Through fantasy books, films and games, good and bad, the same main character- "the chosen one". Where did this image come from, what function is it intended to perform in world culture, can the chosen one fail or take the side of evil? Joseph Campbell's book The Hero with a Thousand Faces will help us answer these questions.
Our hero
Who is the chosen one, everyone knows. For many, this is a faded stamp, now mercilessly ridiculed. Of course, the crude exploitation of a character who, after leaving the village, saves the world, gets half the kingdom with the princess and personally overthrows the main villain, deserves ridicule. But the best incarnations of the chosen one, whether it's Neo from The Matrix, Frodo from The Lord of the Rings, or Luke Skywalker from Star Wars, are becoming iconic. Why? "Classics
Can"? But many of these classics live in the present.
To understand the chosen one, let's turn to Joseph Campbell's study of myth and fairy tales - the book "The Hero with a Thousand Faces".
Joseph Campbell
American scholar of mythology and religion. Developed the monomyth theory, which reveals common features mythological-religious and fabulous world heritage. He became widely known thanks to the book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, published in 1949. It was she who was guided by George Lucas when creating Star Wars.
Coming from eternity
The "stamp" about the chosen one arose in the nth millennium BC, almost simultaneously with the appearance of myths as such. Even Campbell does not undertake to argue where the myths about the formation of the Hero came from. But all peoples and tribes have such legends, including the islanders isolated from the whole world.
Based on the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud and the analytical psychology of Carl Jung, Campbell comes to the conclusion that stories about the formation of a hero and the salvation of the world are formed by the very psyche of a person under the influence of images of universal symbolism - archetypes.
A simplified (and fun) model of the hero's journey. Artist Esbjorn Jorsater (Wikimedia Commons)
The Chosen Ones also live in science fiction, but their true homeland is not even fantasy, but legends and fairy tales. Vladimir Propp, who devoted his life to the study of the fairy-tale heritage, argued that the fairy tale is a degraded myth. Myths, in turn, are the remnants of ancient religions that have not survived to this day. Once upon a time, their task was to give a person instructions leading to spiritual development. George Lucas put it this way:
Myths tell old stories without threatening us. They are an imaginary place where you are safe. But they contain real truths that need to be spoken about. Sometimes these truths are so painful that fictional stories become the only way to perceive them.
The edifications in question are not necessarily religious. The messages of myths and fairy tales are often aimed at helping to overcome the crisis associated with growing up or moral growth. As they say, a fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it - good fellows lesson. And the lesson cannot be explained on the fingers - examples are needed. Here comes the turn of our hero.
George Lucas: the most famous fan Campbell. He even arranged for his favorite culturologist a personal screening of Star Wars.
The true chosen one is the one who has time to mature and develop. If we have a fairy tale before us, he must part with childhood and enter into adult life, full of difficulties (they are monsters and feats). If a myth or a religious text - rise above the ordinary, grow spiritually and morally. And if fantasy ... the ideological load remains on the conscience of the author. As well as the mission to tell the eternal story to their contemporaries in a new way. On this occasion, the same Lucas noted:
I'm retelling an old myth in a new way. Each society knows this myth and retells it in its own way, depending on the environment in which it lives. The idea is the same everywhere. The only difference is how it is localized.
Campbell singled out the stages of the wanderings of the eternal hero that are universal for myths and fairy tales and outlined the meaning of each of them. By examples contemporary stories we see that the ancient mechanism is still working today.
Stage 1: Exodus
The hero does not have to be a peasant or an introvert teenager, which writers and screenwriters abuse, focusing on the average representative of the target audience. To fit into the framework outlined by Campbell, you can be anything from an animated plush toy to a great king or a god of medium size. "Level" does not matter, even a "pumped" character can take the path of the chosen one. All the same, according to the laws of the genre, he will have a hard time.
First calls
If you haven't received a letter from Hogwarts at the age of eleven...
The “call to wander” reaches the ears of the hero. It can be Morpheus's insinuating voice: "Wake up, Neo", or Gandalf, who appeared on the threshold of Bilbo, or a letter from Hogwarts. The methods are different, but the essence is the same: something pushes the hero to leave the beaten paths of life. The center of gravity is transferred from the ordinary to the area of the unknown.
Gravity is meant precisely spiritual, because all subsequent events and miracles will become a symbolic reflection of the spiritual path of the hero. In any case, this was the case at a time when the dragon, for example, was considered the keeper of secret knowledge, and not just a fire-breathing dinosaur on a pile of gold.
Let someone else
... wait until fifty years, suddenly Gandalf will come for you personally
The future hero brushes off the call. This is natural, because everything new scares and repels. Wanderings symbolize growing up or serious changes in life and worldview. It is not easy to even get up off the couch, let alone get off the beaten track of life. And who will believe the first old man they meet that he is a Jedi, a wizard and a mage who came to see you off Magic world who needs to be saved?
