lord said: "By My grace, through My own yoga-power,
  O Arjuna, I have shown you this supreme form, resplendent,
  universal, infinite, and primeval, which none but you has ever
  seen. . . . Be not afraid, be not bewildered, on seeing this terrific
  form of Mine. Free from fear and glad at heart, behold again My
  other form."
  Having thus addressed Arjuna, Krishna assumed a graceful
  shape again and comforted the terrified Pandava.'0
  30 Bhagavad Gita, 11; 1:45-46; 2:9. From the translation by Swami Nikhil-
  ananda (New York, 1944).
  217
  
  RETURN
  The disciple has been blessed with a vision transcending the
  scope of normal human destiny, and amounting to a glimpse of
  the essential nature of the cosmos. Not his personal fate, but the
  fate of mankind, of life as a whole, the atom and all the solar sys-
  tems, has been opened to him; and this in terms befitting his
  human understanding, that is to say, in terms of an anthropo-
  morphic vision: the Cosmic Man. An identical initiation might
  have been effected by means of the equally valid image of the
  Cosmic Horse, the Cosmic Eagle, the Cosmic Tree, or the Cos-
  mic Praying-Mantis.31 Furthermore, the revelation recorded in
  "The Song of the Lord" was made in terms befitting Arjuna's
  caste and race: The Cosmic Man whom he beheld was an aristo-
  crat, like himself, and a Hindu. Correspondingly, in Palestine
  the Cosmic Man appeared as a Jew, in ancient Germany as a
  11 "Om. The head of the sacrificial horse is the dawn, its eye the sun, its vital
  force the air, its open mouth the fire called Vaishvanara, and the body of the
  sacrificial horse is the year. Its back is heaven, its belly the sky, its hoof the
  earth, its sides the four quarters, its ribs the intermediate quarters, its mem-
  bers the seasons, its joints the months and fortnights, its feet the days and
  nights, its bones the stars and its flesh the clouds. Its half-digested food is the
  sand, its blood-vessels the rivers, its liver and spleen the mountains, its hairs
  the herbs and trees. Its forepart is the ascending sun, its hind part the descend-
  ing sun, its yawning is lightning, its shaking the body is thundering, its urinat-
  ing is raining, and its neighing is voice." (Brihadaranyaka Upaniskad, 1. 1. 1;
  translated by Swami Madhavananda, Mayavati, 1934.)
  the archetype
  Body of life a beaked carnivorous desire
  Self-upheld on storm-broad wings: but the eyes
  Were spouts of blood; the eyes were gashed out; dark blood
  Ran from the ruiiwus eye-pits to the hook of the beak
  And rained on the waste spaces of empty heaven.
  Yet the great Life continued; yet the great Life
  Was beautiful, and she drank her defeat, and devoured
  Her famine for food.
  (Robinson Jeffers, Cawdor, p. 116. Copyright, 1928, by Robinson Jeffers.
  Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.)
  The Cosmic Tree is a well known mythological figure (viz., Yggdrasil, the
  World Ash, of the Eddas). The Mantis plays a major role in the mythology of
  the Bushmen of South Africa. (See also Plate XVI.)
  218
  MA SIKH OF THK TWO WORLDS
  German; among the Basuto he is a Negro, in Japan Japanese.
  The race and stature of the figure symbolizing the immanent and
  transcendent Universal is of historical, not semantic, moment; so
  also the sex: the Cosmic Woman, who appears in the iconogra-
  phy of the Jains,32 is as eloquent a symbol as the Cosmic Man.
  Symbols are only the vehicles of communication; they must
  not be mistaken for the final term, the tenor, of their reference.
  Xo matter how attractive or impressive they may seem, they re-
  main but convenient means, accommodated to the understand-
  ing. Hence the personality or personalities of God—whether
  represented in trinitarian, dualistic, or Unitarian terms, in poly-
  theistic, monotheistic, or henotheistic terms, pictorially or ver-
  bally, as documented fact or as apocalyptic vision—no one should
  attempt to read or interpret as the final thing. The problem of
  the theologian is to keep his symbol translucent, so that it may
  not block out the very light it is supposed to convey. "For then
  alone do we know God truly," writes Saint Thomas Aquinas,
  "when we believe that He is far above all that man can possibly
  think of God."33 And in the Kena Upanishad, in the same spirit:
  "To know is not to know; not to know is to know."34 Mistaking
  a vehicle for its tenor may lead to the spilling not only of value-
  less ink, but of valuable blood.
  The next thing to observe is that the transfiguration of Jesus
  was witnessed by devotees who had extinguished their personal
  wills, men who had long since liquidated "life," "personal fate,"
  "destiny," by complete self-abnegation in the Master. "Neither
  by the Vedas, nor by penances, nor by alms-giving, nor yet by
  sacrifice, am I to be seen in the form in which you have just
  now beheld Me," Krishna declared, after he had resumed his fa-
  miliar shape; "but only by devotion to Me may I be known in
  this form, realized truly, and entered into. He who does My work
  %'2 Jainism is a heterodox Hindu religion (i.e., rejecting the authority of the
  Vedas) which in its iconography reveals certain extraordinarily archaic traits.
  (See pp. 262 ff., infra.)
  '"" Summa contra Gentiles, I, 5, par. 3.
  34 Kena Upanishad, 2:3.
  
  RETURN
  and regards Me as the Supreme Goal, who is devoted to Me and
  without hatred for any creature—he comes to Me."35 A corre-
  sponding formulation by Jesus makes the point more succinctly:
  "Whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it."36
  The meaning is very clear; it is the meaning of all religious
  practice. The individual, through prolonged psychological dis-
  ciplines, gives up completely all attachment to his personal limi-
  tations, idiosyncrasies, hopes and fears, no longer resists the
  self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth in the realization
  of truth, and so becomes ripe, at last, for the great at-one-ment.
  His personal ambitions being totally dissolved, he no longer tries
  to live but willingly relaxes to whatever may come to pass in
  him; he becomes, that is to say, an anonymity. The Law lives in
  him with his unreserved consent.
  Many are the figures, particularly in the social and mythologi-
  cal contexts of the Orient, who represent this ultimate state of
  anonymous presence. The sages of the hermit groves and the
  wandering mendicants who play a conspicuous role in the life
  and legends of the East; in myth such figures as the Wandering
  Jew (despised, unknown, yet with the pearl of great price in his
  pocket); the tatterdemalion beggar, set upon by dogs; the mirac-
  ulous mendicant bard whose music stills the heart; or the mas-
  querading god, Wotan, Viracocha, Edshu: these are examples.
  "Sometimes a fool, sometimes a sage, sometimes possessed of
  regal splendor; sometimes wandering, sometimes as motionless
  as a python, sometimes wearing a benignant expression; some-
  times honored, sometimes insulted, sometimes unknown—thus
  lives the man of realisation, ever happy with supreme bliss. Just
  as an actor is always a man, whether he puts on the costume of
  his role or lays it aside, so is the perfect knower of the Imperish-
  able always the Imperishable, and nothing else."3'
  35 Bhagavad Gita, II: 53-55.
  x Matthew, 16:25.
  '' Shankaracharya, Vivekachudamayri, 542 and 555.
  FREEDOM TO LIVE
  Freedom to Live
  What, now, is the result of the miraculous passage and return"?
  The battlefield is symbolic of the field of life, where every
  creature lives on the death of another. A realization of the in-
  evitable guilt of life may so sicken the heart that, like Hamlet or
  like Arjuna, one may refuse to go on with it. On the other hand,
  like most of the rest of us, one may invent a false, finally un-
  justified, image of oneself as an exceptional phenomenon in the
  world, not guilty as others are, but justified in one's inevitable
  sinning because one represents the good. Such self-righteousness
  leads to a misunderstanding, not only of oneself but of the na-
  ture of both man and the cosmos. The goal of the myth is to dis-
  pel 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.
  "Even as a person casts off worn-out clothes and puts on oth-
  ers that are new, so the embodied Self casts off worn-out bodies
  and enters into others that are new. Weapons cut It not; fire
  burns It not; water wets It not; the wind does not wither It.
  This Self cannot be cut nor burnt nor wetted nor withered. Eter-
  nal, all-pervading, unchanging, immovable, the Self is the same
  for ever."38
  Man in the world of action loses his centering in the principle
  of eternity if he is anxious for the outcome of his deeds, but rest-
  ing them and their fruits on the knees of the Living God he is
  released by them, as by a sacrifice, from the bondages of the sea
  of death. "Do without attachment the work you have to do. . . .
  Surrendering all action to Me, with mind intent on the Self,
  3" Bhagavad Gita, 2:22-24.
  220
  221
  
  freeing yourself from longing and selfishness, fight—unperturbed
  by grief."39
  Powerful in this insight, calm and free in action, elated that
  through his hand should flow the grace of Viracocha, the hero is
  the conscious vehicle of the terrible, wonderful Law, whether his
  work be that of butcher, jockey, or king.
  Gwion Bach, who, having tasted three drops from the poison
  kettle of inspiration, was eaten by the hag Caridwen, reborn as
  an infant, and committed to the sea, was found next morning in
  a fishtrap by a hapless and sorely disappointed young man named
  Elphin, son of the wealthy landholder Gwyddno, whose horses
  had been killed by the flood of the burst kettle's poison. When
  the men took up the leathern bag out of the trap and opened it
  and saw the forehead of the baby boy, they said to Elphin, "Behold
  a radiant brow (taliesin)V' "Taliesin be he called," said Elphin.
  And he lifted the boy in his arms, and, lamenting his mischance,
  he placed him sorrowfully behind him. And he made his horse
  amble gently that before had been trotting, and he carried him
  as softly as if he had been sitting on the easiest chair in the
  world. And presently the boy recited aloud a poem in consola-
  tion and praise of Elphin, and foretold to him honor and glory.
  Fair Elphin, cease to lament!
  Let no one be dissatisfied with his own.
  To despair will bring no advantage.
  No man sees what supports him. . . .
  Weak and small as I am,
  On the foaming beach of the ocean,
  In the day of trouble I shall be
  Of more service to thee than three hundred salmon. . . .
  When Elphin returned to his father's castle, Gwyddno asked
  him if he had had a good haul at the weir, and he told him that
  he had got that which was better than fish. "What was that?"
  said Gwyddno. "A bard," answered Elphin. Then said Gwyddno,
  "Alas, what will he profit thee?" And the infant himself replied
  •Ibid., 3:19 and 3:30.
  222
  FREEDOM TO LIVE
  and said, "He will profit him more than the weir ever profited
  thee." Asked Gwyddno, "Art thou able to speak, and thou so lit-
  tle?" And the infant answered him, "I am better able to speak
  than thou to question me." "Let me hear what thou canst say,"
  quoth Gwyddno. Then Taliesin sang a philosophical song.
  Now the king one day held court, and Taliesin placed himself
  in a quiet corner. "And so when the bards and the heralds came
  to cry largess, and to proclaim the power of the king and his
  strength, at the moment that they passed by the corner wherein
  he was crouching, Taliesin pouted out his lips after them, and
  played 'Blerwm, blerwm,' with his finger upon his lips. Neither
  took they much notice of him as they went by, but proceeded
  forward till they came before the king, unto whom they made
  their obeisance with their bodies, as they were wont, without
  speaking a single word, but pouting out their lips, and making
  mouths at the king, playing 'Blerwm, blerwm,' upon their lips
  with their fingers, as they had seen the boy do elsewhere. This
  sight caused the king to wonder and to deem within himself that
  they were drunk with many liquors. Wherefore he commanded
  one of his lords, who served at the board, to go to them and de-
  sire them to collect their wits, and to consider where they stood,
  and what it was fitting for them to do. And the lord did so
  gladly. But they ceased not from their folly any more than be-
  fore. Whereupon he sent to them a second time, and a third, de-
  siring them to go forth from the hall. At the last the king ordered
  one of his squires to give a blow to the chief of them named
  Heinin Vardd; and the squire took a broom and struck him on
  the head, so that he fell back in his seat. Then he arose and went
  on his knees, and besought leave of the king's grace to show that
  this their fault was not through want of knowledge, neither
  through drunkenness, but by the influence of some spirit that
  was in the hall. And after this Heinin spoke on this wise. 'Oh
  honorable king, be it known to your grace, that not from the
  strength of drink, or of too much liquor, are we dumb, without
  power of speech like drunken men, but through the influence of
  a spirit that sits in the corner yonder in the form of a child.'
  Forthwith the king commanded the squire to fetch him; and he
  223
  
  went to the nook where Taliesin sat, and brought him before
  the king, who asked him what he was, and whence he came.
  And he answered the king in verse.
  "Primary chief bard am I to Elphin,
  And my original country is the region of the summer stars;
  Idno and Heinin called me Merddin,
  At length every king will call me Taliesin.
  "I was with my Lord in the highest sphere,
  On the fall of Lucifer into the depth of hell.
  I have borne a banner before Alexander;
  I know the names of the stars from north to south;
  I have been on the galaxy at the throne of the Distributer;
  I was in Canaan when Absalom was slain;
  I conveyed the Divine Spirit to the level of the vale of Hebron;
  I was in the court of Don before the birth ofGwdion.
  I was instructor to Eli and Enoc;
  I have been winged by the genius of the splendid crosier;
  I have been loquacious prior to being gifted with speech;
  I was at the place of the crucifixion of the merciful Son of God;
  I have been three periods in the prison of Arianrod;
  I have been the chief director of the work of the tower ofNimrod;
  I am a wonder whose origin is not known.
  I have been in Asia with Noah in the ark,
  I have seen the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra;
  I have been in India when Roma was built,
  I am now come here to the Remnant ofTroia.
  1 have been with my Lord in the manger of the ass;
  I strengthened Moses through the water of Jordan;
  I have been in the firmament with Mary Magdalene;
  I have obtained the muse from the cauldron ofCaridwen;
  I have been bard of the harp to Lleon ofLochlin.
  I have been on the White Hill, in the court ofCynvelyn,
  For a day and a year in stocks and fetters,
  1 have suffered hunger for the Son of the Virgin,
  I have been fostered in the land of the Deity,
  I have been teacher to all intelligences,
  224
  F R E E D O M 
  T O 
  L I V E
  / am able to instruct the whole universe.
  I shall be until the day of doom on the face of the earth;
  And it is not known whether my body is flesh or fish.
  "Then I was for nine months
  In the womb of the hag Caridwen;
  I was originally little Gwion,
  And at length I am Taliesin.
  "And when the king and his nobles had heard the song, they
  wondered much, for they had never heard the like from a boy as
  young as he."40
  The larger portion of the bard's song is devoted to the Imper-
  ishable, which lives in him, only a brief stanza to the details of
  his personal biography. Those listening are oriented to the Im-
  perishable in themselves, and then supplied incidentally with an
  item of information. Though he had feared the terrible hag, he
  had been swallowed and reborn. Having died to his personal
  ego, he arose again established in the Self.
  The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things
  become, because he is. "Before Abraham was, I AM." 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. "Nothing
  retains its own form; but Nature, the greater renewer, ever
  makes up forms from forms. Be sure there's nothing perishes in
  the whole universe; it does but vary and renew its form."41 Thus
  the next moment is permitted to come to pass.—When the
  Prince of Eternity kissed the Princess of the World, her resis-
  tance was allayed. "She opened her eyes, awoke, and looked at
  him in friendship. Together they came down the stairs, and the
  king awoke and the queen and the entire courtly estate, and all
  looked at each other with big eyes. And the horses in the court
  stood up and shook themselves: the hunting dogs jumped and
  wagged their tails: the pigeons on the roof drew their little
  1 "Taliesin," op. cit., pp. 264—274.
  1 Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV, 252-255.
  225
  
  heads out from under their wings, looked around, and flew across
  the field: the flies on the wall walked again: the fire in the kitchen
  brightened, flickered, and cooked the dinner: the roast began
  again to sizzle: and the cook gave the scullery boy a box in the
  ear that made him yell: and the maid finished plucking the
  chicken."42
  C i) A r T E R
  The Keys
  '- Grimm, No. 50; conclusion.
  THE adventure can be summarized in the following diagram:
  226
  The mythological hero, setting forth from his common-day hut or
  castle, is lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the
  threshold of adventure. There he encounters a shadow presence that
  guards the passage. The hero may defeat or conciliate this power
  and go alive into the kingdom of the dark (brother-battle, dragon-
  battle; offering, charm), or be slain by the opponent and descend in
  death (dismemberment, crucifixion). Beyond the threshold, then,
  the hero journeys through a world of unfamiliar yet strangely inti-
  mate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of
  which give magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir of
  the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains
  his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero's sexual
  227
  
  THE KEYS
  union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his
  recognition by the father-creator (father atonement), his own di-
  vinization (apotheosis), or again —if the powers have remained
  unfriendly to him—his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride-theft,
  fire-theft); intrinsically it is an expansion of consciousness and
  therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom). The
  final work is that of the return. If the powers have blessed the hero,
  he now sets forth under their protection (emissary); if not, he flees
  and is pursued (transformation flight, obstacle flight). At the re-
  turn threshold the transcendental powers must remain behind; the
  hero re-emerges from the kingdom of dread (return, resurrection).
  The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir).
  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 inde-
  pendent cycles into a single series (as in the Odyssey). Differing
  characters or episodes can become fused, or a single element can
  reduplicate itself and reappear under many changes.
  The outlines of myths and tales are subject to damage and ob-
  scuration. Archaic traits are generally eliminated or subdued.
  Imported materials are revised to fit local landscape, custom, or
  belief, and always suffer in the process. Furthermore, in the in-
  numerable retellings of a traditional story, accidental or inten-
  tional dislocations are inevitable. To account for elements that
  have become, for one reason or another, meaningless, secondary
  interpretations are invented, often with considerable skill.2
  In the Eskimo story of Raven in the belly of the whale, the
  motif of the fire sticks has suffered a dislocation and subsequent
  rationalization. The archetype of the hero in the belly of the
  whale is widely known. The principal deed of the adventurer is
  ' The view (page 229) of the Return of Jason (from a vase in the Vatican
  Etruscan Collection) illustrates a reading of the legend not represented in any
  literary document. See comment in Table of Illustrations, supra, p. xiii.
  2 For a discussion of this matter, see my Commentary to the Pantheon Books
  edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales (New York 1944), pp. 846-856.
  228
  THE KEYS
  FIGURE 12. The Return of Jason
  usually to make fire with his fire sticks in the interior of the
  monster, thus bringing about the whale's death and his own re-
  lease. Fire making in this manner is symbolic of the sex act. The
  two sticks—socket-stick and spindle—are known respectively as
  the female and the male; the flame is the newly generated life. The
  hero making fire in the whale is a variant of the sacred marriage.
  But in our Eskimo story this fire-making image underwent a
  modification. The female principle was personified in the beauti-
  ful girl whom Raven encountered in the great room within the
  animal; meanwhile the conjunction of male and female was sym-
  bolized separately in the flow of the oil from the pipe into the
  burning lamp. Raven's tasting of this oil was his participation in
  the act. The resultant cataclysm represented the typical crisis of
  229
  
  THE KEYS
  the nadir, the termination of the old eon and initiation of the
  new. Raven's emergence then symbolized the miracle of rebirth.
  Thus, the original fire sticks having become superfluous, a clever
  and amusing epilogue was invented to give them a function in
  the plot. Having left the fire sticks in the belly of the whale,
  Raven was able to interpret their rediscovery as an ill-luck omen,
  frighten the people away, and enjoy the blubber feast alone.
  This epilogue is an excellent example of secondary elaboration.
  It plays on the trickster character of the hero but is not an ele-
  ment of the basic story.
  In the later stages of many mythologies, the key images hide
  like needles in great haystacks of secondary anecdote and ratio-
  nalization; for when a civilization has passed from a mythologi-
  cal to a secular point of view, the older images are no longer felt
  or quite approved. In Hellenistic Greece and in Imperial Rome,
  the ancient gods were reduced to mere civic patrons, household
  pets, and literary favorites. Uncomprehended inherited themes,
  such as that of the Minotaur—the dark and terrible night aspect
  of an old Egypto-Cretan representation of the incarnate sun god
  and divine king—were rationalized and reinterpreted to suit
  contemporary ends. Mt. Olympus became a Riviera of trite scan-
  dals and affairs, and the mother-goddesses hysterical nymphs.
  The myths were read as superhuman romances. In China, com-
  parably, where the humanistic, moralizing force of Confucianism
  has fairly emptied the old myth forms of their primal grandeur,
  the official mythology is today a clutter of anecdotes about the
  sons and daughters of provincial officials, who, for serving their
  community one way or another, were elevated by their grateful
  beneficiaries to the dignity of local gods. And in modern pro-
  gressive Christianity the Christ—Incarnation of the Logos and
  Redeemer of the World—is primarily a historical personage, a
  harmless country wise man of the semi-oriental past who preached
  a benign doctrine of "do as you would be done by," yet was exe-
  cuted as a criminal. His death is read as a splendid lesson in in-
  tegrity and fortitude.
  Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, his-
  tory, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote
  230
  THE KEYS
  facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult
  to demonstrate that as science and history mythology is absurd.
  When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this
  way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the
  link between the two perspectives is dissolved. Such a blight
  has certainly descended on the Bible and on a great part of the
  Christian cult.
  To bring the images back to life, one has to seek, not interest-
  ing applications to modern affairs, but illuminating hints from
  the inspired past. When these are found, vast areas of half-dead
  iconography disclose again their permanently human meaning.
  On Holy Saturday in the Catholic Church, for example, after
  the blessing of the new fire,3 the blessing of the paschal candle,
  and the reading of the prophecies, the priest puts on a purple
  cope and, preceded by the processional cross, the candelabra, and
  the lighted blessed candle, goes to the baptismal font with his
  ministers and the clergy, while the following tract is sung: "As
  the hart panteth after the fountains of water, so my soul panteth
  after Thee, O God! when shall I come and appear before the face
  of God? My tears have been my bread day and night, while they
  say to me daily: Where is thy God?" (Psalm xli, 2-4; Douay).
  On arriving at the threshold of the baptistry, the priest pauses
  to offer up a prayer, then enters and blesses the water of the font,
  "to the end that a heavenly offspring, conceived by sanctification,
  may emerge from the immaculate womb of the divine font, reborn
  new creatures: and that all, however distinguished either by sex
  in body, or by age in time, may be brought forth to the same in-
  fancy by grace, their spiritual mother." He touches the water
  with his hand, and prays that it may be cleansed of the malice of
  Satan; makes the sign of the cross over the water; divides the
  water with his hand and throws some towards the four quarters
  of the world; breathes thrice upon the water in the form of a
  cross; then dips the paschal candle in the water and intones:
  3 Holy Saturday, the day between the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, who
  is in the belly of Hell. The moment of the renewal of the eon. Compare the
  motif of the fire sticks discussed above.
  231
  
  THE KEYS
  "May the virtue of the Holy Ghost descend into all the water of
  this font." He withdraws the candle, sinks it back again to a
  greater depth, and repeats in a higher tone: "May the virtue of
  the Holy Ghost descend into all the water of this font." Again he
  withdraws the candle, and for the third time sinks it, to the bot-
  tom, repeating in a higher tone still: "May the virtue of the Holy
  Ghost descend into all the water of this font." Then breathing
  thrice upon the water he goes on: "And make the whole sub-
  stance of this water fruitful for regeneration." He then withdraws
  the candle from the water, and, after a few concluding prayers,
  the assistant priests sprinkle the people with this blessed water.4
  The female water spiritually fructified with the male fire of the
  Holy Ghost is the Christian counterpart of the water of transfor-
  mation known to all systems of mythological imagery. This rite
  is a variant of the sacred marriage, which is the source-moment
  that generates and regenerates the world and man, precisely the
  mystery symbolized by the Hindu lingam. To enter into this font
  is to plunge into the mythological realm; to break the surface is
  to cross the threshold into the night-sea. Symbolically, the infant
  makes the journey when the water is poured on its head; its
  guide and helpers are the priest and godparents. Its goal is a
  visit with the parents of its Eternal Self, the Spirit of God and
  the Womb of Grace.5 Then it is returned to the parents of the
  physical body.
  Few of us have any inkling of the sense of the rite of baptism,
  which was our initiation into our Church. Nevertheless, it clearly
  appears in the words of Jesus: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Ex-
  cept a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
  Nicodemus said to him "How can a man be born when he is
  old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be
  born?" Jesus answered "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a
  THE KEYS
  man be born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the
  kingdom of God."'1
  The popular interpretation of baptism is that it "washes away
  original sin," with emphasis rather on the cleansing than on the
  rebirth idea. This is a secondary interpretation. Or if the tradi-
  tional birth image is remembered, nothing is said of an antecedent
  marriage. Mythological symbols, however, have to be followed
  through all their implications before they open out the full system
  of correspondences through which they represent, by analogy, the
  millennial adventure of the soul.
  fi John, 3:3-5.
  4 See the Catholic Daily Missal under "Holy Saturday." The above is
  abridged from the English translation by Dom Caspar Lefebvre, O.S.B., pub-
  lished in this country by the E. M. Lohmann Co., Saint Paul, Minnesota.
  1 In India the power (shakti) of a god is personified in female form and rep-
  resented as his consort; in the present ritual, grace is similarly symbolized.
  232
  233
  
  PART II
  The Cosmogonic Cycle
  
  C 
  H 
  A 
  1> 
  T 
  K 
  K
  Emanations
  • l •
  From Psychology to Metaphysics
  IT is not difficult for the modern intellectual to concede that the
  symbolism of mythology has a psychological significance. Partic-
  ularly after the work of the psychoanalysts, there can be little
  doubt, either that myths are of the nature of dream, or that dreams
  are symptomatic of the dynamics of the psyche. Sigmund Freud,
  Carl G. Jung, Wilhelm Stekel, Otto Rank, Karl Abraham, Geza
  Roheim, and many others have within the past few decades de-
  veloped a vastly documented modern lore of dream and myth in-
  terpretation; and though the doctors differ among themselves,
  they are united into one great modern movement by a consider-
  able body of common principles. With their discovery that the
  patterns and logic of fairy tale and myth correspond to those of
  dream, the long discredited chimeras of archaic man have re-
  turned dramatically to the foreground of modern consciousness.
  According to this view it appears that through the wonder tales—
  which pretend to describe the lives of the legendary heroes, the
  powers of the divinities of nature, the spirits of the dead, and the
  totem ancestors of the group—symbolic expression is given to
  the unconscious desires, fears, and tensions that underlie the
  conscious patterns of human behavior. Mythology, in other
  words, is psychology misread as biography; history, and cosmol-
  ogy. The modern psychologist can translate it back to its proper
  denotations and thus rescue for the contemporary world a rich
  237
  
  EMANATIONS
  and eloquent document of the profoundest depths of human
  character. Exhibited here, as in a fluoroscope, stand revealed the
  hidden processes of the enigma Homo sapiens—Occidental and
  Oriental, primitive and civilized, contemporary and archaic. The
  entire spectacle is before us. We have only to read it, study its
  constant patterns, analyze its variations, and therewith come to
  an understanding of the deep forces that have shaped man's des-
  tiny and must continue to determine both our private and our
  public lives.
  But if we are to grasp the full value of the materials, we must
  note that myths are not exactly comparable to dream. Their
  figures originate from the same sources—the unconscious wells
  of fantasy—and their grammar is the same, but they are not the
  spontaneous products of sleep. On the contrary, their patterns
  are consciously controlled. And their understood function is to
  serve as a powerful picture language for the communication of
  traditional wisdom. This is true already of the so-called primi-
  tive folk mythologies. The trance-susceptible shaman and the
  initiated antelope-priest are not unsophisticated in the wisdom
  of the world, nor unskilled in the principles of communication
  by analogy. The metaphors by which they live, and through which
  they operate, have been brooded upon, searched, and discussed
  for centuries —even millenniums; they have served whole soci-
  eties, furthermore, as the mainstays of thought and life. The cul-
  ture patterns have been shaped to them. The youth have been
  educated, and the aged rendered wise, through the study, expe-
  rience, and understanding of their effective initiatory forms. For
  they actually touch and bring into play the vital energies of the
  whole human psyche. They link the unconscious to the fields of
  practical action, not irrationally, in the manner of a neurotic pro-
  jection, but in such fashion as to permit a mature and sobering,
  practical comprehension of the fact-world to play back, as a stern
  control, into the realms of infantile wish and fear. And if this be
  true of the comparatively simple folk mythologies (the systems
  of myth and ritual by which the primitive hunting and fishing
  tribes support themselves), what may we say of such magnificent
  cosmic metaphors as those reflected in the great Homeric epics,
  238
  FROM PSYCHOLOGY TO METAPHYSICS
  the Divine Comedy of Dante, the Book of Genesis, and the time-
  less temples of the Orient? Until the most recent decades, these
  were the support of all human life and the inspiration of philoso-
  phy, poetry, and the arts. Where the inherited symbols have been
  touched by a Lao-tse, Buddha, Zoroaster, Christ, or Mohammed—
  employed by a consummate master of the spirit as a vehicle of
  the profoundest moral and metaphysical instruction—obviously
  we are in the presence rather of immense consciousness than of
  darkness.
  And so, to grasp the full value of the mythological figures that
  have come down to us, we must understand that they are not
  only symptoms of the unconscious (as indeed are all human
  thoughts and acts) but also controlled and intended statements
  of certain spiritual principles, which have remained as constant
  throughout the course of human history as the form and nervous
  structure of the human physique itself. Briefly formulated, the
  universal doctrine teaches that all the visible structures of the
  world—all things and beings — are the effects of a ubiquitous
  power out of which they rise, which supports and fills them dur-
  ing the period of their manifestation, and back into which they
  must ultimately dissolve. This is the power known to science as
  energy, to the Melanesians as mana, to the Sioux Indians as
  ivakonda, the Hindus as sliakti, and the Christians as the power
  of God. Its manifestation in the psyche is termed, by the psycho-
  analysts, libido) And its manifestation in the cosmos is the struc-
  ture and flux of the universe itself.
  The apprehension of the source of this undifferentiated yet
  everywhere particularized substratum of being is rendered frus-
  trate by the very organs through which the apprehension must
  be accomplished. The forms of sensibility and the categories of
  human thought,2 which are themselves manifestations of this
  power,3 so confine the mind that it is normally impossible not
  1 Cf. C. G. Jung, "On Psychic Energy" (orig. 1928; Collected Works, vol. 8),
  entitled in its earliest draft "The Theory of the Libido."
  - See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason.
  3 Sanskrit: mdya-sakti.
  239
  
  EMANATIONS
  only to see, but even to conceive, beyond the colorful, fluid,
  infinitely various and bewildering phenomenal spectacle. The
  function of ritual and myth is to make possible, and then to facil-
  itate, the jump—by analogy. Forms and conceptions that the
  mind and its senses can comprehend are presented and arranged
  in such a way as to suggest a truth or openness beyond. And
  then, the conditions for meditation having been provided, the in-
  dividual is left alone. Myth is but the penultimate; the ultimate
  is openness—that void, or being, beyond the categories4—into
  which the mind must plunge alone and be dissolved. Therefore,
  God and the gods are only convenient means—themselves of the
  nature of the world of names and forms, though eloquent of, and
  ultimately conducive to, the ineffable. They are mere symbols to
  move and awaken the mind, and to call it past themselves.5
  Heaven, hell, the mythological age, Olympus and all the other
  habitations of the gods, are interpreted by psychoanalysis as
  symbols of the unconscious. The key to the modern systems of
  psychological interpretation therefore is this: the metaphysical
  realm = the unconscious. Correspondingly, the key to open the
  door the other way is the same equation in reverse: the uncon-
  scious = the metaphysical realm. "For," as Jesus states it, "be-
  hold, the kingdom of God is within you."6 Indeed, the lapse of
  superconsciousness into the state of unconsciousness is precisely
  the meaning of the Biblical image of the Fall. The constriction of
  consciousness, to which we owe the fact that we see not the
  * Beyond the categories, and therefore not denned by either of the pair of oppo-
  sites called "void" and "being.'1 Such terms are only clues to the transcendency.
  This recognition of the secondary nature of the personality of whatever
  deity is worshiped is characteristic of most of the traditions of the world (see,
  for example, supra, p. 164, note 154). In Christianity, Mohammedanism, and
  Judaism, however, the personality of the divinity is taught to be final—which
  makes it comparatively difficult for the members of these communions to un-
  derstand how one may go beyond the limitations of their own anthropomor-
  phic divinity. The result has been, on the one hand, a general obfuscation of
  the symbols, and on the other, a god-ridden bigotry such as is unmatched else-
  where in the history of religion. For a discussion of the possible origin of this
  aberration, see Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (translated by James
  Strachey; Standard Edn., XXIII, 1964). (Orig. 1939.)
  [i Luke, 17:21.
  240
  FROM PSYCHOLOGY TO METAPHYSICS
  source of the universal power but only the phenomenal forms
  reflected from that power, turns superconsciousness into uncon-
  sciousness and, at the same instant and by the same token, creates
  the world. Redemption consists in the return to superconscious-
  ness and therewith the dissolution of the world. This is the great
  theme and formula of the cosmogonic cycle, the mythical image
  of the world's coming to manifestation and subsequent return
  into the nonmanifest condition. Equally, the birth, life, and death
  of the individual may be regarded as a descent into unconscious-
  ness and return. The hero is the one who, while still alive, knows
  and represents the claims of the superconsciousness which
  throughout creation is more or less unconscious. The adventure
  of the hero represents the moment in his life when he achieved
  illumination—the nuclear moment when, while still alive, he
  found and opened the road to the light beyond the dark walls of
  our living death.
  And so it is that the cosmic symbols are presented in a spirit
  of thought-bewildering sublime paradox. The kingdom of God
  is within, yet without, also; God, however, is but a convenient
  means to wake the sleeping princess, the soul. Life is her sleep,
  death the awakening. The hero, the waker of his own soul, is
  himself but the convenient means of his own dissolution. God,
  the waker of the soul, is therewith his own immediate death.
  Perhaps the most eloquent possible symbol of this mystery is
  that of the god crucified, the god offered, "himself to himself.'"
  Read in one direction, the meaning is the passage of the phe-
  nomenal hero into superconsciousness: the body with its five
  senses—like that of Prince Five-weapons stuck to Sticky-hair—
  is left hanging to the cross of the knowledge of life and death,
  pinned in five places (the two hands, the two feet, and the head
  crowned with thorns).8 But also, God has descended voluntar-
  ily and taken upon himself this phenomenal agony. God assumes
  the life of man and man releases the God within himself at
  the mid-point of the cross-arms of the same "coincidence of
  ' Supra, p. 176.
  8 Supra, pp. 79-80.
  241
  
  EMANATIONS
  opposites,"1' the same sun door through which God descends
  and Man ascends—each as the other's food.1"
  The modern student may, of course, study these symbols as he
  will, either as a symptom of others1 ignorance, or as a sign to
  him of his own, either in terms of a reduction of metaphysics to
  psychology, or vice versa. The traditional way was to meditate on
  the symbols in both senses. In any case, they are telling metaphors
  of the destiny of man, man's hope, man's faith, and man's dark
  mystery.
  The Universal Round
  As the consciousness of the individual rests on a sea of night into
  which it descends in slumber and out of which it mysteriously
  wakes, so, in the imagery of myth, the universe is precipitated
  out of, and reposes upon, a timelessness back into which it again
  dissolves. And as the mental and physical health of the individ-
  ual depends on an orderly flow of vital forces into the field of
  waking day from the unconscious dark, so again in myth, the
  continuance of the cosmic order is assured only by a controlled flow
  of power from the source. The gods are symbolic personifications
  of the laws governing this flow. The gods come into existence
  with the dawn of the world and dissolve with the twilight. They
  are not eternal in the sense that the night is eternal. Only from
  the shorter span of human existence does the round of a cosmo-
  gonic eon seem to endure.
  The cosmogonic cycle is normally represented as repeating it-
  self, world without end. During each great round, lesser dissolu-
  tions are commonly included, as the cycle of sleep and waking
  9 Supra, p. 81.
  "' Supra, pp. 38-39.
  242
  THE UNIVERSAL ROUND
  revolves throughout a lifetime. According to an Aztec version,
  each of the four elements—water, earth, air, and fire—terminates
  a period of the world: the eon of the waters ended in deluge,
  that of the earth with an earthquake, that of air with a wind, and
  the present eon will be destroyed by flame."
  According to the Stoic doctrine of the cyclic conflagration, all
  souls are resolved into the world soul or primal fire. When this
  universal dissolution is concluded, the formation of a new uni-
  verse begins (Cicero's renovatio), and all things repeat them-
  selves, every divinity, every person, playing again his former
  part. Seneca gave a description of this destruction in his "De
  Consolatione ad Marciam," and appears to have looked forward
  to living again in the cycle to come.1"2
  A magnificent vision of the cosmogonic round is presented in
  the mythology of the Jains. The most recent prophet and savior
  of this very ancient Indian sect was Mahavira, a contemporary of
  the Buddha (sixth century B.C.). His parents were already fol-
  lowers of a much earlier Jaina savior-prophet, Parshvanatha,
  who is represented with snakes springing from his shoulders
  and is reputed to have flourished 872-772 B.C. Centuries before
  Parshvanatha, there lived and died the Jaina savior Neminatha,
  declared to have been a cousin of the beloved Hindu incarnation,
  Krishna. And before him, again, were exactly twenty-one others,
  going all the way back to Rishabhanatha, who existed in an ear-
  lier age of the world, when men and women were always born
  in wedded couples, were two miles tall, and lived for a period
  of countless years. Rishabhanatha instructed the people in the
  seventy-two sciences (writing, arithmetic, reading of omens,
  etc.), the sixty-four accomplishments of women (cooking, sewing,
  etc.), and the one hundred arts (pottery, weaving, painting,
  smithing, barbering, etc.); also, he introduced them to politics
  and established a kingdom.
  1 Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Historia de la Nation Chichimeca (1608),
  Capitulo I (published in Lord Kingsborough's Antiquities of Mexico; London,
  1830-48, Vol. IX, p. 205; also by Alfredo Chavero, Obras Historicas de Alva
  Ixtlilxochitl; Mexico, 1891-92, Vol. II, pp. 21-22).
  13 Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. V, p. 375.
  243
  
  EMANATIONS
  Before his day, such innovations would have been superfluous;
  for the people of the preceding period—who were four miles tall,
  with one hundred and twenty-eight ribs, enjoying a life span of
  two periods of countless years—were supplied in all their needs
  by ten "wish-fulfilling trees" (kalpa vriksha), which gave sweet
  fruits, leaves that were shaped like pots and pans, leaves that
  sweetly sang, leaves that gave forth light at night, flowers de-
  lightful to see and to smell, food perfect both to sight and to
  taste, leaves that might serve as jewelry, and bark providing
  beautiful clothes. One of the trees was like a many-storied palace
  in which to live; another shed a gentle radiance, like that of
  many little lamps. The earth was sweet as sugar; the ocean as
  delicious as wine. And then again, before this happy age, there
  had been a period happier still—precisely twice as happy—when
  men and women had been eight miles tall, possessing each two
  hundred and fifty-six ribs. When those superlative people died,
  they passed directly to the world of the gods, without ever hav-
  ing heard of religion, for their natural virtue was as perfect as
  their beauty.
  The Jains conceive of time as an endless round. Time is pic-
  tured as a wheel with twelve spokes, or ages, classified in two
  sets of six. The first set is called the "descending" series
  (avasarpini), and begins with the age of the superlative giant-
  couples. That paradisiac period endures for ten millions of ten
  millions of one hundred millions of one hundred million periods
  of countless years, and then yields slowly to the only half as
  blissful period when men and women are only four miles tall. In
  the third period—that of Rishabhanatha, first of the twenty-four
  world saviors—happiness is mixed with a little sorrow, and
  virtue with a little vice. At the conclusion of this period, men
  and women are no longer born together in couples to live to-
  gether as man and wife.
  During the fourth period, the gradual deterioration of the
  world and its inhabitants steadily continues. The life span and
  stature of man slowly diminish. Twenty-three world saviors are
  born; each restating the eternal doctrine of the Jains in terms
  appropriate to the conditions of his time. Three years, eight and
  244
  THE UNIVERSAL ROUND
  one-half months after the death of the last of the saviors and
  prophets, Mahavira, this period comes to an end.
  Our own age, the fifth of the descending series, began in 522 B.C.
  and will last for twenty-one thousand years. No Jaina savior will
  be born during this time, and the eternal religion of the Jains
  will gradually disappear. It is a period of unmitigated and grad-
  ually intensifying evil. The tallest human beings are only seven
  cubits tall, and the longest life span no more than one hundred
  and twenty-five years. People have only sixteen ribs. They are
  selfish, unjust, violent, lustful, proud, and avaricious.
  But in the sixth of the descending ages, the state of man and
  his world will be still more horrible. The longest life will be only
  twenty years; one cubit will be the greatest stature and eight
  ribs the meagre allotment. The days will be hot, the nights cold,
  disease will be rampant and chastity nonexistent. Tempests will
  sweep over the earth, and toward the conclusion of the period
  these will increase. In the end all life, human and animal, and all
  the vegetable seeds, will be forced to seek shelter in the Ganges,
  in miserable caves, and in the sea.
  The descending series will terminate and the "ascending" se-
  ries (utsarpini) begin, when the tempest and desolation will
  have reached the point of the unendurable. For seven days then
  it will rain, and seven different kinds of rain will fall; the soil
  will be refreshed, and the seeds will begin to grow. Out of their
  caves the horrible dwarf-creatures of the arid, bitter earth will
  venture; and very gradually there will be perceptible a slight im-
  provement in their morals, health, beauty, and stature; until
  presently they will be living in a world such as the one we know
  today. And then a savior will be born, named Padmanatha, to
  announce again the eternal religion of the Jains; the stature of
  mankind will approach again the superlative, the beauty of man
  will surpass the splendor of the sun. At last, the earth will
  sweeten and the waters turn to wine, the wish-fulfilling trees
  will yield their bounty of delights to a blissful population of per-
  fectly wedded twins; and the happiness of this community again
  will be doubled, and the wheel, through ten millions of ten mil-
  lions of one hundred millions of one hundred million periods of
  245
  
  EMANATIONS
  THE UNIVERSAL ROUND
  countless years, will approach the point of beginning the down-
  ward revolution, which again will lead to the extinction of the
  eternal religion and the gradually increasing noise of unwhole-
  some merrymaking, warfare, and pestilential winds.13
  This ever-revolving, twelve-spoked wheel of time of the .Jains
  is a counterpart of the cycle of four ages of the Hindus: the first
  age a long period of perfect bliss, beauty, and perfection, lasting
  4800 divine years;14 the second of somewhat lesser virtue, last-
  ing 3600 divine years; the third of equally intermingled virtue
  and vice, lasting 2400 divine years; and the last, our own, of
  steadily increasing evil, lasting 1200 divine years, or 432,000
  years according to human calculation. But at the termination of
  the present period, instead of beginning again immediately to
  improve (as in the cycle described by the Jains), all is first to be
  annihilated in a cataclysm of lire and Hood, and thereby reduced
  to the primordial state of the original, timeless ocean, to remain
  for a period equal to that of the whole length of the four ages.
  The world's great ages then begin anew.
  A basic conception of Oriental philosophy is understood to be
  rendered in this picture-form. Whether the myth was originally
  an illustration of the philosophical formula, or the latter a distil-
  lation out of the myth, it is today impossible to say. Certainly the
  myth goes back to remote ages, but so too does philosophy.
  Who is to know what thoughts lay in the minds of the old sages
  who developed and treasured the myth and handed it on? Very
  often, during the analysis and penetration of the secrets of ar-
  chaic symbol, one can only feel that our generally accepted no-
  tion of the history of philosophy is founded on a completely false
  assumption, namely that abstract and metaphysical thought be-
  gins where it first appears in our extant records.
  The philosophical formula illustrated by the cosmogonic cycle
  is that of the circulation of consciousness through the three planes
  of being. The first plane is that of waking experience: cognitive of
  15 See Mrs. Sinclair Stevenson, The Heart of Jainism (Oxford University
  Press. 1915), pp. 272-278.
  11 A divine year is equal to 360 human years. Cf. supra, p. 207.
  the hard, gross, facts of an outer universe, illuminated by the
  light of the sun, and common to all. The second plane is that of
  dream experience: cognitive of the fluid, subtle, forms of a pri-
  vate interior world, self-luminous and of one substance with the
  dreamer. The third plane is that of deep sleep: dreamless, pro-
  foundly blissful. In the first are encountered the instructive ex-
  periences of life; in the second these are digested, assimilated to
  the inner forces of the dreamer; while in the third all is enjoyed
  and known unconsciously, in the "space within the heart,11 the
  room of the inner controller, the source and end of all.1"
  The cosmogonic cycle is to be understood as the passage of
  universal consciousness from the deep sleep zone of the unmani-
  fest, through dream, to the full day of waking; then back again
  through dream to the timeless dark. As in the actual experience
  of every living being, so in the grandiose figure of the living cos-
  mos: in the abyss of sleep the energies are refreshed, in the work
  of the day they are exhausted; the life of the universe runs down
  and must be renewed.
  The cosmogonic cycle pulses forth into manifestation and
  back into nonmanifestation amidst a silence of the unknown.
  The Hindus represent this mystery in the holy syllable AUM.
  Here the sound A represents waking consciousness, U dream
  consciousness, M deep sleep. The silence surrounding the syllable
  is the unknown: it is called simply "The Fourth."111 The syllable
  itself is God as creator-preserver-destroyer, but the silence is God
  a See Mandukya Upanishad, 3-6.
  ln Mandukya Upanishad, 8-12.
  Since in Sanskrit a and u coalesce in o, the sacred syllable is pronounced and
  written "nm." See the prayers, pp. 141 and 218, note 31, supra.
  
