There is no definitive system for the interpretation of myths, and such a system will never emerge. Mythology is similar to the god Proteus, "the shrewd old man of the sea"; this god

Different types will begin to accept and appear to you
Everything that crawls on the ground, and with water and burning flame.

Travelers in life who want to learn something from Proteus are given advice: "do not be shy, the stronger it is, the stronger you hold it" - and then he will appear before them in his true form. But this crafty god will never reveal even to the most skillful inquirer the full content of his wisdom. He will answer only the question put to him, and what remains hidden may turn out to be both great and banal - it all depends on the question itself.

Here every day, only Helios of the sky will pass half:
In the breeze of the wind, with the great excitement of dark moisture,
The waters of the depths are left by the sea shrewd old man;
He came out of the waves, he lies down to rest in a deep cave;
Around the tail-footed seals, the children of the young Alosinda,
They lie down in a flock, and sleep, and, covered with salty mud,
The disgusting stench of the sea pours over the whole neighborhood.

The Greek warrior-king Menelaus, guided by his quick-witted daughter into the dark lair of this ancient sea father and instructed by her on how to wrest the answer from God, desired only to know the secrets of his personal difficulties and the whereabouts of his personal friends. And God did not consider the answer to him below his dignity.

Mythology has been interpreted by modern thinkers as a primitive, clumsy attempt to explain the natural world (Frazer); as a product of the poetic fantasy of prehistoric times, misunderstood by subsequent eras (Müller); as a repository of allegorical indications that allow the individual to exist in his group (Durkheim); as a collective dream, a symptomatic manifestation of archetypal urges emanating from the depths human soul(Jung); as a traditional bearer of the deepest metaphysical insights of man (Kumaraswamy) and as God's Revelation for His children (the Church).

Mythology is everything. Diverse evaluations are determined by the points of view of the evaluators, for, when considered not in terms of what it is, but in terms of how it functions, how it served humanity in the past, mythology shows itself to be just as susceptible to the obsessions and demands of the individual, people, eras, like life itself.

FUNCTIONS OF MYTH, CULT AND MEDITATION

In its life manifestation, a person is always only a particle and a distortion. a holistic image person. Individuality is limited as male or female; at any point in her life she is as limited as a child, teenager, mature adult or old person. Moreover, she inevitably has to choose her role in life - to be an artisan, merchant, servant or thief, priest, leader, wife, nun or prostitute. A person cannot be all of these at the same time. For this reason, integrity - the fullness of man - is created not by a separate unit, but by the whole body of society as a unity; individuality is only an organ of this body. It is his community that determines the way of life of a person, the language in which he thinks, the ideas that educate him; from past history society came to him the genes that built his body. And if a person dares to cut himself off from society in his actions, thoughts or feelings, he will simply break the connection with the source of his existence.

The task of tribal rites of birth, initiation, marriage, burial or induction is to translate the turning points and accomplishments of a person's life into the language of classical impersonal forms. They expose the individual to the individual, not as an individual, but as a warrior, bride, widow, priest, or leader, while at the same time recounting to the rest of the community the old lessons of the archetypal episodes. Everyone takes part in the ritual, according to their status and functions. The whole community appears before itself as an enduring living unity. Generations of personalities arise and disappear like the nameless cells of a living organism; only a supportive, timeless form remains. Expanding the horizons of his vision to embrace this superpersonality, each person finds that he has become more profound, enriched, gained support and multiplied in his strength. However insignificant his role may be, it is inherent in the beautiful, festive image of a person - an image that potentially exists, albeit in a latent state, in each of us.

Public duties become a continuation of the lesson of this holiday in ordinary, everyday existence, so that the person is constantly exposed to it. And vice versa, indifference, protest - or exile - break these life-giving ties. From the point of view of social unity, a person cut off from it is simply nothing, a scum, while a person who can sincerely declare that he has lived his role to the end - the role of a priest or a whore, a queen or a slave - is something meaningful in the full sense of the verb "to be".

