The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Joseph Campbell

One of the great, yet popularly accessible, books of our century, The Hero with a Thousand Faces concerns the common reality of human beings, however separate we may be geographically and in appearance. It is a book to read when you are 17, 24, and again at 32, and once every decade or two following; a book to grow up with and to mature by, because more and more of it has relevance to an expanding knowledge of life. The first reading is an exciting revelation, opening our awareness to a common human inner life, introducing us to Western consciousness, particularly to Jung, and initiating those of us who live on this side of the globe with a perception of Eastern philosophy and spiritual tradition. I think for people of different cultures and traditions it must be equally or even more revealing of the West, a view of our antecedents as thinking and evolving people.

Campbell offers a vital overview of the maturation of mankind, defining the emotional and spiritual growth that each of us must experience in order to progress through the adventure that is human life and death. That there is a hierarchy of steps, predictable no matter what culture we live in, is one of the main themes of the book, offering a map of where we have been, where we are, and a guide to where we are going.

I cannot review this book without an admission. For my entire life I have been drawn to Native Americans, indeed to the indigenous people of every land, often with deep appreciation for their cultures, triumphs, trials and sorrows, but I have always had trouble with their myths. I hear a story of a bird creature, who may accomplish some remarkable feat, or the tale of the storm twins, etc. but there is nothing in either my own culture, such as it is, or my experience, which enables me to understand most of these stories, even vaguely. I need them to be explained in terms that I can relate to, but Campbell doesn't really do this. I remember a night that I spent in the Taos Pueblo at the time of huge celebration after President Nixon returned their sacred Blue Lake to the tribe. Standing in the dark beside an adobe wall, I watched people of every age join in dance; long lines of dancers radiating out from a great fire, like spokes in a giant wheel, rotating clockwise—as the sun revolves around the earth. Talking, laughing, or silently moving with arms embracing each other, shoulder to shoulder, people would drop out or step in. In harmony to the cavernous beat of drums, the feet of a hundred and fifty people touched the ground at the same time. Suddenly I was overtaken by a sense of loneliness, aware of the separateness of my own young culture in contrast to the wholeness and community of their ancient one. In the same way I stand in my ignorance, outside of myth stories. Outside the circle. Watching, never dancing.

It is surely a tribute to Joseph Campbell that in spite of my lack of comprehension of so many indigenous myths, my life has benefited enormously from The Hero with a Thousand Facesand I will be forever grateful to him for writing it. His definition of a hero, alone, is worth everything to me: "A hero 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 vision, ideas, and inspirations come pristine from the primary springs of human life and thought. Hence they are eloquent, not of the present, disintegrating society and psyche, but of the unquenched source through which society is reborn. The hero has died as a modern man; but as an eternal man—perfected, unspecific, universal man—he has been reborn."

An educational must–read, and the sooner the better, The Hero with a Thousand Faces is a book for all times and people.

Review by Holy Moly.