  EMANATIONS
  Eternal, absolutely uninvolved in all the opening-and-closings of
  the round.
  It is unseen, unrelated, inconceivable,
  un inferable, unimaginable, indescribable.
  It is the essence of the one self-cognition
  common to all states of consciousness.
  All phenomena cease in it.
  It is peace, it is bliss, it is nonduality}'
  Myth remains, necessarily, within the cycle, but represents
  this cycle as surrounded and permeated by the silence. Myth is
  the revelation of a plenum of silence within and around every
  atom of existence. Myth is a directing of the mind and heart, by
  means of profoundly informed figurations, to that ultimate mys-
  tery which fills and surrounds all existences. Even in the most
  comical and apparently frivolous of its moments, mythology
  is directing the mind to this unmanifest which is just beyond
  the eye.
  "The Aged of the Aged, the Unknown of the Unknown, has a
  form and yet has no form," we read in a cabalistic text of the
  medieval Hebrews. "He has a form whereby the universe is pre-
  served, and yet has no form, because he cannot be compre-
  hended."18 This Aged of the Aged is represented as a face in
  " Mandukya Uparuskad, 7.
  1S Ha idra zuta, Zohar, iii. 288a. Compare supra, p. 164.
  The Zokar (zohar, "light, splendor") is a collection of esoteric Hebrew writ-
  ing, given to the world about 1305 by a learned Spanish Jew, Moses de Leon.
  It was claimed that the material had been drawn from secret original1;, going
  back to the teachings of Simeon ben Yohai, a rabbi of Galilee in the second
  century A.D. rl"hreatened with death by the Romans, Simeon had hidden for
  twelve years in a cave; ten centuries later his writings had been found there,
  and these were the sources of the books of the Zohar.
  Simeon's teachings were supposed to have been drawn from the hokmah
  nistarah or hidden wisdom of Moses, i.e., a body of esoteric lore first studied
  by Moses in Egypt, the land of his birth, then pondered by him during his
  forty years in the wilderness (where he receh ed special instruction from an angel),
  THE UNIVERSAL ROUND
  profile: always in profile, because the hidden side can never be
  known. This is called "The Great Face," Makroprosopos; from
  the strands of its white beard the entire world proceeds. "That
  beard, the truth of all truths, proceedeth from the place of the
  ears, and descendeth around the mouth of the Holy One; and
  descendeth and ascendeth, covering the cheeks which are called
  the places of copious fragrance; it is white with ornament: and it
  descendeth in the equilibrium of balanced power, and furnisheth
  a covering even unto the midst of the breast. That is the beard of
  adornment, true and perfect, from which flow down thirteen
  fountains, scattering the most precious balm of splendor. This is
  disposed in thirteen forms. . . . And certain dispositions are found
  in the universe, according to those thirteen dispositions which
  depend from that venerable beard, and they are opened out into
  the thirteen gates of mercies."19
  The white beard of Makroprosopos descends over another
  head, "The Little Face," Mikroprosopos, represented full face
  and with a beard of black. And whereas the eye of The Great
  Face is without lid and never shuts, the eyes of The Little Face
  open and close in a slow rhythm of universal destiny. This is the
  opening and closing of the cosmogonic round. The Little Face is
  named "GOD," the Great Face "I AM."
  and finally incorporated cryptically in the first four books of the Pentateuch, from
  which it can be extracted by a proper understanding and manipulation of the mys-
  tical number-values of the Hebrew alphabet. This lore and the techniques for re-
  discovering and utilizing it constitute the cabala.
  It is said that the teachings of the cabala (qabbalah, "received or traditional
  lore") were first entrusted by God himself to a special group of angels in Par-
  adise. After Man had been expelled from the Garden, some of these angels
  communicated the lessons to Adam, thinking to help him back to felicity
  thereby. From Adam the teaching passed to Noah, and from Noah to Abraham.
  Abraham let some of it slip from him while he was in Egypt, and that is why
  this sublime wisdom can now be found in reduced form in the myiihs and
  philosophies of the gentiles. Moses first studied it with the priests of Egypt,
  but the tradition was refreshed in him by the special instructions of his angels.
  19 Ha idra rabba </adisha, xi, 212-14 and 233, translation by S. L. MacGregor
  Mathers, The Kabbalah Unveiled (London: Regan Paul, Trench, Trubner and
  Company, Ltd., 1887), pp. 134-135 and 137.
  
  EMANATIONS
  Makroprosopos is the Uncreated Uncreating and Mikroproso-
  pos the Uncreated Creating: respectively, the silence and the
  syllable AUM, the unmanifest and the presence immanent in the
  cosmogonic round.
  Out of the Void—Space
  Saint Thomas Aquinas declares: "The name of being wise is re-
  served to him alone whose consideration is about the end of the
  universe, which end is also the beginning of the universe."90 The
  basic principle of all mythology is this of the beginning in the
  end. Creation myths are pervaded with a sense of the doom that
  is continually recalling all created shapes to the imperishable out
  of which they first emerged. The forms go forth powerfully, but
  inevitably reach their apogee, break, and return. Mythology, in
  this sense, is tragic in its view. But in the sense that it places our
  true being not in the forms that shatter but in the imperishable
  out of which they again immediately bubble forth, mythology
  is eminently untragical.21 Indeed, wherever the mythological
  mood prevails, tragedy is impossible. A quality rather of dream
  prevails. True being, meanwhile, is not in the shapes but in the
  dreamer.
  As in dream, the images range from the sublime to the ridicu-
  lous. The mind is not permitted to rest with its normal evalua-
  tions, but is continually insulted and shocked out of the assurance
  that now, at last, it has understood. Mythology is defeated when
  the mind rests solemnly with its favorite or traditional images, de-
  fending them as though they themselves were the message that
  they communicate. These images are to be regarded as no more
  -" Summa contra Gentiles, I, i.
  sl See supra, pp. 19—25.
  OUT OF-' THE VO I D — S P A C E
  than shadows from the unfathomable reach beyond, where the eye
  goeth not, speech goeth not, nor the mind, nor even piety. Like
  the trivialities of dream, those of myth are big with meaning.
  The first phase of the cosmogonic cycle describes the breaking
  of formlessness into form, as in the following creation chant of
  the Maoris of New Zealand:
  Te Rare (The Void)
  Te Kore-tua-tahi (The First Void)
  Te Kore-tua-rua (The Second Void)
  Te Kore-nui (The Vast Void)
  Te Kore-roa (The Far-Extending Void)
  Te Kore-para (The Sere Void)
  Te Kore-zvhiwhia (The Unpossessing Void)
  Te Kore-rawea (The Delightful Void)
  Te Kore-te-tamaua (The Void Fast Bound)
  Te Po (The Night)
  Te Po-teki (The Hanging Night)
  Te Po-terea (The Drifting Night)
  Te Pu-whazuha (The Moaning Night)
  Hine-make-moe (The Daughter of Troubled Sleep)
  TcAta (The Dawn)
  Te Au-tu-roa (The Abiding Day)
  Te Ao-marama (The Bright Day)
  Whai-tua (Space).
  In space were evolved two existences without shape:
  Maku (Moisture [a male])
  Mahora-mri-a-rangi (Great Expanse of Heaven [a female]).
  From these sprang:
  Rangi-potiki (The Heavens [a male])
  Papa (Earth [a female]).
  Rangi-potiki and Papa were the parents of the gods.22
  22 Johannes C, Anderson, Maori Life in Ao-tea (Christchurch, [New
  Zealand,] no date [1907?]), p. 127.
  
  From the void beyond all voids unfold the world-sustaining
  emanations, plantlike, mysterious. The tenth of the above series
  is night; the eighteenth, space or ether, the frame of the visible
  world; the nineteenth is the male-female polarity; the twentieth
  is the universe we see. Such a series suggests the depth beyond
  depth of the mystery of being. The levels correspond to the pro-
  fundities sounded by the hero in his world-fathoming adventure;
  they number the spiritual strata known to the mind introverted
  in meditation. They represent the bottomlessness of the dark
  night of the soul.23 "
  The Hebrew cabaia represents the process of creation as a se-
  ries of emanations out of the I AM of The Great Face. The first
  is the head itself, in profile, and from this proceed "nine splen-
  did lights." The emanations are represented also as the branches
  of a cosmic tree, which is upside down, rooted in "the inscrutable
  height.'' 'l"he world that we see is the reverse image of that tree.
  According to the Indian Samkhya philosophers of the eighth
  century B.C., the void condenses into the element ether or space.
  From this air is precipitated. From air comes fire, from fire water,
  and from water the element earth. With each element evolves a
  sense-function capable of perceiving it: hearing, touch, sight,
  taste, and smell respectively.34
  An amusing Chinese myth personifies these emanating ele-
  ments as five venerable sages, who come stepping out of a ball of
  chaos, suspended in the void:
  "Before heaven and earth had become separated from each
  other, everything was a great ball of mist, called chaos. At that
  time, the spirits of the five elements took shape, and then devel-
  oped into five ancients. The first was called the Yellow Ancient,
  and he was the master of earth. The second was called the Red
  In the s;n.'i"^d 'A riim^"-. uf M:ihi.]y:iM:i BtiildhiMii, nubre-en "voicln^'ise^ * or
  degrees of the void are enumerated and described. These arc experienced by
  the yogi and by the soul as it passes into death. See Evan&-Wentz, Tibetan
  1o!^a and Secret Dortnnr, pp. i?Oli, 239 f.
  -1 See The Vedan'a-or.t of S,ul,munda, translated with Introduction, Sanskrit
  Text, and Comments, bj S«ami Nikhilanandii (Mayavati, 1931).
  WITHIN SPACE — LIFE
  Ancient, and he was the master of fire. The third was called the
  Dark Ancient, and he was the master of water. The fourth was
  called the Wood Prince, and he was the master of wood. The fifth
  was called the Metal Mother, and she was the mistress of metals.25
  "Now each of these five ancients set in motion the primordial
  spirit from which he had proceeded, so that water and earth
  sank downward; the heavens soared aloft and the earth became
  fast in the depths. Then the water gathered into rivers and lakes,
  and the mountains and plains appeared. The heavens cleared
  and the earth divided; then there were sun, moon, and all the
  stars, sand, clouds, rain, and dew. The Yellow Ancient gave play
  to the purest power of the earth, and to this were added the op-
  erations of fire and water. Then there sprang into being the
  grasses and trees, birds and animals, and the generations of the
  snakes and insects, and fishes and turtles. The Wood Prince and
  the Metal Mother brought light and darkness together and thereby
  created the human race, as man and woman. Thus gradually ap-
  peared the world. . . ."26
  Within Space—Life
  The first effect of the cosmogonic emanations is the framing of
  the world stage of space; the second is the production of life
  within the frame: life polarized for self-reproduction under the
  dual form of the male and female. It is possible to represent the
  entire process in sexual terms, as a pregnancy and birth. This
  wood, and gold.
  "2fi Translated from Richard Willielm, Ckinesische Miirchen (Jena: EuBen
  Diederichs Verlag, 1921), pp. 29-31.
  
  EMANATIONS
  idea is superbly rendered in another metaphysical genealogy of
  the Maoris:
  From the conception the increase.
  From the increase the thought,
  From the thought the remembrance,
  From the remembrance the consciousness,
  From the consciousness the desire.
  The word became fruitful;
  It dwelt with the feeble glimmering;
  It brought forth night:
  The great night, the long night,
  The lowest night, the loftiest night,
  The thick night, to be felt,
  The night to be touched,
  The night not to be seen,
  The night ending in death.
  From the nothing the begetting,
  From the nothing the increase,
  From the nothing the abundance,
  The power of increasing,
  The living breath.
  It dwelt with the empty space, and produced
  the atmosphere which is above us.
  The atmosphere which floats above the earth,
  The great firmament above us,
  dwelt with the early dawn,
  And the moon sprang forth;
  The atmosphere above us,
  dwelt with the glowing sky,
  And thence proceeded the sun;
  Moon and sun were thrown up above,
  as the chief eyes of heaven:
  Then the Heavens became light:
  the early dawn, the early day,
  The mid-day: the blaze of day from the sky.
  254
  WITHIN SPACE —LIFE
  The sky above dwelt with Hawaiki,
  and produced land.-'
  About the middle of the nineteenth century, Paiore, a high
  chieftain of the Polynesian island of Anaa, drew a picture of the
  beginnings of creation. The first detail of this illustration was a
  little circle containing two elements, Te Tumu, "The Founda-
  tion" (a male), and Te Papa, "The Stratum Rock" (a female).'38
  "The universe," said Paiore, "was like an egg, which con-
  tained Te Tumu and Te Papa. It at last burst and produced
  three layers superposed—one layer below supporting two above.
  On the lowest layer remained Te Tumu and Te Papa, who cre-
  ated man, animals, and plants.
  "The first man was Matata, produced without arms; he died
  shortly after he had come into being. The second man was Aitu,
  who came with one arm but without legs; and he died like his
  elder brother. Finally, the third man was Hoatea (Sky-space),
  and he was perfectly formed. After this came a woman named
  Hoatu (Fruitfulness of Earth). She became the wife of Hoatea
  and from them descended the human race.
  "When the lowest layer of earth became filled with creation,
  the people made an opening in the middle of the layer above, so
  that they could get upon it also, and there they established
  themselves, taking with them plants and animals from below.
  Then they raised the third layer (so that it should form a ceiling
  to the second) . . . and ultimately established themselves up
  there also, so that human beings had three abodes.
  "Above the earth were the skies, also superposed, reaching
  down and supported by their respective horizons, some being at-
  tached to those of the earth; and the people continued to work,
  expanding one sky above another in the same manner, until all
  were set in order."29
  iT Rev. Richard Taylor, Te ika a Mam, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants
  (London, 1855), pp. 14-15.
  ** The little circle underneath the main portion of Figure 13. Compare the
  Chinese 1 ao\ lootnote, p. 1-tO, supra.
  w Kenneth P. Emory, "The Tuamotuan Creation Charts by Paiore" Journal
  of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 48, No. 1 (March, 1939), pp. 1-29.
  iT Rev. Richard Taylor, Te ika a I
  (London, 1855), pp. 14-15.
  ** The little circle underneath the
  Chinese Tito', lootnote, p. 1-tO, supra.
  M Kenneth P. Emory, "The Tuamotuan Creation Charts by Pa
  of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 48, No. 1 (March, 1939), pp. 1-29.
  255
  
  FIGURE 13. Tuamotuan Creation Chart. Below: The Cosmic Egg.
  Above: The People Appear, and Shape the Universe
  The main portion of Paiore's illustration shows the people
  spreading out the world, standing on each other's shoulders to el-
  evate the skies. On the lowest stratum of this world appear the
  two original elements, Te Tumu and Te Papa. To the left of them
  are the plants and animals of their begetting. Over to the right are
  to be seen the first man, malformed, and the first successful men
  and women. In the upper sky appears a fire surrounded by four
  figures, representing an early event in the history of the world: "The
  creation of the universe was scarcely terminated when Tangaroa,
  who delighted in doing evil, set fire to the highest heaven, seeking
  thus to destroy everything. But fortunately the fire was seen spread-
  ing by Tamatua, Oru, and Ruanuku, who quickly ascended from
  the earth and extinguished the flames."30
  M Ibid., p. 12.
  WITHIN SPACE —LIFE
  The image of the cosmic egg is known to many mythologies;
  it appears in the Greek Orphic, Egyptian, Finnish, Buddhistic,
  and Japanese. "In the beginning this world was merely non-
  being," we read in a sacred work of the Hindus; "It was exis-
  tent. It developed. It turned into an egg. It lay for the period of a
  year. It was split asunder. One of the two eggshell parts became
  silver, one gold. That which was of silver is the earth. That
  which was of gold is the sky- What was the outer membrane is
  the mountains. What was the inner membrane is cloud and mist.
  What were the veins are the rivers. What was the fluid within is
  the ocean. Now, what was born therefrom is yonder sun."31 The
  shell of the cosmic egg is the world frame of space, while the fer-
  tile seed-power within typifies the inexhaustible life dynamism
  of nature.
  "Space is boundless by re-entrant form not by great extension.
  That which is is a shell floating in the infinitude of that which is
  not.'" This succinct formulation by a modern physicist, illustrat-
  ing the world picture as he saw it in 1928,32 gives precisely the
  sense of the mythological cosmic egg. Furthermore, the evolu-
  tion of life, described by our modern science of biology, is the
  theme of the early stages of the cosmogonic cycle. Finally, the
  world destruction, which the physicists tell us must come with
  the exhaustion of our sun and ultimate running down of the
  whole cosmos,33 stands presaged in the scar left by the fire of
  Tangaroa: the world-destructive effects of the creator-destroyer
  will increase gradually until, at last, in the second course of the
  cosmogonic cycle, all will devolve into the sea of bliss.
  Not uncommonly the cosmic egg bursts to disclose, swelling
  from within, an awesome figure in human form. This is the an-
  thropomorphic personification of the power of generation, the
  Mighty Living One, as it is called in the cabala. "Mighty Ta'aroa
  whose curse was death, he is the creator of the world." Thus we
  31 Chundogya Upanishad, 3. 19. 1-3.
  •s A. S. Eddington, The Nature of the Pkijsical World, p. 83. Copyright, 1928
  by The Macmillan Company and used with their permission.
  •a "Entropy always iriLTease.s.'11 (See a^ain Eddington, pp. 63 ff.)
  257
  
  KMANATIONS
  hear from Tahiti, another of the South Sea Isles.34 "He was alone.
  He had no father nor indeed a mother. Ta'aroa simply lived in
  the void. There was no land, nor sky, nor sea. Land was nebu-
  lous: there was no foundation. Ta'aroa then said:
  0 space for land, 0 space for sky,
  Useless world below existing in nebulous state,
  Continuing and continuing from time immemorial.
  Useless world below, extend!
  The face of Ta'aroa appeared outside. The shell of Ta'aroa fell
  away and became land. 'IVaroa looked: Land had come into ex-
  istence, sea had come into existence, sky had come into exis-
  tence. IVaroa lived god-like contemplating his work."35
  An Egyptian myth reveals the demiurge creating the world
  by an act of masturbation.36 A Hindu myth displays him in
  yogic meditation, with the forms of his inner vision breaking
  forth from him (to his own astonishment) and standing then
  around him as a pantheon of brilliant gods.3' And in another ac-
  count from India the all-father is represented as first splitting
  into male and female, then procreating all the creatures accord-
  ing to kind:
  "In the beginning, this universe was only the Self, in human
  form. He looked around and saw nothing but himself. Then, at
  the beginning, he cried out, 'I am he.' Whence came the name,
  I. That is why, even today, when a person is addressed, he first
  declares, 'It is I,' and then announces the other name that he
  goes by.
  "He was afraid. That is why people are afraid to be alone. He
  34 Ta'aroa (Tahitian dialect) is Tangaroa. See Plate XX.
  35 Kenneth P. Emory, "The Tahitian Account of Creation by Mare" Journal
  of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 47, No. 2 (June, 1938), pp. 53-54.
  36 F,. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (London, 1904), Vol. I,
  pp. 282-292.
  37 Kalika Purana, I (translated in Heinrich Zimmer, The King and the
  Corpse, The Bollingen Series XI, Pantheon Books, 1948, pp. 239 ff.).
  WITHIN 8PACE — H FE
  thought, 'But what am I afraid of? There is nothing but myself.'
  Whereupon his fear was gone. . . .
  "He was unhappy. That is why people are not happy when
  they are alone. He wanted a mate. He became as big as a woman
  and man embracing. He divided this body, which was himself,
  in two parts. From that there came husband and wife. . . .
  Therefore this human body (before one marries a wife) is like
  one of the halves of a split pea. ... He united with her; and from
  that were born men.
  "She considered: 'How can he unite with me after producing
  me from himself? Well then, let me hide myself.'' She became a
  cow; but he became a bull and united with her; from that were
  born cattle. She became a mare, he a stallion; she became a she-
  ass, he a he-ass and united with her; from that were born the
  one-hoofed animals. She became a she-goat, he a he-goat; she
  became a ewe, he a ram and united with her; from that were
  born goats and sheep. Thus did he project everything that exists
  in pairs, down to the ants.
  "Then he knew: 'Indeed I am myself the creation, for I have
  projected the entire world.1 Whence he was called Creation. . . ,'138
  The enduring substratum of the individual and of the progen-
  itor of the universe are one and the same, according to these
  mythologies; that is why the demiurge in this myth is called the
  Self. The Oriental mystic discovers this deep-reposing, enduring
  presence in its original androgynous state when he plunges in
  meditation into his own interior.
  Him on whom the sky, the earth, and the atmosphere
  Are woven, and the mind, together with all the life-breaths,
  is Brihadaranyaka L'panishad, 1. 4. 1-5. Translated by Swami Madha-
  vananda (Mayavati, 1934). Compare the foik lore motif of the transformation
  flight, supra, pp. 183-184. See also Cypria 8, where Nemesis "dislikes to lie in
  love uitli Her hither Zeus rind fhe^ from him, ;ts*iuimn^ forms of nsli and am-
  IIILIIS fcued IJ\ AiKitida K. (. ^omarnsw rnii\. Spt> dual /'••W'V and Ienipimd Au-
  thority in the Indian Theory of Government, American Oriental Society, 1942,
  p. 361).
  
  EMANATIONS
  Him alone know as the one Soul. Other
  Words dismiss. He is the bridge to immortality.;w
  Thus it appears that though these myths of creation narrate of
  the remotest past, they speak at the same time of the present ori-
  gin of the individual. "Each soul and spirit," we read in the
  Hebrew Zohar, "prior to its entering into this world, consists of
  a male and female united into one being. When it descends on
  this earth the two parts separate and animate two different bod-
  ies. At the time of marriage, the Holy One, blessed be He, who
  knows all souls and spirits, unites them again as they were be-
  fore, and they again constitute one body and one soul, forming
  as it were the right and left of one individual. . . . This union,
  however, is influenced by the deeds of the man and by the ways
  in which he walks. If the man is pure and his conduct is pleasing
  in the sight of God, he is united with that female part of his soul
  which was his component part prior to his birth."40
  This cabalistic text is a commentary to the scene in Genesis
  where Adam gives forth Eve. A similar conception appears in
  Plato's Symposium. According to this mysticism of sexual love,
  the ultimate experience of love is a realization that beneath the
  illusion of two-ness dwells identity: "each is both." This realiza-
  tion can expand into a discovery that beneath the multitudinous
  individualities of the whole surrounding universe—human, ani-
  mal, vegetable, even mineral—dwells identity; whereupon the
  love experience becomes cosmic, and the beloved who first
  opened the vision is magnified as the mirror of creation. The
  man or woman knowing this experience is possessed of what
  Schopenhauer called "the science of beauty everywhere." He
  "goes up and down these worlds, eating what he desires, assum-
  ing what forms he desires," and he sits singing the song of uni-
  versal unity, which begins: "Oh, wonderful! Oh, wonderful! Oh,
  wonderful!"41
  3" Mundaka Upani&had, 2. 2. 5.
  '" Zohar, i, <J1 b. Quoted by C. G. Ginsburg, The Kabbalah, its Doctrines, De-
  velopment, and Literature (London, 1920), p. 116.
  11 Taittiriya Upanishad, 3. 10. 5.
  260
  I-HE ONE INTO THE MANIFOLD
  The Breaking of the One into the Manifold
  The forward roll of the cosmogonic round precipitates the One
  into the many. Herewith a great crisis, a rift, splits the created
  world into two apparently contradictor}' planes of being. In Paiore's
  chart the people emerge from the lower darknesses and immedi-
  ately go to work to elevate the sky.42 They are revealed as mov-
  ing with an apparent independence. They hold councils, they
  decide, they plan; they take over the work of arranging the world.
  Yet we know that behind the scenes the Unmoved Mover is at
  work, like a puppetmaster.
  In mythology', wherever the Unmoved Mover, the Mighty Liv-
  ing One, holds the center of attention, there is a miraculous
  spontaneity about the shaping of the universe. The elements con-
  dense and move into play of their own accord, or at the Creator's
  slightest word; the portions of the self-shatter ing cosmic egg go
  to their stations without aid. But when the perspective shifts, to
  focus on living beings, when the panorama of space and nature
  is faced from the standpoint of the personages ordained to in-
  habit it, then a sudden transformation overshadows the cosmic
  scene. No longer do the forms of the world appear to move in
  the patterns of a living, growing, harmonious thing, but stand re-
  calcitrant, or at best inert. The props of the universal stage have
  to be adjusted, even beaten into shape. The earth brings forth
  thorns and thistles; man eats bread in the sweat of his brow.
  Two modes of myth therefore confront us. According to one,
  the demiurgic forces continue to operate of themselves; according
  to the other, they give up the initiative and even set themselves
  i2 The mythologies of the American Southwest describe such an emergence
  in great detail, so also the creation stories of the Kabyl Berbers of Algiers. See
  Morris Edward Opler, Myths and Tales of the Jicarilla Apache Indians (Mem-
  oirs of the American Folklore Society. No. 31, 1938); and Leo Frobenius and
  Douglas C. Fox, African Genesis (New York, 1927), pp. 4-9-50.
  261
  
  EMANATIONS
  against the further progress of the cosmogonic round. The
  difficulties represented in this latter form of myth begin even as
  early as during the long darkness of the original, creature-beget-
  ting embrace of the cosmic parents. Let the Maoris introduce us
  to this terrible theme:
  Rangi (the Sky) lay so close on the belly of Papa (Mother
  Earth) that the children could not break free from the womb.
  "They were in an unstable condition, floating about the world of
  darkness, and this was their appearance: some were crawling . . .
  some were upright with arms held up ... some lying on their
  sides . . . some on their backs, some were stooping, some with
  their heads bent down, some with legs drawn up ... some kneel-
  ing . . . some feeling about in the dark. . . . They were all within
  the embrace of Rangi and Papa
  "At last the beings who had been begotten by Heaven and
  Earth, worn out by the continued darkness, consulted among
  themselves, saying, 'Let us now determine what we should do
  with Rangi and Papa, whether it would be better to slay them or
  to rend them apart.' Then spake Tu-matauenga, the fiercest of
  the children of Heaven and Earth, 'It is well, let us slay them.1
  "Then spake Tane-mahuta, the father of the forests and of all
  things that inhabit them, or that are constructed from trees,
  'Nay, not so. It is better to rend them apart, and to let the heaven
  stand far above us, and the earth lie under our feet. Let the sky
  become a stranger to us, but the earth remain close to us as our
  nursing mother.1"
  Several of the brother gods vainly tried to rend apart the heav-
  ens and the earth. At last it was Tane-mahuta himself, the father
  of the forests and of all things that inhabit them, or that are con-
  structed from trees, who succeeded in the titanic project. "His
  head is now firmly planted on his mother the earth, his feet he
  raises up and rests against his father the skies, he strains his
  back and limbs with mighty effort. Now are rent apart Rangi
  and Papa, and with cries and groans of woe they shriek aloud.
  "Wherefore slay you thus your parents'? Why commit you so
  dreadful a crime as to slay us, as to rend your parents apart?'
  THE ONE INTO THE MANIFOLD
  But Tane-mahuta pauses not, he regards not their shrieks and
  cries; far, far beneath him he presses down the earth; far, far
  above him, he thrusts up the sky. . . ."4'3
  As known to the Greeks, this story is rendered by Hesiod in
  his account of the separation of Ouranos (Father Heaven) from
  Gaia (Mother Earth). According to this variant, the Titan Kronos
  castrated his father with a sickle and pushed him up out of the
  way.*4 In Egyptian iconography the position of the cosmic cou-
  ple is inverted: the sky is the mother, the father is the vitality of
  the earth;4"'' but the pattern of the myth remains: the two were
  pushed asunder by their child, the air god Shu. Again the image
  comes to us from the ancient cuneiform texts of the Sumerians,
  dating from the third and fourth millenniums B.C. First was
  the primeval ocean; the primeval ocean generated the cosmic
  mountain, which consisted of heaven and earth united; An (the
  Heaven Father) and Ki (the Earth Mother) produced Enlil (the
  FIGURE 14. The Separation of Sky and Earth
  43 George Grey. 
  Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional History of the
  New Zealand Race, as furnished by their Priests and Chiefs (London, 
  1855).
  pp. 1-3.
  44 Tkeogony, 116 ff. In the Greek version, the mother is not reluctant; she
  herself supplies the sickle.
  w Compare the Maori polarity of Mahora-mii-a-rangi and Maki, p. 271,
  
  EMANATIONS
  Air God), who presently separated An from Ki and then himself
  united with his mother to beget mankind.48
  But if these deeds of the desperate children seem violent, they
  are as nothing compared with the total carving up of the parent
  power which we discover recorded in the Icelandic Eddas, and
  in the Babylonian Tablets of Creation. The final insult here is given
  in the characterization of the demiurgic presence of the abyss as
  "evil," "dark," "obscene." The bright young warrior- sons, now
  disdaining the generative source, the personage of the seed-state
  of deep sleep, summarily slay it, hack it, slice it into lengths, and
  carpenter it into the structure of the world. This is the pattern
  for victory of all our later slayings of the dragon, the beginning
  of the age-long history of the deeds of the hero.
  According to the Eddie account, after the "yawning gap"47
  had given forth in the north a mist-world of cold and in the
  south a region of fire, and after the heat from the south had
  played on the rivers of ice that crowded down from the north, a
  yeasty venom began to be exuded. From this a drizzle arose,
  which in turn congealed to rime. The rime melted and dripped;
  life was quickened from the drippings in the form of a torpid, gi-
  gantic, hermaphroditic, horizontal figure named Ymir. The giant
  slept, and as it slept it sweated; one of its feet begat with the
  other a son, while under its left hand germinated a man and wife.
  The rime continually melted and dripped, and there con-
  densed from it the cow, Audumla. From her udder flowed four
  streams of milk, which were drunk for nourishment by Ymir.
  But the cow, for her own nourishment, licked the iceblocks,
  which were salty. The evening of the first day she licked, a
  man's hair came forth from the blocks; the second day a man's
  head; the third, the entire man was there, and his name was
  Buri. Now Buri had a son (the mother is not known) named
  Borr, who married one of the giant daughters of the creatures
  46 S. N. Kramer, op. cit., pp. 40-41.
  THE ONE INTO THE MANIFOLD
  that had sprung from Ymir. She gave birth to the trinity of
  Othin, Vili, and Ve, and these then slaughtered sleepful Ymir
  and carved the body into chunks.
  Of Ymir's flesh the earth was fashioned,
  And of his sweat the sea;
  Crags of his bones, trees of his hair,
  And of his skull the sky.
  Then of his bones the blithe gods made
  Midgardfor sons of men;
  And of his brain the bitter-mooded
  Clouds were all created.^
  In the Babylonian version the hero is Marduk, the sun-god; the
  victim is Tiamat—terrifying, dragon-like, attended by swarms of
  demons—a female personification of the original abyss itself: chaos
  as the mother of the gods, but now the menace of the world. With
  bow and trident, club and net, and a convoy of battle-winds, the
  god mounted his chariot. The four horses, trained to trample
  underfoot, were flecked with foam-
  . . . But Tiamat turned not her neek,
  With lips that failed not she uttered rebellious words. . . .
  48 Prose Edda, "Gylfaginning," IV-VIII (from the translation by Arthur
  Gilchrist Brodeur, The American-Scandinavian Foundation, New York, 1916;
  by permission of the publishers). See also, Poetic Edda, "Vokispa.'"
  The Poetic Edda is a collection of thirty-four Old Norse poems treating of
  tlie pagan Germanic gods and heroes. The poems were composed by a number
  of singers and poets (scalds) in various parts of the Viking world (one, at least,
  in Greenland) during the period A.D. 900-1050. The collection was com-
  pleted, apparently, in Iceland.
  The Prose Edda is a handbook for young poets, written in Iceland by the
  Christian master-poet and chieftain, Snorri Sturluson (1178-1241). It summa-
  rizes the pagan Germanic myths and reviews the rules of scaldic rhetoric.
  The mythology documented in these texts reveals an earlier, peasant stratum
  (associated with the thunderer, Thor), a later, aristocratic stratum (that of
  Wotan-Othin), and a third, distinctly phallic complex (Nyorth, Freya, and Frey).
  Bardic influences from Ireland mingle with Classical and Oriental themes in this
  profoundly broodod yd jrrolesquely humorous world of symbolic forms.
  265
  
  EMANATIONS
  Then the lord raised the thunderbolt, his mighty weapon.
  And against Tiamat, who was raging, thus he sent the word:
  "Thou art become great, thou hast exalted thyself on high,
  And thy heart hath prompted thee to call to battle. . . .
  And against the gods my fathers thou hast contrived thy
  wicked plan.
  Let then thy host be equipped, let thy weapons be girded on!
  Stand! I and thou, let us join battle!"
  When Tiamat heard these words,
  She was like one possessed, she lost her reason.
  Tiamat uttered wild, piercing cries,
  She trembled and shook to her very foundations.
  She recited an incantation, she pronounced her spell.
  And the gods of the battle cried out for their weapons.
  'Then advanced Tiamat and Marduk, the counselor
  of the gods;
  To the fight they came on, to the battle they drew nigh.
  The lord spread out his net and caught her.
  And the evil wind that was behind him he let loose
  in her face.
  The terrible winds filled her belly,
  And her courage was taken from her, and her mouth
  she opened wide.
  He seized the trident and burst her belly,
  He severed her inward parts, he pierced her heart.
  He overcame her and cut off her life;
  He cast down her body and stood upon it.
  Having then subdued the remainder of her swarming host, the
  god of Babylon returned to the mother of the world:
  And the lord stood upon Tiamat's hinder parts,
  And with his merciless club he smashed her skull.
  He cut through the channels of her blood,
  And he made the north wind bear it away into secret places. . . .
  Then the lord rested, gazing upon her dead body, . . . and
  devised a cunning plan.
  THE ONE INTO THE MANIFOLD
  He split her up like a fiat fish into two halves;
  One half of her he stablished as a covering for heaven.
  He fixed a bolt, he stationed a watchman,
  And bade them not to let her waters come forth.
  He passed through the heavens, he surveyed the regions thereof,
  And over against tin Deep he set the dwelling of 'Niidimmud.
  And the Lord measured the structure of the Deep. . . .4Q
  Marduk in this heroic manner pushed back with a ceiling the
  waters above, and with a floor the waters beneath. Then in the
  world between he created man.
  The myths never tire of illustrating the point that conflict in
  the created world is not what it seems. Tiamat, though slain
  and dismembered, was not thereby undone. Had the battle been
  viewed from another angle, the chaos-monster would have been
  seen to shatter of her own accord, and her fragments move to
  their respective stations. Marduk and his whole generation of di-
  vinities were but particles of her substance. From the standpoint
  of those created forms all seemed accomplished as by a mighty
  arm, amid danger and pain. But from the center of the emanat-
  ing presence, the flesh was yielded willingly, and the hand that
  carved it was ultimately no more than an agent of the will of the
  victim herself.
  Herein lies the basic paradox of myth: the paradox of the dual
  focus. Just as at the opening of the cosmogonic cycle it was pos-
  sible to say "God is not involved,11 but at the same time "God
  is creator-preserver-destroyer," so now at this critical juncture,
  where the One breaks into the many, destiny "happens,11 but at
  the same time "is brought about." From the perspective of the
  source, the world is a majestic harmony of forms pouring into
  being, exploding, and dissolving. But what the swiftly passing
  creatures experience is a terrible cacaphony of battle cries and
  pain. The myths do not deny this agony (the crucifixion); they
  *a "The Epic of Creation," Tablet IV, lines 35-143, adapted from the trans-
  lation by L. W. King. Babylonian Religion and Mythology (London and New
  York: Regan Paul, Trench, Triibner and Co. Ltd., 1899), pp. 72-78.
  
  EMANATIONS
  reveal within, behind, and around it essential peace (the heav-
  enly rose)."'0
  The shift of perspective from the repose of the central Cause
  to the turbulation of the peripheral effects is represented in the
  Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. They ate of the for-
  bidden fruit, "And the eyes of them both were opened.11"11 The
  bliss of Paradise was closed to them and they beheld the created
  field from the other side of a transforming veil. Henceforth they
  should experience the inevitable as the hard to gain.
  • 6 •
  Folk Stories of Creation
  The simplicity of the origin stories of the undeveloped folk
  mythologies stands in contrast to the profoundly suggestive
  myths of the cosmogonic cycled No long-sustained attempt to
  fathom the mysteries behind the veil of space makes itself appar-
  ent in these. Through the blank wall of timelessness there
  breaks and enters a shadowy creator-figure to shape the world of
  forms. His day is dreamlike in its duration, fluidity, and ambient
  50 See Dante, Tarudiso." XXX-XXXII. This is the rose opened to mankind
  by the cross.
  ;l Genesis, 3:7.
  :'z A broad distinction can be made between the mythologies of the truly
  primitive (fishing, hunting, root-digging, and berry-picking) peoples and those
  of the civilizations that came into being following the development of the arts
  of agriculture, dairying, and herding, ca. 6000 B.C. Most of what we call prim-
  itive, however, is actually colonial, i.e., diffused from some high culture center
  and adapted to the needs of a simpler society. It is in order to avoid the mis-
  leading term, "primitive," that I am calling the undeveloped or degenerate tra-
  ditions "folk mydKilogies." The term is adequate for the purposes of the present
  elementary comparative study of the universal forms, though it would certainly
  not serve for a strict historical analysis.
  FOLK STORIES OF CREATION
  power. The earth has not yet hardened; much remains to be done
  to make it habitable for the future people.
  Old Man was traveling about, declare the Blackfeet of Montana;
  he was making people and arranging things. "He came from the
  south, traveling north, making animals and birds as he passed
  along. He made the mountains, prairies, timber, and brush first.
  So he went along, traveling northward, making things as he
  went, putting rivers here and there, and falls on them, putting
  red paint here and there in the ground—fixing up the world as
  we see it to-day. He made the Milk River (the Teton) and crossed
  it, and, being tired, went up on a hill and lay down to rest. As he
  lay on his back, stretched out on the ground, with arms ex-
  tended, he marked himself out with stones—the shape of his
  body, head, legs, arms, and everything. There you can see those
  rocks to-day. After he had rested, he went on northward, and
  stumbled over a knoll and fell down on his knees. Then
  he said, 'You are a bad thing to be stumbling against'; so he
  raised up two large buttes there, and named them the Knees,
  and they are called so to this day. He went further north, and
  with some of the rocks he carried with him he built the Sweet
  Grass Hills. . . .
  "One day Old Man determined that he would make a woman
  and a child; so he formed them both—the woman and the child,
  her son —of clay. After he had moulded the clay in human shape,
  he said to the clay, 'You must be people,1 and then he covered it
  up and left it, and went away- The next morning he went to the
  place and took the covering off, and saw that the clay shapes had
  changed a little. The second morning there was still more change,
  and the third still more. The fourth morning he went to the
  place, took the covering off, looked at the images, and told them
  to rise and walk; and they did so. They walked to the river with
  their Maker, and then he told them that his name was Na'pi,
  Old Man.
  "As they were standing by the river, the woman said to him,
  'How is it? will we always live, will there be no end to it?1 He
  said: 'I have never thought of that. We will have to decide it.
  
  EMANATIONS
  I will take this buffalo chip and throw it in the river. If it floats,
  when people die, in four days they will become alive again; they
  will die for only four days. But if it sinks, there will be an end to
  them.' He threw the chip in the river, and it floated. The woman
  turned and picked up a stone, and said: 'No, I will throw this
  stone in the river; if it floats, we will always live, if it sinks peo-
  ple must die, that they may always be sorry for each other.' The
  woman threw the stone into the water, and it sank. 'There,' said
  Old Man, 'you have chosen. There will be an end to them.'"53
  The arranging of the world, the creation of man, and the deci-
  sion about death are typical themes from the tales of the primitive
  creator. It is difficult to know how seriously or in what sense these
  FIGURE 15. Khnemu Shapes Pharaoh's Son on the Potter's Whei
  While Thoth Marks His Span of Life
  53 George Bird Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales (New York: Charles Sci
  Sons, 1892, 1916), pp. 137-138.
  FOLK STORIES OF CREATION
  stories were believed. The mythological mode is one not so much
  of direct as of oblique reference: it is as if Old Man had done so-
  and-so. Many of the tales that appear in the collections under the
  category of origin stories were certainly regarded more as popular
  fairy tales than as a book of genesis. Such playful mythologizing is
  common in all civilizations, higher as well as lower. The simpler
  members of the populations may regard the resultant images with
  undue seriousness, but in the main they cannot be said to repre-
  sent doctrine, or the local "myth." The Maoris, for example, from
  whom we have some of our finest cosmogonies, have the story of
  an egg dropped by a bird into the primeval sea; it burst, and out
  came a man, a woman, a boy, a girl, a pig, a dog, and a canoe. All
  got into the canoe and drifted to New Zealand.54 This clearly is a
  burlesque of the cosmic egg. On the other hand, the Kamchatkans
  declare, apparently in all seriousness, that God inhabited heaven
  originally, but then descended to earth. When he traveled about
  on his snowshoes, the new ground yielded under him like thin
  and pliant ice. The land has been uneven ever since.™ Or again,
  according to the Central Asiatic Kirghiz, when two early people
  tending a great ox had been without drink for a very long time
  and were nearly dead of thirst, the animal got water for them by
  ripping open the ground with its big horns. That is how the lakes
  in the country of the Kirghiz were made.56
  A clown figure working in continuous opposition to the well-
  wishing creator very often appears in myth and folk tale, as ac-
  counting for the ills and difficulties of existence this side of the
  veil. The Melanesians of New Britain tell of an obscure being,
  "the one who was first there," who drew two male figures on the
  ground, scratched open his own skin, and sprinkled the draw-
  ings with his blood. He plucked two large leaves and covered
  "4 J. S. Polack, Manners and Customs of the New Ze.alanders (London,
  1840), Vol. I, p. 17. To regard such a tale as a cosmogonic myth would be as
  inept as to illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity with a paragraph from the
  nursery ston "M;i!"i'-]ikiiK! i (n'livim* Xo. 3).
  " Harva, op. cit., p. 109, citing S. Kraseninnikov, Opisanie Zemli Kamcatki
  (St. Petersburg, 1819), Vol. II, p. 101.
  as Harva, op. cit., p. 109, citing Potanin, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 153.
  271
  
  EMANATIONS
  the figures, which became, after a while, two men. The names of
  the men were To Kabinana and To Karvuvu.
  To Kabinana went oft' alone, climbed a coconut tree that had
  light yellow nuts, picked two that were still unripe, and threw
  them to the ground; they broke and became two handsome
  women. To Karvuvu admired the women and asked how his
  brother had come by them. "Climb a coconut tree," To Kabinana
  said, "pick two unripe nuts, and throw them to the ground." But
  To Karvuvu threw the nuts point downward, and the women
  who came from them had flat ugly noses.57
  One day To Kabinana carved a Thum-fish out of wood and let
  it swim off into the ocean, so that it should be a living fish for-
  ever after. Now this Thum-fish drove the Malivaran-fish to the
  shore, where To Kabinana simply gathered them up from the
  beach. To Karvuvu admired the Thum-fish and wanted to make
  one, but when he was taught how, he carved a shark instead.
  This shark ate the Malivaran-fish instead of driving them ashore.
  To Karvuvu, crying, went to his brother and said: "I wish I had
  not made that fish; he does nothing but eat up all the others."
  "What sort of fish is it?" he was asked. "Well," he answered,
  "I made a shark." "You really are a disgusting fellow," his
  brother said. "Now you have fixed it so that our mortal descen-
  dants shall suffer. That fish of yours will eat up all the others,
  and people too."58
  Behind this foolishness, it is possible to see that the one cause
  (the obscure being who cut himself) yields within the frame of
  the world dual effects —good and evil. The story is not as naive
  as it appears.59 Furthermore, the metaphysical pre-existence of
  the Platonic archetype of the shark is implied in the curious logic
  "'" P. J. Meier, Mift.hen und Erzahhmgen der kihtenbrn'ohner der Gazelle-
  Halbinsel (Neu-Pommern) (Anthropos Bibliothek, Band I, Heft 1, Miinster i.
  W., 1909), pp. 15-16.
  '* Ibid., pp. 59-61.
  35 "The universe does not on the whole act as though it were under efficient
  personal supervision and control. When I hear some hymns, sermons, and
  prayers taking for granted or asserting with naive simplicity that this vast, ruthless
  cosmos, with all the monstrous accidents which it involves, is a neatly planned and
  FOLK STORIES OF CREATION
  of the final dialogue. This is a conception inherent in every
  myth. Universal too is the casting of the antagonist, the repre-
  sentative of evil, in the role of the clown. Devils—both the lusty
  thickheads and the sharp, clever deceivers —are always clowns.
  Though they may triumph in the world of space and time, both
  they and their work simply disappear when the perspective shifts
  to the transcendental. They are the mistakers of shadow for sub-
  stance: they symbolize the inevitable imperfections of the realm
  of shadow, and so long as we remain this side the veil cannot be
  done away.
  The Black Tatars of Siberia say that when the demiurge
  Pajana fashioned the first human beings, he found that he was
  unable to produce a life-giving spirit for them. So he had to go
  up to heaven and procure souls from Kudai, the High God, leav-
  ing meanwhile a naked dog to guard the figures of his manufac-
  ture. The devil, Krlik, arrived while he was away. And Erlik said
  to the dog: "Thou hast no hair. I will give thee golden hair if
  thou wilt give into my hands these soulless people." The pro-
  posal pleased the dog, and he gave the people he was guarding to
  the tempter. Erlik defiled them with his spittle, but took flight
  the moment he saw God approaching to give them life. God saw
  what had been done, and so he turned the human bodies inside
  out. That is why we have spittle and impurity in our intestines.60
  pervmalK conducted tour, I recall the more reasonable hypothesis of an East
  African tribe. "They say,' reports an observer, 'that although God is good and
  wishes good for everybody, unfortunately he has a half-witted brother who is al-
  ways interfering with what he does.' That, at least, bears some resemblance to the
  facts. God's half-witted brother might explain some of life's sickening and insane
  tragedies which the idea of an omnipotent individual of boundless good will to-
  ward every soul most certainly does not explain.11 (Harry- Emerson Fosdkk, As
  I See Religion, New York: Harper and Brothers, publisher, 1932, pp. 53-54.)
  ":l Harva, op. cit., pp. 114-115, quoting W. RadlofT, Proben der Volkditeratur
  der turkischen Stiimms- Sud-Siberiens (St. Petersburg, 1866-70), Vol. I, p. 285.-
  Breaking free from cosmogonie associations, the negative, clown-devil aspect of
  the demiurgic [lower has become a great favorite in the tales told for amusement.
  A vivid example is Coyote of the American plains. Reynard the Fox is a European
  incarnation of this fii^ure.
  