Rites of initiation and initiation thus teach the most important lesson of the unity of the individual and the group, and the holidays associated with the beginning of a new season open up new horizons. Just as the individual is the organ of society, so the tribe or city - and indeed the whole of humanity as a whole - is only one aspect of the powerful organism of the cosmos.

For a long time the seasonal festivities of the so-called primitive peoples were usually explained as attempts to command nature, but this interpretation is erroneous. The desire to command can be found in all human actions and, in particular, in those magical ceremonies that are believed to help bring rain, cure illness or stop flooding, but the main motive of all truly religious (as opposed to black magic) ceremonies is submission to inevitable manifestations. predestination - and in seasonal festivities this motif is especially noticeable.

There is no record of any tribal rite intended to prevent the onset of winter; on the contrary, all the rites associated with winter prepare the community to endure patiently, in unity with the rest of nature, this period of terrible cold. No springtime rite seeks to compel nature to immediately produce corn, beans, or pumpkins for emaciated people; on the contrary, these rites command the whole community to take up the work connected with this season. The wonderful tolovy cycle, with its periods of difficulties and joys, is glorified, outlined and presented as a continuous cycle of life of a group of people.

The world of the society instructed by mythology is also filled with many other symbolic representations from this continuous series. For example, clans of American hunting tribes usually consider themselves descendants of half-animal, half-human ancestors. These ancestors were the progenitors not only of the people of the clan, but also of those animals after which the clan was named; Thus, representatives of the bear clan consider themselves blood relatives of animals from the bear family, protectors of this species and, in turn, objects of protection of the animal wisdom of this forest people.

For another example, the hogan, the mud huts of the Navajo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, are built after the Navajo space layout. Their entrance faces east. The eight walls of the house indicate four directions and intermediate points. Each corner or beam corresponds to one of the elements of the great hogan, covering the whole earth and sky. And, since the human soul itself is considered as corresponding in its form to the structure of the Universe, such a clay hut becomes the personification of the fundamental harmony of man and the world and a reminder of the innermost life path to perfection.

But there is another way - the way opposite to public duties and universal cult. From the position of the path of duty, anyone who is expelled from society is reduced to nothing. However, from a different point of view, such exile is the first step in the search. Everyone carries everything in himself, and therefore everything can be sought and found in oneself. Differences of sex, age and sphere of activity are not essential for human character; these are just the costumes we put on while we are performing on the stage of the world. Internal image a man is not to be confused with his garments. We consider ourselves Americans, children of the twentieth century, Westerners, civilized Christians. We are either virtuous or sinful. And yet such designations tell us nothing about what it means to be human, they only indicate random circumstances of geographical location, date of birth and income received. But what is going on in our depths? What are the main features of our being?

The asceticism of medieval saints and Indian yogis, the Hellenistic mysteries of initiation, the ancient philosophies of East and West are methods of shifting the main attention from individual consciousness, freeing a person from clothes. The aspirant's preparatory meditations take his mind and feelings away from the accidental circumstances of life and turn him towards the inner core. “I am neither this nor that,” he repeats in meditation, “not a mother, not a son who has just passed away; I am not my body, sick and aging; I am not my hand, not my eyes, not my head, not the totality of all this "I am not my feelings, I am not my mind, I am not my power of intuition." Through such meditations, he directs himself to his own depths and breaks at last into an inconceivable awareness. No person who has lived through such an experience can take himself too seriously as Mr. So-and-so from the state of So-and-so, USA - society and responsibilities go one by one. Mr. So-and-so, having discovered human greatness in himself, becomes self-absorbed and alienated.

This is the stage of Narcissus looking into the water, the level of Buddha sitting in meditation under a tree, but the final goal is not yet this - it is a necessary step, but not the end. Man's aim is not to see this essence, but to realize that he is it; only then can man freely roam the world as that entity. Moreover, the world itself is also it. The nature of man and the essence of the world - these two are one. For this reason, separation, detachment, is no longer necessary. Wherever the hero appears, whatever he does, he always remains close to his own essence - for his eyes see perfectly. Separation does not exist. That is why, just as the path of participation in the life of society can eventually lead to the realization of the All in the individual, so exile can bring the hero to the realization of the Self in everything.