Fate is knocking at the door
Despite the hitch, the rejected call, according to the law of myth, is growing. Its amplification can be expressed directly, "on the forehead" - for example, when a stream of letters bursts into the Dursley family's chimney, knocking Uncle Vernon to the delight of Harry, and the dwarves furiously pound on Bilbo's door. Or the hero is given a revelation, he learns something about himself or about the world and decides to take the path of wandering.
The hero can also be "helped" in liberation from everyday life. But it's not always pleasant - remember Luke's burned down house in A New Hope.
Challenge accepted!
So, the hero accepts the call and gets ready to go.
There is also an option when he still rejects the invitation to self-development. In this case, the hero is cursed and becomes a passive anti-hero. The fate of such people is unenviable, they vegetate in everyday life and bury their potential in the ground - if the forces of fate do not immediately destroy them.
But if everything is according to the rules, then the hero receives the blessing of the forces that chose him, acquires a companion-teacher (an elder, a magician, a guide, a mentor) and an amulet for solving problems (a sword, a ring, a ball of Ariadne - depending on the upcoming quest).
No entrance for unauthorized people
However, this is not the beginning of a great adventure. Just like that, no one managed to escape from the everyday world. The hero must fight the guardian of the hidden world, he is also the guardian of the boundaries of the ordinary world.
Very ironically, this episode was conveyed by Neil Gaiman in Stardust, where Tristan approaches the gate to the magical world, and the watchman uncle gives him a kick
The guard encourages to abandon the venture with an adventure. He can appear in different guises. It may be the temptation of a hollow woman leading away, or a promised horror that turns out to be fiction. Evil forces can deceive the hero by pointing the wrong direction, or try to bribe him by offering a lot of money for the amulet. And no one canceled the kicks - Neo had to endure a lot before disconnecting from the Matrix.
So, overcoming the gravity of the familiar world (pleasure) and the rejection of the new world (suffering), the hero shows a combination of courage, perseverance, intelligence and nobility. And there is a breakthrough into the hidden world of adventure.
Usually this is accompanied by a change of scenery (flight to another planet, going beyond the borders of native lands, diving into the abyss), and sometimes a figurative rebirth. Making the transition, the hero remains naked, giving up his ego. Remember Neo waking up in a capsule - naked, bald and covered in slime. Great adventures begin!
Stage 2: Initiation
Neo's initiation in The Matrix is reminiscent of rebirth
This is the main part where the hero will fulfill his mission or fail, and his victory or defeat will become a lesson for future generations. Ahead of a series of adventures and mysterious events. This is the most variable stage, it changes in accordance with the idea and the world of the work. There may be dubious victories, secret helpers, mystical inspirations of the hero.
Closer to the light - blacker shadow
An important stable motive that lives in contemporary works, - the hero's collision with his own " dark side or its personification. Carl Jung called this archetype the Shadow. This is the inner embodiment of evil, which has absorbed all the shameful, ugly and disgusting features of the hero himself. Ignoring and misunderstanding of one's Shadow, according to Jung, leads to personality mismatch and possible psychoses.
The hero will have to face his Shadow face to face. But a straightforward victory over the Shadow is one's own defeat, even when the Shadow is represented by a separate character. After all, in an internal conflict, you play for both sides. A civil war cannot be solved by atomic bombing.
The hero must realize his unity with the Shadow and accept that he himself is not deprived dark side. A clear example of such unity is the vision of Luke Skywalker after Yoda's lessons, when he meets Darth Vader in a cave, blows his head off with a sword and sees his own face.
Luke's vision in Yoda's cave is an example of the hero's unity with the Shadow
Next, the hero absorbs his Shadow or lets it absorb him. In the second case, he becomes an active antagonist, chooses the path of evil. This option is well shown by Anakin Skywalker when he becomes Darth Vader. But if the Shadow is absorbed, the hero moves on - spiritually more experienced, morally grown.
Apotheosis
We are approaching the climax of the plot and the high point of the hero's trials. Here the laws of myth offer two symbolic concepts to choose from (although a combination is possible). The spiritual growth of the hero is expressed in reconciliation with the mother-goddess or father-god. At least, these are the formulations that Campbell, a staunch Freudian, cites.
Reconciliation with the mother goddess is associated with the Oedipus complex. That's just the sexual interpretation of the image will just become the failure of the hero. So Actaeon was punished and turned into a deer, who saw in the bathing Artemis only an object of desire. The hero must rise above sexual desire and selfish understanding of the world. The time has come to discard children's ideas, according to which everything pleasant and interesting is considered good, and everything unpleasant and difficult is considered evil, and comprehend the laws of the world.