  EMANATIONS
  The folk mythologies take up the story of creation only at the
  moment where the transcendental emanations break into spatial
  forms. Nevertheless, they do not differ from the great mythologies
  on any essential point in their evaluations of human circumstance.
  Their symbolic personages correspond in import—frequently also
  in trait and deed—to those of the higher iconographies, and the
  wonder world in which they move is precisely that of the greater
  revelations: the world and the age between deep sleep and wak-
  ing consciousness, the zone where the One breaks into the mani-
  fold and the many are reconciled in the One.
  C
  H
  A
  P
  T
  E
  R 
  I I
  The Virgin Birth
  Mother Universe
  THE world-generating spirit of the father passes into the mani-
  fold of earthly experience through a transforming medium—the
  mother of the world. She is a personification of the primal ele-
  ment named in the second verse of Genesis, where we read that
  "the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.'''' In the
  Hindu myth, she is the female figure through whom the Self
  begot all creatures. More abstractly understood, she is the world-
  bounding frame: "space, time, and causality"—the shell of the
  cosmic egg. More abstractly still, she is the lure that moved the
  Self-brooding Absolute to the act of creation.
  In mythologies emphasizing the maternal rather than the pa-
  ternal aspect of the creator, this original female fills the world
  stage in the beginning, playing the roles that are elsewhere as-
  signed to males. And she is virgin, because her spouse is the In-
  visible Unknown.
  A strange representation of this figure is to be found in the
  mythology of the Finns. In Runo I of the Kalevala1 it is told how
  1 The Kak-vala ("The Land of Heroes") in its present form is the work of
  Elias Lonnrot (1802-1884), a country physician and student of Finnish philol-
  ogy. Having collected a considerable body of folk poetry around the legcndary
  heroes, Vainamoinen, Ilmarinen, Lemminkainen, and Kullervo, he composed
  
  THE VIRGIN 
  BIRTH
  FIGURE 16. Nut (the Sky) Gives Birth to the Sun;
  Its Rays Fall on Hathor in the Horizon (Love and Life)
  the virgin daughter of the air descended from the sky mansions
  into the primeval sea, and there for centuries floated on the ever-
  lasting waters.
  these in co-ordinated sequence and cast them in a uniform verse (1835,1849). The
  work comes to some 23,000 lines.
  A German translation of Lonnrot's Kalevala came under the eyes of Henry
  Wadsworth Longfellow, who thereupon both conceived the plan and chose the
  meter of his Song of Hiawatha.
  The following version is from the translation by W. F. Kirby (Everyman's
  Library, Kos. 259-260).
  276
  MOTHER UNIVERSE
  Then a storm arose injury,
  From the East a mighty tempest,
  And the sea was wildly foaming,
  And the waves dashed ever higher.
  Thus the tempest rocked the virgin,
  And the billows drove the maiden,
  O'er the ocean's azure surface,
  On the crest of foaming billows,
  Till the wind that blew around her,
  And the sea woke life within her.2
  For seven centuries the Water-Mother floated with the child
  in her womb, unable to give it birth. She prayed to Ukko, the
  highest god, and he sent a teal to build its nest on her knee. The
  teal's eggs fell from the knee and broke; the fragments formed
  the earth, sky, sun, moon, and clouds. Then the Water-Mother,
  floating still, herself began the work of the World-Shaper.
  When the ninth year had passed over,
  And the summer tenth was passing,3
  From the sea her head she lifted,
  And her forehead she uplifted,
  And she then began Creation,
  And she brought the world to order,
  On the open ocean's surface.
  On the far extending waters.
  Wheresoe'er her hand she pointed,
  There she formed the jutting headlands;
  Wheresoe'er her feet she rested,
  There she formed the caves for fishes;
  When she dived beneath the water,
  There she formed the depths of ocean;
  When towards the land she turned her,
  There the level shores extended;
  2 I, 127-136.
  5 I.e., the tenth summer after the breaking of the eggs of the teal.
  277
  
  T H E V I R G I N 
  B I R T H
  Where her feet to land extended,
  Spots were formed for salmon netting;
  Where her head the land touched lightly,
  There the curving bays extended.
  Further from the land she floated,
  And abode in open water,
  And created rocks in ocean,
  And the reefs that eyes behold not,
  Where the ships are often shattered,
  And the sailors' lives are ended.4
  But the babe remained in her body, growing towards i
  mental middle age:
  Still unborn was Vdinamoinen;
  Still unborn the bard immortal.
  Vdinamoinen, old and steadfast,
  Rested in his mother's body
  For the space of thirty summers,
  And the sum of thirty winters,
  Ever on the placid waters,
  And upon the foaming billows.
  So he pondered and reflected
  How he could continue living
  In a resting place so gloomy,
  In a dwelling far too narrow,
  Where he could not see the moonlight,
  Neither could behold the sunlight.
  Then he spake the words which follow,
  And expressed his thoughts in this wise:
  "Aid me Moon, and Sun release me,
  And the Great Bear lend his counsel,
  Through the portal that I know not,
  Through the unaccustomed passage.
  From the little nest that holds me,
  MOTHER UNIVERSE
  From a dwelling-place so narrow,
  To the land conduct the roamer,
  To the open air conduct me,
  To behold the moon in heaven,
  And the splendor of the sunlight;
  See the Great Bear's stars above me,
  And the shining stars in heaven."
  When the moon no freedom gave him,
  Neither did the sun release him,
  Then he wearied of existence,
  And his life became a burden.
  Thereupon he moved the portal,
  With his finger, fourth in number,
  Opened quick the bony gateway,
  With the toes upon his left foot,
  With his knees beyond the gateway.
  Headlong in the water falling,
  With his hands the waves repelling,
  Thus the man remained in ocean,
  And the hero on the billows.5
  Before Va'inamoinen—hero already in his birth—could make
  his way ashore, the ordeal of a second mother-womb remained
  to him, that of the elemental cosmic ocean. Unprotected now, he
  had to undergo the initiation of nature's fundamentally inhuman
  forces. On the level of water and wind he had to experience
  again what he already so well knew.
  In the sea five years he sojourned,
  Waited five years, waited six years,
  Seven years also, even eight years,
  On the surface of the ocean.
  By a nameless promontory,
  Near a barren, treeless country.
  
  T H E V I R G I N 
  B I R T H
  On the land his knees he planted,
  And upon his arms he rested,
  Rose that he might view the moonbeams,
  And enjoy the pleasant sunlight,
  See the Great Bear's stars above him,
  And the shining stars in heaven.
  Thus was ancient Vain am din en,
  He, the ever famous minstrel,
  Born of the divine Creatrix,
  Born ofllmatar, his mother.6
  Matrix of Destiny
  The universal goddess makes her appearance to men under a
  multitude of guises; for the effects of creation are multitudinous,
  complex, and of mutually contradictory kind when experienced
  from the viewpoint of the created world. The mother of life is at
  the same time the mother of death; she is masked in the ugly de-
  monesses of famine and disease.
  The Sumero-Babylonian astral mythology identified the as-
  pects of the cosmic female with the phases of the planet Venus.
  As morning star she was the virgin, as evening star the harlot, as
  lady of the night sky the consort of the moon; and when extin-
  guished under the blaze of the sun she was the hag of hell.
  Wherever the Mesopotamian influence extended, the traits of
  the goddess were touched by the light of this fluctuating star.
  A myth from southeast Africa, collected from the Wahungwe
  Makoni tribe of South Rhodesia, displays the aspects of the Venus-
  mother in co-ordination with the first stages of the cosmogonic
  f> I, 329-344.
  MATRIX OF DESTINY
  cycle. Here the original man is the moon; the morning star his first
  wife, the evening star his second. Just as Vainamoinen emerged
  from the womb by his own act, so this moon man emerges from the
  abyssal waters. He and his wives are to be the parents of the crea-
  tures of the earth. The story comes to us as follows:
  "Maori (God) made the first man and called him Mwuetsi
  (moon). He put him on the bottom of a Dsivoa (lake) and gave
  him a ngona horn filled with ngona oil.' Mwuetsi lived in Dsivoa.
  "Mwuetsi said to Maori: 'I want to go on the earth.' Maori
  said: 'You will rue it.1 Mwuetsi said: 'None the less, I want to go
  on the earth.' Maori said: 'Then go on the earth.' Mwuetsi went
  out of Dsivoa and on to the earth.
  "The earth was cold and empty. There were no grasses, no
  bushes, no trees. There were no animals. Mwuetsi wept and said
  to Maori: 'How shall I live here.' Maori said: 'I warned you.
  You have started on the path at the end of which you shall die. 1
  will, however, give you one of your kind.' Maori gave Mwuetsi a
  maiden who was called Massassi, the morning star. Maori said:
  'Massassi shall be your wife for two years.' Maori gave Massassi
  a fire maker.
  "In the evening Mwuetsi went into a cave with Massassi.
  Massassi said: 'Help me. We will make a fire. I will gather chi-
  mandra (kindling) and you can twirl the rusika (revolving part
  of the fire maker).' Massassi gathered kindling. Mwuetsi twirled
  the rusika. When the fire was lighted Mwuetsi lay down on one
  side of it, Massassi on the other. The fire burned between them.
  "Mwuetsi thought to himself, 'Why has Maori given me this
  maiden"? What shall I do with this maiden, Massassi"?1 When it
  was night Mwuetsi took his ngona horn. He moistened his index
  finger with a drop of ngona oil. Mwuetsi said, lNdini chaambuka
  mhiri ne mhirir (I am going to jump over the fire).'M Mwuetsi
  jumped over the fire. Mwuetsi approached the maiden, Massassi.
  ; This horn and oil play a conspicuous role in the folk lore of South Rhodesia.
  The ngona horn is a wonder-working instrument, with the power to create fire
  and lightning, to impregnate the li\ ing, and to resurrect the dead.
  [Note by the translators.1
  281
  
  TH F. VI RC.IN U1HTI1
  Mwuetsi touched Massassi's body with the ointment on his
  finger. Then Mwuetsi went back to his bed and slept.
  "When Mwuetsi wakened in the morning he looked over to
  Massassi. Mwuetsi saw that Massassi's body was swollen. When
  day broke Massassi began to bear. Massassi bore grasses. Mas-
  sassi bore bushes. Massassi bore trees. Massassi did not stop
  bearing till the earth was covered with grasses, bushes and trees.
  "The trees grew. They grew till their tops reached the sky.
  When the tops of the trees reached the sky it began to rain.
  "Mwuetsi and Massassi lived in plenty. They had fruits and
  grain. Mwuetsi built a house. Mwuetsi made an iron shovel.
  Mwuetsi made a hoe and planted crops. Massassi plaited fish
  traps and caught fish. Massassi fetched wood and water. Massassi
  cooked. Thus Mwuetsi and Massassi lived for two years.
  "After two years Maori said to Massassi, 'The time is up.'
  Maori took Massassi from the earth and put her back in Dsivoa.
  Mwuetsi wailed. He wailed and wept and said to Maori: 'What
  shall 1 do without Massassi? Who will fetch wood and water for
  me? Who will cook for me'?' Eight days long Mwuetsi wept.
  "Eight days long Mwuetsi wept. Then Maori said: 'I have
  warned you that you are going to your death. But I will give you
  another woman. I will give you Morongo, the evening star. Mo-
  rongo will stay with you for two years. Then I shall take her back
  again.' Maori gave Mwuetsi Morongo.
  "Morongo came to Mwuetsi in the hut. In the evening
  Mwuetsi wanted to lie down on his side of the fire. Morongo said:
  'Do not lie down over there. Lie with me.1 Mwuetsi lay down be-
  side Morongo. Mwuetsi took the ngona horn, put some oint-
  ment on his index finger. But Morongo said: 'Don't be like that.
  I am not like Massassi. Now smear your loins with ngona oil.
  Smear my loins with ngona oil.' Mwuetsi did as he was told.
  Morongo said: 'Now couple with me.' Mwuetsi coupled with
  Morongo. Mwuetsi went to sleep.
  "Towards morning Mwuetsi woke. As he looked over to Mo-
  rongo he saw that her body was swollen. As day broke Morongo
  began to give birth. The first day Morongo gave birth to chick-
  ens, sheep, goats.
  MATRIX OF DESTINY
  "The second night Mwuetsi slept with Morongo again. The
  next morning she bore eland and cattle.
  "The third night Mwuetsi slept with Morongo again. The
  next morning Morongo bore first boys and then girls. The boys
  who were born in the morning were grown up by nightfall.
  "On the fourth night Mwuetsi wanted to sleep with Morongo
  again. But there came a thunderstorm and Maori spoke: 'Let be.
  You are going quickly to your death.' Mwuetsi was afraid. The
  thunderstorm passed over. When it had gone Morongo said to
  Mwuetsi: 'Make a door and then use it to close the entrance to
  the hut. Then Maori will not be able to see what we are doing.
  Then you can sleep with me.1 Mwuetsi made a door. With it he
  closed the entrance to the hut. Then he slept with Morongo.
  Mwuetsi slept.
  "Towards morning Mwuetsi woke. Mwuetsi saw that Morongo's
  body was swollen. As day broke Morongo began to give birth.
  Morongo bore lions, leopards, snakes, and scorpions. Maori saw
  it. Maori said to Mwuetsi: 'I warned you.'
  "On the fifth night Mwuetsi wanted to sleep with Morongo
  again. But Morongo said: 'Look, your daughters are grown.
  Couple with your daughters.' Mwuetsi looked at his daughters.
  He saw that they were beautiful and that they were grown up.
  So he slept with them. They bore children. The children which
  were born in the morning were full grown by night. And so
  Mwuetsi became the Mambo (king) of a great people.
  "But Morongo slept with the snake. Morongo no longer gave
  birth. She lived with the snake. One day Mwuetsi returned to
  Morongo and wanted to sleep with her. Morongo said: 'Let be.1
  Mwuetsi said: 'But I want to.' He lay with Morongo. Under
  Morongo's bed lay the snake. The snake bit Mwuetsi. Mwuetsi
  sickened.
  "After the snake had bitten Mwuetsi, Mwuetsi sickened. The
  next day it did not rain. The plants withered. The rivers and
  lakes dried. The animals died. The people began to die. Many-
  people died. Mwuetsi's children asked: 'What can we do'?'
  Mwuetsi's children said: 'We will consult the hakata (sacred dice).'
  The children consulted the hakata. The hakata said: 'Mwuetsi
  
  THE VIRGIN BIRTH
  the Mambo is sick and pining. Send Mwuetsi back to the
  Dsivoa.'
  "Thereupon Mwuetsi's children strangled Mwuetsi and buried
  him. They buried Morongo with Mwuetsi. Then they chose an-
  other man to be Mambo. Morongo, too, had lived for two years
  in Mwuetsi's Zimbabwe."9
  It is clear that each of the three stages of procreation repre-
  sents an epoch in the development of the world. The pattern for
  the procession was foreknown, almost as something already ob-
  served; this is indicated by the warning of the All-Highest. But
  the Moon Man, the Mighty Living One, would not be denied the
  realization of his destiny. The conversation at the bottom of
  the lake is the dialogue of eternity and time, the "Colloquy of the
  Quick1': "To be, or not to be." Unquenchable desire is finally
  given its rope: movement begins.
  The wives and daughters of the Moon Man are the
  personifications and precipitators of his destiny. With the evolu-
  tion of his world-creative will the virtues and features of the
  goddess-mother were metamorphosed. After the birth from the
  elemental womb, the first two wives were prehuman, suprahu-
  man. But as the cosmogonic round proceeded and the growing
  moment passed from its primordial to its human-historical
  forms, the mistresses of the cosmic births withdrew, and the
  field remained to the women of men. Thereupon the old demiur-
  gic sire in the midst of his community became a metaphysical
  anachronism. When at last he grew tired of the merely human
  and yearned back again to the wife of his abundance, the world
  sickened a moment under the pull of his reaction, but then re-
  leased itself and ran free. The initiative passed to the community
  of the children. The symbolic, dream-heavy parental figures
  WOMB OK RHDKMFT1ON
  v Leo Frobenius and Douglas C. Fox, African Genesis (New York, 1937),
  pp. 215-220. Compare Plate XVI11.
  Zimbabwe means roughly "the royal court." The enormous prehistoric ruins
  near Fort Victoria are called "The Great Zimbabwe"; other stone ruins through-
  out Southern Rhodesia are called "Little Zimbabwe." [Note bv Frobenius and
  Fox.]
  subsided into the original abyss. Only man remained on the fur-
  nished earth. The cycle had moved on.
  o
  Womb of Redemption
  The world of human life is now the problem. Guided by the
  practical judgment of the kings and the instruction of the priests
  of the dice of divine revelation,111 the field of consciousness so
  contracts that the grand lines of the human comedy are lost in a
  welter of cross-purposes. Men's perspectives become flat, compre-
  hending only the light-reflecting, tangible surfaces of existence.
  The vista into depth closes over. The significant form of the
  human agony is lost to view. Society lapses into mistake and dis-
  aster. The Little Ego has usurped the judgment seat of the Self.
  This is in myth a perpetual theme, in the voices of the prophets
  a familiar cry. The people yearn for some personality who, in a
  world of twisted bodies and souls, will represent again the lines
  of the incarnate image. We are familiar with the myth from our
  own tradition. It occurs everywhere, under a variety of guises.
  When the Herod figure {the extreme symbol of the misgovern-
  ing, tenacious ego) has brought mankind to the nadir of spiri-
  tual abasement, the occult forces of the cycle begin of themselves
  to move. In an inconspicuous village the maid is born who will
  maintain herself undefiled of the fashionable errors of her gener-
  ation: a miniature in the midst of men of the cosmic woman who
  was the bride of the wind. Her womb, remaining fallow as the
  primordial abyss, summons to itself by its very readiness the
  original power that fertili/.ed the void.
  111 The "hakata" of Mwuetsi's children; supra, p. 281.
  
  THE VIRGIN BIRTH
  "Now on a certain day, while Mary stood near the fountain
  to fill her pitcher, the angel of the Lord appeared unto her,
  saying, Blessed art thou, Mary, for in thy womb thou hast pre-
  pared a habitation for the Lord. Behold, light from heaven
  shall come and dwell in thee, and through thee shall shine in all
  the world."11
  The story is recounted everywhere; and with such striking
  uniformity of the main contours, that the early Christian mis-
  sionaries were forced to think that the devil himself must be
  throwing up mockeries of their teaching wherever they set their
  hand. Fray Pedro Simon reports, in his Noticias historiales de las
  conquistes de Tierra Firme en las Indias Occidentales (Cuenca,
  1627), that after work had been begun amongst the peoples of
  Tunja and Sogamozzo in Colombia, South America, "the demon
  of that place began giving contrary doctrines. And among other
  things, he sought to discredit what the priest had been teaching
  concerning the Incarnation, declaring that it had not yet come to
  pass; but that presently the Sun would bring it to pass by taking
  flesh in the womb of a virgin of the village of Guacheta, causing
  her to conceive by the rays of the sun while she yet remained a
  virgin. These tidings were proclaimed throughout the region.
  And it so happened that the head man of the village named had
  two virgin daughters, each desirous that the miracle should be-
  come accomplished in her. These then began going out from
  their father's dwellings and garden-en closure every morning at
  the first peep of dawn; and mounting one of the numerous hills
  about the village, in the direction of the sunrise, they disposed
  themselves in such a way that the first rays of the sun would be
  free to shine upon them. This going on for a number of days, it
  was granted the demon by divine permission (whose judgments
  are incomprehensible) that things should come to pass as he had
  planned, and in such fashion that one of the daughters became
  pregnant, as she declared, by the sun. Nine months and she
  brought into the world a large and valuable hacuata, which in
  their language is an emerald. The woman took this, and, wrapping
  " The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Chapter ix.
  286
  WOMB OF REDEMPTION
  it in cotton, placed it between her breasts, where she kept it a
  number of days, at the end of which time it was transformed into
  a living creature: all by order of the demon. The child was
  named Goranchacho, and he was reared in the household of the
  head man, his grandfather, until he was some twenty-four years
  of age." Then he proceeded in triumphant procession to the cap-
  ital of the nation, and was celebrated throughout the provinces
  as the "Child of the Sun/'12
  Hindu mythology tells of the maiden Parvati, daughter of the
  mountain king, Himalaya, who retreated into the high hills to
  practice very severe austerities. A tyrant-titan named Taraka
  had usurped the mastery of the world, and, according to the
  prophecy, only a son of the High God Shiva could overthrow
  him. Shiva, however, was the pattern god of yoga—aloof, alone,
  indrawn in meditation. It was impossible that Shiva should ever
  be moved to beget a son.
  Parvati determined to change the world situation by matching
  Shiva in meditation. Aloof, alone, indrawn into her soul, she too
  fasted naked beneath the blazing sun, even adding to the heat by
  building four additional great fires, to each of the four quarters.
  Hie handsome body shriveled to a brittle construction of bones,
  the skin became leathery and hard. Her hair stood matted and
  wild. The soft liquid eyes burned.
  One day a Brahmin youth arrived and asked why anyone so
  beautiful should be destroying herself with such torture.
  "My desire," she replied, "is Shiva, the Highest Object. Shiva
  is a god of solitude and unshakable concentration. I therefore am
  practicing these austerities to move him from his state of balance
  and bring him to me in love.1"
  "Shiva," the youth said, "is a god of destruction. Shiva is the
  World Annihilator. Shiva's delight is to meditate in burial grounds
  amidst the reek of corpses; there he beholds the rot of death, and
  that is congenial to his devastating heart. Shiva's garlands are of
  living serpents. Shiva is a pauper, furthermore, and no one
  knows anything of his birth."
  12 Kingsborough, op. cit.. Vol. VIII, pp. 26:3-264.
  287
  
  THE VIRGIN BIRTH
  The virgin said: "He is beyond the mind of such as you. A
  pauper, but the fountainhcad of wealth; terrifying, but the
  source of grace; snake-garlands or jewel-garlands he can assume
  or put off at will. How should he have been born, when he is the
  creator of the uncreated! Shiva is my love."
  The youth thereupon put away his disguise —and was Shiva.15
  Folk Stories of Virgin Motherhood
  The Buddha descended from heaven to his mother's womb in
  the shape of a milk-white elephant. The Aztec Coatlicue, "She of
  the Serpent-woven Skirt," was approached by a god in the form
  of a ball of feathers. The chapters of Ovid's Metamorphoses
  swarm with nymphs beset by gods in sundry masquerades: Jove
  as a bull, a swan, a shower of gold. Any leaf accidentally swal-
  lowed, any nut, or even the breath of a breeze, may be enough to
  fertilize the ready womb- The procreating power is even-where.
  And according to the whim or destiny of the hour, either a hero-
  savior or a world-annihilating demon may be conceived—one
  can never know.
  Images of virgin birth abound in the popular tales as well as
  in myth. One example will suffice: a queer folk tale from Tonga,
  belonging to a little cycle of stories told of the "handsome man,'1
  Sinilau. This tale is of particular interest, not because of its ex-
  treme absurdity, but because it clearly announces, in unconscious
  burlesque, every one of the major motifs of the typical life of the
  hero: virgin birth, quest for the father, ordeal, atonement with
  u Kalidasa, Kumarasambhavam ("The Birth of the War God Kumara").
  ~l lien' is :ui fjit^lisli trru"ksfinu)n by Rr (jriffith (2iir! ^dition, Lcntd^.m: I ["iil^ner
  and Company, 1897).
  FOLK. STORIRS OF V IRC, IN MOTHERHOOD
  the father, the assumption and coronation of the virgin mother,
  and finally, the heavenly triumph of the true sons while the pre-
  tenders are heated hot.
  "There was once a certain man and his wife, and the woman
  was pregnant. When her time came to be delivered of her child
  she called her husband to come and lift her, that she might give
  birth. But she bore a clam, and her husband threw her down in
  anger. She, however, bade him take the clam, and leave it in
  Sinilau's bathing-pool. Now Sinilau came to bathe, and flung
  the coconut-husk that he had used to wash himself with on the
  water. The clam slid along and sucked the coconut-husk, and
  became pregnant.
  "One day the woman, the mother of the clam, saw the clam
  rolling along toward her. She angrily asked the clam why she
  had come, but the shellfish replied that it was no time for anger,
  and asked her to curtain off a place in which she could give birth.
  So a screen was placed, and the clam gave birth to a fine big baby
  boy. Then she rolled off back to her pool, and the woman cared
  for the child, who was named Fatai-going-underneath-sandal-
  wood. Time went on, and lo, the clam was again with child, and
  once more came rolling along to the house that she might give
  birth there to her child. The performance was repeated and
  again the clam bore a fine boy, who was named Myrtle-twined-
  at-random-in-the-/ato. He, too, was left with the woman and
  her husband to be cared for.
  "When the two children had grown up to manhood the
  woman heard that Sinilau was going to hold a festival, and she
  determined that her two grandsons should be present. So she
  called the youths, and bade them prepare, adding that the man
  to whose festival they were going was their father. When they
  came to where the festival was being held they were gazed at by
  all the people. There was not a woman but had her eyes fixed on
  them. As they went along a group of women called to them to
  turn aside to them, but the two youths refused, and went on,
  until they came to where the kava was being drunk. There they
  served the kava.
  