When a person stops at this middle point, questions of selfishness or altruism disappear. Individuality loses itself in law and is reborn in identity with full content Universe. For Him, in His name, the world was created. "O Mohammed," said the Lord, "if it weren't for you, I wouldn't have created the sky."

HERO TODAY

All of the above is indeed very different from modern views, since the democratic ideal of a self-determined personality, the invention of powerful automatic devices and the development scientific methods research has changed human life that the inherited timeless universe of symbols has collapsed. The ominous, epochal and prophetic words of Zarathustra sounded: "The gods are dead." Everyone knows this story, it has been told in thousands of varieties. It's a hero cycle modern era, fairy tale about the coming of age of humanity. The charms of the past, the fetters of tradition, were broken by confident and powerful blows. The dream web of myth has disintegrated, reason has opened up to full, waking consciousness, and modern man has risen from ancient ignorance like a butterfly from its cocoon, like the dawn sun from the womb of mother night.

All-seeing telescopes and microscopes have not left a single hidden place for the gods, but more importantly, there is not a single society left that the gods would support. Social unity is no longer a carrier of religious content, but an economic and political organization. His ideals shifted from a hieratic pantomime representing the forms of the heavens on earth, to a worldly state in a fierce and relentless struggle for physical superiority and material resources. Except in areas not yet explored, there are no longer isolated communities held by dreams within a myth-charged horizon. In the progressive societies themselves, the last signs of the ancient human heritage of ritual, morality and art have undergone complete destruction.

Thus, the difficulties of modern humanity are in direct opposition to the problem of people who lived in relatively stable epochs of those great coordinating mythologies that are now considered false. In those days, the whole meaning was in the group, in a huge nameless form, and no meaning in the self-expression of the individual; now, no significance is attached to the group, or to anything in the world at all: everything is contained in the individual. But the content of personality is completely unconscious. No one knows where exactly he is heading. No one knows what motivates him to do this. All lines of communication between the zones of the conscious and unconscious human soul are severed, and each of us is divided in two.

Today, the accomplishments of the hero are completely different from those they were in the age of Galileo. Where there was darkness then, there is light now; but where there was light before, darkness now reigns. Feat modern hero lies in the need to bring light back to the lost Atlantis of the soul in harmony.

It is obvious that this cannot be achieved by going back or away from what we have achieved thanks to modern revolution, for this problem is nothing less than giving the world of our day a spiritual significance - or rather (to express the same principle in reverse) nothing less than making it possible for men and women to reach full human maturity through circumstances. modern life. Indeed, it is precisely these circumstances that have rendered the ancient formulas ineffective, misleading, and even pernicious. The community of today is the entire planet, not a nation closed within its borders, and therefore the models of transferred aggression, which previously helped to coordinate the inner group, today can only split it into pieces. The national idea, armed with the flag as a totem, is in our time the exaltation of the infantile ego, and not the destroyer of the infantile state. Her parody rituals performed on the parade grounds may lead to the end of the "Tick", the tyrant-dragon, but not to God, in which selfishness is destroyed. Numerous saints of such an anti-cult - that is, patriots, whose ubiquitous photographs, decorated with banners, serve as the official analogue of icons - are local guardians of the threshold (the demon Sticky Hair), the victory over which is the first task of the hero.

The world religions, as they are now understood, cannot meet the demands of the time, since they are also associated with the emergence of strife as an instrument of propaganda and self-praise (even Buddhism has recently suffered from such degeneration caused by the lessons of the West). The worldwide triumph of the secular state has placed all religious organizations in such a secondary and finally ineffectual position that religious pantomime is hardly more than a sanctimonious Sunday morning performance combined with business ethics and patriotism on the rest of the week. Such monkey-like holiness is not at all what the active world needs; rather, it needs a transformation of the entire social order, so that in every detail and in any action of worldly life, the consciousness, to one degree or another, notices the animating image of the universal God-man, who really initially resides and acts in each of us.