The simplest interpretation of the image of the mother goddess is nature. This is well illustrated in the film Avatar, where Marine Jake Sully ceases to see the deified nature as a source of resources and accepts new rules of life.
"Avatar" shows the reconciliation of the hero with mother nature
In the case of the god-father, the hero has to become worthy of his father's strength. To do this, you will first have to get to your father, then prove that you are not a self-proclaimed son (perhaps a duel or a riddle will solve this). This is followed by reconciliation with the father and gaining his power. This can be expressed not only in strength as such, but also in the acceptance of heritage, experience, knowledge, the discovery of one's own blocked abilities. Divine duties can also be taken over, such as driving the sun across the sky in the father's chariot - this is what a parent got.
We again see a vivid episode of reconciliation with a powerful father in the finale of Star Wars.
Reward
The great quest is completed, the hero has passed the test and deserves a reward. This is something necessary and important for him personally: half the kingdom with the princess, Frodo's departure to Valinor, a new body for Sally or Neo's superpowers.
The main thing is that now the hero is not the same as before. He knows the hidden, knows the supernatural and possesses the magical. As a rule, this reflects his spiritual transformation and the knowledge he acquired. But this is not the end - the way back is ahead.
Stage 3: Return
Unfortunately, the film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings did not include the chapter "The Devastation of the Shire". But this is a whole stage of the hero's journey!
Returning does not mean degradation back to the layman. To return to where you came from means to bring the acquired knowledge to people. In fairy tales and myths, the brought object often becomes a salvation for the hero's homeland - a village, nation, state or the whole world.
Sometimes the plot of the myth is based on the theft of the desired artifact. At the level of the symbol, everything remains the same: confrontation for the sake of obtaining a coveted item. In such a case, the return turns into a "fairy escape" when the robbed evil forces pursue the plundering hero. Sometimes the forces that guided him help the hero - for example, the eagles carry Frodo away from Mordor. If the item was received as a reward, then the forces themselves magically help the hero return to the boundaries of everyday life.
But sometimes the hero decides not to return and stays in the hidden world. In spiritual terms, this means seclusion. Having gained knowledge, the hero realizes that he will not be able to pass it on to his people. This motif is often repeated in Far Eastern myths. At the same time, the hero does not become a villain - this is still a victory, although not complete. The only hope for the world is that the hero will someday become the mentor of the new chosen one...
In this sense, Luke in the new trilogy exactly follows Campbell
If the hero finds the strength not only to acquire knowledge, but also to convey it to people, he solves old everyday problems in one fell swoop - loan debts, hooligans, old love. The blessings brought lead his people to prosperity. At this point, he completes the round-trip voyage, passing through the figurative stages of birth, naming, growing up and dying. A new chapter has been written in the endless book of exploits.
The stages of the hero's wanderings can be distorted, reduced, and overgrown with details. And some myths and fairy tales, due to brevity, can cover only a few episodes from the above scheme. But the essence remains the same. There is always a chosen one who decides to go beyond the boundaries of everyday life and go the hard way of improvement. He steps on the path, and higher powers help him. He fights dragons, dark lords and himself. He achieves the goal, finds happiness and shares it with people.
Only "the chosen one" is an inappropriate name for our hero. After all, he chooses himself. And we hear the call to travel every time we read or watch good fantasy.
, comparative mythology
"Hero with a thousand faces» (English) The Hero with a Thousand Faces ; in some translations "Hero with a Thousand Faces") is a book by the American scholar Joseph Campbell on comparative mythology.
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.
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. - ISBN 5-220-00066-7.
- Campbell D. Thousand-faced hero \u003d The Hero with a thousand faces / transl. from English. A. P. Khomik. - K., M.: Wakler; Refl-book; AST, 1997. - 384 p. - (Constellation of Wisdom (Astrum Sapientiae)). - 11,000 copies. - ISBN 5-87983-054-3, ISBN 5-87983-058-6, ISBN 966-543-195-1, ISBN 5-15-000228-3.
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An excerpt characterizing the Hero with a Thousand Faces
“They are going well,” said someone in Bagration’s retinue.The head of the column had already descended into the hollow. The collision must have taken place on this side of the descent...
The remnants of our regiment, which was in action, hastily forming up, retreated to the right; from behind them, dispersing the stragglers, two battalions of the 6th Chasseurs approached harmoniously. They had not yet reached Bagration, and already a heavy, heavy step was heard, beaten in the leg by the whole mass of people. From the left flank, the company commander walked closest to Bagration, a round-faced, stately man with a stupid, happy expression on his face, the same one who ran out of the booth. He apparently did not think of anything at that moment, except that he would pass by the authorities as a fine fellow.