  THE VIRGIN BIRTH
  "But Sinilau, angry at their disturbing his festival, ordered
  two bowls to be brought. Then he bade his men seize one of the
  youths and cut him up. So the bamboo knife was sharpened to
  cut him, but when its point was placed on his body it just
  slipped over his skin, and he cried out:
  The knife is placed and slips,
  Do thou but sit and gaze at us
  Whether we are like thee or not.
  "Then Sinilau asked what the youth had said, and they re-
  peated the lines to him. So he ordered the two young men to be
  brought, and asked them who their father was. They replied
  that he himself was their father. After Sinilau had kissed his
  newfound sons he told them to go and bring their mother. So
  they went to the pool and got the clam, and took her to their
  grandmother, who broke it open, and there stood a lovely woman,
  named Hina-at-home-in-the-river.
  "Then they set out on their return to Sinilau. Each of the
  youths wore a fringed mat, of the sort called taufohua; but their
  mother had on one of the very fine mats called tuoua. The two
  sons went ahead, and Hina followed. When they came to Sinilati
  they found him sitting with his wives. The youths sat one at
  each thigh of Sinilau, and Hina sat at his side. Then Sinilau
  bade the people go and prepare an oven, and heat it hot; and
  they took the wives and their children, and killed and baked
  them; but Sinilau was wedded to Hina-at-home-in-the-river."1*
  14 E. E. V. Collocott, Tales and Poems of Tonga (Bernice P. Bishop
  Museum Bulletin, No. 46, Honolulu; 1928), pp. 32-33.
  Transformations of the Hero
  The Primordial Hero and the Human
  WE HAVE come two stages: first, from the immediate emana-
  tions of the Uncreated Creating to the fluid yet timeless person-
  ages of the mythological age; second, from these Created Creat-
  ing Ones to the sphere of human history. The emanations have
  condensed, the field of consciousness constricted. Where formerly
  causal bodies were visible, now only their secondary effects come
  to focus in the little hard-fact pupil of the human eye. The cos-
  mogonic cycle is now to be carried forward, therefore, not by the
  gods, who have become invisible, but by the heroes, more or less
  human in character, through whom the world destiny is real-
  ized. This is the line where creation myths begin to give place to
  legend—as in the Book of Genesis, following the expulsion from
  the garden. Metaphysics yields to prehistory, which is dim and
  vague at first, but becomes gradually precise in detail. The he-
  roes become less and less fabulous, until at last, in the final stages
  of the various local traditions, legend opens into the common day-
  light of recorded time.
  Mwuetsi, the Moon Man, was cut loose, like a fouled anchor;
  the community of the children floated free into the day-world of
  waking consciousness. But we are told that there existed among
  them direct sons of the now submarine father, who, like the chil-
  dren of his first begetting, had grown from infancy to manhood in
  a single day. These special carriers of cosmic power constituted
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  a spiritual and social aristocracy. Filled with a double charge of
  the creative energy, they were themselves sources of revelation.
  Such figures appear on the dawn stage of every legendary past.
  They are the culture heroes, the city founders.
  The Chinese chronicles record that when the earth had so-
  lidified and the peoples were settling in the riverlands, Fu Hsi,
  the "Heavenly Emperor" (2953-2838 B.C.), governed among
  them. He taught his tribes how to fish with nets, to hunt and to
  rear domestic animals, divided the people into clans, and insti-
  tuted matrimony. From a supernatural tablet entrusted to him
  by a horse-shaped scaly monster out of the waters of the river
  Meng, he deduced the Eight Diagrams, which remain to this
  day the fundamental symbols of traditional Chinese thought. He
  had been born of a miraculous conception, after a gestation of
  twelve years; his body being that of a serpent, with human arms
  and the head of an ox.1
  Shen Nung, his successor, the "Earthly Emperor" (2838-
  2698 B.C.), was eight feet seven inches tall, with a human body
  but the head of a bull. He had been miraculously conceived
  through the influence of a dragon. The embarrassed mother had
  exposed her infant on a mountainside, but the wild beasts pro-
  tected and nourished it, and when she learned of this she fetched
  him home. Shen Nung discovered in one day seventy poisonous
  plants and their antidotes: through a glass covering to his stom-
  ach he could observe the digestion of each herb. Then he com-
  posed a pharmacopoeia that is still in use. He was the inventor
  of the plough and a system of barter; he is worshiped by the
  Chinese peasant as the "prince of cereals." At the age of one
  hundred and sixty-eight he was joined to the immortals.2
  Such serpent kings and minotaurs tell of a past when the em-
  peror was the carrier of a special world-creating, world-sustaining
  power, very much greater than that represented in the normal
  1 Giles, op. cit., pp. 233-234; Rev. J. MacGowan, The Imperial History of
  China (Shanghai, 1906), pp. 4-5; Friedrich Hirth, The Ancient History of
  China (Columbia University Press, 1908), pp. 8-9.
  - Giles, Op. cit,, p. 656; MacGowtm, op. cit., pp. 5-6; Hirth. op. cit.,
  pp. 10-12.
  292
  THE PRIMORDIAL HERO AND THE HUMAN
  human physique. In those times was accomplished the heavy
  titan-work, the massive establishment of the foundations of our
  human civilization. But with the progress of the cycle, a period
  came when the work to be done was no longer proto- or super-
  human; it was the labor specifically of man—control of the pas-
  sions, exploration of the arts, elaboration of the economic and
  cultural institutions of the state. Now is required no incarnation
  of the Moon Bull, no Serpent Wisdom of the Eight Diagrams of
  Destiny, but a perfect human spirit alert to the needs and hopes
  of the heart. Accordingly, the cosmogonic cycle yields an em-
  peror in human form who shall stand for all generations to come
  as the model of man the king.
  Huang Ti, the "Yellow Emperor" (2697-2597 B.C.), was the
  third of the august Three. His mother, a concubine of the prince
  of the province of Chao-tien, conceived him when she one night
  beheld a golden dazzling light around the constellation of the
  Great Bear. The child could talk when he was seventy days old
  and at the age of eleven years suceeded to the throne. His distin-
  guishing endowment was his power to dream: in sleep he could
  visit the remotest regions and consort with immortals in the su-
  pernatural realm. Shortly following his elevation to the throne,
  Huang Ti fell into a dream that lasted three entire months, dur-
  ing which time he learned the lesson of the control of the heart.
  After a second dream of comparable length, he returned with
  the power to teach the people. He instructed them in the control
  of the forces of nature in their own hearts.
  This wonderful man governed China for one hundred years,
  and during his reign the people enjoyed a veritable golden age.
  He gathered six great ministers around him, with whose help he
  composed a calendar, inaugurated mathematical calculations,
  and taught the making of utensils of wood, pottery, and metal,
  the building of boats and carriages, the use of money, and the
  construction of musical instruments of bamboo. He appointed
  public places for the worship of God. He instituted the bounds
  and laws of private property. His queen discovered the art of
  weaving silk. He planted one hundred varieties of grain, vegeta-
  bles, and trees; favored the development of birds, quadrupeds,
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  reptiles, and insects; taught the uses of water, fire, wood, and
  earth; and regulated the movements of the tides. Before his
  death at the age of one hundred and eleven, the phoenix and the
  unicorn appeared in the gardens of the Empire, in attestation to
  the perfection of his reign.3
  Childhood of the Human Hero
  The earlier culture hero of the snake body and bull head carried
  within him from birth the spontaneous creative power of the
  natural world. That was the meaning of his form. The man hero,
  on the other hand, must "descend" to re-establish connection
  with the infrahuman. This is the sense, as we have seen, of the
  adventure of the hero.
  But the makers of legend have seldom rested content to re-
  gard the world's great heroes as mere human beings who broke
  past the horizons that limited their fellows and returned with
  such boons as any man with equal faith and courage might have
  found. On the contrary, the tendency has always been to endow
  the hero with extraordinary powers from the moment of birth,
  or even the moment of conception. The whole hero-life is shown
  to have been a pageant of marvels with the great central adven-
  ture as its culmination.
  This accords with the view that herohood is predestined,
  rather than simply achieved, and opens the problem of the rela-
  tionship of biography to character. Jesus, for example, can be
  regarded as a man who by dint of austerities and meditation
  3 Giles, op. cit., p. 338; MacGowan, op. cit., pp. 6-8; Edouard Chavannes,
  Les memoires historiques de Se-ma Ts'icn (Paris, 1895-1905), Vol. I.
  pp. 25-36. See also John C. Ferguson, Chinese Mythology ("The Mythology of
  AN Races," Vol. VIII, Boston, 1928), pp. 27-28, 29-31.
  294
  CHILDHOOD OF THE HUMAN HERO
  attained wisdom; or on the other hand, one may believe that a
  god descended and took upon himself the enactment of a human
  career. The first view would lead one to imitate the master liter-
  ally, in order to break through, in the same way as he, to the
  transcendent, redemptive experience. But the second states that
  the hero is rather a symbol to be contemplated than an example
  to be literally followed. The divine being is a revelation of the
  omnipotent Self, which dwells within us all. The contemplation
  of the life thus should be undertaken as a meditation on one's
  own immanent divinity, not as a prelude to precise imitation, the
  lesson being, not "Do thus and be good," but "Know this and
  be God."1
  In Part I, "The Adventure of the Hero," we regarded the re-
  demptive deed from the first standpoint, which may be called
  the psychological. We now must describe it from the second,
  where it becomes a symbol of the same metaphysical mystery
  + This formula is, of course, not precisely that of the common Christian
  teaching, where, though Jesus is reported to have declared that "the kingdom
  of God is within you," the churches maintain that, since man is created only
  "in the image" of God, the distinction between the soul and its creator is
  absolute-thus retaining, as the final reach of their wisdom, the dualistic dis-
  tinction between man's "eternal soul" and the divinity. The transcending of
  this pair of opposites is not encouraged (indeed, is rejected as "pantheism'1 and
  has sometimes been rewarded with the stake); nevertheless, the prayers and
  diaries of the Christian mystics abound in ecstatic descriptions of the unitive,
  soul-shattering experience'(via. supra, pp. 35-38), while Dante's vision at the
  conclusion of the Divine Comedy (supra, p. 176) certainly goes beyond the or-
  thodox, dualistic, concretistic dogma of the finality of the personalities of the
  Trinity. Where this dogma is not transcended the myth of Going to the Father
  is taken literally, as describing man's final goal. (See supra, p. 240, footnote 5.)
  As; for the problem of imitating Jesus as a human model, or meditating upon
  Him as a s^nd, [he liisuir\ <>l ihi' Christum nnirsule UILA \)f niu-ihly sumnut-
  rized, as follows: (1) a period of literally following the master, Jesus, by
  renouncing the world as he did (Primitive Christianity); (2) a period of medi-
  tating on Christ Crucified as the divinity within the heart, meanwhile leading
  one's lite in the world as the servant of this god (Early and Medieval Christianity);
  (3) a rejection of most of the instruments supporting meditation, meanwhile,
  tempt to interpret Jesus as a model human being, but without accepting his as-
  cetic path (Liberal Christianity). Compare supra, p. 138, footnote 83.
  295
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  that it was the deed of the hero himself to rediscover and bring
  to view. In the present chapter, therefore, we shall consider first
  the miraculous childhood, by which it is shown that a special
  manifestation of the immanent divine principle has become in-
  carnate in the world, and then, in succession, the various life
  roles through which the hero may enact his work of destiny.
  These vary in magnitude, according to the needs of the time.
  Stated in the terms already formulated, the hero's first task is
  to experience consciously the antecedent stages of the cosmo-
  gonic cycle; to break back through the epochs of emanation. His
  second, then, is to return from that abyss to the plane of contem-
  porary life, there to serve as a human transformer of demiurgic
  potentials. Huang Ti had the power to dream: this was his road
  of descent and return. Vainamoinen's second or water birth threw
  him back to an experience of the elemental. In the Tonga tale of
  the clam wife, the retreat began with the birth of the mother: the
  brother heroes sprang from an infrahuman womb.
  The deeds of the hero in the second part of his personal cycle
  will be proportionate to the depth of his descent during the first.
  The sons of the clam wife came up from the animal level; their
  physical beauty was superlative. Vainamoinen was reborn from
  the elemental waters and winds; his endowment was to rouse or
  quell with bardic song the elements of nature and of the human
  body. Huang Ti sojourned in the kingdom of the spirit; he
  taught the harmony of the heart. The Buddha broke past even
  the zone of the creative gods and came back from the void; he
  announced salvation from the cosmogonic round.
  If the deeds of an actual historical figure proclaim him to have
  been a hero, the builders of his legend will invent for him appro-
  priate adventures in depth. These will be pictured as journeys
  into miraculous realms, and are to be interpreted as symbolic, on
  the one hand, of descents into the night-sea of the psyche, and
  on the other, of the realms or aspects of man's destiny that are
  made manifest in the respective lives.
  King Sargon of Agade (c. 2550 B.C.) was born of a lowly mother.
  His father was unknown. Set adrift in a basket of bulrushes
  on the waters of the Euphrates, he was discovered by Akki the
  CHILDHOOD OF THE HUMAN HERO
  husbandman, whom he was brought up to serve as gardener.
  The goddess Ishtar favored the youth. Thus he became, at last,
  king and emperor, renowned as the living god.
  Chandragupta (fourth century B.C.), the founder of the Hindu
  Maurya dynasty, was abandoned in an earthen jar at the thresh-
  old of a cowshed. A herdsman discovered and fostered the in-
  fant. One day when he was playing with his companions a game
  of High King in the Judgment Seat, little Chandragupta com-
  manded that the worst of the offenders should have their hands
  and feet cut off; then, at his word, the amputated members im-
  mediately returned to place. A passing prince, beholding the
  miraculous game, bought the child for a thousand harshapanas
  and at home discovered by physical signs that he was a Maurya.
  Pope Gregory the Great (A.D. 540?-604) was born of noble
  twins who at the instigation of the devil had committed incest.
  His penitent mother set him to sea in a little casket. He was
  found and fostered by fishermen, and at the age of six was sent
  to a cloister to be educated as a priest. But he desired the life of
  a knightly warrior. Entering a boat, he was borne miraculously
  to the country of his parents, where he won the hand of the
  queen—who presently proved to be his mother. After discovery
  of this second incest, Gregory remained seventeen years in
  penance, chained to a rock in the middle of the sea. The keys to
  the chains were tossed to the waters, but when at the end of the
  long period they were discovered in the belly of a fish, this was
  taken to be a providential sign: the penitent was conducted to
  Rome, where in due course he was elected Pope.1
  Charlemagne (742—814) was persecuted as a child by his
  elder brothers, and took flight to Saracen Spain. There, under
  the name of Mainet, he rendered signal services to the king. He
  converted the king's daughter to the Christian faith, and the two
  secretly arranged to marry. After further deeds, the royal youth
  returned to France, where he overthrew his former persecutors
  ' These three legends appear in the excellent psychological study by
  Dr. Otto Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero (Nervous and Mental Disease
  Monographs; New York, 1910). A variant of the third appears in the Gesta
  Romanorum, Tale LXXX1.
  297
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  and triumphantly assumed the crown. Then he ruled a hundred
  years, surrounded by a zodiac of twelve peers. According to all
  reports, his beard and hair were very long and white." One day,
  sitting under his judgment tree, he rendered justice to a snake,
  and in gratitude the reptile bestowed on him a charm that in-
  volved him in a love affair with a woman already dead. This
  amulet fell into a well at Aix: that is why Aix became the em-
  peror's favorite residence. After his long wars against the Sara-
  cens, Saxons, Slavs, and Northmen, the ageless emperor died;
  but he sleeps only, to awake in the hour of his country's need.
  During the later Middle Ages, he once arose from the dead to
  participate in a crusade.'
  Kach of these biographies exhibits the variously rationalized
  theme of the infant exile and return. This is a prominent feature
  in all legend, folk tale, and myth. Usually an effort is made to
  give it some semblance of physical plausibility. However, when
  the hero in question is a great patriarch, wizard, prophet, or incar-
  nation, the wonders are permitted to develop beyond all bounds.
  The popular Hebrew legend of the birth of father Abraham
  supplies an example of the frankly supernatural infant exile. The
  event of the birth had been read by Nimrod in the stars, "for this
  impious king was a cunning astrologer, and it was manifest to
  him that a man would be born in his day who would rise up
  against him and triumphantly give the lie to his religion. In his
  terror at the fate foretold him in the stars, he sent for his princes
  and governors, and asked them to advise him in the matter.
  They answered, and said: 'Our unanimous advice is that thou
  shouldst build a great house, station a guard at the entrance
  thereof, and make known in the whole of thy realm that all preg-
  nant women shall repair thither together with their midwives,
  who are to remain with them when they are delivered. When the
  days of a woman to be delivered are fulfilled, and the child is
  born, it shall be the duty of the midwife to kill it, if it be a boy.
  6 Actually Charles the Great was beardless and bald.
  1 The Charlemagne cycles are exhaustively discussed by Joseph Bedier, I,e.
  legendes epiques (3rd edition; Paris, 1926).
  CHILDHOOD OF THK HUMAN HERO
  But if the child be a girl, it shall be kept alive, and the mother
  shall receive gifts and costly garments, and a herald shall pro-
  claim, "Thus is done unto the woman who bears a daughter!"'
  "The king was pleased with this counsel, and he had a procla-
  mation published throughout his whole kingdom, summoning
  all the architects to build a great house for him, sixty ells high
  and eighty wide. After it was completed, he issued a second
  proclamation, summoning all pregnant women thither, and there
  they were to remain until their confinement. Officers were ap-
  pointed to take the women to the house, and guards were sta-
  tioned in it and about it, to prevent the women from escaping
  thence. He furthermore sent midwives to the house, and com-
  manded them to slay the men children at their mothers' breasts.
  But if a woman bore a girl, she was to be arrayed in byssus, silk,
  and embroidered garments, and led forth from the house of de-
  tention amid great honors. No less than seventy thousand chil-
  dren were slaughtered thus. Then the angels appeared before
  God, and spoke, 'Seest Thou not what he doth, yon sinner and
  blasphemer, Nimrod son of Canaan, who slays so many innocent
  babes that have done no harm?' God answered, and said: 'Ye
  holy angels, I know it and I see it, for I neither slumber nor sleep.
  I behold and I know the secret things and the things that are re-
  vealed, and ye shall witness what I will do unto this sinner and
  blasphemer, for I will turn My hand against him to chastise him.'
  "It was about this time that Terah espoused the mother of
  Abraham and she was with child. . . . When her time ap-
  proached, she left the city in great terror and wandered toward
  the desert, walking along the edge of a valley, until she hap-
  pened across a cave. She entered this refuge, and on the next day
  she was seized with the throes, and she gave birth to a son. The
  whole cave was filled with the light of the child's countenance as
  with the splendor of the sun, and the mother rejoiced exceed-
  ingly. The babe she bore was our father Abraham.
  "His mother lamented, and said to her son: 'Alas that I
  bore thee at a time when Nimrod is king. For thy sake seventy
  thousand men-children were slaughtered, and I am seized with
  terror on account of thee, that he hear of thy existence, and slay
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  thee. Better thou shouldst perish here in this cave than my eye
  should behold thee dead at my breast.1 She took the garment in
  which she was clothed, and wrapped it about the boy. Then she
  abandoned him in the cave, saying, 'May the Lord be with thee,
  may He not fail thee nor forsake thee.'
  "Thus Abraham was deserted in the cave, without a nurse,
  and he began to wail. God sent Gabriel down to give him milk
  to drink, and the angel made it to flow from the little finger of
  the baby's right hand, and he sucked it until he was ten days
  old. Then he arose and walked about, and he left the cave and
  went along the edge of the valley. When the sun sank, and the
  stars came forth, he said, 'These are the gods!' But the dawn
  came, and the stars could be seen no longer, and then he said,
  'I will not pay worship to these, for they are no gods.' There-
  upon the sun came forth, and he spoke, 'This is my god, him
  will I extol.' But again the sun set and he said, 'He is no god,1
  and beholding the moon, he called him his god to whom he
  would pay divine homage. Then the moon was obscured, and he
  cried out: 'This, too, is no god! There is One who sets them all
  in motion.'"8
  The Blackfeet of Montana tell of a young monster-slayer, Kut-
  o-yis, who was discovered by his foster parents when the old
  man and woman put a clot of buffalo blood to boil in a pot. "Im-
  mediately there came from the pot a noise as of a child crying, as
  if it were being hurt, burnt, or scalded. They looked in the ket-
  tle, and saw there a little boy, and they quickly took it out of the
  water. They were very much surprised. . . . Now on the fourth
  day the child spoke, and said, 'Lash me in turn to each of these
  lodge poles, and when I get to the last one, I shall fall out of my
  lashing and be grown up.' The old woman did so, and as she
  lashed him to each lodge pole he could be seen to grow, and
  finally when they lashed him to the last pole, he was a man."9
  " Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publi-
  :ation Society of America, 1911), Vol. Ill, pp. 90-94.
  * George Bird Grinnell, Blackfuot Lodge Tales (New York; Charles Scrib-
  ler's Sons, 1892, 1916), pp. 31-32.
  300
  CHILDHOOD OF THE HUMAN HERO
  The folk tales commonly support or supplant this theme of the
  exile with that of the despised one, or the handicapped: the abused
  youngest son or daughter, the orphan, stepchild, ugly duckling, or
  the squire of low degree.
  A young Pueblo woman, who was helping her mother mix
  clay for pottery with her foot, felt a splash of mud on her leg but
  thought no more of it. "After some days the girl felt something
  was moving in her belly, but she did not think anything about
  going to have a baby. She did not tell her mother. But it was
  growing and growing. One day in the morning she was very
  sick. In the afternoon she got the baby. Then her mother knew
  (for the first time) that her daughter was going to have a baby.
  The mother was very angry about it; but after she looked at the
  baby, she saw it was not like a baby, she saw it was a round
  thing with two things sticking out, it was a little jar. 'Where did
  you get this?1 said her mother. The girl was just crying. About
  that time the father came in. 'Never mind, I am very glad she
  had a baby,1 he said. 'But it is not a baby,1 said her mother. Then
  the father went to look at it and saw it was a little water jar.
  After that he was very fond of that little jar. 'It is moving," he
  said. Pretty soon that little water jar was growing. In twenty
  days it was big. It was able to go around with the children, and
  it could talk. 'Grandfather, take me outdoors, so I can look around,'
  he said. So every morning the grandfather would take him out
  and he would look at the children, and they were very fond of
  him and they found out he was a boy, Water Jar boy. They found
  out from his talking."10
  In sum: the child of destiny has to face a long period of obscu-
  rity. This is a time of extreme danger, impediment, or disgrace.
  He is thrown inward to his own depths or outward to the un-
  known; either way, what he touches is a darkness unexplored.
  And this is a zone of unsuspected presences, benign as well as
  malignant: an angel appears, a helpful animal, a fisherman, a
  hunter, crone, or peasant. Fostered in the animal school, or, like
  Elsie Clt^vs Parsons, li:t.i:<< tide* {Memoirs "\ th^ Am^Horm I'olklore Soci-
  ety, XIX, 1926), p. 193.
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HEHO
  Siegfried, below ground among the gnomes that nourish the
  roots of the tree of life, or again, alone in some little room (the
  story has been told a thousand ways), the young world-apprentice
  learns the lesson of the seed powers, which reside just beyond
  the sphere of the measured and the named.
  The myths agree that an extraordinary capacity is required to
  face and survive such experience. The infancies abound in anec-
  dotes of precocious strength, cleverness, and wisdom. Herakles
  strangled a serpent sent against his cradle by the goddess Hera.
  Maui of Polynesia snared and slowed the sun—to give his mother
  time to cook her meals. Abraham, as we have seen, arrived at the
  knowledge of the One God. Jesus confounded the wise men.
  The baby Buddha had been left one day beneath the shade of a
  tree; his nurses suddenly noted that the shadow had not moved
  all afternoon and that the child was sitting fixed in a yogic trance.
  The feats of the beloved Hindu savior, Krishna, during his in-
  fant exile among the cowherds of Gokula and Brindaban, consti-
  tute a lively cycle. A certain goblin named Putana came in the
  shape of a beautiful woman, but with poison in her breasts. She
  entered the house of Yasoda, the foster mother of the child, and
  made herself very friendly, presently taking the baby in her lap
  to give it suck. But Krishna drew so hard that he sucked away
  her life, and she fell dead, reassuming her huge and hideous
  form. When the foul corpse was cremated, however, it emitted a
  sweet fragrance; for the divine infant had given the demoness
  salvation when he had drunk her milk.
  Krishna was a mischievous little boy. He liked to spirit away
  the pots of curds when the milkmaids were asleep. He was for-
  ever climbing to eat and spill things placed out of his reach on
  the high shelves. The girls would call him Butter-thief and com-
  plain to Yasoda; but he could always invent a story. One after-
  noon when he was playing in the yard, his foster parent was
  warned that he was eating clay. She arrived with a switch, but
  he had wiped his lips, and denied all knowledge of the matter. She
  opened the dirty mouth to see, but when she peered inside beheld
  the whole universe, the "Three Worlds.1' She thought: "How silly
  CHILDHOOD OF THE HUMAN HF.RO
  I am to imagine that my son could be the Lord of the Three
  Worlds." Then all was veiled from her again, and the moment
  passed immediately from her mind. She fondled the little boy
  and took him home.
  The herding folk were accustomed to pay worship to the god
  Indra, the Hindu counterpart of Zeus, king of heaven and lord of
  rain. One day when they had made their offering, the lad Krishna
  said to them: "Indra is no supreme deity, though he be king in
  heaven; he is afraid of the titans. Furthermore, the rain and
  prosperity for which you are praying depend on the sun, which
  draws up the waters and makes them fall again. What can Indra
  do? Whatever comes to pass is determined by the laws of nature
  and the spirit." Then he turned their attention to the nearby-
  woods, streams, and hills, and especially to Mount Govardhan, as
  more worthy of their honor than the remote master of the air. And
  so they offered flowers and fruits and sweetmeats to the moiintain.
  Krishna himself assumed a second form: he took the form of a
  mountain god and received the offerings of the people, mean-
  while remaining in his earlier shape among them, paying wor-
  ship to the mountain king. The god received the offerings and
  ate them up."
  Indra was enraged, and sent for the king of the clouds, whom
  he commanded to pour rain over the people until all should be
  swept away. A flight of storm clouds drew over the district and
  began to discharge a deluge; it seemed the end of the world was
  at hand. But the lad Krishna filled Mount Govardhan with the
  heat of his inexhaustible energy-, lifted it with his little finger,
  and bid the people take shelter beneath. The rain struck the
  11 The sense of this advice, which to the Western reader may seem strange,
  is that the Way of Devotion (bhakti marga) must begin with things known
  the Godhead'is immanent in all, He will make Himself known through any
  object profoundly regarded. .Furthermore, it is the Godhead within the devo-
  tee that makes it possible for him to discover Godhead in the world without.
  This mystery is illustrated in Krishna's double presence during the act of
  ihi p.
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  mountain, hissed, and evaporated. The torrent fell seven days,
  but not a drop touched the community of herdsmen.
  Then the god realized that the opponent must be an incarna-
  tion of the Primal Being. When Krishna went out next day to
  graze the cows, playing music on his flute, the King of Heaven
  came down on his great white elephant, Airavata, fell on his face
  at the feet of the smiling lad, and made submission.13
  The conclusion of the childhood cycle is the return or recogni-
  tion of the hero, when, after the long period of obscurity, his
  true character is revealed. This event may precipitate a consider-
  able crisis; for it amounts to an emergence of powers hitherto
  excluded from human life. Earlier patterns break to fragments or
  dissolve; disaster greets the eye. Yet after a moment of apparent
  havoc, the creative value of the new factor comes to view, and
  the world takes shape again in unsuspected glory. This theme of
  crucifixion-resurrection can be illustrated either on the body of
  the hero himself, or in his effects upon his world. The first alter-
  native we find in the Pueblo story of the water jar.
  "The men were going out to hunt rabbits, and Water Jar boy
  wanted to go. 'Grandfather, could you take me down to the foot
  of the mesa, I want to hunt rabbits.' 'Poor grandson, you can't
  hunt rabbits, you have no legs or arms,' said the grandfather.
  But Water Jar boy was very anxious to go. 'Take me anyway.
  You are too old and you can't do anything.' His mother was cry-
  ing because her boy had no legs or arms or eyes. But they used
  to feed him, in his mouth, in the mouth of the jar. So next morn-
  ing his grandfather took him down to the south on the flat. Then
  he rolled along, and pretty soon he saw a rabbit track and he fol-
  lowed the track. Pretty soon the rabbit ran out, and he began to
  chase it. Just before he got to the marsh there was a rock, and he
  hit himself against it and broke, and a boy jumped up. He was
  very glad his skin had been broken and that he was a boy, a big
  boy. He was wearing lots of beads around his neck and turquoise
  12 Adapted from Sister Nivedita and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Myths
  of the, Hindus and Buddhists (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1914),
  pp. 221-232.
  CHILDHOOD OF THE HUMAN HERO
  earrings, and a dance kilt and moccasins, and a buckskin shirt."
  Catching a number of rabbits, he returned and presented them to
  his grandfather, who brought him triumphantly home.13
  The cosmic energies burning within the vivid Irish warrior
  Cuchulainn—chief hero of the medieval Ulster Cycle, the so-
  called "Cycle of the Knights of the Red Branch"1*—would sud-
  denly burst like an eruption, both overwhelming himself and
  smashing everything around. When he was four years old—so
  the story goes—he set out to test the "boy corps" of his uncle,
  King Conchobar, at their own sports. Carrying his hurly of
  brass, ball of silver, throwing javelin, and toy spear, he pro-
  ceeded to the court city of Kmania, where, without so much as a
  word of permission, he dived right in among the boys—"thrice
  fifty in number, who were hurling on the green and practicing
  martial exercises with Conchobar's son, Follamain, at their head."
  The whole field let fly at him. With his fists, forearms, palms,
  and little shield, he parried the hurlies, balls, and spears that
  came simultaneously from all directions. Then for the first time
  "Parsons, op. cit., p. 193.
  u The legendary cycles of medieval Ireland include: (1) The Mythological
  Cycle, which describes the migrations to the island of prehistoric peoples, their
  battles, and in particular the deeds of the race of gods known as the Tuatha De
  Danaan, "Children of the Great Mother, Dana"; (2) The Annals of the
  Milesians, or semi-historical chronicles of the last arriving race, the sons of
  Anglo-Normans under Henry II in the twelfth century; (3) The Ulster Cycle of
  theKvights of the Red Brunch", which treats primarily of the deeds of Cuchulainn
  (pronounced coohoolinn) at the court of his uncle Conchobar (pronounced
  conohoor): this cycle greatly influenced the development of the Arthurian tra-
  dition, in Wales,'Brittany, and England—the court of Conchobar serving as
  model for that of King Arthur and the deeds of Cuehulainn for those of
  Arthur's nephew, Sir Gawain (Gawain was the original hero of many of the
  adventures later assigned to Lancelot, Perceval, and Galahad); (4) The Cycle of
  the Fianna: the Fianna were a company of heroic fighters under the captaincy
  of Finn MacCool (cf. p. 207, note 21, supra); the greatest tale of this cycle
  hrint: that ui llir lo\<- tn:in£>lr of I1 inn. dnanni his bride. Lind Diarmaid his
  nephew, ninny episodes ni which come down to us in the celebrated tale of
  Tristan and Iseult; (5) Legends of the Irish Saints.
  tions of the earlier pagan divinities, the Tuatha De Danaan.
  305
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  in his life he was seized with his battle-frenzy (a bizarre, charac-
  teristic transformation later to be known as his "paroxysm" or
  "distortion") and before anyone could grasp what was coming to
  pass, he had laid low fifty of the best. Five more of the boy corps
  went scuttling past the king, where he sat playing chess with Fer-
  gus the Eloquent. Conchobar arose and took a hand in the confu-
  sion. But Cuchulainn would not lighten his hand until all the
  youngsters had been placed under his protection and guarantee.1"*
  Cuchulainn's first day under arms was the occasion of his full
  self-manifestation. There was nothing serenely controlled about
  this performance, nothing of the playful irony that we feel in the
  deeds of the Hindu Krishna. Rather, the abundance of Cuchu-
  lainn's power was becoming known for the first time to himself,
  as well as to everybody else. It broke out of the depths of his
  being, and then had to be dealt with, impromptu and fast.
  The happening was again at the court of King Conchobar, the
  day Cathbad the Druid declared in prophecy of any stripling
  who that day should assume arms and armature that "the name
  of such an one would transcend those of all Ireland's youths be-
  sides: his life however would be fleeting short." Cuchulainn forth-
  with demanded fighting equipment. Seventeen sets of weapons
  given him he shattered with his strength, until Conchobar in-
  vested him with his own outfit. Then he reduced the chariots to
  fragments. Only that of the king was strong enough to support
  his trial.
  Cuchulainn commanded Conchobar's charioteer to drive him
  past the distant "Look-out Ford," and they came presently to a
  remote fortress, the Dun of the Sons of Nechtan, where he cut
  off the heads of the defenders. He fastened the heads to the sides
  of the car. On the road back he jumped to the ground and "by
  sheer-running and mere speed" captured two stags of the grandest
  bulk. With two stones he knocked out of the air two dozen
  '' "Tain bo Cuailgne" (from the version in the Book of Leinstcr, 62 a-b):
  edited by Wh. Stokes and E. Windisch, Iriscke Texte (Extraband zu Serie I bis
  IV; Leipzig, 1905), pp. 106-117; English translation in Eleanor Hull's The
  Cuchullin Saga in Irish Literature (London, 1898), pp. 135-137.
  CHILDHOOD OF THE HUMAN HERO
  flying swans. And with thongs and other gear he tethered all,
  both the beasts and the birds, to the chariot.
  Levarchan the Prophetess beheld the pageant with alarm as it
  approached the city and castle of Emania. "The chariot is graced
  with bleeding heads of his enemies," she declared, "beautiful
  white birds he has which in the chariot bear him company, and
  wild unbroken stags bound and tethered to the same." "I know-
  that chariot-fighter," the king said: "even the little boy, my sis-
  ter's son, who this very day went to the marches. Surely he will
  have reddened his hand; and should his fury not be timely met,
  all Emania's young men will perish by him." Very quickly, a
  method had to be contrived to abate his heat; and one was
  found. One hundred and fifty women of the castle, and Scandlach
  their leader at the head of them, "reduced themselves critically
  to nature's garb, and without subterfuge of any kind trooped out
  to meet him." The little warrior, embarrassed or perhaps over-
  whelmed by such a display of womanhood, averted his eyes, at
  which moment he was seized by the men and soused into a vat
  of cold water. The staves and hoops of the vessel flew asunder. A
  second vat boiled. The third became only very hot. Thus Cuchu-
  lainn was subdued, and the city saved."'
  "A beautiful boy indeed was that: seven toes to each foot
  Cuchulainn had, and to either hand as many fingers; his eyes
  were bright with seven pupils apiece, each one of which glit-
  tered with seven gemlike sparkles. On either cheek he had four
  moles: a blue, a crimson, a green, and a yellow. Between one ear
  and the other he had fifty clear-yellow long tresses that were as
  the yellow wax of bees, or like unto a brooch of the white gold as
  it glints to the sun unobscured. He wore a green mantle silver-
  clasped upon his breast and a gold-thread shirt."1' But when he
  was taken by his paroxysm or distortion "he became a fearsome
  and multiform and wondrous and hitherto unknown being." All
  la Book ofLcinstcr, 64B-67B (Stokes and Windisch, op. cit., pp. 130-169);
  Hull, op- cit., pp. 142-154.
  :T From Eleanor Hull, op. cit., p. 154; translated from the Book of Leimter,
  68A (Stokes and Windisch, op. cit., pp. 168-171).
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  over him, from his crown to the ground, his flesh and every limb
  and joint and point and articulation of him quivered. His feet,
  shins, and knees shifted themselves and were behind him. The
  frontal sinews of his head were dragged to the back of his neck,
  where they showed in lumps bigger than the head of a man-
  child aged one month. "One eye became engulfed in his head so
  far that' 'tis a question whether a wild heron could have got at it
  where it lay against his occiput, to drag it out upon the surface
  of his cheek; the other eye on the contrary protruded suddenly,
  and of itself so rested upon the cheek. His mouth was twisted
  awry till it met his ears . . . flakes of fire streamed from it. The
  sounding blows of the heart that pounded within him were as
  the how! of a ban-dog doing his office, or of a lion in the act of
  charging bears. Among the aerial clouds over his head were visi-
  ble the virulent pouring showers and sparks of ruddy fire which
  the seething of his savage wrath caused to mount up above him.
  His hair became tangled about his head . .. over the which
  though a prime apple-tree had been shaken, yet may we surmise
  that never an apple of them would have reached the ground, but
  rather that all would have been held impaled each on an individ-
  ual hair as it bristled on him for fury. His 'hero's paroxysm' pro-
  jected itself out of his forehead, and showed longer as well as
  thicker than the whetstone of a first-rate man-at-arms. [And
  finally:] taller, thicker, more rigid, longer than the mast of a
  great ship was the perpendicular jet of dusky blood which out of
  his scalp's very central point shot upwards and then was scat-
  tered to the four cardinal points; whereby was formed a magic
  mist of gloom resembling the smoky pall that drapes a regal
  dwelling, what time a king at night fall of a winter's day draws
  near to it."lfi
  1H Hull, op. cit., pp. 174-176; from the Book of Leinster, 77 (Stokes and
  Windisch, op. cit,, pp. 368-377). Compare the transfiguration of Krishna,
  supra, pp. 231-234 and Plate IV; see also Plates II and XII.
  XVII. The Fountain of Life (Flanders)
  
  XV1U. The Moon King and His I'eople (South Rhodesia)
  XIX. The Mother of the Gods (Mexico)
  