But consciousness cannot do this on its own. Consciousness is just as incapable of inventing or even predicting an effective symbol as it is to foresee or control a night dream. All this can be achieved only on a different level, thanks to what will inevitably turn out to be a long and very frightening process - not only in the depths of every living soul of the modern world, but also on those fields of titanic battles with which our entire planet has recently been covered. We watch the terrible clash of the rocks of the Symplegades, which the soul must pass - without identifying itself with either of the two stones.

However, there is something else we need to know: even if new symbols become visible, they will not be the same for different parts of the world. The circumstances of local life, the culture and traditions of the people - all this will certainly merge into new effective forms. Thus, people need to understand and learn to notice that the same salvation is revealed in various symbols. "Truth is one, - say the Vedas, - but the wise speak about it differently." One and the same song performed by the choir of mankind shimmers with all colors. For this reason, the general propaganda of one or another local solution to the problem is redundant - and, most likely, dangerous. The path of becoming a man is to recognize the outlines of God in all the wonderful modifications of the human face.

This brings us to a final guess as to what the exact orientation of the modern task of the hero should be, and we discover the real cause of the destruction of all the religious formulas we have inherited. The center of attraction or, if I may say so, the realm of mystery and danger has definitely shifted. For the primitive hunters of those distant millennia of the era of mankind, when the saber-toothed tiger, the mammoth and smaller representatives of the animal world were the most obvious manifestations of everything alien - sources of both danger and livelihood - a huge human problem it was to achieve a psychological connection to share the savagery with these creatures. An unconscious identification took place - and then at last the half-human-half-animal figures of the mythological totem ancestors passed into the realm of consciousness. Animals have become the mentors of mankind. Through literal imitation - such as can only be seen today in playgrounds (or insane asylums) - the effective destruction of the human ego was completed, and society reached the level of a cohesive organization. Similarly, tribes whose life was based on plant foods began to associate themselves with plants: the rituals of sowing and harvesting were identified with the processes of procreation, birth, and the transition of man to maturity. Both vegetable and animal world, however, were eventually subject to public control. As a result, the vast sphere of instructive miracles shifted - to heaven - and humanity legitimized the majestic pantomime of the sacred lunar king and the holy solar lord, the hieratic planetary state and symbolic festivals in honor of the higher spheres that rule the world.

Today, all these riddles have lost their power; their symbols no longer touch our soul. The concept of a cosmic law, to which all things are subject and to which man himself must bow, long ago passed through the preliminary mystical stages represented in ancient astrology, and is now simply expressed in mechanistic terms, as if taken for granted. The descent of Western sciences from heaven to earth (from seventeenth-century astronomy to nineteenth-century biology) and their focus finally on man himself (twentieth-century anthropology and psychology) mark the path of a tremendous shift in the focus of human wonder. The main mystery is now not the animal world, not vegetable world not the miracles of the higher realms, but the man himself. It is man who is that unfamiliar guise to which the forces of egoism must come to terms, through which the ego undergoes crucifixion and resurrection, and in the image of which society is to be reconstructed - man, understood, however, not as "I", but as "You", since no the ideals and transient institutions of a tribe, a people, a continent, a social class, or a century cannot measure the inexhaustible and miraculous divine existence that is life in each of us.

The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and set out in search of the hall of the entity with which he is destined to reunite, cannot—and must not—wait for his community to shed its peeling skin of pride, fear, rational greed, and sanctified falsehood. understanding. "Live," says Nietzsche, "as if your time has come." It is not society that should guide and save the hero - just the opposite. And therefore, each of us shares the highest test - dragging his own cross of the savior - not in the bright moments of the great victories of his tribe, but in the silent moments of the despair of the individual.

Campbell J. Hero s a thousand faces ami. - K., 1997, p. 284-292

The purpose of this book is precisely to discover the nature of some of these truths, familiar to us under the masks of the characters of religions and myths, to bring together many characteristic fragments that are not too difficult to understand, and thus to reveal their original meaning. The ancient teachers knew what they meant. Once we can read their symbolic language again, we will need to master the art of anthology writers in order to give modern man hear what they taught. But first we must study the grammar of symbols itself, and there is hardly a better toolkit - as a key to its mysteries - than the modern psychoanalytic approach. Without seeking to present this method as the last word of science, we can nevertheless assume that this approach is acceptable. The next step is to bring together many myths and folk tales from all over the world and let them speak for themselves. Thus, all the semantic parallels will become directly visible, thus we will be able to present the entire vast and amazing set of fundamental truths that have determined human life for thousands of years on this planet.