With ruthless self-satisfaction, he walked lightly on muscular legs, as if he were swimming, stretching himself without the slightest effort and differing in this lightness from the heavy step of the soldiers walking along his step. He carried at his foot a thin, narrow sword (a bent skewer that did not look like a weapon) at his foot, and, looking now at his superiors, then back, without losing his step, flexibly turned around with his whole strong camp. It seemed that all the strength of his soul was directed towards getting past the authorities in the best possible way, and, feeling that he was doing this job well, he was happy. "Left ... left ... left ...", it seemed, he inwardly sentenced every step, and according to this beat with various strict faces a wall of soldiers' figures, weighed down with satchels and rifles, moved, as if each of these hundreds of soldiers mentally repeated every step: "left ... left ... left ...". The fat major, puffing and breaking his pace, went around the bush along the road; a lagging soldier, out of breath, with a frightened face for his malfunction, was trotting up to the company; the ball, pressing the air, flew over the head of Prince Bagration and his retinue and in time: “left - left!” hit the column. "Close up!" I heard the flaunting voice of the company commander. The soldiers arced around something in the place where the ball fell; the old cavalier, a flank non-commissioned officer, lagging behind the dead, caught up with his line, jumped up, changed his foot, fell into step and looked around angrily. “Left…left…left…” seemed to be heard from behind the menacing silence and the monotonous sound of feet hitting the ground at the same time.
- Well done guys! - said Prince Bagration.
"For the sake of ... hoo ho ho ho! ..." resounded through the ranks. The gloomy soldier who was walking on the left, shouting, looked round at Bagration with such an expression as if he were saying: "we know ourselves"; the other, without looking back and as if afraid of being entertained, with his mouth open, shouted and passed.
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 if we consider it not in terms of what it is, but in terms of how it functions, how it served humanity in the past, mythology shows itself as subject to the obsessions and demands of the individual, the people, the era, as 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 significant 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 disease or stop flooding, but the main motive of all truly religious (as opposed to black magic) ceremonies is submission to the inevitable manifestations of predestination - and in seasonal festivities this motive 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. The inner image of a person should not be confused with his clothes. We consider ourselves Americans, children of the twentieth century, Westerners, civilized Christians. We are either virtuous or sinful. Yet such designations do not tell us anything about what it means to be human, they only indicate the 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 experienced 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. This is the heroic cycle of the modern era, a magical tale of 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 disintegrated, the mind opened up to full, waking consciousness, and modern man risen from ancient ignorance, like a butterfly from its cocoon, like the sun of dawn 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 achieve 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, in the form in which they are now understood, cannot meet the requirements 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 anything more today than sanctimonious Sunday morning action 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 only be achieved on a different level, thanks to what will inevitably be a long and very frightening process - not only in the depths of every living soul. 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 the unfamiliar guise to which the forces of egoism must come to terms, through which the ego undergoes crucifixion and resurrection, and in whose image society is to be reshaped - man, understood, however, not as "I", but as "You", since no ideals and transient institutions of a tribe, people, continent, social class or century can serve as a measure of the inexhaustible and shining with various miracles of divine existence, which 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 that 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 misunderstanding. "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 - he drags his 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. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. - K., 1997, p. 284-292
Different peoples have their own myths, which touch upon important life issues, themes of good and evil. There are a great many mythological heroes, but is there anything in common between them? In the first half of the 20th century, Joseph Campbell researched a large number of myths, and then wrote a voluminous work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which he reflected everything that he was able to uncover. The book was not immediately accepted, but later it had a great influence on the plots of films, now Campbell's ideas are taken into account when creating all films that have a mythological component.
The author of the book believes that all myths have a common structure, and their heroes can be combined into one archetypal image. This explains the title of the book, in which many faces are assigned to one hero. The book is an unusual combination of mythology and psychology. Joseph Campbell in his research relies on the teachings of famous psychologists such as Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung.
The first part of the book is dedicated to the main character of myths, tells about his image and path. The author believes that in the life of each hero, three stages can be distinguished, when he realizes his essence, proves it with heroic deeds, and then returns to the world of ordinary people, however, difficulties may arise at the final stage. In the second part, Campbell speaks through this image not only about the path of the hero, but also about the existence of everything in the world.
The book allows you to form a general idea of both mythology and the world as a whole, about the perception of people and their attitude to the images of heroes. At the same time, it makes it possible to take some part of it and study it in more detail, since the research material is very extensive.
The work belongs to the genre Psychology. It was published in 2008 by ACT, Reflbook, Wackler. The book is part of the "Masters of Psychology (Peter)" series. On our site you can download the book "Hero with a Thousand Faces" in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format or read online. The rating of the book is 3.63 out of 5. Here, before reading, you can also refer to the reviews of readers who are already familiar with the book and find out their opinion. In the online store of our partner you can buy and read the book in paper form.
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. -