  XX. Tangaroa, Producing Gods
  and Men (Rurutu Island)
  
  XXII. The Young Corn God (Honduras)
  XXIII. The Chariot of the .Moon (Cambodia)
  
  XXIV. Autumn (Alaska)
  THE HERO AS WARRIOR
  • 3 •
  The Hero as Warrior
  The place of the hero's birth, or the remote land of exile from
  which he returns to perform his adult deeds among men, is the
  mid-point or navel of the world. Just as ripples go out from an
  underwater spring, so the forms of the universe expand in circles
  from this source.
  "Above the broad, unmoving depths, beneath the nine spheres
  and the seven floors of heaven, at the central point, the World
  Navel, the quietest place on the earth, where the moon does not
  wane, nor the sun go down, where eternal summer rules and the
  cuckoo everlastingly calls, there the White Youth came to con-
  sciousness." So begins a hero myth of the Yakuts of Siberia. The
  White Youth went forth to learn where he was and what his
  dwelling place was like. Eastward of him lay stretching a broad,
  fallow field, in the middle of which arose a mighty hill, and on
  the summit of the hill a gigantic tree. The resin of that tree was
  transparent and sweet scented, the bark never dried or cracked,
  the sap shone silver, the luxuriant leaves never wilted, and the
  catkins resembled a cluster of reversed cups. The summit of the
  tree rose over the seven heaven-floors and served as a tethering
  post for the High God, Yryn-ai-tojon; while the roots penetrated
  into subterranean abysses, where they formed the pillars of the
  dwellings of the mythical creatures proper to that zone. The tree
  held conversation, through its foliage, with the beings of the sky.
  When the White Youth turned to face south, he perceived in
  the midst of a green grassy plain the quiet Lake of Milk that no
  breath of wind ever stirs; and around the shores of the lake were
  swamps of curdle. To the north of him a somber forest stood
  with trees that rustled day and night; and therein was moving
  every kind of beast. Tall mountains were lifting beyond it, and
  appeared to be wearing caps of white rabbit fur; they leaned
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  against the sky and protected this middle place from the northern
  wind. A thicket of scrub stretched out to the west, and beyond it
  stood a forest of tall firs; behind the forest gleamed a number of
  blunt-headed solitary peaks.
  This was the manner, then, of the world in which the White
  Youth beheld the light of day. Presently tired, however, of being
  alone, he went over to the gigantic tree of life. "Honored High
  Mistress, Mother of my Tree and my Dwelling Place," he prayed;
  "everything that lives exists in pairs and propagates descen-
  dants, but I am alone. I want now to travel and to seek a wife of
  my own kind; I wish to measure my strength against my kind; I
  want to become acquainted with men—to live according to the
  manner of men. Do not deny me thy blessing; I do humbly pray.
  I bow my head and bend my knee."
  Then the leaves of the tree began murmuring, and a fine,
  milk-white rain descended from them upon the White Youth. A
  warm breath of wind could be felt. The tree began to groan, and
  out of its roots a female figure emerged to the waist: a woman of
  middle age, with earnest regard, hair flowing free, and bosom
  bare. The goddess offered her milk to the youth from a sumptu-
  ous breast, and after partaking of it he felt his strength increase
  a hundredfold. At the same time the goddess promised the youth
  FIGURE 17. Paleolithic Petroglyph (Algiers)
  310
  THE HERO AS WARRIOR
  every happiness and blessed him in such a way that neither water,
  nor fire, iron, nor anything else should ever do him harm.:s
  From the umbilical spot the hero departs to realize his des-
  tiny. His adiilt deeds pour creative power into the world.
  Sang the aged Vaindmoinen;
  Lakes swelled up, and earth was shaken,
  And the coppery mountains trembled,
  And the mighty rocks resounded.
  And the mountains clove asunder;
  On the shore the stones were shattered.'20
  The stanza of the hero-bard resounds with the magic of the
  word of power; similarly, the sword edge of the hero-warrior
  flashes with the energy of the creative Source: before it fall the
  shells of the Outworn.
  For the mythological hero is the champion not of things be-
  come but of things becoming; the dragon to be slain by him is
  precisely the monster of the status quo: Holdfast, the keeper of
  the past. From obscurity the hero emerges, but the enemy is
  great and conspicuous in the seat of power; he is enemy, dragon,
  tyrant, because he turns to his own advantage the authority of
  his position. He is Holdfast not because he keeps the past but
  because he keeps.
  The tyrant is proud, and therein resides his doom. He is
  proud because he thinks of his strength as his own; thus he is in
  the clown role, as a mistaker of shadow for substance; it is his
  destiny to be tricked. The mythological hero, reappearing from
  the darkness that is the source of the shapes of the day, brings a
  knowledge of the secret of the tyrant's doom. With a gesture as
  simple as the pressing of a button, he annihilates the impressive
  configuration. The hero-deed is a continuous shattering of the
  crystallizations of the moment. The cycle rolls: mythology focuses
  -•' Uno Holmberg (Uno Harva), Dcr Baum des Lebenx (Annales Academiae
  Scientiarum Fennicae, Ser. B, Tom. XVI, No. 3; Helsinki, 1923), pp. 57-59;
  from N. Gorochov, "Yryn Uolan" (Ixee&tia Voitncnn-Siberskago Otdela I. Russ-
  ketgo Grograftceakaifv Obsri'stua, XV), pp. 43 ff.
  a" Kalevala, 111,295-300.
  311
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  on the growing-point. Transformation, fluidity, not stubborn pon-
  derosity, is the characteristic of the living God. The great figure
  of the moment exists only to be broken, cut into chunks, and
  scattered abroad. Briefly: the ogre-tyrant is the champion of the
  prodigious fact, the hero the champion of creative life.
  The world period of the hero in human form begins only
  when villages and cities have expanded over the land. Many
  monsters remaining from primeval times still lurk in the outly-
  ing regions, and through malice or desperation these set them-
  selves against the human community. They have to be cleared
  away. Furthermore, tyrants of human breed, usurping to them-
  selves the goods of their neighbors, arise, and are the cause of
  widespread misery. These have to be suppressed. The elemen-
  tary deeds of the hero are those of the clearing of the field.21
  Kut-o-yis, or "Blood Ciot Boy," when he had been taken from
  the pot and had grown to manhood in a day, slew the murderous
  son-in-law of his foster parents, then proceeded against the
  ogres of the countryside. He exterminated a tribe of cruel bears,
  with the exception of one female who was about to become a
  mother. "She pleaded so pitifully for her life, that he spared her.
  If he had not done this, there would have been no bears in the
  world." Then he slaughtered a tribe of snakes, but again with
  the exception of one "who was about to become a mother.11 Next
  he deliberately walked along a road which he had been told was
  dangerous. "As he was going along, a great windstorm struck
  him and at last carried him into the mouth of a great fish. This
  was a sucker-fish and the wind was its sucking. When he got
  into the stomach of the fish, he saw a great many people. Many of
  J1 I am here keeping the distinction between the earlier semi-animal titan-
  hero (city founder, culture giver) and the later, fully human type. (See
  pp. 309-S11, supra.) The deeds of the latter frequently include the "slaying of
  the former, the Pythons and Minotaurs who were the boon-givers of the past.
  (A god outgrown becomes immediately a life-destroying demon. The form has
  to be broken and the energies released.) Not infrequently deeds that belong to
  the earlier stages of the cycle are assigned to the human hero, or one of the ear-
  lier heroes may be humanized and carried on into a later day; but such contam-
  [nation*, and winaiions do not alter the genera] formula.
  THE HIiRO AS WARRIOR
  them were dead, but some were still alive. He said to the people,
  'Ah, there must be a heart somewhere here. We will have a
  dance.' So he painted his face white, his eyes and mouth with
  black circles, and tied a white rock knife on his head, so that the
  point stuck up. Some rattles made of hoofs were also brought.
  Then the people started in to dance. For a while Blood Clot sat
  making wing-motions with his hands, and singing songs. Then
  he stood up and danced, jumping up and down until the knife
  on his head struck the heart. Then he cut the heart down.
  Next he cut through between the ribs of the fish, and let all the
  people out.
  "Again Blood Clot said he must go on his travels. Before
  starting, the people warned him, saying that after a while he
  would see a woman who was always challenging people to wres-
  tle with her, but that he must not speak to her. He gave no heed
  to what they said, and, after he had gone a little way, he saw a
  woman who called him to come over. 'No,' said Blood Clot.
  'I am in a hurry.' However, at the fourth time the woman asked
  him to come over, he said, "Yes, but you must wait a little
  while, for I am tired. I wish to rest. When I have rested, I will
  come over and wrestle with you.' Now, while he was resting, he
  saw many large knives sticking up from the ground almost hid-
  den by straw. Then he knew that the woman killed the people
  she wrestled with by throwing them down on the knives. When
  he was rested, he went on. The woman asked him to stand up in
  the place where he had seen the knives; but he said, 'No, I am
  not quite ready. Let us play a little, before we begin.' So he
  began to play with the woman, but quickly caught hold of her,
  threw her upon the knives, and cut her in two.
  "Blood Clot took up his travels again, and after a while came
  to a camp where there were some old women. The old women
  told him that a little farther on he would come to a woman with
  a swing, but on no account must he ride with her. After a time
  he came to a place where he saw a swing on the bank of a swift
  stream. There was a woman swinging on it. He watched her a
  while, and saw that she killed people by swinging them out and
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  dropping them into the water. When he found this out, he came
  up to the woman. 'You have a swing here; let me see you swing,'
  he said. 'No,1 said the woman, 'I want to see you swing.' 'Well,'
  said Blood Clot, 'but you must swing first.1 'Well,' said the
  woman, 'now I shall swing. Watch me. Then I shall see you do
  it.' So the woman swung out over the stream. As she did this, he
  saw how it worked. Then he said to the woman, 'You swing
  again while I am getting ready'; but as the woman swung out
  this time, he cut the vine and let her drop into the water. This
  happened on Cut Bank Creek."22
  We are familiar with such deeds from our Jack-the-Giant-
  Killer nursery tales and the classical accounts of the labors of
  such heroes as Hcrakles and Theseus. They abound also in the
  legends of the Christian saints, as in the following charming
  French tale of Saint Martha.
  "There was at that time on the banks of the Rhone, in a forest
  situated between Avignon and Aries, a dragon, half animal, half
  fish, larger than an ox, longer than a horse, with teeth as sharp
  as horns, and great wings at either side of its body; and this
  monster slew all the travelers and sank all the boats. It had ar-
  rived by sea from Galatia. Its parents were the Leviathan—a
  monster in the form of a serpent that dwelt in the sea—and the
  Onager—a terrible beast bred in Galatia, which burns with fire
  everything it touches.
  "Now Saint Martha, at the earnest request of the people, went
  against the dragon. Having found it in the forest, in the act of
  devouring a man, she sprinkled holy water on it and exhibited a
  crucifix. Immediately, the monster, vanquished, came like a lamb
  to the side of the saint, who passed her belt around its neck and
  conducted it to the neighboring village. There the populace slew
  it with stones and staffs.
  "And since the dragon had been known to the people under
  the name of Tarasque, the town took the name of Tarascon, in
  22 Clark Wissler and D. C. Duvall, Mythology of the Blackfeet Indians
  (Anthropological papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. II,
  Part I; New York, 1909), pp. 55-57. Quoted by Thompson, op. cit., pp. Ill—113.
  THE H E R O AS W A R R I O R
  FIGURE 18. King Ten {Egypt, First Dynasty, ca. 3200 B.C.)
  Smashes the Head of a Prisoner of War
  remembrance. Up to then it had been called Nerluc, which is to
  say, Black Lake, on account of the somber forests which there
  bordered the stream.23
  The warrior-kings of antiquity regarded their work in the
  spirit of the monster-slayer. This formula, indeed, of the shining
  hero ^oing against the dragon has been the great device of self-
  justification for all crusades. Numberless memorial tablets have
  been composed with the grandiose complacency of the following
  cuneiform of Sargon of Agade, destroyer of the ancient cities of
  the Sumerians, from whom his own people had derived their
  civilization.
  "Sargon, king of Agade, viceregent of the goddess Ishtar,
  king of Kish, pashishu24 of the god Anu, King of the Land, great
  ishakku2* of the god F.nlil: the city of Uruk he smote and its wall
  he destroyed. With the people of Uruk, he battled and he captured
  him and in fetters led him through the gate of Knlil. Sargon, king
  of Agade, battled with the man of Ur and vanquished him; his
  city he smote and its wall he destroyed. E-Ninmar he smote and its
  wall he destroyed, and its entire territory, from Lagash to the sea,
  he smote. His weapons he washed in the sea. .. ."
  ?l J&cobus ck- \ <">i\i.miit\ <>p- cil.. C I\ . ''Saint Murl.hu, \ irgin."
  " One of a class of priests entrusted with the preparation and application of
  the sacred ointments.
  25 Chief priest, governing as viceregent of the god.
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  • 4 •
  The Hero as Lover
  The hegemony wrested from the enemy, the freedom won from
  the malice of the monster, the life energy released from the toils
  of the tyrant Holdfast—is symbolized as a woman. She is the
  maiden of the innumerable dragon slayings, the bride abducted
  from the jealous father, the virgin rescued from the unholy lover.
  She is the "other portion" of the hero himself—for "each is both11:
  if his stature is that of world monarch she is the world, and if he
  is a warrior she is fame. She is the image of his destiny which he
  is to release from the prison of enveloping circumstance. But
  where he is ignorant of his destiny, or deluded by false consider-
  ations, no effort on his part will overcome the obstacles.26
  The magnificent youth, Cuchulainn, at the court of his uncle,
  Conchobar the king, aroused the anxiety of the barons for the
  virtue of their wives. They suggested that he should be found a
  wife of his own. Messengers of the king went out to every
  province of Ireland, but could find no one he would woo. Then
  Cuchulainn himself went to a maiden that he knew in Luglochta
  Loga, "the Gardens of Lugh." And he found her on her playing
  field, with her foster-sisters around her, teaching them needlework
  and fine handiwork. Emer lifted up her lovely face and recognized
  Cuchulainn, and she said: "May you be safe from every harm!"
  When the girl's father, Forgall the Wily, was told that the
  couple had talked together, he contrived to send Cuchulainn off
  to learn battle skills from Donall the Soldierly in Alba, supposing
  the youth would never return. And Donall set him a further task,
  namely, to make the impossible journey to a certain warrior-woman,
  2n An amusing and instructive example of a great hero's abject failure will be
  found in the Finnish Kaievala, Runos IV-VIII, where Vainamolnen fails in his
  wooing, first of Aino, and then of the "maid of Pohjola." The story is much too
  long for the present context.
  THE HERO AS LOVER
  Scathach, and then compel her to give him instruction in her arts
  of supernatural valor. Cuchulainn's hero-journey exhibits with
  extraordinary simplicity and clarity all the essential elements of
  the classic accomplishment of the impossible task.
  The way was across a plain of ill luck: on the hither half of it
  the feet of men would stick fast; on the farther half the grass
  would rise and hold them fast on the points of its blades. But a
  fair youth appeared who presented to Cuchulainn a wheel and
  an apple. Across the first part of the plain the wheel would roll
  just ahead, and across the second the apple. Cuchulainn had
  only to keep to their thin guiding line, without a step to either
  side, and he would come across to the narrow and dangerous
  glen beyond.
  The residence of Scathach was on an island, and this island
  was approached by a difficult bridge only: it had two low ends
  and the midspace high, and whenever anybody leaped on one
  end of it, the other head would lift itself up and throw him on
  his back. Cuchulainn was thrown three times. Then his distor-
  tion came upon him, and, gathering himself, he jumped on the
  head of the bridge, and made the hero's salmon-leap, so that he
  landed on the middle of it; and the other head of the bridge had
  not fully raised itself up when he reached it, and threw himself
  from it, and was on the ground of the island.
  The warrior-woman Scathach had a daughter —as the mon-
  ster so often has —and this young maid in her isolation had
  never beheld anything approaching the beauty of the young man
  who came down from the mid-air into her mother's fortress.
  When she had heard from the youth what his project was, she
  described to him the best manner of approach to persuade her
  mother to teach him the secrets of supernatural valor. He should
  go through his hero's salmon-leap to the great yew tree where
  Scathach was giving instruction to her sons, set his sword be-
  tween her breasts, and state his demand.
  Cuchulainn, following instructions, won from the warrior-
  sorceress acquaintance with her feats, marriage to her daughter
  without payment of a bride-price, knowledge of his future, and
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  sexual intercourse with herself. He remained a year, during which
  he assisted in a great battle against the Amazon, Aife, on whom
  he begot a son. Finally, slaying a hag who disputed with him a
  narrow path along the edge of a cliff, he started home for Ireland.
  One further adventure of battle and love, and Cuchulainn re-
  turned to find Forgall the Wily still against him. He simply car-
  ried the daughter off this time, and they were married at the
  court of the king. The adventure itself had given him the capac-
  ity to annihilate all opposition. The only annoyance was that
  uncle Conchobar, the king, exercised on the bride his royal pre-
  rogative before she passed officially to the groom.2'
  The motif of the difficult task as prerequisite to the bridal bed
  has spun the hero-deeds of all time and all the world. In stories
  of this pattern the parent is in the role of Holdfast; the hero's
  artful solution of the task amounts to a slaying of the dragon.
  The tests imposed are difficult beyond measure. They seem to
  represent an absolute refusal, on the part of the parent ogre, to
  permit life to go its way; nevertheless, when a fit candidate ap-
  pears, no task in the world is beyond his skill. Unpredicted
  helpers, miracles of time and space, further his project; destiny
  itself (the maiden) lends a hand and betrays a weak spot in the
  parental system. Barriers, fetters, chasms, fronts of every kind
  dissolve before the authoritative presence of the hero. The eye of
  the ordained victor immediately perceives the chink in every
  fortress of circumstance, and his blow can cleave it wide.
  The most eloquent and deep-driving of the traits in this color-
  ful adventure of Cuchulainn is that of the unique, invisible path,
  which was opened to the hero with the rolling of the wheel and
  the apple. This is to be read as symbolic and instructive of the
  miracle of destiny. To a man not led astray from himself by sen-
  timents stemming from the surfaces of what he sees, but coura-
  geously responding to the dynamics of his own nature—to a
  man who is, as Nietzsche phrases it, "a wheel rolling of itself'—
  difficulties melt and the unpredictable highway opens as he goes.
  37 The Wooing of Enter, abstracted from the translation by Kuno Meyer in
  E. Hull, op. cit., pp. 57-84.
  THE HKRO AS EMPEROR AND AS TYRANT
  The Hero as Emperor and as Tyrant
  The hero of action is the agent of the cycle, continuing into the
  living moment the impulse that first moved the world. Because
  our eyes are closed to the paradox of the double focus, we regard
  the deed as accomplished amid danger and great pain by a vig-
  orous arm, whereas from the other perspective it is, like the ar-
  chetypal dragon-slaying of Tiamat by Marduk, only a bringing
  to pass of the inevitable.
  The supreme hero, however, is not the one who merely con-
  tinues the dynamics of the cosmogonic round, but he who re-
  opens the eye —so that through all the comings and goings,
  delights and agonies of the world panorama, the One Presence
  will be seen again. This requires a deeper wisdom than the
  other, and results in a pattern not of action but of significant
  representation. The symbol of the first is the virtuous sword, of
  the second, the scepter of dominion, or the book of the law. The
  characteristic adventure of the first is the winning of the bride—
  the bride is life. The adventure of the second is the going to the
  father—the father is the invisible unknown.
  Adventures of the second type fit directly into the patterns of
  religious iconography. Even in a simple folk tale a depth is sud-
  denly sounded when the son of the virgin one day asks of his
  mother: "Who is my father?" The question touches the problem
  of man and the invisible. The familiar myth-motifs of the atone-
  ment inevitably follow.
  The Pueblo hero, Water Jar boy, asked the question of his
  mother. " 'Who is my father'?' he said. 'I don't know,' she said.
  He asked her again, 'Who is my father?' but she just kept on
  crying and did not answer. 'Where is my father's home?' he
  asked. She could not tell him. 'Tomorrow I am going to find my
  father.1—'You cannot find your father,' she said. 'I never go with
  any boy, so there is no place where you can look for your father.'
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  But the boy said, 'I have a father, I know where he is living,
  I am going to see him.1 The mother did not want him to go, but
  he wanted to go. So early next morning she fixed a lunch for him,
  and he went off to the south-east where they called the spring
  Waiyu powidi. Horse mesa point. He was coming close to that
  spring, he saw somebody walking a little way from the spring.
  He went up to him. It was a man. He asked the boy, 'Where are
  you going?' —'I am going to see my father,' he said. 'Who is your
  father?' said the man. 'Well, my father is living in this spring.1—
  'You will never find your father.'—'Well, I want to go into the
  spring, he is living inside it.' —'Who is your father?' said the man
  again. 'Well, I think you are my father,' said the boy. 'How do
  you know I am your father?' said the man. 'Well, I know you are
  my father.' Then the man just looked at him, to scare him. The
  boy kept saying, 'You are my father.' Pretty soon the man said,
  'Yes, I am your father. I came out of that spring to meet you,' and
  he put his arm around the boy's neck. His father was very glad
  his boy had come, and he took him down inside the spring."28
  Where the goal of the hero's effort is the discovery of the un-
  known father, the basic symbolism remains that of the tests and
  the self-revealing way. In the above example the test is reduced
  to the persistent questions and a frightening look. In the earlier
  tale of the clam wife, the sons were tried with the bamboo knife.
  We have seen, in our review of the adventure of the hero, to
  what degrees the severity of the father can go. For the congrega-
  tion of Jonathan Edwards he became a veritable ogre.
  The hero blessed by the father returns to represent the father
  among men. As teacher (Moses) or as emperor (Huang Ti), his
  word is law. Since he is now centered in the source, he makes
  visible the repose and harmony of the central place. He is a
  reflection of the World Axis from which the concentric circles
  spread—the World Mountain, the World Tree—he is the perfect
  microcosmic mirror of the macrocosm. To see him is to perceive
  the meaning of existence. From his presence boons go out; his
  word is the wind of life.
  «ins. op. cit., p. 194.
  THE HERO AS EMPEROR AND AS TYRANT
  But a deterioration may take place in the character of the repre-
  sentative of the father. Such a crisis is described in the Zoroastrian
  Persian legend of the Emperor of the Golden Age, Jemshid.
  All looked upon the throne, and heard and saw
  Nothing but Jemshid, he alone was King,
  Absorbing every thought; and in their praise
  And adoration of that mortal man,
  Forgot the worship of the great Creator.
  Then proudly he to his nobles spoke,
  Intoxicated with their loud applause.
  "I am unequalled, for to me the earth
  Owes all its science, never did exist
  A sovereignty like mine, beneficent
  And glorious, driving from the populous land
  Disease and want. Domestic joy and rest
  Proceed from me, all that is good and great
  Waits my behest; the universal voice
  Declares the splendor of my government,
  Beyond whatever human heart conceived,
  And me the only monarch of the world."
  — Soon as these words had parted from his lips
  Words impious, and insulting to high heaven,
  His earthly grandeur faded—then all tongues
  Grew clamorous and bold. The day of Jemshid
  Passed into gloom, his brightness all obscured.
  What said the Moralist? "When thou wert a king
  Thy subjects were obedient, but whoever
  Proudly neglects the worship of his God
  Brings desolation on his house and home."
  —And when he marked the insolence of his people,
  He knew the wrath of heaven had been provoked,
  And terror overcame him.29
  29 Firdausi, Shah-Nameh, translation by James Atkinson {London and New
  York, 1886), p. 7.
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE H F. B O
  No longer referring the boons of his reign to their transcendent
  source, the emperor breaks the stereoptic vision which it is his
  role to sustain. He is no longer the mediator between the two
  worlds. Man's perspective flattens to include only the human term
  of the equation, and the experience of a supernal power immedi-
  ately fails, The upholding idea of the community is lost. Force is
  all that binds it. 'Hie emperor becomes the tyrant ogre (Herod-
  Ximrod), the usurper from whom the world is now to be saved.
  The Hero as World Redeemer
  Two degrees of initiation are to be distinguished in the mansion
  of the father. From the first the son returns as emissary, but
  from the second, with the knowledge that "I and the father are
  Persian mythology is rooted in the common Indo-European => stem that was car-
  ried out of the Aral-Caspian steppes into India and Iran, as well as into Europe.
  The principal divinities of the earliest sacred writings (Avesta) of the Persians
  correspond very closely to those of the earliest Indian texts (Vedas; see note 32,
  p. 104, supra). But the two branches came under greatly differing influences in
  their new homes, the Vedic tradition submitting gradually to Dravidian Indian
  forces, the Persian to Sumero- Babylonian.
  Early in the first millennium* B.C., Persian belief was reorganized by the
  prophet Zarathustra (Zoroaster) according to a strict dualism of good and evil
  principles, light and dark, angels and devils. This crisis profoundly affected
  not only the Persian, but also the subject Hebrew beliefs, and thereby (cen-
  turies later) Christianity. It represents a radical departure from the more usual
  mythological interpretation of good and evil as effects proceeding from a
  unique source of being that transcends arid reconciles all polarity.
  Persia was overrun by the zealots of Mohammed, A.D. 642. Those not con-
  verted were put to the sword. A poor remnant took refuge in India, where they
  survive to this day as the Parsis ("Persians") of Bombay. After a period of
  some three centuries, however, a -Mohammedan-Persian literary "Restoration"
  took place. The great names are: Firdausi (940-1020?), Omar Khayyam
  (?-U23?), Nizami (1140-1203), Jala! ad-Din Rumi (1207-1273), Saadi
  (1184-1291), Hafiz (1-1389?), and Jam! (1414-1492). Firdausi's Shah Nameh
  ("Epic of Kings") is a rehearsal in simple and stately narrative verse of the
  story of ancient Persia down to the Mohammedan conquest.
  322
  THE HERO AS WORLD REDEEMER
  one." Heroes of this second, highest illumination are the world
  redeemers, the so-called incarnations, in the highest sense. Their
  myths open out to cosmic proportions. Their words carry an au-
  thority beyond anything pronounced by the heroes of the scepter
  and the book.
  "All of you watch me. Don't look around," said the hero of the
  Jicarilla Apache, Killer-of-Enemies; "Listen to what I say. The
  world is just as big as my body. The world is as large as my
  word. And the world is as large as my prayers. The sky is only as
  large as my words and prayers. The seasons are only as great as
  my body, my words, and my prayer. It is the same with the wa-
  ters; my body, my words, my prayer are greater than the waters.
  "Whoever believes me, whoever listens to what I say, will
  have long life. One who doesn't listen, who thinks in some evil
  way, will have a short life.
  "Don't think I am in the east, south, west, or north. The earth
  is my body. I am there. I am all over. Don't think I stay only
  under the earth or up in the sky, or only in the seasons, or on the
  other side of the waters. These are all my body. It is the truth
  that the underworld, the sky, the seasons, the waters, are all my
  body. I am all over.
  "I have already given you that with which you have to make
  an offering to me. You have two kinds of pipe and you have the
  mountain tobacco."so
  The work of the incarnation is to refute by his presence the
  pretensions of the tyrant ogre. The latter has occluded the source
  of grace with the shadow of his limited personality; the incarna-
  tion, utterly free of such ego-consciousness, is a direct manifestation
  of the law. On a grandiose scale he enacts the hero-life—performs
  the hero-deeds, slays the monster—but it is all with the freedom
  of a work done only to make evident to the eye what might have
  been accomplished equally well with a mere thought.
  Kans, the cruel uncle of Krishna, usurper of his own father's
  throne in the city of Mathura, heard a voice one day that said to
  him: "Thy enemy is born, thy death is certain." Krishna and his
  ''" Opler, op. cit,, pp. 133—134.
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  elder brother Balarama had been spirited to the cowherds from
  their mother's womb to protect them from this Indian counter-
  part of Nimrod. And he had sent demons after them — Putana of
  the poison milk was the first—but all had been undone. Now
  when his devices had failed, Kans determined to lure the youths
  to his city. A messenger was sent to invite the cowherds to a
  sacrifice and great tournament. The invitation was accepted.
  With the brothers among them, the cowherds came and camped
  outside the city wall.
  Krishna and Balarama, his brother, went in to see the won-
  ders of the town. There were great gardens, palaces, and groves.
  They encountered a washerman and asked him for some fine
  clothes; when he laughed and refused, they took the clothes
  by force and made themselves very gay. Then a hump-backed
  woman prayed Krishna to let her rub sandal-paste on his body.
  He went up to her, placing his feet on hers, and with two fingers
  beneath her chin, lifted her up and made her straight and fair.
  And he said: "When I have slain Kans I shall come back and be
  with you."
  The brothers came to the empty stadium. There the bow of
  the god Shiva was set up, huge as three palm trees, great and
  heavy. Krishna advanced to the bow, pulled it, and it broke
  with a mighty noise. Kans in his palace heard the sound and was
  appalled.
  The tyrant sent his troops to kill the brothers in the city. But
  the lads slew the soldiers and returned to their camp. They told
  the cowherds they had had an interesting tour, then ate their
  suppers, and went to bed.
  Kans that night had ominous dreams. When he woke, he or-
  dered the stadium prepared for the tournament and the trumpets
  blown for assembly. Krishna and Balarama arrived as jugglers,
  followed by the cowherds, their friends. When they entered the
  gate, there was a furious elephant ready to crush them, mighty
  as ten thousand common elephants. The driver rode it directly at
  Krishna. Balarama gave it such a blow with his fist that it
  halted, started back. The driver rode it again, but the two broth-
  ers struck it to the ground, and it was dead.
  THE HERO AS WORLD REDEEMER
  The youths walked onto the field. Everybody saw what his
  own nature revealed to him: the wrestlers thought Krishna a
  wrestler, the women thought him the treasure of beauty, the
  gods knew him as their lord, and Kans thought he was Mara,
  Death himself. When he had undone every one of the wrestlers
  sent against him, slaying finally the strongest, he leapt to the
  royal dais, dragged the tyrant by the hair, and killed him. Men,
  gods, and saints were delighted, but the king's wives came forth
  to mourn. Krishna, seeing their grief, comforted them with his
  primal wisdom: "Mother,'1 he said, "do not grieve. No one can
  live and not die. To imagine oneself as possessing anything is to
  be mistaken; nobody is father, mother, or son. There is only the
  continuous round of birth and death.'"31
  The legends of the redeemer describe the period of desolation
  as caused by a moral fault on the part of man (Adam in the gar-
  den, Jemshid on the throne). Yet from the standpoint of the cos-
  mogonic cycle, a regular alternation of fair and foul is characteris-
  tic of the spectacle of time. Just as in the history of the universe,
  so also in that of nations: emanation leads to dissolution, youth
  to age, birth to death, form-creative vitality to the dead weight
  of inertia. Life surges, precipitating forms, and then ebbs, leav-
  ing jetsam behind. The golden age, the reign of the world em-
  peror, alternates, in the pulse of every moment of life, with the
  waste land, the reign of the tyrant. The god who is the creator
  becomes the destroyer in the end.
  From this point of view the tyrant ogre is no less representa-
  tive of the father than the earlier world emperor whose position
  he usurped, or than the brilliant herb (the son) who is to sup-
  plant him. He is the representative of the set-fast, as the hero is
  the carrier of the changing. And since every moment of time
  bursts free from the fetters of the moment before, so this dragon,
  Holdfast, is pictured as of the generation immediately preceding
  that of the savior of the world.
  Stated in direct terms: the work of the hero is to slay the tena-
  cious aspect of the father (dragon, tester, ogre king) and release
  Jl Adapted from Nivedita and Coomaraswamy, op. cit., pp. 236-237.
  325
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THF. HERO
  from its ban the vital energies that will feed the universe. "This
  can be done either in accordance with the Father's will or against
  his will; he [the Father] may 'choose death for his children's
  sake,' or it may be that the Gods impose the passion upon him,
  making him their sacrificial victim. These are not contradictory
  doctrines, but different ways of telling one and the same story;
  in reality, Slayer and Dragon, sacrificer and victim, are of one
  mind behind the scenes, where there is no polarity of contraries,
  but mortal enemies on the stage, where the everlasting war of
  the Gods and the Titans is displayed. In any case, the Dragon-
  Father remains a Pleroma, no more diminished by what he ex-
  hales than he is increased by what he repossesses. He is the
  Death, on whom our life depends; and to the question 'Is Death
  one, or many?1 the answer is made that 'He is one as he is there,
  but many as he is in his children here.' "33
  The hero of yesterday becomes the tyrant of tomorrow, unless
  he crucifies himself today.
  From the point of view of the present there is such a reckless-
  ness in this deliverance of the future that it appears to be nihilis-
  tic. The words of Krishna, the world savior, to the wives of the
  dead Kans carry a frightening overtone; so do the words of Jesus:
  "I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a
  man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her
  mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
  And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that
  loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and
  he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of
  me."33 To protect the unprepared, mythology veils such ultimate
  revelations under half-obscuring guises, while yet insisting on
  the gradually instructive form. The savior figure who eliminates
  the tyrant father and then himself assumes the crown is (like
  Oedipus) stepping into his sire's stead. To soften the harsh pat-
  ricide, the legend represents the father as some cruel uncle or
  usurping Nimrod. Nevertheless, the half-hidden fact remains.
  THE HERO AS SAINT
  13 Matthew, 10:34-37.
  Once it is glimpsed, the entire spectacle buckles: the son slays
  the father, but the son and the father are one. The enigmatical
  figures dissolve back into the primal chaos. This is the wisdom
  of the end (and rebeginning) of the world.
  The Hero as Saint
  Before we proceed to the last episode of the life, one more hero-
  type remains to be mentioned: the saint or ascetic, the world-
  renouncer.
  "Endowed with a pure understanding, restraining the self
  with firmness, turning away from sound and other objects, and
  abandoning love and hatred; dwelling in solitude, eating but
  little, controlling the speech, body, and mind, ever engaged in
  meditation and concentration, and cultivating freedom from pas-
  sion; forsaking conceit and power, pride and lust, wrath and
  possessions, tranquil in heart, and free from ego—he becomes
  worthy of becoming one with the imperishable."j4
  The pattern is that of going to the father, but to the unmani-
  fest rather than the manifest aspect: taking the step that the
  Bodhisattva renounced: that from which there is no return. Not
  the paradox of the dual perspective, but the ultimate claim of the
  unseen is here intended. The ego is burnt out. Like a dead leaf
  in a breeze, the body continues to move about the earth, but the
  soul has dissolved already in the ocean of bliss.
  Thomas Aquinas, as the result of a mystical experience while
  celebrating mass in Naples, put his pen and ink on the shelf and
  left the last chapters of his Summa Theologica to be completed by
  another hand. "My writing days," he stated, "are over; for such
  things have been revealed to me that all 1 have written and taught
  34 Bhagavad Gita, 18:51-53.
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  DEPARTURE OF THE HERO
  seems of but small account to me, wherefore I hope in my God,
  that, even as the end has come to my teaching, so it may soon come
  in my life." Shortly thereafter, in his forty-ninth year, he died.
  Beyond life, these heroes are beyond the myth also. Neither
  do they treat of it any more, nor can the myth properly treat of
  them. Their legends are rehearsed, but the pious sentiments and
  lessons of the biographies are necessarily inadequate; little bet-
  ter than bathos. They have stepped away from the realm of
  forms, into which the incarnation descends and in which the
  Bodhisattva remains, the realm of the manifest profile of The
  Great Face. Once the hidden profile has been discovered, myth is
  the penultimate, silence the ultimate, word. The moment the
  spirit passes to the hidden, silence alone remains.
  King Oedipus came to know that the woman he had married
  was his mother, the man he had slain his father; he plucked his
  eyes out and wandered in penance over the earth. The Freudians
  declare that each of us is slaying his father, marrying his mother,
  all the time—only unconsciously: the roundabout symbolic ways
  of doing this and the rationalizations of the consequent compul-
  sive activity constitute our individual lives and common civiliza-
  tion. Should the feelings chance to become aware of the real import
  of the world's acts and thoughts, one would know what Oedipus
  knew: the flesh would suddenly appear to be an ocean of self-
  violation. This is the sense of the legend of Pope Gregory the
  Great, born of incest, living in incest. Aghast, he flees to a rock
  in the sea, and there does penance for his very life.
  The tree has now become the cross: the White Youth sucking
  milk has become the Crucified swallowing gall. Corruption crawls
  where before was the blossom of spring. Yet beyond this thresh-
  old of the cross—for the cross is a way (the sun door), not an
  end—is beatitude in God.
  "He has placed his seal upon me that I may prefer no love
  to Him.
  "The winter has passed; the turtle dove sings; the vineyards
  burst into blossom.
  "With His own ring my Lord Jesus Christ has wed me, and
  crowned me with a crown as His bride.
  "The robe with which the Lord has clothed me is a robe of
  splendor with gold interwove, and the necklace with which He
  had adorned me is beyond all price."3"1
  Departure of the Hero
  The last act in the biography of the hero is that of the death or
  departure. Here the whole sense of the life is epitomized. Need-
  less to say, the hero would be no hero if death held for him any
  terror; the first condition is reconciliation with the grave.
  "While sitting under the oak of Mamre, Abraham perceived a
  flashing of light and a smell of sweet odor, and turning around
  he saw Death coming toward him in great glory and beauty.
  And Death said unto Abraham: 'Think not, Abraham, that this
  beauty is mine, or that I come thus to every man. Nay, but if any
  one is righteous like thee, I thus take a crown and come to him,
  but if he is a sinner, I come in great corruption, and out of their
  sins I make a crown for my head, and I shake them with great
  fear, so that they are dismayed.1 Abraham said to him, 'And art
  thou, indeed, he that is called Death?' He answered, and said,
  'I am the bitter name,' but Abraham answered, 'I will not go
  with thee.' And Abraham said to Death, 'Show us thy corrup-
  tion.1 And Death revealed his corruption, showing two heads,
  the one had the face of a serpent, the other head was like a
  sword. All the servants of Abraham, looking at the fierce mien of
  Death, died, but Abraham prayed to the Lord, and he raised
  them up. As the looks of Death were not able to cause Abraham's
  55 Antiphons of the nuns, at their consecration as Brides of Christ; from the
  Roman Pontifical. Reprinted in The Soul Afire, pp. 289-292.
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  soul to depart from him, God removed the soul of Abraham as in
  a dream, and the archangel Michael took it up into heaven. After
  great praise and glory had been given to the Lord by the angels
  who brought Abraham's soul, and after Abraham bowed down
  to worship, then came the voice of God, saying thus: 'Take My
  friend Abraham into Paradise, where are the tabernacles of My
  righteous ones and the abodes of My saints Isaac and Jacob in
  his bosom, where there is no trouble, nor grief, nor sighing, but
  peace and rejoicing and life unending.'"3fi
  Compare the following dream. "I was on a bridge where I met
  a blind fiddler. Everyone was tossing coins into his hat. I came
  closer and perceived that the musician was not blind. He had a
  squint, and was looking at me with a crooked glance from the
  side. Suddenly, there was a little old woman sitting at the side of
  a road. It was dark and I was afraid. 'Where does this road
  lead?1 I thought. A young peasant came along the road and took
  me by the hand. 'Do you want to come home," he said, 'and
  drink coffee?' 'Let me go! You are holding too tight!' I cried,
  and awoke."3'
  The hero, who in his life represented the dual perspective,
  after his death is still a synthesizing image: like Charlemagne,
  he sleeps only and will arise in the hour of destiny, or he is
  among us under another form.
  The Aztecs tell of the feathered serpent, Quetzalcoatl, monarch
  of the ancient city of Tollan in the golden age of its prosperity.
  He was the teacher of the arts, originator of the calendar, and
  the giver of maize. He and his people were overcome, at the
  close of their time, by the stronger magic of an invading race,
  the Aztecs. Tezcatlipoca, the warrior-hero of the younger people
  and their era, broke the city of Tollan; and the feathered ser-
  pent, king of the golden age, burned his dwellings behind him,
  36 Ginzberg, op. cit.. Vol. I, pp. 305-306. By permission of the Jewish Publi-
  cation Society of America.
  37 Wilhelm Stekel, Die Sprache des Traumes, dream no. 421. Death here ap-
  pears, observes Dr. Stekel, in four symbols: the Old Fiddler, the Squinting
  One, the Old Woman, and the Young Peasant (the Peasant is die Sower and
  the Reaper).
  330
  DEPARTURE OF THE HERO
  buried his treasures in the mountains, transformed his chocolate
  trees into mesquite, commanded the multi-colored birds, his ser-
  vants, to Hy before him, and departed in great sorrow. And he
  came to a city called Quauhtitlan, where there was a tree, very
  tall and large; and he went over to the tree, sat down beneath it,
  and gazed into a mirror that was brought to him. "I am old," he
  said; and the place was named "The old Quauhtitlan." Resting
  again at another place along the way, and looking back in the di-
  rection of his Tollan, he wept, and his tears went through a
  rock. He left in that place the mark of his sitting and the impress
  of his palms. He was met and challenged, further along, by a
  group of necromancers, who prohibited him from proceeding
  until he had left with them the knowledge of working silver,
  wood, and feathers, and the art of painting. As he crossed the
  mountains, all of his attendants, who were dwarfs and hump-
  backs, died of cold. At another place he encountered his antago-
  nist, Tezcatlipoca, who defeated him at a game of ball. At still
  another he aimed with an arrow at a large pochotl tree; the arrow
  too was an entire pochotl tree; so that when he shot it through
  the first they formed a cross. And so he passed along, leaving
  many signs and place-names behind him, until, coming at last to
  the sea, he departed on a raft of serpents. It is not known how he
  arrived at his destination, Tlapallan, his original home/"
  Or, according to another tradition, at the shore he immolated
  himself upon a funeral pyre, and birds with multicolored feath-
  ers arose from his ashes. His soul became the Morning Star.59
  The life-eager hero can resist death, and postpone his fate for
  a certain time. It is written that Cuchulainn in his sleep heard a
  cry, "so terrible and fearful, that he fell out of his bed upon the
  ground, like a sack, in the east wing of the house." He rushed
  forth without weapons, followed by Emer, his wife, who carried
  his arms and garments. And he discovered a chariot harnessed
  with a chestnut horse that had but one leg, the pole passing
  i8 Bernardino de Sahagun, Bistoria General de las Cosas de Nueva Espana
  (Mexico, 1829), Lib. Ill, Cap. xii-xiv (condensed). The work has been repub-
  lished by Pedro Robredo (Mexico, 1938), Vol. I, pp. 278-282.
  TO Thomas A. Joyce, Mexican Archaeology (London, 1914), p. 46.
  331
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  DEPARTURE OF THE HERO
  through its body and out at the forehead. Within sat a woman,
  her eyebrows red, and a crimson mantel round her. A very big
  man walked along beside, also in a coat of erimson, carrying a
  forked staff of hazelwood and driving a cow.
  Cuchulainn claimed the cow as his own, the woman chal-
  lenged him, and Cuchulainn then demanded to know why she
  was speaking instead of the big man. She answered that the man
  was Uar-gaeth-sceo Luachair-sceo. "Well to be sure," said Cuchu-
  lainn, "the length of the name is astonishing!" "The woman to
  whom you speak," said the big man, "is called Faebor beg-beoil
  cuimdiuir folt sceub-gairit sceo uath." "You are making a fool of
  me," said Cuchulainn; and he made a leap into the chariot, put
  his two feet on her two shoulders, and his spear on the parting
  of her hair. "Do not play your sharp weapons on me!" she said.
  "Then tell me your true name," said Cuchulainn. "Go further off
  from me then," said she; "I am a female satirist, and I carry off
  this cow as a reward for a poem." "Let us hear your poem," said
  Cuchulainn. "Only move further off," said the woman; "your
  shaking over my head will not influence me."
  Cuchulainn moved off until he was between the two wheels of
  the chariot. The woman sang at him a song of challenge and in-
  sult. He prepared to spring again, but, in an instant, horse,
  woman, chariot, man, and cow had disappeared, and on the
  branch of a tree was a black bird.
  "A dangerous enchanted woman you are!" said Cuchulainn to
  the black bird; for he now realized that she was the battle-
  goddess, Badb, or Morrigan. "If I had only known that it was
  you, we should not have parted thus." "What you have done,"
  replied the bird, "will bring you ill luck." "You cannot harm
  me," said Cuchulainn. "Certainly I can," said the woman; "I am
  guarding your deathbed, and I shall be guarding it henceforth."
  Then the enchantress told him that she was taking tb
  from the fairy hill of Cruachan to be bred by the bull of the big
  man, who was Cuailgne; and when her calf was a year old
  Cuchulainn would die. She herself would come against him
  when he would be engaged at a certain ford with a man "as
  strong, as victorious, as dexterous, as terrible, as untiring, as
  noble, as brave, as great" as himself. "I will become an eel,"
  she said, "and I will throw a noose round thy feet in the ford."
  Cuchulainn exchanged threats with her, and she disappeared into
  the ground. But the following year, at the foretold foray at the
  ford, he overcame her, and actually lived to die another day.'"1
  A curious, perhaps playful, echo of the symbolism of salvation
  in a yonder world dimly sounds in the final passage of the
  Pueblo folk tale of Water Jar boy. "A lot of people were living
  down inside the spring, women and girls. They all ran to the
  boy and put their arms around him because they were glad their
  child had come to their house. Thus the boy found his father and
  his aunts, too. Well, the boy stayed there one night and next day
  he went back home and told his mother he had found his father.
  Then his mother got sick and died. Then the boy said to him-
  self, 'No use for me to live with these people.' So he left them
  and went to the spring. And there was his mother. That was the
  way he and his mother went to live with his father. His father
  was Avaiyo' pi'i (water snake red). He said he could not live
  with them over at Sikyat'ki. That was the reason he made the
  boy's mother sick so she died and 'came over here to live with
  me,' said his father. 'Now we will live here together,' said
  Avaiyo' to his son. That's the way that boy and his mother went
  to the spring to live there."41
  This story, like that of the clam wife, repeats point for point
  the mythical narrative. The two stories are charming in their ap-
  parent innocence of their power. At the opposite extreme is the
  account of the death of the Buddha: humorous, like all great
  myth, but conscious to the last degree.
  "The Blessed One, accompanied by a large congregation of
  priests, drew near to the further bank of the Hirannavati river,
  and to the city of Kusinara and the sal-tree grove Upavattana of
  40 "Tain bo Regamna," edited by Stokes and Windisch, Irische Texts (zweite
  Serie, Heft. 2; Leipzig, 1887), pp. 24,1-254. The above is condensed from
  Hull, op. cit., pp. 103-107.
  11 Parsons, op. cit., pp. 194-195.
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF T H F. HERO
  the Mallas; and having drawn near, he addressed the venerable
  Ananda:
  " 'Be so good, Ananda, as to spread me a couch with its head
  to the north between twin sal-trees. I am weary, Ananda, and
  wish to lie down.'
  " 'Yes, Reverend Sir,' said the venerable Ananda to The Blessed
  One in assent, and spread the couch with its head to the north
  between twin sal-trees. Then The Blessed One lay down on his
  right side after the manner of a lion, and placing foot on foot, re-
  mained mindful and conscious.
  "Now at that time the twin sal-trees had completely burst
  forth into bloom, though it was not the flowering season; and
  the blossoms scattered themselves over the body of The Tatha-
  gata, and strewed and sprinkled themselves in worship of The
  Tathagata.45 Also heavenly sandal-wood powder fell from the
  sky; and this scattered itself over the body of The Tathagata, and
  strewed and sprinkled itself in worship of The Tathagata. And
  music sounded in the sky in worship of The Tathagata, and heav-
  enly choruses were heard to sing in worship of The Tathagata."
  During the conversations which then took place, as The Tatha-
  gata lay like a lion on his side, a large priest, the venerable Upa-
  vana, stood in front, fanning him. The Blessed One briefly or-
  dered him to step aside; whereupon the body attendant of The
  Blessed One, Ananda, complained to The Blessed One. "Rev-
  erend Sir," he said, "what, pray, was the reason, and what was
  the cause, that The Blessed One was harsh to the venerable Upa-
  vana, saying, 'Step aside, O priest; stand not in front of me'?1'
  The Blessed One replied: "Ananda, almost all the deities
  throughout ten worlds have come together to behold The Tatha-
  gata. For an extent, Ananda, of twelve leagues about the city
  Kusinara and the sal-tree grove Upavattana of the Mallas, there
  is not a spot of ground large enough to stick the point of a hair
  into, that is not pervaded by powerful deities. And these deities,
  Ananda, are angered, saving, 'From afar have we come to behold
  " Tathagatu: "arrived at or being in (gala) such a state or condition (tathd)":
  i.e., an Enlightened One, a Buddha.
  DEPARTURE OF THE HERO
  The Tathagata, for but seldom, and on rare occasions, does a
  Tathagata, a saint, and Supreme Buddha arise in the world; and
  now, to-night, in the last watch, will The Tathagata pass into
  Nirvana; but this powerful priest stands in front of The Blessed
  One, concealing him, and we have no chance to see The Tatha-
  gata, although his last moments are near.1 Thus Ananda, are
  these deities angered."
  "What are the deities doing, Reverend Sir, whom The Blessed
  One perceives?"
  "Some of the deities, Ananda, are in the air with their minds
  engrossed by earthly things, and they let fly their hair and cry
  aloud, and stretch out their arms and cry aloud, and fall head-
  long to the ground and roll to and fro, saying, 'All too soon will
  The Blessed One pass into Nirvana; all too soon will The Light
  of The World vanish from sight!1 Some of the deities, Ananda,
  are on the earth with their minds engrossed by earthly tilings, and
  they let fly their hair and cry aloud, and stretch out their arms
  and cry aloud, and fall headlong on the ground and roll to and
  fro, saying, 'All too soon will The Blessed One pass into Nir-
  vana; all too soon will The Happy One pass into Nirvana; all too
  soon will The Light of The World vanish from sight.1 But those
  deities which are free from passion, mindful and conscious, bear
  it patiently, saying, 'Transitory are all things. How is it possible
  that whatever has been born, has come into being, and is orga-
  nized and perishable, should not perish? That condition is not
  possible.'"
  The last conversations continued for some time, and during
  the course of them The Blessed One gave consolation to his
  priests. Then he addressed them:
  "And now, O priests, I take my leave of you; all the constituents
  of being are transitory; work out your salvation with diligence.1'
  And this was the last word of The Tathagata.
  "Thereupon The Blessed One entered the first trance; and ris-
  ing from the first trance, he entered the second trance; and
  rising from the second trance, he entered the third trance;
  and rising from the third trance, he entered the fourth trance;
  and rising from the fourth trance, he entered the realm of the
  
  TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE HERO
  infinity of space; and rising from the realm of the infinity of
  space, he entered the realm of the infinity of consciousness, and
  rising from the realm of the infinity of consciousness, he entered
  the realm of nothingness; and rising from the realm of nothing-
  ness, he entered the realm of neither perception nor yet non-
  perception; and rising from the realm of neither perception nor
  yet non-perception, he arrived at the cessation of perception and
  sensation.
  "Thereupon the venerable Ananda spoke to the venerable
  Anuruddha as follows:
  " 'Reverend Anuruddha, The Blessed One has passed into
  Nirvana.'
  " 'Nay, brother Ananda, The Blessed One has not yet passed
  into Nirvana; he has arrived at the cessation of perception and
  sensation.1
  "Thereupon The Blessed One rising from the cessation of his
  perception and sensation, entered the realm of neither percep-
  tion nor yet non-perception; and rising from the realm of neither
  perception or yet non-perception, he entered the realm of noth-
  ingness; and rising from the realm of nothingness, he entered
  the realm of infinity of consciousness; and rising from the realm
  of infinity of consciousness, he entered the realm of the infinity
  of space; and rising from the realm of the infinity of space, he en-
  tered the fourth trance; and rising from the fourth trance, he en-
  tered the third trance; and rising from the third trance, he entered
  the second trance; and rising from the second trance, he entered
  the first trance; and rising from the first trance, he entered the se-
  cond trance; and rising from the second trance, he entered the
  third trance; and rising from the third trance, he entered the fourth
  trance; and rising from the fourth trance, immediately The
  Blessed One passed into Nirvana."1'5
  13 Reprinted by permission of the publishers from Henry Clarke Warren,
  Ruddhhm in Translations (Harvard Oriental Series, 3), Cambridge, Mass.:
  Harvard University Press, 18S6, pp. 95-110.
  Compare the stages of cosmic emanation, p. 270, supra.
  C H A P T E R 
  I V
  Dissolutions
  End of the Microcosm
  THE mighty hero of extraordinary powers —able to lift Mount
  Govardhan on a finger, and to fill himself with the terrible glory
  of the universe—is each of us: not the physical self visible in the
  mirror, but the king within. Krishna declares: "I am the Self,
  seated in the hearts of all creatures. I am the beginning, the mid-
  dle, and the end of all beings."' This, precisely, is the sense of
  the prayers for the dead, at the moment of personal dissolution:
  that the individual should now return to his pristine knowledge
  of the world-creative divinity who during life was reflected
  within his heart.
  "When he comes to weakness—whether he come to weakness
  through old age or through disease—this person frees himself
  from these limbs just as a mango, or a fig, or a berry releases it-
  self from its bond; and he hastens again, according to the en-
  trance and place of origin, back to life. As noblemen, policemen,
  chariot-drivers, village-heads wait with food, drink, and lodg-
  ings for a king who is coming, and cry: 'Here he comes! Here he
  comes!' so indeed do all things wait for him who has this knowl-
  edge and cry: 'Here is the Imperishable coming! Here is the Im-
  perishable coming!'"2
  : Bhagavad Gita, 10:20.
  - Brikadaranyaka Upanishad, 4. 3. 3fi—37.
  
  DISSOLUTIONS
  The idea is sounded already in the Coffin Texts of ancient
  Egypt, where the dead man sings of himself as one with God:
  I am j\tl(?71, 1 ~LCt~l() Ti'ilS (iiOllCV
  I am Re at his first appearance.
  I am the Great God, self-generator,
  Who fashioned his names, lord of gods,
  Whom none approaches among the gods.
  I was yesterday, I know tomorrow.
  The battle-field of the gods was made when I spoke.
  I know the name of that Great God who is therein.
  "Praise of Re" is his name.
  I am that great Phoenix which is in Heliopolis.3
  But, as in the death of the Buddha, the power to make a full
  transit back through the epochs of emanation depends on the
  character of the man when he was alive. The myths tell of a dan-
  gerous journey of the soul, with obstacles to be passed. The
  Eskimos in Greenland enumerate a boiling kettle, a pelvis bone,
  a large burning lamp, monster guardians, and two rocks that
  strike together and open again.1 Such elements are standard fea-
  tures of world folklore and heroic legend. We have discussed
  them above, in our chapters of the "Adventure of the Hero." They
  have received their most elaborate and significant development in
  the mythology of the soul's last journey.
  An Aztec prayer to be said at the deathbed warns the de-
  parted of the dangers along the way back to the skeleton god of
  the dead, Tzontemoc, "He of the Falling Hair." "Dear child!
  Thou hast passed through and survived the labors of this life.
  Now it hath pleased our Lord to carry thee away. For we do not
  enjoy this world everlastingly, only briefly; our fife is like the
  3 James Henry Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Egypt
  (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912), p. 275. Reprinted by permission
  of the publishers.
  Compare the poem of Taliesin, pp. 241-242, supra.
  4 Franz Boas, Race, Language, and Culture (New York, 1940), p. 514. See
  supra, pp. 92-94.
  END OF THK MICROCOSM
  warming of oneself in the sun. And the Lord hath conferred on
  us the blessing of knowing and conversing with each other in
  this existence; but now, at this moment, the god who is called
  Mictlantecutli, or Aculnahuacatl, or again Tzontemoc, and the
  goddess known as Mictecacihuatl, have transported thee away.
  Thou art brought before His seat; for we all must go there: that
  place is intended for us all, and it is vast.
  "We are to have of thee no further recollection. Thou wilt
  reside in that place most dark, where there is neither light nor
  window. Thou wilt not return or depart from thence; nor wilt
  thou think about or concern thyself with the matter of return.
  Thou wilt be absent from among us for ever more. Poor and or-
  phaned hast thou left thy children, thy grandchildren; nor dost
  thou know how they will end, how they will pass through the
  labors of this life. As for ourselves, we shall soon be going there
  where thou art to be."
  The Aztec ancients and officials prepared the body for the
  funeral, and, when they had properly wrapped it, took a little
  water and poured it on the head, saying to the deceased: "This
  thou didst enjoy when thou wert living in the world." And they
  took a small jug of water and presented it to him, saying: "Here
  is something for thy journey"; they set it in the fold of his
  shroud. Then they wrapped the deceased in his blankets, se-
  cured him strongly, and placed before him, one at a time, certain
  papers that had been prepared: "Lo, with this thou wilt be able
  to go between the mountains that clash." "With this thou wilt
  pass along the road where the serpent watcheth." "This will sat-
  isfy the little green lizard, Xochitonal." "And behold, with this
  thou wilt make the transit of the eight deserts of freezing cold."
  "Here is that by which thou wilt go across the eight small
  hills." "Here is that by which thou wilt survive the wind of the
  obsidian knives."
  The departed was to take a little dog with him, of bright red-
  dish hair. Around its neck they placed a soft thread of cotton;
  they killed it and cremated it with the corpse. The departed swam
  on this small animal when he passed the river of the underworld.
  
  DISSOLUTIONS
  END OF THE MICROCOSM
  And, after four years of passage, he arrived with it before the
  god, to whom he presented his papers and gifts. Whereupon he
  was admitted, together with his faithful companion, to the
  "Ninth Abyss."5
  The Chinese tell of a crossing of the Fairy Bridge under guid-
  ance of the Jade Maiden and the Golden Youth. The Hindus
  picture a towering firmament of heavens and a many-leveled un-
  derworld of hells. The soul gravitates after death to the story ap-
  propriate to its relative density, there to digest and assimilate
  the whole meaning of its past life. When the lesson has been
  learned, it returns to the world, to prepare itself for the next de-
  gree of experience. Thus gradually it makes its way through all
  the levels of life-value until it has broken past the confines of the
  cosmic egg. Dante's Divina Commedia is an exhaustive review of
  the stages: "Inferno," the misery of the spirit bound to the prides
  and actions of the flesh; "Purgatorio," the process of transmuting
  fleshly into spiritual experience; '"Paradiso," the degrees of spiri-
  tual realization.
  A deep and awesome vision of the journey is that of the
  Egyptian Book of the Dead. The man or woman who has died is
  identified with and actually called Osiris. The texts open with
  hymns of praise to Re and Osiris and then proceed to the mys-
  teries of the unswathing of the spirit in the world beneath. In
  the "Chapter of Giving a Mouth to Osiris N.,"6 we read the
  phrase: "I rise out of the egg in the hidden land." This is the an-
  nouncement of the idea of death as a rebirth. Then, in the "Chap-
  ter of Opening the Mouth of Osiris N.," the awakening spirit
  prays: "May the god Ptah open my mouth, and may the god of
  my city loose the swathings, even the swathings which are over
  my mouth.11 The "Chapter of Making Osiris N. to possess Mem-
  ory in the Underworld" and the "Chapter of Giving a Heart to
  5 Sahagv'm, op. cit.. Lib. I, Apendice, Cap. i; ed. Robredo, Vol. I,
  pp. 284-286.
  White dogs and black cannot swim the river, because the white would say:
  "I have washed myself!" and the black: "I have soiled myself!" Only the bright
  reddish unes can pass to the shore of the dead.
  fi N.: the name of the deceased is given; viz., Osiris Aufankh, Osiris Ani.
  FIGURE 19. Osiris, Judge of the Dead
  Osiris N. in the Underworld" carry the process of rebirth two
  stages further. Then begin the chapters of the dangers that the
  lone voyager has to face and overcome on his way to the throne
  of the awesome judge.
  The Book of the Dead was buried with the mummy as a guide
  book to the perils of the difficult way, and chapters were recited
  at the time of burial. At one stage in the preparation of the
  mummy, the heart of the dead man was cut open and a basalt
  scarab in a gold setting, symbolic of the sun, was placed therein
  with the prayer: "My heart, my mother, my heart, my mother;
  my heart of transformations." This is prescribed in the "Chapter
  of not Letting the Heart of Osiris N. be Taken from Him in the
  Underworld." Next we read, in the "Chapter of Beating Back
  
  DISSOLUTIONS
  the Crocodile": "Get thee back, O crocodile that dwellest in the
  west. . . . Get thee back, O crocodile that dwellest in the south.
  . . . Get thee back, O crocodile that dwellest in the north. . . .
  The things which are created are in the hollow of my hand, and
  those which have not yet come into being are in my body. I am
  clothed and wholly provided with thy magical words, O Re, the
  which are in heaven above me and in the earth beneath me. . . ."
  The "Chapter of Repulsing Serpents" follows, then the "Chap-
  ter of Driving Away Apshait." The soul cries at the latter de-
  mon: "Depart from me, O thou who hast lips that gnaw." In the
  "Chapter of Driving Back the Two Merti Goddesses" the soul
  declares its purpose, and protects itself by stating its claim to be
  the son of the father: "... I shine from the Sektet boat, I am
  Horus the son of Osiris, and I have come to see my father
  Osiris." The "Chapter of Living by Air in the Underworld" and
  the "Chapter of Driving Back the Serpent Rerek in the Under-
  world" carry the hero still further along his way, and then comes
  the great proclamation of the "Chapter of Driving Away the
  Slaughterings which are Performed in the Underworld": "My
  hair is the hair of Nu. My face is the face of the Disk. My eyes
  are the eyes of Hathor. My ears are the ears of Apuat. My nose
  is the nose of Khenti-khas. My lips are the lips of Anpu. My
  teeth are the teeth of Serget. My neck is the neck of the divine
  goddess Isis. My hands are the hands of Ba-neb-Tattu. My fore-
  arms are the forearms of Neith, the Lady of Sais. My backbone
  is the backbone of Suti. My phallus is the phallus of Osiris. My
  loins are the loins of the Lords of Kher-aba. My chest is the
  chest of the Mighty One of Terror 
  There is no member of
  my body that is not the member of some God. The god Thoth
  FIGURE 20. The Serpent Kheti in the Underworld,
  Consutning \\ itli Tire ;ni Knemy of Osiris
  KND OF THE MICROCOSM
  shieldeth my body altogether, and I am Re day by day. I shall
  not be dragged back by the arms, and none shall lay violent hold
  upon my hands. . . ."
  As in the much later Buddhist image of the Bodhisattva
  within whose nimbus stand five hundred transformed Buddhas,
  each attended by five hundred Bodhisattvas, and each of these,
  in turn, by innumerable gods, so here, the soul comes to the ful-
  ness of its stature and power through assimilating the deities
  that formerly had been thought to be separate from and outside
  of it. They are projections of its own being; and as it returns to
  its true state they are all reassumed.
  In the "Chapter of Snuffing the Air and of having the Mastery-
  over the Water of the Underworld," the soul proclaims itself to
  be the guardian of the cosmic egg: "Hail, thou sycamore-tree of
  the goddess Nut! Grant thou to me of the water and of the air
  which dwell in thee. I embrace the throne which is in Hermopolis.
  and I watch and guard the egg of the Great Cackler. It groweth,
  I grow; it liveth, I live; it snuffeth the air, I snuff the air, I the
  Osiris N\, in triumph."
  There follow the "Chapter of not Letting the Soul of a Man be
  taken from him in the Underworld" and the "Chapter of Drink-
  ing Water in the Underworld and of not being Burnt by Fire,"
  and then we come to the great culmination —the "Chapter of
  Coming Forth by Day in the Underworld," wherein the soul and
  the universal being are known to be one: "I am Yesterday, Today,
  and Tomorrow, and I have the power to be born a second time;
  I am the divine hidden Soul who createth the gods, and who
  giveth sepulchral meals iinto the denizens of the Underworld of
  Amentet and of Heaven. I am the rudder of the east, the posses-
  sor of two divine faces wherein his beams are seen. I am the lord
  of the men who are raised up; the lord who cometh forth out of
  darkness, and whose forms of existence are of the house wherein
  are the dead. Hail, ye two hawks who are perched upon your
  resting-places, who harken unto the things which are said by
  him, who guide the bier to the hidden place, who lead along Re,
  and who follow him into the uppermost place of the shrine
  which is in the celestial heights! Hail, lord of the shrine which
  
  DISSOLUTIONS
  standeth in the middle of the earth. He is I, and I am he, and
  Ftah hath covered his sky with crystal. . . ."
  Thereafter, the soul may range the universe at will, as is shown
  in the "Chapter of Lifting up the Feet and of Corning forth upon
  the Earth," the "Chapter of Journeying to Heliopolis and of Re-
  ceiving a Throne therein," the "Chapter of a Man Transforming
  himself into Whatever Form he Pleaseth," the "Chapter of Enter-
  ing into the Great House," and the "Chapter of Going into the
  Presence of the Divine Sovereign Princes of Osiris." The chap-
  ters of the so-called Negative Confession declare the moral purity
  of the man who has been redeemed: "I have not done iniquity. . . .
  I have not robbed with violence.... I have not done violence to any
  man.... I have not committed theft.... I have not slain man or
  woman 
  " The book concludes with addresses of praise of the
  gods, and then: the "Chapter of Living N'igh unto Re," die "Chap-
  ter of Causing a Man to Come Back to See his House upon Earth,"
  the "Chapter of Making Perfect the Soul," and the "Chapter of
  Sailing in the Great Sun-Boat of Re."7
  FIGURE 21. The Doubles of Ani and His Wife
  Drinking Water in the Other World
  7 Based on the translation by E. A. W. Budge: The Book of the Dead, The
  Papyrus of Ani, Scribe and Treasure! of the Temples of Egypt about B c 1450
  (New York, 1913).
  END OF THE MACROCOSM
  End of the Macrocosm
  As the created form of the individual must dissolve, so that of
  the universe also:
  "When it is known that after the lapse of a hundred thousand
  years the cycle is to be renewed, the gods called Loka byuhas, in-
  habitants of a heaven of sensual pleasure, wander about through
  the world, with hair let down and flying in the wind, weeping and
  wiping away their tears with their hands, and with their clothes
  red and in great disorder. And thus they make announcement:
  " 'Sirs, after the lapse of a hundred thousand years the cycle is
  to be renewed; this world will be destroyed; also the mighty ocean
  will dry up; and this broad earth, and Suraeru, the monarch of
  mountains, will be burnt up and destroyed—up to the Brahma
  world will the destruction of the world extend. Therefore, sirs,
  cultivate friendliness; cultivate compassion, joy, and indiffer-
  ence; wait on your mothers; wait on your fathers; and honor
  your elders among your kinsfolk.1
  "This is called the Cyclic-Uproar."8
  The Mayan version of the world-end is represented in an il-
  lustration covering the last page of the Dresden Codex.y This
  ancient manuscript records the cycles of the planets and from
  those deduces calculations of vast cosmic cycles. The serpent
  numbers which appear toward the close of the text (so-called be-
  cause of the appearance in them of a serpent symbol) represent
  world periods of some thirty-four thousand years—twelve and
  a half million days—and these are recorded again and again.
  "In these well-nigh inconceivable periods, all the smaller units
  8 Reprinted by permission of the Harvard University Press from Henry
  Clarke Warren, Buddhism in Translations, pp. 38-39.
  9 Sylvanus G. Morley, An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyph-
  ics (57th Bulletin, Bureau of American Ethnology; Washington, 1915), Plate 3
  (facing p. 32).
  