Perhaps one can reproach me for the fact that, trying to identify correspondences, I neglected the differences in the traditions of East and West, modern times, antiquity, primitive peoples. However, a similar objection can be raised with respect to any anatomy manual, which clearly neglects racial differences in physiological characteristics for the sake of a fundamental common understanding. physical nature person. Of course, there are differences between the numerous mythological and religious systems of mankind, but this book is devoted, in fact, to what unites them; and as soon as we understand this for ourselves, we will find that the differences here are not so great as is commonly believed in wide circles unenlightened public (and, of course, among politicians). I hope that this sort of comparative study will contribute to the not entirely hopeless cause of those constructive forces that are trying to unite the modern world - not for the sake of building an empire based on a single religion or political principles, but on a basis between people. As the Vedas say: "Truth is one, the sages speak of it using many names."

I would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Henry Morton Robinson, whose advice greatly helped me in the initial and final stages of the arduous work involved in bringing the materials I collected into a readable form, as well as to Mrs. Peter Jager, Mrs. Margaret Wing and Mrs. Helen McMaster, for their invaluable suggestions after reading my manuscripts many times, and finally to my wife, who worked by my side from the first to last day listening, reading and editing what is written.

New York,

J.K.

Il. one. Gorgon Medusa (marble). Ancient Rome, exact date unknown

1. Myth and dream

When we arrogantly watch a red-eyed shaman from the Congo in the midst of a ritual, or get exquisite pleasure from reading the exquisite translations of the enigmatic verses of Lao Tzu; when we try to delve into the complex argumentation of Thomas Aquinas or suddenly grasp the meaning of a bizarre Eskimo fairy tale - we always meet the same, changeable in form, but still surprisingly constant story, and at the same time the same defiantly insistent hint that the unknown, somewhere waiting for us, much more than ever can be known and told to the world.

Wherever a human foot has stepped, always and in any circumstances, people have created myths, a living embodiment of the work human body and spirit. It would not be an exaggeration to say that myth is a wonderful channel through which human culture in all its manifestations is fertilized by inexhaustible flows of cosmic energy. Religions, philosophies, arts, forms of social organization of primitive and historical man, discoveries in science and technology, and the dreams themselves, bursting into our sleep with flashes - all this is born in the original, magical circle of myth.

It is simply amazing that the most unpretentious children's fairy tale has a special power to touch and inspire deep layers of creativity - just like a drop of water preserves the taste of the ocean, and a flea egg contains all the mystery of life. For mythological symbols are not born of themselves; they cannot be brought to life by the will of reason, invented and suppressed with impunity. They are the spontaneous product of the psyche, and each of them carries in embryo intact the full force of its original sources.

What is the secret of this timeless vision? In what depths of the brain does it originate? Why are myths the same everywhere, no matter what clothes they dress up in? And what is their meaning?

Many branches of science have tried to answer this question. Archaeologists are looking for an answer in excavations in Iraq, Crete and Yucatan. Ethnologists collect information from the Khanty on the banks of the Ob and the African Bubi tribes living in the Fernando Po valleys. A new generation of Orientalists has recently discovered the sacred texts of the East, as well as the sources of the Holy Scriptures, created in the pre-Jewish era. And another group of purposeful researchers-ethnopsychologists in the last century tried to answer the question about the psychological origins of language, myths, religion, art in their development, moral norms.

The most amazing information we have received thanks to the research of psychiatrists. The bold and truly epoch-making works of psychoanalysts are indispensable to the student of mythology; for however much we dispute the details of their sometimes conflicting interpretations of particular cases and problems, Freud, Jung, and their followers have irrefutably demonstrated that the logic of myth, its heroes, and their deeds are still relevant today. In the absence of a universally valid mythology, each of us has our own, unrecognized, rudimentary, but nevertheless latent pantheon of dreams. The latest incarnations of Oedipus and the characters of the never-ending love story The Beauties and the Beasts stand today on the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic lights to change.

“I dreamed,” a young American wrote to a newspaper columnist, “that I was repairing the roof of my house. Suddenly I hear my father calling me from below. I turn quickly, listening, suddenly I drop the hammer, it slips out of my hands, rolls off the roof and falls down. Then a dull sound, as if someone had fallen.

In Comparative Mythology. In 2011, the book was included in Time magazine's list of the best and most influential books (among books written in English since 1923).

The Hero with a Thousand Faces
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
genre	science, comparative mythology
author	Joseph Campbell
Original language	English
Date of first publication	1949
publishing house	Sofia

Key Ideas

Campbell wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949 and used the theories of Freud, Jung, Arnold van Gennep, as well as the research of the ethnographers James George Frazer and Franz Boas and the psychologist Otto Rank in the book.

Campbell, examining the myths of the peoples of the world, came to the conclusion that most of the legends have a common plot structure of the journey of the archetypal hero, which he called the monomyth. The hero, according to Campbell, makes a journey in several stages: having received a call, he leaves the ordinary world and, with the help of a mentor, overcomes the barrier on the way to the supernatural world. Further tests await the hero, while the help of allies is possible, as well as the most difficult test, having accepted which, he will receive a reward. Then comes the metaphorical death and resurrection. After that, the hero returns with a reward to the ordinary world and tests await him again on the way. Upon returning, the hero can use the reward received to improve the ordinary world.

When creating the book, Campbell studied the classics of mythology and literature, in particular, he was guided by the paths that such heroes took: Osiris, Buddha, Jesus, Prometheus, Muhammad, Moses. Guided by Van Gennep's theory, Campbell developed his own classification of the rites of passage, also dividing them into three stages: division, consecration And return or separative, liminal And ultimate stages .

The term "monomyth" is borrowed from Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

Influence

Based on the ideas in the book, Hollywood producer Christopher Vogler wrote a manual for screenwriters. This short note, 7 pages long, influenced the scripts of many films, in particular, the Walt Disney Studios. George Lucas used Campbell's theory in his star wars.

Editions in Russian

• Campbell D. The Hero with a Thousand Faces: Myth. Archetype. Unconscious = The Hero with a thousand faces / ed. I. Old; per. from English. K. Semyonov. - St. Petersburg. : Sofia, 1997. - 336 p. -

Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces is one of the most famous psychological books of our time. What can this work tell about? Well, let's try to figure this out.

Basic moments

If we consider the content of the "Hero with a Thousand Faces" (Joseph Campbell), then we can say the following: the book tells the reader about those heroes who became characters in various fairy tales, films and stories in the style of fantasy. The author calls these heroes the chosen ones. In fact, in every work of art there is the same main character who is looking for adventure. Joseph Campbell in "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" identifies only three stages, after passing through which the character changes his life in a radical way.

First step

In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell refers to this phase as the "Exodus". It begins exactly when the main character of the adventure is downright called. An excellent example for this part of the stage is the appearance of the old Gandalf in the story "The Hobbits". It is the old magician who is a kind of invitation to Magic world where the main character is waiting for new adventures. Or you can look at Harry Potter, who is called towards a new life by letters that fall asleep at the Dursley family home. This time the protagonist is drawn into the unknown.

Next step

The next step of the hero is also quite predictable: as a rule, he simply brushes off the call to try something new because of his fear of the unknown. This is quite normal, absolutely everyone who has to deal with something unknown, unusual experiences such feelings. In addition, magical invitations always raise doubts in the character, because it is impossible to immediately believe the old man whom you see for the first time that he is a great magician who is ready to lead you into the world of extraordinary wanderings.

Lack of choice

Despite the fact that the main character desperately resists change, adventure still calls him. They come to the character in the form of various signs: a bunch of ill-mannered gnomes who are ready to break down the door; crazy streams of letters pouring from all the cracks in the house. As a result, in order, in the end, to find peace, the main character has to accept and go towards new and unforgettable adventures.