  DISSOLUTIONS
  may be regarded as coming at last to a more or less exact close.
  What matter a few score years one way or the other in this vir-
  tual eternity? Finally, on the last page of the manuscript, is de-
  picted the Destruction of the World, for which the highest
  numbers have paved the way. Here we see the rain serpent,
  stretching across the sky, belching forth torrents of water. Great
  streams of water gush from the sun and moon. The o!d goddess,
  she of the tiger claws and forbidding aspect, the malevolent pa-
  troness of floods and cloudbursts, overturns the bowl of the
  heavenly waters. The crossbones, dread symbol of death, deco-
  rate her skirt, and a writhing snake crowns her head. Below
  with downward-pointed spear, symbolic of the universal de-
  struction, the black god stalks abroad, a screeching owl raging
  on his fearsome head. Here, indeed, is portrayed with graphic
  touch the final all-cngulfing cataclysm."10
  One of the strongest representations appears in the Poetic
  Edda of the ancient Vikings. Othin (Wotan) the chief of the
  gods has asked to know what will be the doom of himself and
  his pantheon, and the "Wise Woman," a personification of the
  World Mother herself, Destiny articulate, lets him hear:11
  Brothers shall fight and fell each other,
  And sisters' sons shall kinship stain;
  Hard is it on earth, with mighty whoredom;
  Ax-time, sword-time, shields are sundered,
  Wind-time, wolf-time, ere the world falls;
  Nor ever shall men each other spare.
  In the land of the giants, Jotunheim, a fair, red rooster shall
  crow; in Valhalla the rooster Golden Comb; a rust-red bird in
  Hell. The dog Garm at the cliff-cave, the entrance to the world
  of the dead, shall open his great jaws and howl. The earth shall
  tremble, the crags and trees be torn asunder, the sea gush forth
  '"Ibid., p. 32.
  " The following account is based on the Poetic Edda, "Yoluspa," 42 ff. (the
  verses are quoted from the translation by Bellows, op. cit., pp. 19-20, 24.), and
  the Prose Edda, "Gylfaginning," LI (translation by Brodcur, op. cit., pp. 77-81).
  By permission of the American-Scandinavian Foundation, publishers.
  346
  END OF THE MACROCOSM
  upon the land. The fetters of those monsters who were chained
  back in the beginning shall all burst: Fenris-Wolf shall run free,
  and advance with lower jaw against the earth, upper against the
  heavens ("he would gape yet more if there were room for it");
  fires shall blaze from his eyes and nostrils. The world-enveloping
  serpent of the cosmic ocean shall rise in giant wrath and advance
  beside the wolf upon the land, blowing venom, so that it shall
  sprinkle all the air and water. Naglfar shall be loosed (the ship
  made of dead men's nails) and this shall be the transport of the
  giants. Another ship shall sail with the inhabitants of hell. And
  the people of fire shall advance from the south.
  When the watchman of the gods shall blow the shrieking
  horn, the warrior sons of Othin will be summoned to the final bat-
  tle. From all quarters the gods, giants, demons, dwarfs, and elves
  will be riding for the field. The World Ash, Yggdrasil, will trem-
  ble, and nothing then be without fear in heaven and earth.
  Othin shall advance against the wolf, Thor against the ser-
  pent, Tyr against the dog—the worst monster of all—and Freyr
  against Surt, the man of flame. Thor shall slay the serpent,
  stride ten paces from that spot, and because of the venom blown
  fall dead to the earth. Othin shall be swallowed by the wolf, and
  thereafter Vidarr, setting one foot upon the lower jaw, shall take
  the upper jaw of the wolf in his hand and tear asunder the gul-
  let. Loki shall slay Heimdallr and be slain by him. Surt shall cast
  fire over the earth and burn all the world.
  The sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea,
  The hot stars down from heaven are whirled;
  Fierce grows the steam and the life-feeding flame,
  Till fire leaps high about heaven itself.
  Now Garm howls loud before Gnipahellir,
  The fetters will burst, and the wolf run free;
  Much do I know, and more can see
  Of the fate of the gods, the mighty in fight.
  "And as Jesus sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples
  came unto him privately, saying, Tell us when shall these things
  
  DISSOLUTIONS
  be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of
  the world?
  "And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no
  man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am
  Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and
  rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things
  must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise
  against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall
  be famines and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
  All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver
  you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of
  all nations for my name's sake. And then shall many be offended,
  and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And
  many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And be-
  cause iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But
  he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And
  this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for
  a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.
  "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation,
  spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso
  readeth, let him understand:) Then let them which be in Judaea
  flee into the mountains: Let him which is on the house top not
  come down to take anything out of his house: Neither let him
  which is in the field return back to take his clothes. And woe
  unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those
  days! But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither
  on the sabbath day: For then shall be great tribulation, such as
  was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor
  ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there
  should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall
  be shortened.
  "Then if any man shall say unto you: Lo, here is Christ, or
  there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false
  prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch
  that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Behold,
  I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Be-
  hold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret
  END OF THE MACROCOSM
  chambers; believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the
  east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of
  the Son of man be. For wheresoever the carcase is there will the
  eagles be gathered together. Immediately after the tribulation of
  those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not
  give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the pow-
  ers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the
  sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of
  the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in
  the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall
  send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall
  gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of
  heaven to the other. . . . But of that day and hour knoweth no
  man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only."12
  u Matthew, 24:3-36.
  
  EPILOGUE
  Myth and Society
  
  The Shapes/lifter
  THERE is no final system for the interpretation of myths, and there
  will never be any such thing. Mythology is like the god Proteus,
  "the ancient one of the sea, whose speech is sooth.11 The god "will
  make assay, and take all manner of shapes of things that creep
  upon the earth, of water likewise, and of fierce fire burning."1
  The life-voyager wishing to be taught by Proteus must "grasp
  him steadfastly and press him yet the more," and at length he
  will appear in his proper shape. But this wily god never dis-
  closes even to the skillful questioner the whole content of his
  wisdom. He will reply only to the question put to him, and what
  he discloses will be great or trivial, according to the question
  asked. "So often as the sun in his course stands high in mid
  heaven, then forth from the brine comes the ancient one of the
  sea, whose speech is sooth, before the breath of the West Wind
  he comes, and the sea's dark ripple covers him. And when he is
  got forth, he lies down to sleep in the hollow of the caves. And
  around him the seals, the brood of the fair daughter of the brine,
  sleep all in a flock, stolen forth from the grey sea water, and bit-
  ter is the scent they breathe of the deeps of the salt sea."2 The
  Greek warrior-king Menelaus, who was guided by a helpful daugh-
  ter of this old sea-father to the wild lair, and instructed by her how
  to wring from the god his response, desired only to ask the se-
  cret of his own personal difficulties and the whereabouts of his
  persona] friends. And the god did not disdain to reply.
  Mythology has been interpreted by the modern intellect as a
  primitive, fumbling effort to explain the world of nature (Frazer);
  as a production of poetical fantasy from prehistoric times, misun-
  derstood by succeeding ages (Muller); as a repository of allegorical
  ' Odyssey, IV, 401, 417-^18, translation by S. H. Butcher and Andrew Lang
  (London, 1879).
  2 Ibid., IV, 400-408.
  
  MYTH AND SOCIETY
  instruction, to shape the individual to his group (Durkheim);
  as a group dream, symptomatic of archetypal urges within the
  depths of the human psyche (Jung); as the traditional vehicle of
  man's profoundest metaphysical insights (Coomaraswamy); and
  as God's Revelation to His children (the Church). Mythology is
  all of these. The various judgments are determined by the view-
  points of the judges. For when scrutinized in terms not of what it
  is but of how it functions, of how it has served mankind in the
  past, of how it may serve today, mythology shows itself to be as
  amenable as life itself to the obsessions and requirements of the
  individual, the race, the age.
  The Function of Myth, Cult, and Meditation
  In his life-form the individual is necessarily only a fraction and
  distortion of the total image of man. He is limited either as male
  or as female; at any given period of his life he is again limited as
  child, youth, mature adult, or ancient; furthermore, in his life-
  role he is necessarily specialized as craftsman, tradesman, ser-
  vant, or thief, priest, leader, wife, nun, or harlot; he cannot be all.
  Hence, the totality—the fullness of man—is not in the separate
  member, but in the body of the society as a whole; the individual
  can be only an organ. From his group he has derived his tech-
  niques of life, the language in which he thinks, the ideas on
  which he thrives; through the past of that society descended the
  genes that built his body. If he presumes to cut himself off, ei-
  ther in deed or in thought and feeling, he only breaks connection
  with the sources of his existence.
  The tribal ceremonies of birth, initiation, marriage, burial, in-
  stallation, and so forth, serve to translate the individual's life-crises
  and life-deeds into classic, impersonal forms. They disclose him
  to himself, not as this personality or that, but as the warrior, the
  MYTH, CULT, AND MEDITATION
  bride, the widow, the priest, the chieftain; at the same time re-
  hearsing for the rest of the community the old lesson of the ar-
  chetypal stages. All participate in the ceremonial according to
  rank and function. The whole society becomes visible to itself as
  an imperishable living unit. Generations of individuals pass, like
  anonymous cells from a living body; but the sustaining, timeless
  form remains. By an enlargement of vision to embrace this super-
  individual, each discovers himself enhanced, enriched, supported,
  and magnified. His role, however unimpressive, is seen to be in-
  trinsic to the beautiful festival-image of man—the image, potential
  yet necessarily inhibited, within himsetf.
  Social duties continue the lesson of the festival into normal,
  everyday existence, and the individual is validated still. Con-
  versely, indifference, revolt—or exile—break the vitalizing con-
  nectives. From the standpoint of the social unit, the broken-off
  individual is simply nothing—waste. Whereas the man or woman
  who can honestly say that he or she has lived the role—whether
  that of priest, harlot, queen, or slave—is something in the full
  sense of the verb to be.
  Rites of initiation and installation, then, teach the lesson of the
  essential oneness of the individual and the group; seasonal festi-
  vals open a larger horizon. As the individual is an organ of soci-
  ety, so is the tribe or city—so is humanity entire—only a phase
  of the mighty organism of the cosmos.
  It has been customary to describe the seasonal festivals of so-
  called native peoples as efforts to control nature. This is a mis-
  representation. There is much of the will to control in every act
  of man, and particularly in those magical ceremonies that are
  thought to bring rain clouds, cure sickness, or stay the flood;
  nevertheless, the dominant motive in all truly religious (as op-
  posed to black-magical) ceremonial is that of submission to the
  inevitables of destiny —and in the seasonal festivals this motive
  is particularly apparent.
  No tribal rite has yet been recorded which attempts to keep
  winter from descending; on the contrary: the rites all prepare
  the community to endure, together with the rest of nature, the
  season of the terrible cold. And in the spring, the rites do not
  
  MYTH AND SOCIETY
  seek to compel nature to pour forth immediately corn, beans,
  and squash for the lean community; on the contrary: the rites
  dedicate the whole people to the work of nature's season. The
  wonderful cycle of the year, with its hardships and periods of
  joy, is celebrated, and delineated, and represented as continued
  in the life-round of the human group.
  Many other symbolizations of this continuity fill the world of
  the mythologically instructed community. For example, the clans
  of the American hunting tribes commonly regarded themselves
  as descended from half-animal, half-human, ancestors. These an-
  cestors fathered not only the human members of the clan, but
  also the animal species after which the clan was named; thus the
  human members of the beaver clan were blood cousins of the an-
  imal beavers, protectors of the species and in turn protected by
  the animal wisdom of the wood folk. Or another example: The
  hogan, or mud hut, of the Navahos of New Mexico and Arizona,
  is constructed on the plan of the Navaho image of the cosmos.
  The entrance faces east. The eight sides represent the four direc-
  tions and the points between. Every beam and joist corresponds
  to an element in the great hogan of the all-embracing earth and
  sky. And since the soul of man itself is regarded as identical in
  form with the universe, the mud hut is a representation of the
  basic harmony of man and world, and a reminder of the hidden
  life-way of perfection.
  But there is another way—in diametric opposition to that of
  social duty and the popular cult. From the standpoint of the way
  of duty, anyone in exile from the community is a nothing. From
  the other point of view, however, this exile is the first step of the
  quest. Each carries within himself the all; therefore it may be
  sought and discovered within. The differentiations of sex, age,
  and occupation are not essential to our character, but mere cos-
  tumes which we wear for a time on the stage of the world. The
  image of man within is not to be confounded with the garments.
  We think of ourselves as Americans, children of the twentieth
  century, Occidentals, civilized Christians. We are virtuous or sin-
  ful. Yet such designations do not tell what it is to be man, they
  MYTH, CULT, AND MEDITATION
  denote only the accidents of geography, birth-date, and income.
  What is the core of us? What is the basic character of our being"?
  The asceticism of the medieval saints and of the yogis of
  India, the Hellenistic mystery initiations, the ancient philoso-
  phies of the East and of the West, are techniques for the shifting
  of the emphasis of individual consciousness away from the gar-
  ments. The preliminary meditations of the aspirant detach his
  mind and sentiments from the accidents of life and drive him to
  the core. "I am not that, not that," he meditates: "not my mother
  or son who has just died; my body, which is ill or aging; my
  arm, my eye, my head; not the summation of all these things. I
  am not my feeling; not my mind; not my power of intuition.1" By
  such meditations he is driven to his own profundity and breaks
  through, at last, to unfathomable realizations. No man can re-
  turn from such exercises and take very seriously himself as Mr.
  So-an-so of Such-and-such a township, U.S.A. — Society and du-
  ties drop away. Mr, So-and-so, having discovered himself big
  with man, becomes indrawn and aloof.
  This is the stage of Narcissus looking into the pool, of the
  Buddha sitting contemplative under the tree, but it is not the ul-
  timate goal; it is a requisite step, but not the end. The aim is not
  to see, but to realize that one is, that essence; then one is free to
  wander as that essence in the world. Furthermore: the world too
  is of that essence. The essence of oneself and the essence of the
  world: these two are one. Hence separateness, withdrawal, is no
  longer necessary. Wherever the hero may wander, whatever he
  may do, he is ever in the presence of his own essence—for he has
  the perfected eye to see. There is no separateness. Thus, just as
  the way of social participation may lead in the end to a realiza-
  tion of the All in the individual, so that of exile brings the hero
  to the Self in all.
  Centered in this hub-point, the question of selfishness or al-
  truism disappears. The individual has lost himself in the law and
  been reborn in identity with the whole meaning of the universe.
  For Him, by Him, the world was made. "O Mohammed," God
  said, "hadst thou not been, I would not have created the sky."
  
  MYTH AND SOCIETY
  • 3 •
  The Hero Today
  All of which is far indeed from the contemporary view; for the
  democratic ideal of the self-determining individual, the inven-
  tion of the power-driven machine, and the development of the
  scientific method of research, have so transformed human life
  that the long-inherited, timeless universe of symbols has col-
  lapsed. In the fateful, epoch-announcing words of Nietzsche's
  Zarathustra: "Dead are all the gods.'" One knows the tale; it has
  been told a thousand ways. It is the hero-cycle of the modern
  age, the wonder-story of mankind's coming to maturity. The
  spell of the past, the bondage of tradition, was shattered with
  sure and mighty strokes. The dream-web of myth fell away; the
  mind opened to full waking consciousness; and modern man
  emerged from ancient ignorance, like a butterfly from its cocoon,
  or like the sun at dawn from the womb of mother night.
  It is not only that there is no hiding place for the gods from
  the searching telescope and microscope; there is no such society
  any more as the gods once supported. The social unit is not a
  carrier of religious content, but an economic-political organiza-
  tion. Its ideals are not those of the hieratic pantomime, making
  visible on earth the forms of heaven, but of the secular state, in
  hard and unremitting competition for material supremacy and
  resources. Isolated societies, dream-bounded within a mytholog-
  ically charged horizon, no longer exist except as areas to be ex-
  ploited. And within the progressive societies themselves, every
  last vestige of the ancient human heritage of ritual, morality, and
  art is in full decay.
  The problem of mankind today, therefore, is precisely the op-
  posite to that of men in the comparatively stable periods of those
  great co-ordinating mythologies which now are known as lies.
  1 Nietzsche, Thus Spake ZamthuMfa, 1. 22. 3.
  358
  THE H ERO TODAY
  Then all meaning was in the group, in the great anonymous
  forms, none in the self-expressive individual; today no meaning
  is in the group—none in the world: all is in the individual. But
  there the meaning is absolutely unconscious. One does not know
  toward what one moves. One does not know by what one is pro-
  pelled. The lines of communication between the conscious and
  the unconscious zones of the human psyche have all been cut,
  and we have been split in two.
  The hero-deed to be wrought is not today what it was in the
  century of Galileo. Where then there was darkness, now there is
  light; but also, where light was, there now is darkness. The mod-
  ern hero-deed must be that of questing to bring to light again the
  lost Atlantis of the co-ordinated soul.
  Obviously, this work cannot be wrought by turning back, or
  away, from what has been accomplished by the modern revolu-
  tion; for the problem is nothing if not that of rendering the mod-
  ern world spiritually significant—or rather (phrasing the same
  principle the other way round) nothing if not that of making it
  possible for men and women to come to full human maturity
  through the conditions of contemporary life. Indeed, these con-
  ditions themselves are what have rendered the ancient formulae
  ineffective, misleading, and even pernicious. The community
  today is the planet, not the bounded nation; hence the patterns
  of projected aggression which formerly served to co-ordinate the
  in-group now can only break it into factions. The national idea,
  with the flag as totem, is today an aggrandizer of the nursery
  ego, not the annihilator of an infantile situation. Its parodyrituals
  of the parade ground serve the ends of Holdfast, the tyrant dragon,
  not the God in whom self-interest is annihilate. And the numer-
  ous saints of this anticult—namely the patriots whose ubiquitous
  photographs, draped with flags, serve as official icons—are pre-
  cisely the local threshold guardians (our demon Sticky-hair)
  whom it is the first problem of the hero to surpass.
  Xor can the great world religions, as at present understood,
  meet the requirement. For they have become associated with
  the causes of the factions, as instruments of propaganda and
  self-congratulation. (Even Buddhism has lately suffered this
  
  MYTH AND SOCIETY
  degradation, in reaction to the lessons of the West.) The univer-
  sal triumph of the sectdar state has thrown all religious organi-
  zations into such a definitely secondary, and finally ineffectual,
  position that religious pantomime is hardly more today than a
  sanctimonious exercise for Sunday morning, whereas business
  ethics and patriotism stand for the remainder of the week. Such a
  monkey-holiness is not what the functioning world requires;
  rather, a transmutation of the whole social order is necessary, so
  that through every detail and act of secular life the vitalizing image
  of the universal god-man who is actually immanent and effective in
  all of us may be somehow made known to consciousness.
  And this is not a work that consciousness itself can achieve.
  Consciousness can no more invent, or even predict, an effective
  symbol than foretell or control tonight's dream. The whole thing
  is being worked out on another level, through what is bound to
  be a long and very frightening process, not only in the depths of
  every living psyche in the modern world, but also on those titanic
  battlefields into which the whole planet has lately been con-
  verted. We are watching the terrible clash of the Symplegades,
  through which the soul must pass—identified with neither side-
  But there is one thing we may know, namely, that as the new
  symbols become visible, they will not be identical in the various
  parts of the globe; the circumstances of local life, race, and tradi-
  tion must all be compounded in the effective forms. Therefore, it
  is necessary for men to understand, and be able to see, that
  through various symbols the same redemption is revealed, "Truth
  is one," we read in the Vcdas; "the sages call it by many names."
  A single song is being inflected through all the colorations of the
  human choir. General propaganda for one or another of the local
  solutions, therefore, is superfluous—or much rather, a menace.
  The way to become human is to learn to recognize the lineaments
  of God in all of the wonderful modulations of the face of man.
  With this we come to the final hint of what the specific orien-
  tation of the modern hero-task must be, and discover the real
  cause for the disintegration of all of our inherited religious formu-
  lae. The center of gravity, that is to say, of the realm of mystery and
  danger has definitely shifted- Kor the primitive hunting peoples of
  THE HERO TODAY
  those remotest human millenniums when the sabertooth tiger,
  the mammoth, and the lesser presences of the animal kingdom
  were the primary manifestations of what was alien—the source
  at once of danger, and of sustenance—the great human problem
  was to become linked psychologically to the task of sharing the
  wilderness with these beings. An unconscious identification took
  place, and this was finally rendered conscious in the half-human,
  half-animal, figures of the mythological totem-ancestors. The an-
  imals became the tutors of humanity. Through acts of literal imi-
  tation—such as today appear only on the children's playground
  (or in the madhouse) —an effective annihilation of the human
  ego was accomplished and society achieved a cohesive organiza-
  tion. Similarly, the tribes supporting themselves on plant-food
  became cathected to the plant; the life-rituals of planting and
  reaping were identified with those of human procreation, birth,
  and progress to maturity. Both the plant and the animal worlds,
  however, were in the end brought under social control. Where-
  upon the great field of instructive wonder shifted—to the skies—
  and mankind enacted the great pantomime of the sacred moon-
  king, the sacred sun-king, the hieratic, planetary state, and the
  symbolic festivals of the world-regulating spheres.
  Today all of these mysteries have lost their force; their sym-
  bols no longer interest our psyche. The notion of a cosmic law,
  which all existence serves and to which man himself must bend,
  has long since passed through the preliminary mystical stages
  represented in the old astrology, and is now simply accepted
  in mechanical terms as a matter of course. The descent of the Occi-
  dental sciences from the heavens to the earth (from seventeenth-
  century astronomy to nineteenth-century biology), and their con-
  centration today, at last, on man himself (in twentieth-century
  anthropology and psychology), mark the path of a prodigious
  transfer of the focal point of human wonder. Not the animal
  world, not the plant world, not the miracle of the spheres, but
  man himself is now the crucial mystery. Man is that alien pres-
  ence with whom the forces of egoism must come to terms,
  through whom the ego is to be crucified and resurrected, and in
  whose image society is to be reformed. Man, understood however
  
  MYTH AND SOCI KTV
  not as "I" but as "Thou": for the ideals and temporal institu-
  tions of no tribe, race, continent, social class, or century, can be
  the measure of the inexhaustible and multifariously wonderful
  divine existence that is the life in all of us.
  The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed
  the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is
  our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait
  for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rational-
  ized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. "Live," Nietzsche
  says, "as though the day were here." It is not society that is to
  guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And
  so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal —carries the cross
  of the redeemer—not in the bright moments of his tribe's great
  victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  A NOTE OX M E T H O D AND ORGANIZATION
  The following bibliography has been prepared for the 2004 by the
  staff of the Joseph Campbell and Marija Gimbutas Library, located on
  the campus of Pacifica Graduate Institute at Carpinteria, California,
  under the direction of Dr. Richard Buchen, Special Collections Librarian.
  '1 "he primary purpose in creating such a reference tool—the first biblio-
  graphical list ever published in any edition of the text of Joseph
  Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces—is to help readers, both
  first-time and those long familiar with this classic—identify and locate
  the wealth of sources that Campbell consulted in writing this book; by
  this reconstruction, the remarkable breadth of his reading—in mythol-
  ogy, ethnology, folklore, philosophy, psychology, contemporary, me-
  dieval, and classical literatures of the West, and religious scriptures of
  the world are—is illuminated in a newly accessible format for readers
  of the original book.
  From the earliest draft in 1944, this book went through many revi-
  sions before its publication by Bollingen Foundation in 1949. Camp-
  bell's letter to his friend, Henry Morton Robinson, dated 13 March
  1946 and preserved in the Joseph Campbell and Marija Gimbutas Li-
  brary at Pacifica Graduate Institute, indicates that he had originally
  planned to cite from a much smaller number of sources and to draw
  heavily instead a single reference work—The Mythology of All Races,
  published in the thirteen volumes, under the editorial supervision of
  Louis Gray and John McCulloch, between 1916 and 1932. Unfortu-
  nately for Campbell's early plan, the Macmillan Company had just
  bought publication rights to the set, and then refused to grant him per-
  new edition. By withholding this expedient, Macmillan inadvertently
  forced Campbell to track down new and heretofore unfamiliar sources
  to illustrate the argument of his book.
  This bibliography comprises all but a handful of the citation sources
  found in the second edition of Hero, published by Princeton University
  363
  
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  Press in 1968. It lists all works from which significant quotations are
  drawn, works which are cited more than once, and works which had a
  major role in shaping his thinking. Secondary citations, from which
  Campbell uses materials "as quoted in" a different source, have not
  been included; instead, the original sources for these texts are docu-
  mented. When the second, revised and expanded, edition appeared in
  1968, Campbell himself had revised almost all the citations from two of
  his key modern sources to reflect new scholarly editions published
  since 1949: quotations from works by C. G. Jung were now cited as
  they were being republished in the Collected Works ofC. G. Jung; and
  the citations from Freud's writings were now taken from the ongoing
  Standard Edition of the Collected Works of Sigmund Freud.
  The bibliography has four sections. The first section groups those
  citations for which the edition used by Campbell can be identified; ex-
  cept where otherwise noted, these sources have been verified by con-
  sulting general library cataloguing sources as well as the collection of
  Joseph Campbell's personal books, preserved at Pacifies Graduate In-
  stitute. The second section is composed of the articles Campbell found
  in journals and other periodical publications; most of these have
  proven more difficult to verify than the books in the first section. A
  third section consists of canonical works, which appear separately, or-
  ganized by specific religious tradition, to circumvent the difficulties of
  integrating them into a sequence based on a system, such as the previ-
  ous sections have employed, based on the alphabetized names of identi-
  fiable authors. Finally, the fourth section lists those sources Campbell
  cites without identifying the edition he consulted; these include many
  familiar literary works, included writings from classical antiquity.
  Richard Buchen, Special Collections Librarian
  The Joseph Campbell andMarija Gimbutas Collection
  September 2003
  I. PRIMARY SOURCES
  Anderson, Johannes C. Maori Life in Ao-Tea. Christchurch [N.Z.],
  [n.d.].
  Apuleius. The Golden Ass. Translated by W. Adlington. New York:
  Modern Library, [n.d.].
  '
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  Aristotle. Aristotle on the Art of Poetry. Translated by Ingram Bywater,
  with a preface by Gilbert Murray. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
  1920.
  Arnold, Thomas Walker, and Alfred Guillaume, eds. The Legacy of
  Mam. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931.
  Bain, F. W. A Digit of the Moon, and Other Love Stories from the
  Hindoo. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1910.
  Bastian, 
  Adolf. Ethnische Elementargedanken 
  in der Lehre vom
  Menschen. Berlin: Weidmann, 1895.
  Bedier, Joseph. Les legendes epiques: recherches sur la formation des
  chansons de geste. 3d ed. Paris: H. Champion, 1926.
  Bellows, Henry Adams, ed. The Poetic Edda. New York: The American-
  Scandinavian Foundation, 1923.
  Bhagavad Gita. Translated from the Sanskrit with notes, comments,
  and introduction by Swami Nikhilananda. New York: Ramakrishna-
  Vivekananda Center, 1944.
  Boas, Franz. The Mind of Primitive Man. New York: Macmillan, 1911.
  . Race, Language and Culture. New York: Macmillan, 1940.
  The Book of the Dead. See Budge, E. A. Wallis, The Papyrus ofAni.
  Breasted, James Henry. Development of Religion and Thought in
  Ancient Egypt. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912.
  Brhadaranyakopanisad. The Brihadaranyaka Upanisad: With the Com-
  mentary of Shankaracharya. Translated by Madhavananda. Mayavati:
  Advaita Ashrama, [1934?].
  Bryan, William Frank, and Germaine Dempster. Sources and Analogues
  of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales." Chicago: University of Chicago
  Press, 1941.
  Budge, E. A. Wallis. The Gods of the Egyptians. London: Methuen, 1904.
  , ed. The Papyrus of Ani. Translated by E. A. Wallis Budge.
  New York: Putnam, 1913.
  Burlingame, Eugene Watson, ed. Buddhist Parables. New Haven: Yale
  University Press, 1922.
  Burton, Richard Francis. See Thousand Nights and a Night.
  Callaway, Henry. Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus,
  in Their Own Words, with a Translation into English, and Notes.
  Springvafe, Natal: J. A. Blair; London: Trubner, 1868.
  Campbell, Joseph. "Folkloristic Commentary." In Grimms' Fairy Tales,
  by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, 833-64. New York: Pantheon, 1944.
  
  lilULIOGRAPHY
  R ] 1! LKK'.RAPHV
  Chavannes, Edouard. Us memoires historiques de Se-Ma-Ts'ien. Trans-
  lated by Edouard Chavannes. Paris: E. Leroux, 1895.
  Codrington, R. H. The Melanesians: Studies in Their Anthropology and
  Folk-Lore. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891.
  Collocott, E. E. V. Tales and Poems of Tonga. Bernice P. Bishop
  Museum Bulletin 46. Honolulu, Hawaii: The Museum, 1928.
  Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish. Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism.
  New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1916.
  . The Dance of Siva: Fourteen Indian Essays. New York: Sunwise
  Turn, 1924, c. 1918.
  .Hinduism and Buddhism. New York: Philosophical Library, [n.d.].
  . Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory
  of Government. American Oriental Series, v. 22. New Haven: Amer-
  ican Oriental Society, 1942.
  Curtin, Jeremiah. Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland. Boston; Little,
  Brown, 1890.
  Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated
  by Charles Eliot Norton. Rev. ed. in 3 vols. Boston: Hough ton
  Mifflin and Co., 1902.
  Diinnet, Ernest. The Art of Thinking. New York: Simon & Schuster,
  1929.
  Edda, Poetic. See Bellows, Henry Adams.
  Edda, Prose. See Snorri Sturleson.
  Eddington, Arthur Stanley. The Nature of the Physical World. Gifford
  Lectures, 1927. New York: Macmillan, c. 1928.
  Edwards, Jonathan. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: A Sermon
  Preached at Enfield, July 8th. 2d ed. Boston, 1742.
  Eliot, T. S. "The Waste Land1' (1922). In Collected Poems, 1909-1935.
  New York: Harcourt, Brace, [n.d.].
  Evans-Wentz, W. Y., ed. Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines; or. Seven
  Books of Wisdom of the Great Path, according to the Late Lama
  Kazi Dazva-Samdup's English Rendering. London: Oxford University
  Press, 1935.
  . Tibet's Great Yogi, Milarepa: A Biography from the Tibetan;
  being the Jetsun-Kahbum or Biographical History of Jetsun-Milarepa
  according to the Late Lama Kazi Daiva-Samdup's English Rendering.
  London: Oxford University Press, 1928.
  Firdausi. The Shah Nameh of the Persian Poet Firdausi. Translated by
  .James Atkinson. London, New York: F. Warne, 1886.
  Fletcher, Alice C. The Hako: A Pawnee Ceremony. Bureau of American
  Ethnology Annual Report. Washington: Government Printing Office,
  1904.
  Fliigel, J. C. The Psycho-Analytic Study of the Family. 4th ed. The
  International Psycho-Analytical Library, no. 3. London: Leonard
  and Virginia Woolf, editors; Hogarth Press and the Institute of
  Psycho-Analysis, 1931.
  Fosdick. Harry Emerson. As / See Religion. New York, London:
  Harper & Brothers. 1932.
  Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and
  Religion. Abridged ed. New York: Macmillan, 1922.
  Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In The Standard Edi-
  tion of the Collected Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 18, edited and
  translated by James Strachey et al. London: Hogarth Press, 1955.
  (Originally published 1920.)
  . The"Future of an Illusion. In The Standard Edition of the
  Collected Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 21, edited and translated by
  James Strachey et al. London: Hogarth Press. 1961. pp. 1-56.
  (Originally published 1927.)
  . The Interpretation of Dreams. In The Standard Edition of the
  Collected Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 4, edited and translated by
  James Strachey et al. London: Hogarth Press, 1953. (Originally
  puhlished 1900.)
  . The Interpretation of Dreams (Part II). In The Standard Edition
  of the Collected Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 5, edited and translated
  by James Strachey et al. London: Hogarth Press, 1953. (Originally
  published 1900-1901.)
  . Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis (Part III). In The Stan-
  dard Edition of the Collected Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 16, edited
  and translated by James Strachey et al. London: Hogarth Press,
  1963. (Originally published 1916-17.)
  . Moses and Monotheism. 
  In 
  The Standard Edition of the
  Collected Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 2:1, edited and translated by
  James Strachey ct al.. pp. 1-137. London: Hogarth Press, 19(34.
  (Originally puhlished 1939.)
  . The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. In The Standard Edition
  of the Collected Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 6, edited and translated
  by James Strachey et al. London: Hogarth Press, 1960. (Originally
  published 1901.)
  367
  
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  Freud, Sigmiind. "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality." In The
  Standard Edition of the Collected Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 7,
  edited and translated by James Strachey et al., pp. 123-245. Lon-
  don: Hogarth Press, 1953. (Originally published 1905.)
  Frobenius, Leo. Das unhekannte Afrika: Aufheilung der Schicksale eines
  Erdteils. Veroffentlichung des Forschungsinstitutes fur Kulturmor-
  phologie. Munich: Oskar Beck, 1923.
  . Und Afrika sprach. Berlin: Vita, 1912.
  . Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1904.
  Frobenius, Leo, and Douglas Claughton Fox. African Genesis. New
  York: Stackpole Sons, 1937.
  Gennep, Arnold van. Les rites depassage. Paris: E. Xourry, 1909.
  Giles, Herbert Allen. A Chinese Biographical Dictionary. London:
  B. Quaritch; Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1898.
  Ginsburg, Christian D. The Kabbalah: Its Doctrines, Development, and
  Literature. London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1920.
  Ginzberg, Louis. The Legends of the Jews. Translated by Henrietta
  Szold and Paul Radin. 7 vols. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication
  Society of America, 1911.
  Gray, Louis H., and J. A. MaeCulloch, eds. The Mythology of All Races.
  13 vols. Boston: Archaeological Institute of America; Marshall Jones
  Company, 1916-32. Contents:
  I. Greek and Roman, by William Sherwood Fox. 1916.
  II. Eddie, by J. A. MacCulloch. 1930.
  III. Celtic, by J. A. MacCulloch; Slavic by Jan Machal. 1918.
  IV. Finno-Ugric, Siberian, by Uno Holmbcrg. 1927.
  V. Semitic, by S. H. Langdon. 1931.
  VI. Indian, by A. B. Keith; Iranian, by A. J. Carnvy. 1917.
  VII. Armenian, by M. H. Ananikian; African, by Alice Werner. 1925.
  VIII. Chinese, by J. C. Ferguson; Japanese, by Masaharu Anesaki.
  1928.
  IX. Oceanic, by R. B. Dixon. 1916.
  X. North American, by H. R. Alexander. 1916.
  XI. Latin-American, by H. B. Alexander. 1920.
  XII. Egyptian, by W. M. Miillcr [n.d.]; Indo-Chinese, by J. G.
  Scott. 1918.
  XIII. Complete index to volumes I-XII. 1932.
  Grey, George. Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional History
  of the New Zealand Race, as Furnished by Their Priests and Chiefs.
  London: J. Murray, 1855.
  368
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhetm Grimm. Grimms-Fairy Tales. Unabridged
  edition. New York: Pantheon Books, 1944.
  Grmnell, George Bird. Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie
  People. New York: Scribner, 1892.
  Guest, Charlotte. See Mabinogion.
  Gutmann, Bruno. Volksbuch der Wadschagga: Sagen, Marcheti, Fabeln
  und Schwiinke den Dschagganegern narherzahlt. Leipzig; Verlag der
  F.vang.-Luth. Mission, 1914.
  Harrison, Jane Ellen. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion.
  3d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922. (Reprinted in
  a Mythos series edition by Princeton University Press, 1991.)
  . Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion. 2d rev
  ed. London: Cambridge University Press, 1927.
  Harva, Uno. Der Baum des Lebe'ns. Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian
  Toimituksia, Annales; Sarja B, Nide 16, 3. Helsinki: Suomalainen
  Tiedeakatemia, 1923.
  . Die religib'sen Vorstellungen der altaischen ViJlker. FF Communi-
  cations no. 125. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1938.
  Hastings, James, ed. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. 13 vols.
  New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928.
  Hearn. Lafcadio. Japan, an Attempt at Interpretation. New York:
  Grosset ik Dunlap, 1904.
  Hirth, Friedrich. The Ancient History of China to the End of the Chou
  Dynasty. New York: Columbia University Press, 1908.
  Holmberg, Uno. See Harva, Una
  Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Samuel Henry Butcher and
  Andrew- Lang, 2d ed. London: Macmillan, 1879.
  Hull, Eleanor. The Cuchullin Saga in Irish Literature: Being a Collection of
  Stories Relating to the Hero Cuchullin. London; D. Nutt, 1898.
  Hume, Robert Ernest, ed. The Thirteen Principal Upanishads, Translated
  from the Sanskrit with an Outline of the Philosophy of the Upanishads.
  2d ed. London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1931.
  Jeffers, Robinson. The Roan Stallion, and Other Poems. New York: Horace
  Liveright, 1925.
  Jensen, Peter Christian Albrecht. Assyrisch-Habylonische My then
  undEpen. Kellinschriftliche Bibliothek Bd. VI, I. Berlin: Reuther &
  Keichard, 1900.
  Jezower, Ignaz. Das Buch der Traume. Berlin: E. Rowohlt, 1928.
  Johnson, Obed Simon. A Study of Chinese Alchemy. 
  Shanghai,
  China, 1928.
  369
  
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. New York: Viking 1'ress, 1939.
  . A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Viking
  Press, 1964.
  . Ulysses. New York: Modern Library, 1942.
  Joyce, Thomas Athol. Mexican Archaeology, an Introduction to the
  Archaeology of the Mexican and Mayan Civilizations of Pre-Spanish
  America. London: P. L. Warner, 1914.
  Jung, C. G. "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious." In the Col-
  lected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 9, part i, edited by Herbert Read
  et ai, translated by R. F. C. Hull, pp. 3—tl. Bollingen Series 20.
  New York: Pantheon, 1959. (Originally written 1934. Second edi-
  tion published 1969 by Princeton University Press.)
  . The Integration of the Personality. New York, Toronto: Farrar
  and Rinehart, 1939. Republished, with revisions, in vol. 9, part i, of
  the Collected Works.
  . "On Psychic Energy." In the Collected Works ofC. G. Jung, vol.
  8, edited by Herbert Read et al., translated by R. F. C. Hull,
  pp. 3-66. Bollingen Series 20. New York: Pantheon, 1960. Originally
  written 1928; second edition, 1969 by Princeton University Press.
  . Psychology and Alchemy. In the Collected Works ofC. G. Jung,
  vol. 12, edited by Herbert Read et al., translated by R. 1'. C. Hull.
  Bollingen Series 20. New York: Pantheon, 1953. Originally written
  1935-36. Second edition, 1968 by Princeton University Press.
  . "Psychology and Religion." In the Collected Works of C. G.
  Jung, vol. 11, edited by Herbert Read et al., translated by R. F. C.
  Hull, pp. 3-105. Bollingen Series 20. New York: Pantheon, 1958.
  Originally written 1938; Second edition, 1968 by Princeton University
  Press.
  . Psychological '1'ijpes; or. The Psychology of Indtviduation. Trans-
  lated by H. Godwin Baynes. London: K. Paul, Trench Triibner; New-
  York: Harcourt Brace, 1946, Republished as vol. 6 of the Collected
  Works ofC. G. Jung. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1971.
  . Symbols of Transformation. In the Collected Works of C. G.
  Jung, vol. 5, edited by Herbert Read et al., translated by R. F. C.
  Hull. 2d ed. Bollingen Series 20. Princeton: Princeton University
  Press. 1967.
  Kakuzo, Okakura. See Okakura, Kflkuzo.
  Kalevala. Kalevala, the Land of Heroes. Translated by William Korsell
  Kirby. Everyman's Library. London & Toronto: .1. M. Dent &
  Sons, 1907.
  370
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  Kalidasa. The Birth of the War-God: A Poem. Translated by Ralph T. H.
  Griffith. 2d ed. London: Trubner, 1897. [Edition not verified. The
  quotation is possibly from the 1879 edition.]
  Kato, Genchi. What Is Shinto? Tourist Library 8. Tokyo: Maruzen
  Co., Ltd., 1935.
  Kenopanisad. Kena-Upanishad, with Sanskrit Text, Paraphrase with
  Word-for-WordLiteral Translation, English Rendering, and Comments.
  Translated by Sharvananda. Mylapore, Madras: Sri Ramakrishna
  Math, 1932.
  Kimmins, Charles William. Children's Dreams. London: G. Allen &
  Unwin, 1937.
  King, Jeff, Maud Oakes, and Joseph Campbell. Where the Two Came
  to Their Father: A Navaho War Ceremonial. Bollingen Series,
  1. Richmondi Old Dominion Foundation, 1943. 2d edition, Prince-
  ton University Press, 1969.
  King, L. W. Babylonian Religion and Mythology. Books (in Egypt and
  Chaldaea, vol. 4. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1899.
  King.sborough, Edward King. Antiquities of Mexico: Comprising Fac-
  Simiks of Ancient Mexican Paintings and Hieroglyphics. 
  9 vols.
  London: R. Havell [etc.], 1831-1848.
  Klein, Melanie. The Psycho-Analysis of Children. Internationa! Psycho-
  Analytical Library, no. 22. London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf,
  eds-; Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1932.
  Knight, W. F. Jackson. Cumaean Gates: A Reference of the Sixth
  Aeneid to the Initiation Pattern. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1936.
  Koran. The Holy Qur-An: Text, Translation and Commentary. Translated
  by Abdullah Yusuf Aii. 2 vo!s. New York: Hafner Pub. Co., [1946].
  (Revised edition of this translation is available in paperback, as Al-
  Qur'an: A Contemporary Translatio?i, Princeton: Princeton University
  Press, 2001.)
  Kramer, Samuel Noah. Sumerian Mythology: A Study of Spiritual and
  Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium, B.C. Memoirs of the
  American Philosophical Society, vol. XXI. Philadelphia: The
  American Philosophical Society, 1944.
  Lang, Andrew. Custom and Myth. 2d ed. London: Longmans, Green,
  and Co., 1885.
  Lao-tzu. Lao-tzu's Tao and Wu Wei. Translated by Dwight Goddard.
  New York: Brentano\ 1919.
  Layard, John. Stone Men of Malekula. London: Chatto & Windus,
  1942.
  371
  
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  Loomis, Gertrude Schoepperle. Tristan and holt: A Study of the
  Sources of the Romance. Frankfurt a. M.: J. Baer & Co., 1913.
  Mabinogion. The Mubinogion. Translated by Charlotte Elizabeth Guest
  Schreiber. Everyman's Library. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1906.
  MacGowan, .1. The Imperial History of China. 2d ed. Shanghai: American
  Presbyterian Mission Press, 1906.
  Malory, Thomas. Le Morte D'Arthur. Even-man's Library. London,
  Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1919.
  Mather, Cotton. The Wonders of the Invisible World: Observations as
  Well Historical as Theological Upon the Nature, the Number, and the
  Operations of the Devils. Boston, 1693.
  Mathers, S. L. MaeGregor. Kahbala Denudata, the Kabbalah Unveiled.
  Containing the Following Books of the Zohar. 1. The Book of Con-
  cealed Mystery. 2. The Greater Holy Assembly. 3. The Lesser Holy
  Assembly. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co, 1887.
  Matthews, Washington. Navaho Legends. Boston, New York: Pub-
  lished for the American Folk-Lore Society by Hough ton, Mifflin and
  Company, 1897.
  Meier, Joseph. Mythen und Erzdhlungen der Kustenbeivohner der
  Gazelle-Halbinsel (Neu-Pommern). Miinster i. W.: Aschendorff, 1909.
  Menninger, Karl A. Love Against Hate. New York: Harcourt, 1942.
  Motley, Sylvanus Griswold. An Introduction to the Study of the
  Maya Hieroglyphs. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 57.
  Washington: Government Printing Office, 1915.
  Muller, F. Max, ed. Buddhist Mahayana Texts, The Sacred Books of
  the East; vol. 49. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894. Contents:
  1. The Buddha-karita of Asvaghosha, translated from the Sanskrit
  by E. B. Cowcll.
  2. The larger Sukhavatl-vyuha, the smaller Sukhavatai-vyiiha, the
  Vagrakkedika, the larger Pragna-Paramita-Hridaya-Sutra, the
  smaller Pragna-Paramita-Hridaya-Sutra, translated by F. Max
  Muller. The Amitayur Dhyana-Sutra, translated by J. Takaku.su.
  , ed. The Dhammapada. Translated by Max Muller. Sacred
  Books of the East, vol. 10. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881.
  Nelson. Ansgar. See Keinhold, Hans Ansgar.
  Nivedita, and Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. Myths of the Hindus &
  Buddhists. New York: Henry Holt, 1914.
  O'Grady, Standish Hayes, ed. and trans. Silva Gadelica (I.-XXXL): A
  Collection of Tales in Irish with Extracts Illustrating Persons and
  Places. London: Williams and Norgate, 1892.
  372
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  Okakura, Kakuzo. The Book of Tea. New York: Duffleld, 1906.
  Opler, Morris Edward. Myths and Tales of the Jicarilla Apache Indians.
  Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, vol. XXXI. New York:
  American Folk-Lore Society, 1938.
  Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Frank Justus Miller. The Loeb
  Classical Library. London: W. Heinemann, 1933.
  Pallis, Marco. Peaks and Lamas. 4th ed. London: Cassell, 1946.
  Parsons, Elsie Clews. Tewa Tales. Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore
  Society, vol. XIX. New York: American Folk-Lore Society, 1926.
  Peake, Harold, and H. J. Fleure. Merchant Venturers in Bronze. New
  Haven: Yale University Press, 1931.
  . The Way of the Sea. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929.
  Perry, W. J. The Children of the Sun. London: Methuen & Co., 1923.
  Phillips, Robert. American Government and Its Problems. Rev. ed.
  Boston, New Y'ork: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1941.
  Pierce, Frederick. Dreams and Personality: A Study of Our Dual Lives.
  New York, London: D. Appleton and Company, 1931.
  Pinkerton, John. A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting
  Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World. 17 vols. London:
  Longman, Hurst, Rees, 1808. [An important source for the myths of
  Lappland and Siberia.]
  Polack, J. S. Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders: With Notes
  Corroborative of Their Habits, Usages, etc. London: J. Madden, 1840.
  Ramakrishna. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Translated by Swami
  Nikhilananda. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1942.
  Rank, Otto. Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Develop-
  ment. Translated by Charles Francis Atkinson. New York: A. A.
  Knopf, 1943.
  . The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Interpretation
  of Mythology. Translated by F. Robbins and Smith Ely Jelliffe.
  Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series, no. 18. New-
  York: The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing
  Company, 1914.
  Reinhold, Hans Ansgar, ed. The Soul Afire: Revelations of the Mystics.
  New York: Pantheon Books, 1944.
  Roheim, Geza. The Eternal Ones of the Dream: A Psychoanalytic Inter-
  pretation of Australian Myth and Ritual. New Y'ork: International
  Universities Press, 1945.
  . The Origin and Function of Culture. New York: Nervous and
  Mental Disease Monographs, 1943.
  373
  