Second phase

We continue the description. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell also discusses the second stage, which is called "Initiation".

This stage contains the main part of the whole work. Here the main character will either be defeated, or enter into a strong confrontation with the enemy and emerge victorious from it. Any outcome of this struggle will become either a legend or an indicator of morality for future generations.

A feature of this stage is that here the development of the plot entirely depends on the desire of the author of the book. IN this case the leading role is given to the imagination of the author, who himself controls the fate of the protagonist. It is at this stage that the central character meets new friends, enemies and just acquaintances who will accompany him for a certain time. It is very likely that the central character will fall under their influence, which will lead him to new discoveries or trouble.

At the same stage, the protagonist often meets with the other side of his soul - the so-called shadow. He sees dark side of his soul, looks into it as if into a mirror, which is why he is utterly horrified. Whether the hero will cope with his shortcomings and fears is known only to the author of the work.

At the same stage, the protagonist reaches the climax of his adventure. It is at this moment that it is decided whether the central character will remain on that side or still go to the other. Often the characters cannot cope with their shadow, which leads them to the side of evil. Those who do not want to become a villain must give up their selfish goals and act in the name of the whole world.

Often the hero also faces sexual temptation, but the author manages to direct his character in the right direction, forcing him to temporarily abandon his fantasies of pleasure, which can lead to a deplorable end.

Third stage

We continue summary. Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces" ends with a stage called "Return". At this stage, the protagonist finally returns home. But he is unlikely to be able to return to the former resident of that area. In addition, if the central character returns to his native land, then he returns in order to tell his people about the horror that everyone can meet with whom he personally fought, saving the people from death. That is, the main character returns home already much wiser, more serious, older.

Sometimes it happens that the central character decides to stay in this fictional world in order to meet the next adventurer someday and help him with his trials. In this case, the character changes the role of the main character to the role of a teacher, a sage, capable of being a guide to the magical and mystical worlds.

At the same stage, the main character receives an award for his merits. Often this reward is expressed in something that the hero really lacked. Or, as often happens in myths or legends, main character receives as a reward the artifact for which so many tests were passed.

Joseph Campbell

THOUSAND-FACED HERO

THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES

BOLLINGEN SERIES XVII

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Myth in the modern world

In today's rational and pragmatic world, perhaps precisely because of this, interest in mythology is growing and deepening. Like centuries ago, myths enchant, they are mysterious and mysterious, antediluvian stories turn out to be unexpectedly relevant, humanity continues to find food for the soul and mind in them. O. Ranka, D. Hilman show the unconscious foundations of mythological symbolism, explain the origin of the grotesque characters of myths, the origins of their extraordinary adventures and amazing destinies. However, being scientifically “disenchanted”, myths and legends have not lost their meaning for us at all - on the contrary, reading special works allows us to re-evaluate the unsurpassed combination of naive charm and great wisdom of the most unpretentious legend or fairy tale.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces is one of the most fascinating works of comparative mythology. This is a study of the psychological basis of the heroic myths of various times and peoples, based on a huge amount of factual material. Joseph Campbell, with rare skill, is able to combine a poetic presentation and a scientific view of the problem. Fairy tales and fairy tales in the author's retelling not only do not lose their charm, but acquire a new sound - thanks to subtle analysis of the deep sides human psyche, allegorically presented in plots and individual episodes of myths and legends.

Campbell's work is dedicated to the most common mythological plot - the story of the hero of his miraculous birth, heroic deeds, marriage to a beauty, wise rule and mysterious, mysterious death. The folklore of many nations tells about the life of such characters among the Sumerians it was Gilgamesh, among the Jews - Moses and Joseph the Beautiful, among the Greeks - Theseus, Hercules, Jason, Odysseus, among the Scandinavians and Germans - Sigurd - Siegfried, among the Celts - King Arthur, among the Irish - the strongman Kuchulin and the valiant Diarmuid, the French - Roland and Charlemagne, the Yugoslavs - Marco - Yunak, the Moldavians - sunny Fat - Frumos, the Russians - a whole galaxy of "powerful heroes". This list can be continued indefinitely. Why are hero stories so popular?