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  Roheim, Geza. War, Crime and the Covenant. Journal of Clinical
  Psychopathology Monograph Series, 1. Monticello, N. Y.: Medical
  Journal Press, 1945.
  Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Dante and His Circle: With the Italian
  Poets Preceding Him 
  (1100-1200-1300). A Collection of Lyrics,
  edited and translated in the Original Metres. London: Ellis and
  White, 1874.
  Sadananda. I'edanlasara of Sadananda ii'ith Introduction, Text, English
  Translation and Comments by Swami Nikhilananda. Mayavati: Ad-
  vaita Ashrama, 1931.
  Sahagun, Bernardino de. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva
  Espana. Mexico, D. F-: P. Robredo, 1938.
  Sankaracharya. 
  Vivekachudamani, of Sri Sankaracharya: Text with
  English 
  Translation, Notes and Index by Swami Madhavananda.
  Mayavati: Advaita Ashrama, 1932.
  Schoepperle, Gertrude. See Loo mis, Gertrude Schoepperle.
  Schultze, Leonhard. Aus Namaland und Kalahari. Berieht an die Kgl.
  Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin uber eine Forschungsreise
  im westlichen und zentraien Sudafrika, ausgefiihrt in den Jahren
  1903-1905. Jena: G. Fischer, 1907.
  Scott, David Clement Ruffelle. A Cyclopaedic Dictionary of the
  Mang'anja Language Spoken in British Centra! Africa. Edinburgh:
  The Foreign Mission Committee of the Church of Scotland, 1892.
  Shrichakrasambhara Tantra: A Buddhist Tantra, Edited Kazi Dawa-
  Samdup. Edited by John Woodroffe. Translated by Kazi Dawa-
  Samdup. Tantrik Texts, vol. 7. London: Luzac & Co., 1919.
  Snorri Sturkison. The Prose F.dda. Translated by Arthur Gilchrist
  Brodeur. New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1929.
  Spencer, Baldwin, and Francis James Gillen. The Arunta: A Study of a
  Stone Age People. 2 vols. London: Maemillan, 1927.
  . The Native Tribes of Central Australia. London: Maemillan, 1899.
  Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West. Translated by Charles
  Francis Atkinson. 2 vols. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1926-1928.
  Stekel, Wilhelm. Fortschritte und Technik der Traumdeutung. Wien, 1935.
  . Die Sprache des Traumes: Eine DarstcUvng der Symbolik und
  Deutung des Traumes in ihren Beziehungen zur kranken und gesun-
  den Seele. Wiesbaden: J. F. Bergmann, 1911.
  Stevenson, Sinclair (Mrs.). The Heart of Jainism. London; New York:
  Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1915.
  [ 15 L 1 UGKAl'H V
  Stimson, J. F., Edwin G. Burrows, and Kenneth Pike Emory. The Leg-
  ends ofMaui and Tahaki. Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 127.
  Honolulu, Hawaii: The Museum, 1934.
  Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro. Essays in Zen Buddhism. London: Luzac and
  Company, 1927.
  Taylor, Richard. Te ika a Maui, or, New Zealand and its Inhabitants.
  London,1855.
  Thompson, Stith. Tales of the North American Indians. Cambridge,
  Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1929.
  Thousand Nights and a N'ight. A Plain and Literal Translation of the
  Arabian Nights Entertainments. 
  Translated 
  by Richard Francis
  Burton. 10 vols. Benares: printed by the Kamashastra Society for
  private subscribers only, 1885. [Probably the edition referred to as
  "Bombay, 1885."]
  Toynbee, Arnold Joseph. A Study of History. London: Oxford Univer-
  sity Press, 1934.
  Underhill, Evelyn. Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development
  of Man's Spiritual Consciousness. New York: Dutton, 1911.
  Warner, W. Lloyd. A Black Civilization: A Social Study of an Aus-
  tralian Tribe. New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1937.
  Warren, Henry Clarke, ed. Buddhism in Translations. Cambridge,
  Mass.: Harvard University, 1896.
  Werner, Edward Theodore Chalmers. A Dictionary of Chinese Mythol-
  ogy. Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1932.
  White, John. The Ancient History of the Maori, His Mythology and
  Traditions. Wellington: G. Didsbury, 1887.
  Wilhelm, Richard. Chinesische Volksmarchen. Jena: E. Diederichs, 1921.
  Windisch, Wilhelm Oscar Ernst. Die altirische Heldcnsage Tain bit
  Cualnge. Nach dem Buch vm Lein
  zu Serie I bis IV. Leipzig, 1905.
  Wood, Clement. Dreams: Their Ma
  New York: Greenberg, 1931.
  Woodroffe, John 
  George. 
  Shakti
  Ganesh, 1929.
  Young, 
  Hugh. 
  Genital 
  Abnormalities, 
  Hermaphroditism 
  and
  Related 
  Adrenal 
  Diseases. 
  Baltimore: 
  Williams 
  & 
  Wilkins
  Company, 1937.
  Zimmer, Heinrich Robert. The King and the Corpse: Tales of the Soul's
  Conquest of Evil. Edited by Joseph Campbell. Bollingcn Series 11.
  ister... Irische Texte, Extraband
  •aning and Practical Applicatii.
  and Shakta. 
  3d ed. 
  Madr;
  
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  New York: Pantheon Books, 1948. (Rev. ed. available from Prince-
  ton University Press.}
  Zimmer, Heinrich Robert. Maya: Der indische Mythos. Stuttgart:
  Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1936.
  . Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. Edited by
  Joseph Campbell. Bollingen Series 6. New York: Pantheon Books,
  1946. (Rev. ed. available from Princeton University Press.)
  Zirus, Werner. Ahasverus, der ewige Jude. Stoff- und Motivgeschielite
  Der Deutschen Literatur, 6. Berlin und Leipzig: W. de Gruyter &
  Co., 1930.
  II. JOURNAL ARTICLES
  Capus, A. "Contes, chants et proverbes des Rasumbua dans 1'Afrique
  orientale." 
  Zeitschrift fur ufrikanische und oceanische Sprachen,
  vol. 3 (1897).
  Chamberlain, B. H. "Ko-ji-ki: Records of Ancient Matters." Trans-
  actions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. 10, Supplement (1883).
  [Copy in the Joseph Campbell Collection is reprinted, with different
  pagination, by the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1906.]
  Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish. "Akimcanna: Self Naughting." New
  Indian Antiquary, vol. 3 (1940). Reprinted in: Coomaraswamy: Se-
  lected Papers, op. cit.
  "A Xote on the Stick Fast Motif."' Journal of American Folklore,
  vol. 57 (1944).
  . "On the One and Only Transmigrant." Supplement to the Jour-
  nal of the American Oriental Society (Apr-June 1944). Reprinted
  in: Coomaraswamy: Selected Papers, 2, Metaphysics (Bollingen Se-
  ries 89, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).
  -. "Symbolism of the Dome." Indian Historical Quarterly, vol. 14
  {March 1938).
  Coomaraswamy, D. L. "The Perilous Bridge of Welfare." Harvard
  Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 8 (1943). Probably by Dona Luisa
  Coomaraswamy, wile of Ananda Coomaraswamy.
  Emory, Kenneth' "The Tahitian Account of Creation by Mare." Jour-
  nal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 47, no. 2 (June 1938).
  . "The Tuamotuan Creation Charts by Paiore." Journal of the
  Polynesian Society, 48, no. 1 (March 1939): 1-29.
  376
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  Espinosa, Aurelio. "A New Classification of the Fundamental Elements
  of the Tar-Baby Story on the Basis of Two Hundred and Sixty-Seven
  Versions." Journal of American Folklore, vol. 56 (1943).
  . "Notes on the Origin and History of the Tar-Baby Story "Jour-
  nal of American Folklore, vol. 43 (1930).
  Forke, Alfred. "Ko Hung der Philosoph und Alchimist." Archiv fur
  Geschichte der Philosophie, 41 nos. 1-2, (1932): 115-26.
  Meissner, Bruno. "Ein altbabylonisches Fragment des Gilgamosepos."
  Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, vol. 7, no. 1 (1902).
  Stein, Leon. "Hassidic Music.'" Chicago Jewish Forum, vol. 2,
  no. 1 (1943).
  Salmony, Alfred. "Die Rassenfrage in der Indienforschung." Sozialis-
  tische Monatshefte, vol. 8 (1926).
  III. CANONICAL WORKS AND RELIGIOUS SCRIPTURES
  [This list serves as an index to the main list of citations. Since
  Campbell used sources available nearly half a century ago, I have
  indicated the modern forms of the titles used by the Library of
  Congress and noted when reprints or more recent translations are
  available.—R. B.]
  Hinduism
  Campbell did not translate Sanskrit easily, but he had worked
  closely with three scholars who did. While writing The Hero with
  a Thousand Faces, he was editing the unpublished works and lec-
  ture notes of the Sanskrit scholar Heinrich Zimmer (who had died
  in 1943), and he was also corresponding with Ananda Kentish
  Coomaraswamy, Curator of Asian Art at the Boston Museum of
  Fine Art. He was also an advisor to a translation of the Upan-
  ishads (including the commentary of the great Vedantist scholar
  Sankarachara, fl. ca. 800 A.D.) by Swami Nikhilananda of the
  Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center in New- York (New York:
  Harper, 1949-59; reprinted by Dover Publications, 2003).
  Other translations of the Upanishads include Robert Hume's
  Thirteen Principal 
  Upanishads 
  (revised 
  edition 
  1931) 
  and
  Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan's The Principal Upanisads (New York,
  1953, reprinted Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1992).
  377
  
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (Brhadaranyakopanisad). Quotations are
  from The Brihadaranyaka Upanisad. Translated by Swami Madha-
  vananda (Mayavati: Advaita Ashrama, 1935?).
  Chandogya Upanishad (CMndogyopanisad). Quotations are from
  Robert Ernest Hume, ed. and trans, Thirteen Principal Upanishads
  (Oxford University Press, 1931).
  Katha Upanishad (Kathopanisad). From Hume.
  Kaushitaki Upanishad (Kausitakibritmanopanisad). From Hume, There
  are few other translations of this text.
  Kena Upanishad (Kenopanisad). Quotations are from Kena-Upanishad.
  Swami Sharvananda, tr. Mylapore, Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math,
  1932.
  Mandukya Upanishad (Mandukyopanisad), from Hume.
  Mundaka Upanishad (Mundakopanisad), from Hume.
  Taittiriya Upanishad (Taittiriyopanisad), from Hume.
  BRAHMAN AS
  Jaiminiya Upanishad Brahmana (Jaiminiyabrahmana Upanisadbra-
  hmana). This Brahmana is related to the Jaiminiyabrahmana. Quota-
  tions from an unknown source. [A text and translation with different
  wording by Hanns Ortel, "The Jaiminiya or Talavakara Upanisad
  Brahmana" {Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 16, no. 1,
  1894) is in Campbell's book collection and was cited by Zimmer in a
  lecture delivered at the Eranos Conference of 1938.]
  ARANYAKAS
  Aitareya Aranyaka (Aitareyaranyaka.J. The text quoted is found in a
  footnote attributed to Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, in Heinrich
  Zimmer's The King and the Corpse, p. 48.
  Bhagavad Gita (Ehagavadgita.). Quotations are from The Bhagavad
  Gita, translated by Swami Nikhilananda (New York, 1944).
  PURANAS
  Most quotations are from Heinrich Zitnmer's Myths and Symbol* in
  Indian Art and Civilization.
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  Buddhism
  The Mahayana sutras are translated from Sanskrit. Many transla-
  tions are available, although most of these derive from the Chinese
  versions, which can often vary from the Sanskrit originals. The
  Dhammapada was translated from the Pali language.
  Amitayur-Dhyana Sutra. (Amitayurdhyanasutra.) In F. Max Muller,
  ed. Buddhist Mahayana Texts.
  Dh;immapada. In Max Muller, ed and trans. The Dhammapada.
  Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881. Reprinted with revisions, Woodstock,
  Vt., 2002.
  Larger Sukhavati-Vyuha. (SukMvativyuha [Larger].) In F. Max Muller,
  ed. Buddhist Mahayana Texts.
  Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya Sutra. (Hrdaya, or Heart Sutra.) In F. Max
  Miiller, ed. Buddhist Mahayana Texts.
  Smaller Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya Sutra. (Hrdaya.) In F. Max Muller,
  ed. Buddhist Mahayana Texts.
  Vajracchedika ("The Diamond Cutter"). (Vajracchedika, also called
  the "Diamond Sutra") In F. Max Muller, ed. Buddhist Mahayana
  Texts. A more recent translation by Edward Conze was published in
  Buddhist Wisdom: Containing the Diamond Sutra and the Heart
  Sutra (New York, 2001).
  JATAKA (LIVES OF THE BUDDHA)
  Quotations are from Henry Clark Warren, ed. Buddhism in Transla-
  tions, and Eugene Watson Burlingame, Buddhist Parables.
  TANTRAS
  Shri-Chakra-Sambhara Tantra (Cakrasamvaratantra). Quotations are
  from Shrichakrasambhara Tantra: A Buddhist Tantra. Edited by
  Kazi Dawa-Samdup. (London, 1919; reprinted New Delhi, 1987.)
  Judaism
  Midrash, Kabbah, commentary on Genesis (Midrash Kabbah. Gene-
  sis). Campbell's source is uncertain. There is a recent translation by
  
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  Jacob Meusner, Genesis Kabbah: the Judaic Commentary to the Book
  of Genesis (Atlanta, 1985).
  The Zohar. Quotations are from C. G. Ginsburg, The Kabbalah, its
  Doctrines, Development, and Literature (London, 1920) and from
  S. L. MacGregor Mathers, Kabhala Denudata, the Kabbalah Unveiled,
  which uses a different versification from the standard one.
  Christianity
  The Bible. The King James version is quoted.
  Catholic Daily Missal. Probably Saint Andrew Daily Missal, by
  Dom Caspar Lefebvre O.S.B., of the Abbey of S. Andre. Saint Paul,
  Minn.: E. M. Lohmann Co., 1943.
  Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. Quotations are possibly from the Inter-
  national Standard Bible Encyclopedia, James Orr, ed., 1915.
  Roman Missal. Edition uncertain.
  Koran. Quotations match the text of The Holy Qur-An: Text, Translation
  and Commentary. Translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, (New York,
  1946). This translation is now available as Al-Qur'an: A Contempo-
  rary Translation, rev. ed. 2001, from Princeton University Press.
  Tao Teh King. (Tao Teh Ching, sometimes known as the Lao zu, after
  its author). Quotations attributed to Laotzu's Tao and Wu Wei.
  Translated by Dwight Goddard. (New York, 1919).
  WORKS CITED WITHOUT E o n
  Anthologia Graeca ad Fidem Codices, vol. II.
  Apollonios of Rhodes (Apollonius Rhodius). Argonautika.
  Aquinas, St. Thomas. Summa contra Gentiles.
  Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
  Carlyle, Thomas. On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History.
  Epiphanius. Adversus Heareses (apocryphal Gospel of Eve).
  Euripides. The Bacchae. (Gilbert Murray, tr.).
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  Flaubert, Gustave. La tentation de Saint Antoine.
  Gesta Romanorum.
  Grimms' Fairy Tales. "The Frog King." [Campbell's quotations from
  this story do not match either the text of the 1944 Pantheon edition,
  nor that of the older text (Hunt) translation. It is possible that he
  was translating from a German edition.]
  Heraclitus. Fragments.
  Hesiod. Theogony.
  Irving, Washington. The Sketch Book. "Rip van Winkle."
  Jeffers, Robinson. Cawdor (1928).
  Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason.
  Longfellow, Samuel. The Song of Hiawatha.
  Martial. Epigrams.
  Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spake Zarathustra.
  Plato. Symposium.
  Plutarch. Themistocles.
  Rumi. Mathnawi.
  Shakespeare, William. Hamlet.
  Sophocles. Oedipus Coloneus.
  Sophocles. Oedipus Tyrannus.
  Thompson, Francis. The Hound of Heaven.
  Virgil. Aeneid.
  Voragine, Jacobus de. The Golden Legend. No edition is given for this
  influential medieval anthology of the lives of saints. Campbell owned
  a 1925 French edition, La legende dore'e, traduite du latin par Teodor
  de Wyzewa (Paris: Perrin, 1925). A recent abridged translation (in
  two volumes) is The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints. W. G.
  Ryan, tr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
  
  INDEX
  NOTE: Explanatory notes on and s
  the text, as well as the plates, are g
  Abraham, 248n.l8, 298-300 (birth),
  300, 327-28 (death)
  Abraham, Karl, 237
  Actaeon, Greek myth of, 102-3,
  106,108
  Adam, 141 (androgynous state),
  207n.21, 248n.l8;— and Eve, 260
  (creation), 268 (Fall); see also Eve
  Adi-Buddha, the "Absolute,11 81n.51,
  138n.83
  Adonis, 131
  Aeetes, King, 190
  Aeneas, 28-29, 33,13On.6S
  Aeschylus, 131n.67
  Africa, 142
  Central, xvii (PI. X), 3, 72;-F.ast,
  63-69 (Warfiaga tale), 132-33
  (Basumbwa tale), 208
  (Uganda);-North, 259n.42
  (Berbers); nee also Egypt;-South,
  63-64 (Hottentot ogres), 83-84
  (Zulu tale), 218n.31 (Bushmen),
  280-85 (Wahungwe creation
  myth), xix (PI. XVIII),-West, 4
  (Fernando Po), 41-4.2 (Voruba
  myth); see a/so Edshu
  Agade, Akkadian city, 296, 315
  Agamas, Hindu tests, 104n.32
  "Aged of the Aged," cabalistic
  theme, 248
  Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew,
  58,220
  Akkad, 81n.51; see also Agade
  (PI. XXIV)
  urces of the figures that illustrate
  .-en on pages xiii to xxiii.
  Alcestis, play, 192
  alchemy, 67n.31; 174-75 (Chinese)
  Algiers, 261n.42 (Kabyl Berbers),
  310 (fig.)
  Algonquin Indians, 83n.56
  Amaterssu, Japanese siiii-iw>d(lr^s*
  195-97, 199
  ambrosia, 163
  Christianity, United States
  amorfuti, 109
  Anaa, Tuamotu Islands, 255-56
  (PaioTe's creation chart), 261
  Ananda, disciple of Buddha, 334-36
  Andaman Islands, 75-76
  Anderson, Johannes C, 251n.22
  androgynous gods, xvii (PI. X),
  140-12, 150, 156-58 (Bodhisattva)
  Ange", Marie (hermaphrodite),
  142n.98
  Angkor, see Cambodia
  Ani, Egyptian scribe, 344n.~
  Anthony, St., temptation of, 115
  anthropology, 361
  Amibis, Egyptian god, xiv (fig. 18)
  VnuniKiM. SunuTi^in judges of
  underworld, 99
  Apache Indians, 156, 261n.42, 323
  Aphrodite, 141,198; see also Venus
  Apocrypha: Gospel of Eve, 37; Gospel
  of Pseudo-Matthew, 286n.ll
  Apollo (Phoebus), 56-57 (myth of
  Daphne), 75, 122-25 (myth of
  Phaethon)
  Apollonios of Rhodes, 19On.8
  
  Apuat, Kgyptiar. god, xiv (fig. 18)
  Apuleius, 89n.l
  Aquinas, St. Thomas, 3, 85n.59, 219,
  250,327-28 (death)
  Arabia, South, 196
  "Arabian Nights," see Kamar
  al-Zaman, tale of
  Aranda tribe of Australia, I8n.l9
  Arapaho Indians, porcupine myth of,
  49, 110
  archaeology and mythology, 4
  "archetypal images" (Jung), 16-18
  Ardhanarisha, man iff! station of
  Shiva. 142
  Ares, (Mars), 75
  Argentina, xvii (PI. VIII)
  Ariadne, 21-23, 65
  Aristotle, 24
  Arizona, Navahos of, 356
  Arjuna, Prince, Hindu hero,
  214-17, 221
  Arnold, T. W., 198n.l48
  Arthurian cycle, 48^-9 (King
  Arthur), 184n.3, 305n.l4
  artist and neurotic, Rank's view of,
  59n.25
  artist-scientist, Daedalus as, 23
  Arunta tribe of Australia, 127-28
  asceticism, 357
  Ash, World (Yggdrasil, in Eddas),
  163, 218*1.31,347
  Ashur-nasir-apal II, Assyrian king,
  xviii (PL XIII), xix (PL XXI)
  Ashvaghosha, Buddhist poet,
  153n.l24
  Asia Minor, see Phiygia
  Assumption of the Virgin Mary,
  Feast of the, 110
  Assyria, xviii (PI. XIII), xx (PI.
  XXI), 81n.Sl, 99n.26,172n.l59
  Astarte, Phoenician goddess, 198
  astrology, 361
  astronomy, 361
  Athena, xiii (fig. 12)
  Atkinson, Charles Francis (tr.),
  59n.25, 66n.30
  Atkinson, James (tr.), 321n.29
  atonement with the father, hero's,
  116-38 <esp. 120), 150, 220,
  288-89
  Attis, Phrygian god, 38, 86 (Day of
  Blood), 131
  Augustine, St., 18n.2O, 147
  "AUM," Sanskrit holy syllable,
  119n.46, 247-48, 250;
  Australia, aborigines of, 126-130,
  142-13, 161, 162; see also Aranda
  and Murngin tribes
  Avalokiteshvara, Mahayana
  Bodhisattva, xvii (PI. XXI),
  138^.0 (description), 148-54,
  156-57
  Avesta, Persian sacred texts,
  321-22n.29
  Awonawilona, Zuni god, 140
  Axis, World, xix (PL XII, "axis
  mundi"), 127, 198; see also Navel,
  World
  Aztecs of Mexico, xix (PL XIX) 163,
  243, 288, 330-31 (feathered
  serpent), 338-10 (preparation of
  dead); see aha Montezuma
  Babylonia, xix (PL XXI), 81n.51,
  108n, 141n, 185-88 (Gilgamesh),
  284, 289-91 (creation myth), 305
  Bacchus, 175; see also Dionysos
  Bain, F. W., 162n.l45
  Bali, Krishna statue in, xvi (PL IV)
  Banks Islands of New Hebrides,
  76-77
  baptism, symbolism of, 233
  Barhosa, Duarte, 88n.62
  Bastian, Adolf, 17n.l8
  Basumbwa tribe of East Africa,
  132-33, 132n.73
  Bates, D., 129n.61
  Baucis and Philemon, 134
  Bayazid, Persian poet,
  149n. 116-117, 162n
  Beatrice (Dante's), 65, 67
  Beauty and the Beast, 4
  Bedier, Joseph, 298n.7
  Begouen, Count, xvii (PL VII)
  Belgium, see Flanders
  Bellows, Henry Adams (tr.),
  177n.l69, 346n.ll, 37Sn
  ben Yohai, Simeon, 246n.l8
  Berbers of Algiers, 261n.42
  Bering Strait Eskimo, 83
  Bernard, St., 114-15
  Berndt, R. and C, 128n.6O
  Bkagavad Gita, 27n.34, 154n.l25,
  214 (description), 217n.30.
  220n.35, 221n.38, 222n.39,
  327n.34, 337n.l
  Bible, 4, 99n.26 (pre-Hebrew
  sources); 230 (modern
  interpretation); see also Midrash,
  Apocrypha;-Old Testament:
  Genesis, 58n.22, 141n.90,
  155n.l27, 207n.21, 239, 260, 275,
  289; Exodus, 32n.40, 42n.57;
  I Samuel, 144n.lO4; Job, 41,
  135-36; Psalms, 231; Proverbs,
  55n.ll; Hosea, 146n.lll, 150n.ll8;
  see also Biblia Pauperum;-New
  Testament: Matthew, 146un.lO8
  and 110, 202n.l8, 213nn.27-28,
  220n.36, 326n.33, 349n.l2; Mark,
  145n.lO, 202n.l8, 213n.26; Luke,
  134H.75,145n.lO7,145n.lO8,
  240n.6; John, 39n.50, 40nn.51-52,
  2O2n.l8, 233n.6; Hebrews,
  132n.69
  Bibhu Pauperum, x (fig. 5), xi
  (fig. 8), xii (fig. 11)
  biology, 257. 351
  Black Tatars of Siberia, 273
  Blackfeet Indians of Montana,
  269-70 (creation myth); 300,
  312-14 (Blood Clot'lioy)
  William, 41
  blood, 42, 132 (Christian symbol);
  51n.8, 86 (Phrygian Day of),
  86-88 (Quilicare regicide), 128
  (Australian drinking of), 142, 163
  (Aztec drinking of)
  Blood Clot Boy, Blackfeet tale of,
  300, 312-14
  Bo Tree, Buddhist Tree of
  Enlightenment, 29-30, 31n.37,
  151, 177
  Boas, Franz, 17n.l8, 338n.4
  Bodhidharma, Buddhist
  patriarch, 154
  Bodhisattva, xvii-xviii (Pis. XI, XII,
  XIV), 18n.2O (Toynbee
  interpretation), 143n.l01
  (Dharmakara), 327, 328, 391.
  138-40, 138n.83,148-54,156-58
  (Avalokiteshvara-Kwannon)
  Boobies of Fernando Po, 4
  Book of the Dead, Kgyptian,
  340-44
  Boorah, Australian rite, 130n.64
  btirabu, horn of Fenians, 207
  Brahma, 31,165, 215
  brahminical thread, U9n,46
  Breasted, James Henry, 338n.3
  Briar-rose, see Sleeping Beauty
  Brittany, 305n.l4
  Brodeur, Arthur Gilchrist (tr.),
  265n.48, 346n.ll
  Bruckmann, F., xvi (PL VI)
  Bnmn,H.,xvi(Pl.VT)
  Bryan, W.F.,108n.35
  Brynhild, 57, 101
  Buddha, 18n.2O (Toynbee
  interpretation), 30-3lnn.37-38,
  32n.34, 33, 35, 177-78, 178 (Great
  Struggle); 38 (Immovable Spot),
  48, 51-53 (Four Signs), 80-83
  (Prince Five-weapons), 119, 134,
  138n.83,147,158n.l35,168, 239,
  288, 296, 302 (infancy), 357,
  333-36, 338 (death)
  Buddhism, 16, 81n.51, 77-78
  (Benares caravan parable), 81n.5)
  (thunderbolt); 104n.32,167n.l54,
  175n.l65 (Tantric symbolism);
  138n.83 (Mahayana and Ilinayana
  Buddhism); 138-40, 148-54,
  156-58, 252n.23 (Mahayana
  Buddhism); 143n.l01, 144n.lO6,
  147 (Milarepa), 158n.l35, 167,
  257, 343, 345 (cyclic uproar),
  
  Buddhism (cont.)
  359, lSSn.129, 197n.l4 (Japanese
  Buddhism); tee aha Bodhisattva,
  Buddha
  Budge, E. A. Wallis, xi (fig. 13), xii
  (figs. 6, 7), xiii (fig. 10), xiv (fig.
  15), xiv-xv (figs. 18-21), 344n.7
  Budur, Princess, in Kamar al-Zaman
  tale, 59-63, 69-71, 210-12
  bull-roarer, 127-28, 162n.l96
  (in Australian rite); 130n.67
  (in Greek rite)
  Buriat tribe of Irkutsk, 184-85
  Burlingame, Eugene Watson (tr.),
  78n.49, 81n.52
  Burma, Hinayana Buddhism of,
  138n.83
  Bin-ton, Richard F. (tr.), 58n.21,
  63n.26\ 71n.36, 212n.25
  Bushmen of South Africa, 217n.30
  Butcher. S. H. (tr.), 3530.1
  Butsudo, Japanese Buddhism.
  197n.l4; see also Japan
  Bywater, Ingram (tr.), 24n.29
  cabala. Jewish texts, 141, 248-50,
  248-t9n.l8 (explanation), 281,
  282-84
  Callaway, Henrj', 84n.58
  Calvary, Mount, 3O-31n.37
  Cambo'dia, Bodhisattva of moon
  chariot, xviii (PI. XIV); moon
  chariot, xs (PL XXIII)
  Campbell, Joseph (author), 65n.28,
  228n.2
  cannibalism, in Australian tribes,
  128, 129-130n.64
  Capus des Peres-Blancs, Le P. A.,
  133n.7O
  Caridwen, witch in Welsh legend of
  Taliesin, 182-84, 222
  Carlyl,-. Thomas, 66n.3O
  carni\'al games, symbolism of, 131
  castration, 37n.l7, 102 (complex); 8f
  (Phrygian rite), 127-28, 263 (in
  Celtic elements, 99n.26, 184n.3, 209
  (fairy lore), 305n.l4; see also Irish
  and Welsh elements
  Cerberus, 28, 89
  Ceylon, ffioayana Buddhism of,
  l:18n.H3
  Chamberlain, C. H. (tr.), 191n.9,
  196n.I3, 211n
  Chandragupta, Indian Maurya
  emperor, 297
  Charlemagne, 297-98, 330
  Charon, 90
  chastity, of Christian saints, 113-15
  Chaucer, 108n.35
  Chavannes, I'klouard, 294n.3
  Chavero, Alfredo, 243n.ll
  China,xk(Pl.XI),4(Honan),
  47-48,154-55, 252-53 (creation
  myth); 292-94, 320 (culture
  heroes); 338;—Mahayana
  Buddhism of, 137n.83
  (explanation), 138-40, 148-54,
  158n.l35; see also
  Avalokiteshvara;- Taoism: of,
  140n.87, 154,175, 255n.28;
  -Confucianism of, 154, 230
  Christianity, xix (PL XVII), 36-37.
  39-40, 54-55, 65-67, 82, 99n.26
  (sources), 128 (communion),
  131-32 (symbolism of rites and
  mythology), 134, 154n.l25, 158,
  158n.34, 168, 177, 184n.3
  (influence on Celtic legend), 198,
  199n.l5, 202, 240, 240n.5, 285,
  295n.4 (stages of development),
  321-22n.29 (Zoroastrian
  influence);-New England
  Puritan, 115-18, 137,
  145n. 107; — present-day
  Christianity, 144—17,I46n.lO9,
  233;-see also Bible, Dante.
  Gnosticism, Greek Orthodox
  Church, Jesus, Roman Catholic
  Cicero, 18n.l8, 243
  cinema, 11 ("heroes of the screen")
  circle, squaring the, 36
  circumcision, 10, 126-28, 162n.l46,
  clam wife, Tonga tale of, 288-90,
  294,318, 331
  Clashing Rocks, see Symplegacies
  Classical elements, see Greek and
  clown-devil, 273n.6O
  Coatlicue, Aztec goddess, 286
  Codrington, K. H., 77n.48
  Coffin texts, Egyptian, 338
  Collocott, E. E. V.. 290n.l4
  Colombia, folk tale of virgin birth,
  286-87
  colors, symbolism of, 41-42 (African
  myth), 121n.49 (Navaho myth)
  Columbus, 71
  comedy and myth, 23-28, 42
  compass points, Navaho symbolism
  of, 121n.49, 356
  Conchobar, king in Irish legend of
  Cuchulainn, 305-6, 316, 318
  Confucianism, 154,231
  Congo, witch doctor of, 3
  Coomaraswamy, Ananda K., xvii
  (PI. IX), 32n.39, 39n.49, 80n.50,
  81n.51, 85n.59, U8n.46,150n.l2O,
  153n.l24, 154n.l26, 259n.38,
  304n.l2, 325n.31, 326n.32, 354
  (interpretation of myth)
  Coomaraswamy, D. L., 95n.2
  t .HI fin •' I It'rtiit'ttatJTi, 18n..lo
  Cosmic Dancer, 213 (Nietzsche);
  see also Shiva
  Cosmic Egg, see egg, cosmic
  Cosmic Man, Woman, Eagle, Horse,
  Praying-Mantis, Tree, 218; see also
  urtdt'r w.-tpcctivt' nouns
  Cosmic Mother, see mother
  scheme), 249, 268 (myth and)
  Coyote, American Indian clown-devil,
  273n.6O
  Crated'," 2!>1
  Credo, Christian, 199n.l5
  Crete, 4 (archaeology); 13-14, 22-23
  (Minotaur); 130n.65. 230; see also
  cross, as symbol, 198, 241, 328, 331;
  crucifixion, xix (PI. XVII),
  30-31n.34,178, 267
  Crusade, First, 147
  Cuchulainn, Irish hero, 305-8,
  316-18, 321-33
  Cupid and Psyche, 88-89, 110
  Curtin, Jeremiah, I01n.28,159n.l36,
  208n.22
  Cybele, Phrygian goddess, 75, 86
  Cyclic-Uproar, Buddhist concept,
  *345
  Daedalus, 12-13, 22-23
  Dahnash, jmni in fvamar al-Zaman
  tale, 69-70, 210-12
  Dakshineswar, Hindu temple at, 105
  Dante, 20, 20nn.22-26, 65, 67,
  164, 168, 176, 239, 268n.5O,
  295n.4, 340
  Daphne, myth of, 56-59, 59, 114n.41
  de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Fernando,
  243n.ll
  death, personified, xx (PL XXIV),
  132-33 (Basumbwa tale), 199
  (Sumerian myth), 227-28
  (Abraham), 330
  (dream);-accounting for in folk
  mythology, 270;-of hero in
  various cultures, 329^4;-rites of,
  338-10 (Aztec); 338, 340-14,
  341^2 (Egyptian)
  Decalogue; giving of the, 32-33
  Delphic oracle, 75
  deluge myth, 35n.32, 172, 199n.l6
  (deluge hero); 243
  democratic ideal of present day, 358
  Deiupsf cr. dermDrnp, 108n.3o
  destrudo, 6, 72, 151-53
  devatas, part played in yoga, 188
  de Voragine, Jacobus, 114n.41,
  315n.23
  
  Dhammapada, Buddhist text,
  144n.lO6
  Diana, in Actaeon myth, 102-3
  Dimnet Ernest, 55n.l2
  Dionysos (Bacchus), 24, 75,
  119n.46, 131
  dog, reddish-haired, in Aztec death
  rite, 339-10
  Dorsey, George A., 49n.6
  "double," folk idea of spiritual, 161
  dragon, as God or Sin, 120; as father,
  326-27
  Dravidian influences on Hinduism,
  32n.29
  dreams, present-day, 5, 6-7, 7n.7, 10,
  19-21, 50-51, 57-58, 59n.25,
  67n.32, 72n.4O, 76, 92-95, 126,
  162, 330; other psychoanalytic
  comment, 16-19, 164-£5n.l50,
  237-38; see also shaman
  Dresden Codex (of Mayan
  hieroglyphics), 345 '
  Druidic spell, 206
  drum, 89, 185 (shaman's); 118n.46,
  158n.l33 (Shiva's)
  Durkheim, Emile, 354
  Duvall, D. C, 312n.22
  Dyedushka Vodyanoy (Russian
  "Water Grandfather"), 73-74
  Eagle, Cosmic, 218
  Earthly Paradise, 85
  Eddas, 42n.57,177n.l69, 218n.31,
  264-65 (creation myth); 265n.48
  (explanation); 346^.8 (dissolution
  myth)
  Eddington, A. S., 257n.32
  Eden, Garden of, 48, 268
  Edshu, Yoruba trickster-god, 41^-2
  (masquerade tale), 121n.49,
  133-34,182n.2, 220
  Edwards, Jonathan, 116-18,
  137, 320
  <'gg* cosmic. ~2z>5 (Polynesian and
  other myths), 261, 271 (Maori
  burlesque), 275, 277 {Kalevala),
  340, 343 (Egyptian)
  Egypt, xvi (PI. V), 66-67, 74n.43,
  130n.63, 199,230,257,258
  (creation myth), 263, 338 (Coffin
  Texts), 340-44 {Book of the Dead);
  see aha Osiris
  Eight Diagrams, Chinese
  symbols, 292
  El, Hebrew solar god, 134
  Eliot, T. S., 15n.l6
  Elphin, in Taliesin legend, 222-24
  F,mer, in Ctichulainn legend,
  316-18, 331
  Emory, Kenneth P., 255n.29,
  256n.3O, 258n.35
  F.ngland, see Arthurian cycle
  Enlightenment, Buddhist concept,
  31n.37
  Enlil, Sumerian god, xix (PI. XXI),
  263-64
  Eochaid, Irish king, 106
  Epiphanhis, 37n.45
  Erato, nymph of Lykaion oracle, 75
  Ereshkigal, SumeHan goddess,
  96-98,199
  ereuthophobia, 93
  Erin, see Irish elements
  Erlik, 91 (as Lapp underworld lord),
  273 (as Black Tatar devil)
  Eros, Greek divinity, 141
  Eskimo, xx (PI. XXIV), 3, 83,
  192-94, 229-30 (Bering Strait tale
  of Raven), 89, 338 (Greenland
  dissolution myth)
  Espinosa, Aurelio M-, 8On.5O
  "Eternal Ones of the Dream," 17-18
  (definition)
  eternity, Buddhist symbolism of,
  156-57, 158
  ethnolog\ and myth, 4
  Etruscan art, xiii (fig. 12)
  F.uahlayi tribe of Australia,
  lS0n.64
  Euripides, 25nn.31-32, 131n.66
  Europa, mother of King Minos, 12
  Eurydice, 191
  Evans, Walker, xvii (PI. X)
  Evans-Wentz, W. ¥., 147n.ll3,
  148n.ll5, 252n.23
  Eve, 48,141 (creation of); see aha
  Adam and Eve
  "Face, the Great," and "The Little
  249, 252
  fairy lore, 65,154-55 (Chinese), 209
  (Celtic and Germanic); see also
  family, psychoanalytic symbolism of,
  103n.31
  father, 4-6, 7n.7,103n.31, 111,
  119-20,143-^.4, 149
  (psychoanalytic view); 56-57
  (Daphne myth); 63-64, 120-22
  (Kavaho Twin Heroes myth);
  116-30 (atonement of hero and);
  217-20, 275, 325-27
  Faunus, 74
  Faust (Goethe's), 65, 67
  feathered serpent, pre-Aztec hero,
  330-31
  Fenians (Fianna), in Irish legend,
  207, 305n.l4
  Fenris-Wolf, in Viking dissolution
  myth, 347
  Ferguson, John C, 294n.3
  Fernando Po, West Africa, 4
  Fianna, sec Fenians
  Finn MacCool, Irish hero, 84, 206,
  207n.21, 305n.l4
  Finnish elements, 257, 275-80,
  316n.26 (Kalevala); see aha
  Kalevala
  Firdausi, Persian poet, 321n.29
  fire, theft of, 28 (Prometheus);
  168-70 (Polynesian myth);-as
  dissolution, 243
  fire sticks, in Eskimo legend,
  229-230, 231n.3
  Flaccus, in legend of
  St. Petronilla, 114
  flag, national, as symbol, 146, 359
  Flanders, early Renaissance
  triptych of, xix (PI. XVII)
  Flaubert, Gustave, 115n.43
  flesh, as Christian symbol, 39-40
  revulsion against, 112-15
  Fletcher, Alice C, 39n.48
  Fleure, Herbert John, 13n.l3
  flight of hero. 182-91
  Florida, discovery of, 174
  Fliigel, J. C, 103-4n.31, 168n.l55
  "folk mythologies," explanation of
  author's use of term, 268n.52
  foot, as symbol, 72n.4O;—taboo on
  its touching ground, 208-9
  Forke, Alfred, 174n.l63
  Fosdick, Harry Emerson,
  272n.59
  "Four Signs, The," Buddhist
  concept, 51-53
  Fox, Douglas C, 261n.42, 282n.9
  Fox, Reynard the, 273n.6O
  France, see Charlemagne; Bernard,
  St.; Martha, St.; Unicorn
  Frazer, Sir James G., 17n.l8, 54n.lO,
  86n.61, 87n.62,131n.68, 161n.l42,
  162n,143, 208-9 (on foot taboo),
  353 (interpretation of mythology)
  French Pyrenees, cave painting from,
  Freud, Sigmund, and Freudianism, 4,
  6,11,17n.l8 (on dream symbolism).
  46, 47, 37n.l7, 72n.4O, 75n.45,151,
  164-65n.l50, 180, 235, 240n.5,
  328; see also psychoanalysis;
  dreams, present-day
  Freya, Germanic goddess, 265n.48
  Frobenius, Leo, 13n.l4, 42n.57,
  83n.57, 144n.l2, 261n.42, 284n.9
  "Frog King, The" (Grimm), 45^6,
  68n.33, 110
  Fu Hsi, Chinese hero, 292
  Furtwangler, Adolf, xii (figs. 9a, 9b)
  Gaia, Mother Earth, 24
  Galahad. Sir, 305n.l4
  Ganges, Hindu goddess, 119n.46
  C iiiuiL'Iii".i^L ^'iiKvaiTiunl ( l i u d d n E i ,
  which also see), 29-32, 51-53
  Gawain, Sir, 108n.35, 314n.iy
  "gentle heart," requisite of hero, 108
  
  Germanic elements, 84, 99n.26, 177,
  196, 198, 209 (fairy lore), 264-65
  (creation myth), 265n.48 (gods),
  346-18 (dissolution myth); see
  also Ash, Brynhild, Grimm.
  Lorelei, Othin
  Gliayur, King, in K.amar al-Zaman
  myth, 62-63, 69
  giants, folk legends about, 207n.21
  Giles, Herbert A., 175n.l69,
  292nn.I-2, 294n.3
  Gilgamesh, 13On.65,171-74 (myth),
  199n.l6
  Gillen, F. J., 128n.57, 142n.98
  Ginnungagap, Ed die void, 264n.47
  Ginsburg, C. G., 260n.40
  Ginzberg, Louis, 33n.41, 164n.l48,
  300n.8, 33On.36
  Gnosticism, 134, 141, 162
  Goddard, Dwight (tr.), 175n,166
  Goethe, 65. 67
  gold, symbolism of, 119n.46
  Golden Fleece, myth of, 28, 48, 179,
  189-90
  golden touch. King Midas and,
  175-76
  Goloubeu, Victor,
  Gorgon, xii (figs. 9a, 9b)
  Gorochov, N.,311n.l9
  Gower, John, 108n.35
  grace, Christian, 233
  Great Father Snake, in Australian
  rite, 10, 126-28, 143, 149
  Greek elements, 18n.l8, 24-25, 28,
  33, 41 (Heraclitus), 48, 56-57
  (Daphne), 66, 67n.;"il, 73n.41,
  74-75, 81n.51, 82, 84 (Hesione).
  87n.62 (regicide), 99n.26,
  119n.96, 122-25 (Phaethon),
  130n.65 (culture continuity), 131,
  134, 141, H2n.95 (Hermaphrodite);
  163,168, 179n.l61, 175-76
  (Midas), 179, 189-90, 228n.l
  (Jason); 191-92, 198, 191n.l6,
  228, 230-31 (degradation of
  gods), 240, 257, 259n.38, 263
  (creation myth), 353 (Proteus),
  357, 358; see also Homeric epics.
  Minos, Minotaur, Oedipus, Roman
  elements, Theseus, Zeus
  Greek Orthodox Church, 110
  Greenland, 265n.48, 336
  Gregory the Great, Pope, 297, 328
  Gretchen (Faust), 65
  Grey, George, 263n.43
  Griffith, R. (tr.), 288n,13
  Grimm's fairy tales, 45-16 (Frog
  King); 57-58, 225-26 (Sleeping
  Beauty); 187 (magic flight),
  229n.2, 271n.S4; see also under
  Grinnell, George Bird, 27On.53,
  3O0n.9
  guard of threshold, 71-76
  Guest, Lady Charlotte (tr.), 184n.3,
  225n.4O
  guide of hero, 66-67
  Guillaume, A., 199n.ll6
  Guinevere, 94n.21
  Guinicelli di Magnano, Guido,
  109n.36
  Gutmann, Bruno, 64n.27
  Gwion Bach, hero of Taliesin legend,
  182-84, 222-25
  Gwyddno, in Welsh legend of
  Taliesin, 222-23
  Hafiz, Persian poet. 321n.29
  hakata, sacred dice of South African
  tribe, 283-84, 285n.lO
  Hako, Pawnee ceremony, 38-39
  half-man, type of ogre, 72
  Hamilton, Alexander, 142n.95
  Hamlet, 7n.7, 112-13 (psychoanalytic
  view); 221
  Han Hsiang, Chinese divinity, 47
  Harden, Laura, xvii (PI. X) '
  Harivanska, Hindu text, 182n.2
  Harrison, Jane, xii (figs. 9a, 9b)
  25n.32, 13On.65,131n.67
  Harrowing of Hell, 183; see also
  Holy Saturday
  Harva, Uno, 92n.4, 185n.4,
  271nn.55-56, 273n.6O, 311n.l9
  Hassidic sons, 137
  hate and love. Christian, 144-^-7
  Hathor, Egyptian god, 298
  Hauser, Friedrich, xii (figs. 9a. 9b)
  Havell, E. B., xvii (PI. VX)
  headhanting, in New Guinea, 143
  Hearn, Lafcadio. 156n.I29, 197n.l4
  Heaven, pres,ent-day significance of
  (Jung), 96n.24
  Hebbel, Friedrich, dream of, 92
  Hebrew elements, 32-3:3
  (Decalogue), 42n.57, 99n.26,
  127n.56 (circumcision), 134, 164,
  207n.21, 248-50, 248-49n.l8,
  252, 260 (cabalistic writings);
  321-22n.29; see also Bible: Old
  Testament, Jewish elements,
  Moses
  Helen of Troy (Fawt), 65
  helpers in hero's adventure, 63-71
  Hera, 302
  Heraclitus, 41
  Herakles, 84, 302,314
  Hermaphrodite, Greek deity, 141
  hermaphroditic gods, see
  androgynous gods
  Heroes (Mercury), ii (fig. 9a) 66,
  67n.31,134, 141
  hero, adventure of the, 33-36, 54n.l0
  (author's scheme); 227-28
  (summary); a't't' also monomyth and
  Herod figure, 285, 322
  Herodotus, 142n,95
  Heaod, 263
  Hesione, in myth of Herakles, 84
  Hiawatha, Song of, Longfellow's,
  origins, 83n.56, 275n.l
  Hinayana Buddhism, 138n.83
  Hinduism. x>i (PI. IV), xvii (PL IX),
  xviii (PI. XVI), 16, 21n.27, 38,
  104n,31 (sacred texts), 105-6
  (Ramakrishna), 113, 134, 153-54,
  158n.l33, 162 (tale of Land of
  Lotus of the Sun), 165-67 (battle
  of titans and gods), 165n.l51
  (trinity), 172n.l5y, 204. 239
  (sAa&i), 257 (cosmic egg), 104-6,
  157n.l32 (Kali); 118, 118-19n.46,
  142, 287-88 (Shiva); 156, 231
  ("lingam"); 119n.46, 247-48, 250
  ("AUM"); 258-59, 275 (creation
  myth); 179-82, 207n.21, 214-17,
  302-304, 324-25, 337 (Krishna);
  sec also Krishna, Shiva, yoga
  Hinkle, Beatrice M. (tr.), 10n.l2
  Hirth, Friedrich, 292nn.l-2
  Holdfast, type of father-tyrant, 14,
  88a.62,3l,317,3I8,325
  Holmberg, Uno, 309n.l9; see also
  Harva, Uno
  Holy Ghost, 67, 232
  Holy Saturday, Roman Catholic rite
  of, 231-33
  Homeric epics, 237; 214n.29 (Iliad);
  228, 259 (Odyssey)
  Honan, archaeological work in, 3
  Honduras, Mayan art from,
  xx (PI. XXII)
  Horse, Cosmic, 218
  Horus, Egyptian god, xii (fig. 6), xiii
  (fig. 10),xiv-xv(fig. 19)
  Hottentots, ogres of, 71-72
  Hound of Heaven, (Thompson's
  poem), 55, 189
  lisi Wang Mu, Chinese fairy-
  goddess, 134-35
  Huang Ti, Chinese "Yellow
  Emperor," 35, 291-92 (story of),
  294, 318
  Hull, Eleanor (tr.), 304n.l5,
  305nn.l6-17, 306n.l8, 316n.27,
  33 In.46
  Hume, Robert Ernest (tr.), 21n.27
  Iblis, Mohammedan fallen angel,
  68n.34
  Iceland, Eddie creation myth of,
  Ichijo-Kaneyoshi, 197n.l4
  lfrit, kind of jinni in Kamar al-Zaman
  tale, 69, 210-11
  divinity, 195
  
  Iliad, 214n.29
  immortality, Hindu myth of churning
  for, 165-67; hero's quest for,
  171-75; see also imperishability,
  indestructibility
  Immovable Spot,"see Navel, World
  imperishability, 168, 225; see also
  immortality, indestructibility
  Inatina, Sumerian myth of. 96—99,
  120n.48, 198-200
  incest, 295, 326; see also Oedipus
  indestructibility, 160-62; see also
  immortality, imperishability
  India, xvii (PL IX), xviii (PL XVI)
  77-78 (Benares caravan legend),
  86-87 (Quilicare regicide), 105-6,
  172n.l59, 219, 243^6 (Jainism);
  252 (Samkha philosophers), 297
  (Chandragupta), 321n.29 (Parsis);
  see also Buddha. Hinduism, yoga
  Indian Ocean, islands and lands
  bordering, 130
  Indians, of North America, 89,
  130n.65, 156, 196, 273n.60, 356;
  Algonquins, 83n.56; Apache, 156,
  261n.42, 321; Arapah<i, 49, 110;
  Blaekfeet, 269-71 (creation myth),
  300, 312-14 (Blood Clot Boy);
  Iroquois, 83n.56; Navaho, 64-65,
  85,120-22,134 (Twin Heroes);
  356; Pawnee, 38-39; Pueblo, 300,
  304-5, 319-20, 333 (Water Jar
  boy); Sioux; 239; Zuni, 139; see
  oho Aztecs;-of Central America,
  Maya, 345-46;-of South
  America, Colombia, 286-87; Peru,
  132, 134, 167, 219, 221; Argentina,
  xvii (PI. VIII)
  Indo-European system of mythology,
  321-22n.29
  Indra, Hindu god, 303
  infant exile and return of hero,
  296-300
  infantile stage of human
  development, psychoanalytic view
  of influence of, 5-6, 16, 92-93,
  160 (indestructibility concept), 164
  initiation, rite of, 8-10, 131-32, 149;
  10, 126-30, 142, 162, (among
  Australian tribes); 125-26
  (traditional idea of); 329
  stage of hero's adventure, 88-178
  intestines, Tatar folk belief
  explaining, 273
  introversion, willed, 59
  Iraq, 3; see also Assyria, Babylonia,
  Sumer, Mesopotamia
  Irish elements, 162, 184n.3, 265n.48,
  305n,14 (explanation of Irish
  mythology); 84, 205-7, 210
  (Oisin, Finn MacCool); 100-101,
  159 (Tubber Tintye); 106-8 (Niall
  and loathly lady); 305-8, 316-18
  (Cuchulainn)
  Iroquuis Indiuiis. H.>n.3ri
  Irving, Washington, 205n.2O
  Ishtar, Sumerian goddess. 171,198,
  297, 315
  Isis, xiii (fig. 10), xiv-xv (fig. 19),
  119f, 176f
  Islam, see Mohammedanism
  "Islands of the Blessed," Classical
  concept, 174n.lfil
  "Island of Jewels," Hindu concept,
  104
  Ixciuna, Aztec goddess, six (PI. XXI)
  Izanagi, Japanese deity, 190-91
  Izanami, Japanese deity, 190-91
  Izawa-Nagahide, 197n .14
  Jack-the-Giant-Killer, 314
  Jainism, 219, 243-^.6
  Jalal ad-Din Rumi, Persian poet,
  321-22n.29
  James, St., 212
  Jami, Persian poet, 321-22n.29
  Japan, 108, 154 (Taoist paintings),
  163,174, 257;—Mahayana
  Buddhism of, 137n.83"(explanation),
  137-10,147-53,196n.l4; see also
  AvalokiteshvaTa;-Shintoism of,
  154-55 (tea ceremonies), 189-90
  (Izanami myth). 194-96 (Amaterasu
  myth), 196n.l4 (explanation)
  Jason, 28, 82, 189-90 (Golden
  Fleece myth)
  Jataka, Buddhist text, 78n.49,
  81n.52, 178n.l70
  Jeffers, Robinson, 24n.3O, 218n.31
  Jehovah, 42n.57; see also Yahweh
  Jemshid, Persian king, 321, 325
  Jensen, P., 174n.l62
  Jessen, E. J., 91n.3
  Jesus Christ, 30n.37, 36, 38, 55, 119,
  196n.l08, 158n.l34, 213-14, 219
  (Transfiguration); 231-32,
  (Resurrection), 233, 239, 240,
  294-95, 295n.4, 305, 322, 348-19
  (sermon on end of world); (Biblia
  Pauperum cuts)
  Jew, the Wandering, 58, 220
  Jewish elements, 32-33,164 (folk
  legend); 137 (medieval ghetto
  lyric), 141-42, 248-50,
  248-49n.l8, 252, 260 (cabalistic
  writings); 146n.lO9 (modern
  rabbis), 240n.5 (personality of
  divinity); see also Bible: Old
  Testament, Hebrew elements,
  Moses
  Jezower, Ignaz, 92mU0-U
  Jicarilla Apache Indians,
  see Apache
  jinn (in "Arabian Nights"), 68-69
  (explained, 68n.34), 210-12
  Jivan Mukta, 153, I58n.l35
  Job, story of, 135-36
  Jocasta, 6; see also Oedipus
  John, St., 212
  Johnson. Obed Simon, 174n.l63
  Jonah and the whale, 95f, 49f
  Joseph, St., 134
  Joseph in the well, 95f
  Jotunheim, Eddie land of
  giants, 346
  Jove (Jupiter), 110, 124-25, 134,
  149n.l6, 288; see also Zeus
  Joyce, James, 24n.28, 28n.S5,
  99n.27, 142n.94
  Joyce, Thomas A., 331n.39
  Judaism, see Hebrew ami Jewish
  Jung, C. G-, 4, 10, 11, 16-18
  (archetypal images), 50n.7, 57,
  67n.31, 96n.24, 167n.l55, 188-89,
  237, 239n.l
  Kabbalah, see cabala
  Kabyl Berbers of Algiers, 261n.42
  Kakuzo, Okakura, 156n.l29
  Kalevala, Finnish epic, 274-80, 311,
  316n.26
  Kali, Hindu goddess, 38,105-6,
  157n.l32 (description)
  Kalidasa, 28Hn.l3
  Kama-Mara, Buddhist-Hindu god,
  30. 150; see fl/so Mara
  Kamar al-Zaman, "Arabian Nights"
  tale of, 59-63, 68-71,
  210-12, 214
  Kamchatka™, 271
  Kans, uncle of Krishna, 324-25
  Kant, 239n.2
  Karenina, Anna (Tolstoy's), 23
  Kashyapa, Hindu deity. 165
  katharsu, 24, 27
  Kate, Genchi, 197n.l4
  Kazi Dawa-Samdup, Lama, 147n.ll3,
  167n.l54
  Khnemu, Egyptian deity,
  Kimmins, C.W., 72n.40,126n.52,
  137n
  King, Jeff, 65n.28
  King, L.W. (tr.), 267n.49
  Kingsborough, LoTd, 243n.U,
  287n.l2
  Kirby, W. F. (tr.), 275-76n.l
  Kirghiz of Centra] Asia, 271
  Klein, Melanie, 160n.l37
  Knight, W. F. J., 13On.65
  Ko Hung, Chinese philosopher, 174-75
  Ko-ji-ki, Japanese text, 191n.9, 196n.l3
  Koran, 40, 63, 68n.34, 96n.25,
  127n.56, 133n.71, 134n.74,
  134n.77, 194n.lOS
  
  Kramer, S. N., 98n.26, 2OOn.l7,
  264n.46
  Kraseninnikov, S., 271n.S5
  Krishna, xvi (PI. IV), 178-82,
  207n.21 (Muchukunda myth);
  214-17, 219-20 (Arjuna myth);
  243, 302-304 (boyhood), 306,
  308n.l8, 323-25, 326 (Kans
  myth); 365;
  see also Vishnu
  Kroeber, Alfred I... 49n.Q
  Kronos, Greek deity, 84, 91, 263
  Kunwa, Hindu god, 288n.l3
  140,148; see also Avalokiteshvara
  and Kuan Vin
  Kwan Yin, Chinese Bodhisattva, xvii
  (PI. XI), 140; see also
  Avalokiteshvara and Kwannon
  Kyazimba, Wachaga myth of,
  63-64, 133
  labyrinth. 13, 21-23, I30n.65
  Laius, father of Oedipus, 6
  Lakshmi, Hindu goddess, 166
  Lalitavistara, Buddhist text, 32n.39
  Lamberg, Comte de, xi (fig. 2)
  Lancelot, Sir, 95n.21, 305n.l4
  Lang, Andrew, 131n.67, 353n.l (tr.)
  Lan Ts'ai-ho, Taoist divinity, 154
  Lao-tse, 3, 175, 234; see also Taoism
  Lapps, 90-92
  laurel, Greek myth of, 56-57
  Layard, Austen Henry, xix (PI. XIX)
  Layard, John, 130n.65
  Leem, Knud, 90n.2
  Lefebvre, Dom Gaspar, 232n.4
  Leviathan, monster, 314
  libufo, 6, 72,151-52, 239
  "lingain," Hindu manifestation,
  156, 232
  "little people'" of Irish legend,
  305H.14
  loathly lady, in Irish legend. 106-8
  Logo; spermatikoi, 17-18n.l8
  Longfellow, II. W., 83n.56,
  275-76n.l
  l.rinnrot, F.lias, 275-76n.l
  Lorelei. 74n.42
  Lot's wife, 58
  lotus, Buddhist symbol,
  130-40, 158
  love, Christian principle of, 144-^7
  Lykaion, oracle at, 75
  Mabinogion, 184n.3; see also Taliesin
  MacCool, Finn, see Finn MacCool
  MacGowan, Kev. J., 292nn.l-2,
  294n.3
  MacGregor Mathers, S. L. (tr.).
  249n.l9
  Machal, Hanus, 74n.42
  machine in modern life. 358
  Madhavananda. Swami (tr.),
  218n.31, 259n.38
  Madonna, 6; see also Virgin Mary,
  mother
  Mahabharata, 167n.l52, 214n.29
  Mahavira, Jaina prophet, 245
  Mahavana Buddhism, 138r.83,
  252n.23; see also Avalokiteshvara
  Mahu-ika, Polynesian god, 168-69,
  170-71
  Makroprosopos, "The Great Face,"
  in cabalistic writings, 249-50
  Malekula, New Hebrides, 130n.65
  Malory, Sir Thomas, 49n.5
  Manabozho. Algonquin hero, 83n.56
  Manicheans, 162
  Mani-dvipa, abode of Hindu
  goddess, 104
  Mansikka, V. J., 73n.41, 74n.42
  Maori of New Zealand, 186-88
  (magic flight myth), 251 (creation
  chant), 254-55 (metaphysical
  genealogy), 262-63 (creation
  myth), 271 (cosmic egg)
  Maori, Rhodesian god, 279-81
  Mara, Buddhist-Hindu god, 30,
  151, 323
  Marduk, Babylonian sun god, xix
  (PL XXI), 263-65 (myth), 317
  goddess, 100-101;—sacred, 232
  Mars (Ares), 75
  Martha, St., legend of, 312
  Martial, 141n.88
  Mary, see Virgin Mary
  masquerading god, 220; see also
  Edshu, Krishna, Othin, Viracocha
  masturbation, Egyptian myth of
  creation by, 256
  materialism in modern life. ;loo
  Mather, Cotton, 115-16, 145n,107
  Mathews, R. H., 129n.63
  Matthews, Washington, 65n.28,
  122n.5O
  Maugham, W. Somerset, 209
  Maui, Polynesian hero, 84, 168-69,
  171 (fire myth); 182n.2, 300, 327
  MaxMiiller/seeMiiller
  Maya Indians, xx (PI. XXII), 343^4
  (dissolution myth)
  Mnwi!u:iah. |inm\ ;ili in K.imjii
  ai-Zaman tale, 68-70, 210-11
  Mecca, 40
  Medea, 189-90
  medicine man, xvii (PI. X), 3, 8, 161,
  (psychoanalyst as), 174; see also
  meditation in yoga, 355
  Medusa, xii (figs. 9a, 9b), xvi
  (PI. VI)
  Meier, P. J., 272nn. 57-58
  Meiji, F.mperor, 197n.l4
  Meissner, Kruno. 172n.l59
  Melanesia, 142, 237;-New Britain,
  270-71; New Guinea. 142;-New
  Hebrides, 76 (Banks Islands),
  130n.65 (Malekula)
  Menelaus, Greek king, 351
  Menninger, Karl, 146n.lO9,151n.l21
  Mephistopheles (Faust), 67
  Mercury, 134; see also Hermes
  A l'LM'potLini in. H1 n LL1 1. 1/1; sep /ilso
  Assyria, Babylonia, Iraq, Sumer
  Messianic banquet, 164n.l48
  Mexico, xix (PI. XIX), 208; see also
  Aztecs, Maya
  Meyer, Kuno'(tr.), 318n.27
  Midas, King, myth of, 175-76
  Midrash, commentary on Gem-sis,
  14.ln.91
  Mikado, ancestry of, 191-98
  Mikroprosopos, "The Little Face," in
  cabalistic writings, 247
  Milarepa, Tibetan saint, 147
  Milesians, early Irish, 305n.l4
  "Milk that Never Fails," Hebrew
  concept, 162-63
  Miller, Frank Justus (tr.), 27n..!i3,
  56n.l5, 125n-51
  Min, F.gyptian god. 74n.43
  Minos, King of Crete, 12-13, 22,
  54-55, 88n.62 (regicide concept)
  Minotaur, bull-monster, 12-14,
  22-23 (Greek myth); 15, 53, 54,
  230, 290 (Chinese hero), 312n.21
  on Greek myth, nee also Minos,
  Theseus
  mirror, svmbol in Japanese myth,
  195, 198
  Mithra, Persian god, 131
  modern literature and life, 23-27
  modern man, 4, 10-11,144-47,
  272-73n.59, 355, 356-360;
  see also dreams, present-day;
  psychoanalysis
  Mohammed, 35, 68n.34, 237
  Mohammedanism (Islam), 40, 58,
  68n.34 (jinn), 99n.26, 127n.56
  (circumcision), 147n.ll2 (holy-
  war), 149nn.ll6-17, 240n.5,
  321-22n.29 (Persia); see also
  Berbers, Kamar al-Zaman, Koran,
  Mohammed
  monomyth, 3 ^ 2 , 28n.35 (source of
  word), 34-35, 179, (diagram and
  summary)
  Montana, see Blackfeet
  -Moiite^uma, emperor of
  Mexico, 208
  moon, Hindu myth of eclipse, 166
  Moon Man, Rhodesian creation myth
  of, xix (PI. XVIII) 278-82, 289
  Morgon-Kara, Buriat shaman,
  184-85
  Morley, Sylvanus G., 345n.!)
  
  Moses, 32-33 (Decalogue), 35,
  85n.6O, 248-43n.l8, 318
  mother, xvi (PI. Ill), xix (PI. XIX),
  11 (role in U.S.); 5-7, 7n.7. 102-5,
  103-5n.31, 127n.56
  (psychoanalytic view); 111
  (revulsion against); 143-44, 149
  (in initiation rite); 66, 105-6,
  273-88, 344 (Cosmic Mother);
  see also Oedipus, woman
  Muchukunda, Hindu myth of.
  179-80, 192, 207n.21
  Muller, F. Max, xiii (fig. 14),
  144n.lO6, 352 (interpretation of
  mythology)
  Murngin tribe of Australia, 10,
  126-27
  Murray, Gilbert, 24, 24n.29,
  25n.32 (tr.)
  Muses, Greek, 75
  Mwuetsi, Rhodesian moon man, xix
  (PI. XVIII), 279-82. 289
  mysticism, 47, 92-93, 154n.l25,
  mythology (particular reference),
  3-42, 237-11, 246, 353-62
  Nagarjuna, Buddhist sage,
  153n.l24
  Napoleon, 66
  Narcissus, Greek divinity, 357
  Navaho Indians, 64-65, 82, 85,
  120-22,134 (Twin Heroes
  myth); 356-57
  Navel, World, concept of, 30
  (Immovable Spot) 31n.37, 37-42,
  47, 75, 85, 160, 174n,161, 309
  Nelson, Dom Ansgar (tr.), 37n,44
  Nemesis, 259n.3S"
  Neminatha, Jaina savior, 243
  Nephthys, Egyptian goddess, xiv-xv
  (fig. 19)
  Neptune, 199n.l6; see also Poseidon
  neurotic, contrasted to productive
  artist (Rank); 59n.25
  New Britain, creation myth, 267-68
  New England, see Puritan
  Christianity-
  New Guinea, headhunting in, 143
  New Hebrides, Banks Islands, demon
  snake of, 76-77;—Malekula,
  journey of soul, 141n-142n
  New Mexico, 356
  New Zealand, see Maori
  ngona horn and oil, m Rhod<-smn
  folklore, 281n.7
  Niall, Irish prince, and loathly lady,
  107-8
  Nichoks of Cusa, 82
  Nicodemus, 236
  Nietzsche, Friedrich, 16-17n.l8, 213,
  217, 358, 362
  Nigeria, see Yorubaland
  Night-sea journey, xi (fig. 5)
  Nikhilananda, Swami (tr.), 27n.34,
  10Sn.33, 252n.24
  Nile River, xiv-xv (fig. 19)
  Nimrod, in Abraham legend,
  298-300. 322
  Nirvana, 18n.20 (Toynbee
  interpretation), 31, 140, 150-52,
  157,158n.l35,335
  Nivedita, Sister, 304n.l2, 325n.31
  Nizami, Persian poet, 321-22n.29
  Noah, 172n.l60,174n,161,199n.l6,
  247 (cabalistic writings)
  Norse, Old (language), 265n.48;
  see also Eddas
  North, peoples of the, see Eskimo,
  Lapps, Siberians
  Norton, Charles Eliot (tr.), 20n.22,
  65n.29, 169n,149
  Catholic, 326-27
  nursery tales, 312; see also Grimm
  Nut, Egyptian goddess, xiii-xiv
  (fig. 17), 276
  Nyorth, Eddie deity, 265n.48
  Oakes, Maud, 65n.28
  Ob River, 4
  Obermaier, Hugo, xiv (%. 17)
  obstacle flight, 186-91
  Odudua, Yoruba goddess, xvi (PI. Ill)
  Odysseus, 53
  Odyssey, 228, 353n.l
  Oedipus, myth and complex, 4, 6,
  72n, 40, 103, 112-13,128, 192,
  326,328
  O'Grady, Standish H., 108n.35
  Oisin, Irish hero, 206-7. 210
  Old Man, Blackfeet demiurge,
  267-69
  Olympus, Mt., 163, 230, 240
  (symbolism of)
  "om," Sanskrit holy syllable, 138,
  140, 158, 218n.31; see also "AUM"
  Omar Khayyam, 321-22n.29
  Omphalos,'the World Navel, 75
  Onager, medieval monster, 314
  Opler, Morris Edward, 156n.l30,
  261n.42, 323n.30
  Orpheus and Eurydice, 191
  Orphic mythology, 257
  Osiris, 85 (myth), 86,131, 340-42
  (in journey of dead)
  Ostiaks of Siberia, 4
  Othin, Norse god, 42n.57, 177, 265,
  346-48 (dissolution myth); see
  also Wotan
  Ouranos, 261
  Ovid, 13n.l5, 27n.33, 56n.l5, 82n.54,
  103n.30, 125n.51, 134n.76,141n.88,
  142n.95, 209, 224n41, 286
  Padmanatha, Jaina savior, 245
  cosmic egg by, 256-57
  paleolithic art, cave painting
  (French Pyrenees) xvii (PI. VII),
  -petroglyph (Algiers), xiv (Fig. 17)
  Pallis, Marco, 166n.l53
  Pan, Greek divinity, 74-75
  Pandora's box, 21
  Papa, Maori goddess, 251, 262
  • Parker, K. Langloh, 130n.64
  Parshvanatha, Jaina prophet, 243
  Parsifi, Indian sect, 321n.29
  Parsons, Elsie Clews, 301n.l0,
  30.<m.l3, 320n.28, 332n.41
  Parvati, Hindu goddess, 104n.32,
  287-89 (myth)
  paschal candle, in Holy Saturday rite,
  231-33
  Pasiphae, Queen, in Minotaur myth,
  12-13
  patriotism, present-day, 357-58
  Pawnee Indians, Hako ceremony of,
  38-39
  Peaches, Chinese Feast of the, 155
  Peake, Harold, 13n.l3
  peist, Irish monster, 84
  Peneus, in Greek myth of Daphne.
  56, 57n.l9
  Penn, William, 145n.l07
  Perceval, Sir, 305n.l4
  Perry, Commodore (Matthew), 156
  Perry, W. J., 130n.65
  Perseus, xii (figs. 9a, 9b)
  Persian elements, 163, 208; 319-20
  (Jemshid legend), 320n.29
  (mythology-); see also Mithra
  Peru, prehistoric deity of, 133; see
  also Viracocha
  Peter, St., 113-14, 202, 213-14
  (Transfiguration of Christ)
  Petronilla, St., 113-14
  Phillips, Professor Robert, 145n.lO7
  Phoebus, Greek god of the sun,
  122-25; see also Apollo
  Phoenicia, 99n.26; see also Astarte
  Phrygia, 86 (Day of Blood); see also
  Attis, Cybele '
  physics, modern, and cosmic egg, 257
  Pierce, Frederick, 19n.21, 162n.l44
  pigmies of Andaman Islands, 75-76
  Pinkerton, John, 90n.2, 142n.95
  Plato, 31n.38 (Platonic tradition),
  141, 258, 271 (Platonic archetype)
  Pleyte,C.M.,xvi(Pl.IV)
  Pliny, 18n.l8
  Plutarch, 75, 93n.l2
  Polack, J. S., 271n.54
  pollen as Navaho symbol, 65, 82, 120
  Polynesia, 163; 84, 1(58-69,171,
  182n.2, 300 (Maui and fire-
  theft);—Maori of New Zealand,
  
  185-87, 249, 254-55, 262-63,
  267;—Tahiti, 258; — Tonga,
  286-88, 294, 318, 33I;-Tuamotu,
  Anaa Island, 253-54, 259 (Paiore's
  chart of cosmic egg);—Tubuai
  Islands, six (PI. XX)
  Ponce de Leon, Juan, 174
  Poseidon (Neptune), 12-13, 53,
  88n.62 (in Minotaur myth); 84.
  199n,16
  Potanin, G. N., 92n.4, 269n.56
  Praying-Mantis, Cosmic, as Bushmen
  symbol, 218
  Prince Five-weapons, incarnation of
  Buddha, 79-82 (myth), 238
  Prince of the Lonesome Isle, in Irish
  legend of Tubber Tintye, 100-101.
  108, 159
  Prometheus 28, 33, 34.169
  Protestant clergymen, present-day,
  146n.lO9
  Proteus, myth of, 351
  Psyche, myth of, 89-90, 110
  psychoanalysis, 4-12, 16-22, 46
  (blunders), 48 (birth anxiety), 57,
  59n.25 (Kank on neurosis and art),
  92, 93, 94-96, 103-4n.31 (of
  family), 111 (as hero adventure),
  119-20 (father-ogre), 152
  (technique), 160-61 (of infant),
  164-65n,150. (dream symbols),
  235-38, 326 (classic Oedipal
  day; Freud, Jung, Oedipus,
  Ro'heim, Stekel '
  psychology, (folk), 235-36, 359
  Pueblo Indians, myth of Water Jar
  boy, 299, 302-3, 317-18, 331
  Purana, Hindu texts, 104n.32 (place
  in canon); Matsya, 167n.l52;
  Kalika, 258n.37; Vishnu, 182n.2;
  Rkagavaia, 182n.2
  Puritan Christianity of New England,
  115-16, 145n.l07 (Cotton Mather);
  116-18, 137,318 (Jonathan
  Edwards)
  qabbalah, see cabala
  quadrature of circle, 39
  Quakers, 145n. 107
  Quetzalcoatl, Aztec "feathered
  serpent," 328-29
  Quilicare, Indian province, 86-87
  Radcliffe-Brown. A. R., 76n.46
  Radloff, W., 273n.60
  Ramakrishna, Sri, Hindu saint,
  105-6, 146n.lO9
  Ramayana, Hindu text, 167n.l52
  Rangi(-potiki), Polynesian god, 249,
  260-61
  Rank, Otto, 59n.25, 235, 297n.5
  Raven, Kskimo hero, tale of, 83,
  192-94 (tale); 200,238
  (interpretation)
  razor's edge, 21, 95n,21
  Re, Egyptian god, 338-12
  Red Ri'dinghood, 84, 196
  regicide, ritual, of Quilicare, 86-87
  Reichhold, Karl, xii (figs. 9a, 9b)
  religions in modern world, 144-47,
  357-59
  renewal rites, 131
  resurrection, 198, 231-32 (Christ's)
  Reynard the Fox, 273n.60
  tribe of, 278-82;—pre-historic
  rock painting, xvi (PI. IX)
  Rip van Winkle, 203-5, 209-10, 214
  Rishabhanatha, Jaina divinity,
  2-11-43
  rites of passage, 8-9, 21, 28, 352-53
  rites, seasonal, 131, 353-54
  Robsor,-Scott, W. D. (tr.),
  Rodin, Auguste, xvii (PL IX)
  Roheim, Geza, 5-6nn.2-l, 10n.Il,
  18n.l9, 91, 127n.56,
  128-29nn.58-62,
  142-43nn.98-99,143nn.l02-3,
  160-61nn.l38-U, 162n.l46, 235
  Roman Catholic Church, 19n.20
  (Toynbee on), 40, 67. 110 (Feast
  of the Assumption), 146n.lO9
  (priests, present-day), 231-32
  (Holy Saturday), 284
  (missionaries), 326-27
  (consecration of nuns), 351-52
  (and mythology); 118n.46,157,
  168 (the Mass); 113-15. 146, 47,
  312, 325-26, 355 (saints); see also
  Christianity, Oregon1, Jesus,
  Urban II, Virgin Man
  Roman elements, xvi (PI. VI), xviii
  (PI. XV), 18n.l8, 28-29, 33, 66,
  73n.41, 74-75, 89-90,110 (Cupid
  and Psyche); 99n.26, 102-3,116,
  108 (Actaeon); 13On.6I, 134.
  174n.l61, 198,199n,16, 229
  (degradation of gods), 241
  (philosophers), 286; sec also Greek
  elements, Ovid
  Rome, as hub of Christendom, 40
  Rose, Celestial, 176, 266
  Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 109n.36
  "Royal Rule," personified in Irish
  legend, 108
  Rumi, Persian poet, 147n.ll2
  Rurutu Island, can'ing from,
  xix (PI. XX)
  also Siberia
  Saadi, Persian poet, 321-22n.29
  Sadler, Michael E., xvi (PI. Ill)
  Sahagun. Bernardino de, 331n.38,
  340n.5
  sake, Japanese drink, 163
  Sakyamuni, title of Buddha, 31n.38
  Salmony, Alfred, 154n.l25
  Samkhya philosophers of India, 250
  Samsara, opposite of Nirvana,
  158n.l35
  Sargon, King of Agade, 294-95,
  313
  Savior, World, 31n.37
  Scandinavian myth, see Eddas
  Schocpperle. Gertrude, 184n.3
  Schopenhauer, 258
  Schultze, Leonhard Sigmund,
  72nn.38-39
  science, 3 (and mythology), 237
  {libido = eserg) i. 255 (creation
  scientist, Daedehi! as type of, 23
  Scott, David Clement, 72n.4O
  seasonal festivals, 353-54; see also
  carniva] games
  Seb, Egyptian Rod, xiii-xiv (fig. 14)
  Sekhmet, Egyptian goddess,
  xvi (PL V)
  Self, 27, 221-22, 225; 256-57, 273
  (Hindu creation myth); 355
  Sellers, Eugenie, xi (fig. 4)
  Seneca, 241
  serpent, feathered, pre-Aztec hero,
  328-29
  Serpent Kheti. in Egyptian myth, xv
  (fig. 20)
  Serpent Power of Shiva, 119n.46
  Set, Egyptian deity, 85
  Shahriman, King of Persia, 60-61
  Shakespeare, see Hamlet
  Shakti, wife of Shiva, 142
  xhakti, Hindu "power," 237
  shamans, 90-92, 161n.l41,
  184-85, 256
  Shankaraeharya, Hindu monk. 113,
  220n.37
  shark, archetypal, 270
  Sharvananda, Swami (tr.). 176n.l68
  Shastran. Hindu sacred texts,
  104n.32, 153n.l24
  Shaw, Bernard, 174
  Sheba, Queen of, 115n,43
  Shen Nung, Chinese hero, 290
  ' • ' I I I ' l C ! U I \ " ' J x . 1 1 
  ^ ! l i l l ' .
  1 • I! — "I I i. 
  1 
  ' i > .
  198, 203
  Shinto tradition of Japan, 195-97
  Shiva, xvii (PI. IX), 104n.32,118,
  118-19n.46 (dancing Shiva); 142,
  156, 158n,133; 165-66 (in creation
  myth), 285-86 (Parvati m>-th),
  322
  Shmti, Hindu texts, 104n.32; see also
  Upanishads, Vedas
  Shu-Heka, EK>-ptiari godi "i"-siv
  (fig. 14), 261
  
  Slam, Hinayana Buddhism of,
  138n.83; see also Cambodia
  Siberia, 90, 91,161n.l41,196;-Black
  Tatars, 271;-Buriat of Irkutsk,
  184-85; - Kamchatkans.
  269;—Ostiaks, 4,-Yakuts,
  307-9; — see also Kirghiz, Lapps,
  Russian elements
  Sicily, art of, xi (fig. 1)
  Siegfried, 57, 300
  silence. Buddhist concept of, 31n.38
  Simon, Fray Pedro, 284
  Sinilau, Polynesian hero, 286-88
  Sioux Indians, 237
  Sirens, 76 (fig.)
  Sirius, Dog Star, 198
  Slavic elements, 73, 74n.42, 99n.26;
  see also Siberia
  Sleeping Beauty (Briar-rose), tale of,
  57-58,101, 179, 225-26
  sleeping hero, lady, etc., 101; see also
  Brynhild, Charlemagne,
  Muchukunda. Rip van Winkle,
  Sleeping Beauty, Tubber Tintye
  Smriti, Hindu texts, 104n.32
  Sophocles, 7n.7, 142n.9S
  Spencer, Sir Baldwin, 128n.57,
  142n.98
  Spengler, Oswald, 66n.30
  Spider Woman, in Navaho myth of
  Twin Heroes, 64-65, 82,120
  Stein, Leon, I37n.82
  Stekel, Wilhelm, 17n.l8, Sln.8,
  67n.32, 75n.45, 93n.9,
  94-96nn. 13-23, 235, 33On.37
  Stevenson, Mrs. Sinclair, 246n.l3
  Sticky-hair, Hindu fable of, 79-81,
  82, 238, 357
  Stimson, J. F., 171n.l58
  Stoicism, 17-I8n.l8, 241
  Stokes, Wh., 3O6-8nn.l5-18,
  333n.40
  Sturluson, Snorri, 265n.48
  142-43; see also circumcision
  SiifLsii, I'vench. woof] I'Lirv in<'~.
  «»ii (PI. X)
  Sujata. girl in Buddhist legend,
  29, 31
  Sukhavali-Vyuha, The Larger,
  Buddhist text, 143n.l01
  Sumer, xvi (PI. I), six (PI. XXI),
  81n.51, 96-99, 198-200 (myth of
  Inanna); 130n.65,171-74
  (Gilgamesh myth); 199n.l6,
  261-62 (creation myth), 278, 313,
  321-22n.29
  sun, as symbol or personification, 39;
  64-65, 120-22, 134 (Navaho Twin
  Heroes); 122-25 (Phaethon), 133,
  195-98 (Amaterasu), 196 (goddess
  aspect), 229, 284-85; 300
  Sutra, Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya,
  139n.84, 153n.l23; Amitayur-
  Dhyana, 132n.86
  Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, 156n.l29
  swallowing of hero, 83-84, 184,185
  Swedenborg, Fmanuel, 93
  sword bridge, as symbol, 95n.21
  Syivanus, 74
  symbols, function of, 40, 219, 358
  Symeon, St., 36-37
  Symplegades (Clashing Rocks), 28,
  82, 84
  taboo, insulation against, 208-9
  Tahiti, creation myth of, 256
  T'ai Yuan, Chinese holy woman,
  140
  Taliesin, Welsh legend of, 182-84,
  222-25, 338n.3
  Tammuz, Babylonian god, 131
  Tanganyika, see Wachaga tribe
  Tangaroa, Polynesian god, xix (PI.
  XX), 254, 255-56 ("Ta'-aroa")
  Tantra, Hindu texts, lO4n.32,
  167n.lS5,175n.l65
  Taoism, 140n.87 (explanation), 154,,
  158n.l35,175, 255n-28; see also
  Tarascon, legend of, 312
  Tar-baby motif, 8On.50; see also
  Sticky-hair
  Tatars, Black, of Siberia, 271
  Tathagata, The, title of Buddha,
  332-33
  Taylor, Rev. Richard, 255n.27
  tea ceremonies of Japan, 155-56
  Ten, Egyptian king, 315 (fig.)
  the Ten Commandments, see
  Decalogue, giving of the; Moses
  Terah, mother of Abraham, 296-98
  I ' - I i t i ' ? i i i 
  : \ \ \ i ' ] h 
  •' r 
  { > • ' i 
  • .: 
  •
  elements
  Tezcatlipoca, Aztec hero, 35, 328-29
  thanatos, see destrudo
  Themistocles, 92
  Theophrastus, 142.95
  Theseus, hero of Minotaur myth, 15,
  22. 53, 65, 312
  Thompson, Francis, 55n. 13
  Thompson, Stith, 49n.6
  Thor, Germanic god, 265n,48
  Thoth, Egyptiangod, 67, 67n.31
  threshold, in hero's adventure, 71-82,
  201-12
  thunderbolt, as symbol, 81n.51, 134,
  158n.l35, 168,198
  Tiamat, Babylonian primal being,
  263-65. 371
  Tibet, Mahayana Buddhism of,
  xvii-xviii (PI. XII), 81n.51,
  138-40, 138n.83 (explanation),
  147-53, 157-58, 167; 147
  (Milarepa); sue also
  Avalokiteshvara
  time, symbolism of, 63-65
  Tirawa, Pawnee deity, .38-39
  Tiresias, in Oedipus myth, 142
  Tir na n-Og. Irish Land of
  Youth, 206
  titan-hero, role of, 312n.21
  Tokugawa period of Japan, 156
  Tolstoy, Count Leo, 23
  Tomobe-no-Yasutaka, 197n,14
  Tonga, folk tale of clam wife,
  286-88, 294, 318, 331
  Toynbee, Arnold J., 15-16. 18,
  154n.l25
  tragedy and myth, 23-27
  trance of shaman, 90; see also shaman
  Transfiguration of Christ, 213-14, 219
  transformation flight, 182-92, 259n.38
  tree. 31n.37 (World Tree), 38
  (Buddhist tree of life); 195,198 (as
  World Axis); 218, 218n.31, 250
  (Cosmic Tree); 307-8, 326 (Yakut
  tree of life); see also Bo Tree.
  Christmas tree
  trickster god, 182n.2; see also Edshu,
  Maui. Raven, Othin
  Tristan and Iseult, 305n.l4
  Trojan "labyrinth complex," 130n.65
  Tuatha De Danaan, Irish gods, 163,
  305n.l4
  Tubber Tintye, Lady of, Irish legend,
  100-101, 158
  Tubuai Islands, see Rurutu
  Twin Heroes myth of Navaho,
  64-65, 82, 85', 120-22, 134
  Tzontemoc, Aztec god, 336-37
  Uganda, East Africa, 208
  Lister Cycle in Celtic mythology,
  305n.l4
  Ulysses, xi (fig. 4)
  Umbrella, World, xvii-xviii (PI. XII)
  "Uncreate Imperishable," 8fi
  Underhill, Evelyn, 47n.3, 93n.8,
  154n.l25
  "Unicorn, the Captive," tapestry, xvi
  (PI. II)
  United States, 4, 11, 354, 355; see
  <.iiso modrm man, Hip van Winkle
  Upanishads, 21n.27 (explanation),
  104n.32 (place in Hindu
  canon); — Aitareyci Ara/iycika*
  149n.lI6; Brihadaranyaka, 150,
  218n.31, 259n.38, 337n.2; Chan-
  dogya, 257n..'il; Jaimuniya . . . ;
  -Brahmana, 192n.lO; Katha,
  21n.27, 134n.78, 172n.l59;
  Kaushimki, I58n.l35; Kenei,
  176n.l68, 219; Mandukya,
  204n.l9, 247n.l5, 247—18nn.l6-17;
  Mundaka, 258n.39; Taittiriya,
  260n.41
  
  Ur,
  eSui
  Urabe-no-Kanekuni, 197n.l4
  Urban II, Pope, 147
  Ushnish as itatapatra, Tibetan
  Bodhisattva, xvii-xviii (PL XII)
  Utnapishtim, Babylonian deluge
  hero, 172-73, 174n.l61,
  199n.l6
  Vainamoinen. hep", i.ii holr~i>tt't.
  273-78, 294, 309, 316n.26
  I 'ajrucchedika, Buddhist text,
  139B.85,152n.l22
  Vajra-Dhara, Tibetan Buddha.
  Sln.Sl
  Valhalla, 344
  vanGennep,A.,9n.l0
  Vedantasara of Sadananda, Hindu
  text. 252n.24
  Vedas, Hindu texts, 102n.32
  (place in canon), 2l8n.32, 218,
  321-22n.29, 358
  Venus (goddess), 89-90, 198; see
  also Aphrodite
  Venus (planet), identified with
  Cosmic Woman, 278
  Vikings, 265n.48, 344-45; see also
  Eddas
  Viracocha, pre-Inca deity, xvii (PI.
  VIII), 133, 134, 168, 220, 222
  Virbius, Roman deity, 131
  Virgil, 29n.36; see also Aeneas
  Virgil (Dante's), 20n.25. 67
  virgin birth. 273-88
  Virgin Mary, 6 (Madonna), 65 (as
  helper), 110 (Feast of the
  Assumption), 134 (in Bethlehem),
  283-84 (conceiving of Holy Ghost)
  Vishnu, 165-67,180-82, 214-17; see
  also Krishna
  •uiveka ("discrimination"), Hindu-
  Buddhist concept, Ifi, 151
  Wachaga tribe of Tanganyika,
  63, 133
  Wahungwe Makoni tribe of Southern
  Rhodesia, 278-82
  "Wall of Paradise," Christian
  concept, 82
  Wandering Jew, 58,220
  war, modern, 144-47, 357-58
  Warner, W. Lloyd, 127n.55
  Warren, Henry Clarke (tr.), 32n.39,
  53n.9,178n.l7O, 336n.43
  "Water Grandfather" in Russian
  folklore, 73-74
  Water Jar boy, Pueblo myth of, 299,
  302-3, 317-18, 331
  Weapon of Knowledge, in Buddhist
  myth of Prince Five-weapons, 80
  well of fire, in Irish legend of Tubber
  Tintye, 100-101
  Welsh elements, 182-84, 222-25
  (Taliesin legend); 184n.3, 305n.l4
  (explanation of Welsh mythology)
  Werner, E. T. C. 156n,128
  whale's belly, 83-87; 193n.ll, 228,
  230n.3 (Eskimo legend of
  Raven); 295
  White, John, 186n.5
  White Youth, Yakut myth of, 307-9,
  326
  folklore, 73 '
  Wilhelm, Richard (tr.), 253n.26
  Windisch, F., 306-8 im.15-18;
  333n.4O
  wine, as Christian symbol, 119n.46
  Wissler, Clark, 314n.22
  wolf, 84, 196 (Red Ridinghood); 345
  (Fenris)
  woman, 106 (symbolism in hero's
  adventure), 100-110 (as goddess),
  111-16 (as temptress); 219,
  273-88 (Cosmic Woman);
  314-16 (as hero's prize); see also
  womb image, 83-87. 275-90
  Wood, Clement, 5nl, 7n.7, 8n.8,
  126n.53
  Woodroffe, Sir John, 167n.l54
  Word made Flesh, Christian
  concept, 141-42, 158, 213-14
  World Axis, Navel, Savior, Tree,
  Umbrella, Womb, seemder
  world community, 144-16, 357
  Wotan, Teutonic god, 38, 42n.S7, 57,
  163,177, 220, 265n.48, 346
  yab-yum, Buddhist concept, 157,
  158n.l35
  Yahweh, god of Hebrews, 134, 164,
  168; see also Jehovah
  Yakut tribe of Siberia, 307-9
  Yang and Yin, Taoist concept, 140,
  158n.l35
  Yggdrasil, see Ash, World
  Ymir, Eddie primal being, 262-63
  yoga, Hindu discipline, 59,188,
  256, 355
  Yonibaland, Nigeria, xvi (PI. Ill), 13,
  41-42, 133n.73
  Young, Hugh Hampton, 141n.88,
  142im.95 and 98
  Yucatan, 4; see also Maya
  Zarathustra (Nietzsche's), 358
  Zen Buddhism, 156n.l29
  Zeus, 12, 81n.51, 84,131,134,168,
  199n.l6, 259n.38, 301; see also Jovi
  Zimbabwe, South African ruins,
  2K4n.9
  Zimmer, Hdnrich, 95n.21, 104n.32,
  118n.46, 142n.96,157n.l32,
  167n.l52,182.2, 258n.37
  Zohar, Hebrew cabalistic text,
  248-49n.lH, 258
  Zoroaster, 237; 319, 321n.29
  (Persian religion of)
  Zulus of South Africa, 83-84
  Zuui Indians, 1:39
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/_GM Books/World Building & Game Design/Gaming & Society/Campbell_Joseph-The_Hero_With_A_Thousand_Faces.pdf