Campbell, like other authors (Claudio Naranjo, Alexander Pyatigorsky, Geza Roheim Victor Turner Mircea Eliade), believes that the heroic myth is based on symbolic forms of expression of the two most important events for the collective and individual human history - the creation of the world and the formation of personality. In other words, in heroic epic before us cosmogonic myth And initiation ritual. The birth of the hero and his wanderings correspond to the symbolism of initiation (rites of passage), and exploits, accomplishments and death correspond to the world order, the creation of the Cosmos (order) from the universal Chaos. Both of these processes are to some extent the same, and the initiation itself often has the character of a cosmogonic act - for example, in the Caucasian legends about heroes - narmax, or in Campbell's own myths about Krishna and Buddha.

The first part of the book is devoted to individual history thousand-faced hero. The general scheme of his adventures corresponds to the main stages of the initiation process and reproduces the various forms of rites of passage. (rites de passage). The famous folklorist Arnold van Gennep identified three such stages - separative, consisting in the detachment of the individual from the group in which he was a member before; liminal or the stage of "being on the edge" and restorative (reintegrative). A change in social or other status, which is the main goal of initiatory tests, involves a “way out” of the previous state, the rejection of cultural functions, the destruction social role. In myth, this is symbolized by the literal departure, flight, wanderings and wanderings of the hero. Before that, he hears a call, often accompanied by a warning of mortal danger, threats - or, conversely, promises of an unprecedented good. Whether the hero heeds the call or refuses it - this is always the beginning of the path of separation from everything that was familiar and familiar. A typical form of appeal is embodied in the famous epic-fairy tale: “If you go to the right, you will find a wife, if you go to the left, you will take wealth, if you go straight, you will lay down your violent head.”

The liminal stage is represented by the crossing of boundaries (thresholds: limen literally means "threshold"), being in an unusual, intermediate state. Lack of status is marked by blindness, invisibility, nakedness, ridiculous attire (cane hat, donkey skin, caftan turned inside out), dirt, silence, prohibitions (which relate to sleep, laughter, food, drink, etc.). “Liminal beings, for example, neophytes in rites of initiation or coming of age,” points out W. Turner, “can be presented as not owning anything. They may dress up as monsters, wear only rags, or even go about naked, demonstrating a lack of status, possessions, insignia, worldly clothing indicating their place or role, position in the kinship system - in short, anything that could distinguish them from other neophytes. or initiated. Their behavior is usually passive or humiliated; they must unquestioningly obey their mentors or accept unjust punishment without complaint.”

Liminality can be combined with being in other world(dungeon, the belly of a whale or other monster, at the bottom of the sea).

The hero is in the realm of death, this is a living dead man, who will have a new birth and transformation.

The content of the third stage of rebirth (transfiguration, salvation, magical flight) ends with the apotheosis of the power and power of the hero. He acquires extraordinary strength, magical skills, beauty, royal dignity, marries a princess, becomes a god. The main conquest of the hero in the myth is called "freedom to live" by Campbell:

Powerful in his insight, cold-blooded and free in his actions, rejoicing at the fact that his hand will be moved by the benevolence of Viracocha, the hero becomes a conscious instrument of the great and terrible Law, whether his deeds are the actions of a butcher, a jester or a king (p. 236).

However, the adventures of the hero are not limited to his apotheosis or death. The individual fate of the divine hero is closely connected with the fate of the world, its emergence and renewal. The very birth of the hero, Campbell points out, takes place in the sacred center of the world (this is the so-called "Navel of the Earth"), sometimes such a point becomes, on the contrary, the place of burial (the legend that Golgotha, the place of the crucifixion of Christ, hides the skull of Adam). Creation begins from this center, and the material for it is often the flesh of a hero or the body of a giant killed by him, a serpent, a chthonic monster. The victory of Indra over the dragon Vritra, the killing of the terrible Tiamat by Marduk, the creation of the world of people and gods from the body of the giant Ymir - these and other examples are discussed in detail in the book.