Welcome to the Conquering the Hero’s Journey, a three part series discussing Joseph Campbell’s well-loved theory on global mythological traditions, which he called the “monomyth,” otherwise known as “The Hero’s Journey.”
This mythological framework has been pillaged, dissected, and fracked for decades now. From self-help gurus to men’s coaches to psychedelic guides to struggling screenwriters, it seems like the Hero’s Journey is one thing we can all agree on. And in an increasingly fractured world, maybe that’s a good thing.
The hero must venture out into the world, face the outer and inner demons, find the “boon” buried in the dragon’s lair, return home a transformed being, and spread the gifts all around.
What’s not to like?
Honestly, quite a lot, if you ask me.
You might be thinking, who the hell am I to critique the monumental framework of the hero’s journey? Is this just some arrogant attempt to “cancel” Campbell and refute this well-established theory? Not in the slightest.
Let me say this first:
I adore Joseph Campbell. I wouldn’t be who or where I am today without his work. Campbell revitalized the field of mythology for generations to come. He offered a complete revisioning of world mythology that integrated the work of Jung and so many others, and created a deeply valuable psycho-spiritual lens on ancient stories, that were previously only seen as artifacts of so-called “primitive” cultures.
Campbell helped bridge psychology and mythology in a way that inspired millions of people, rippling out into the currents of popular culture in unfathomable ways. Star Wars wouldn’t exist without it, along with so many other beloved stories of our modern era.
We are all profoundly indebted to Uncle Joe.
And…
Our world has changed profoundly since he penned The Hero with a Thousand Faces, his 1949 opus that established his “monomyth” theory. Today, we are grappling with tectonic shifts in our collective values and perspectives that ask us to try and reframe our understanding of history and culture, examine our biases, and calls into question the very way we see the world as modern Western people.
I’ve critiqued Campbell before in some of my workshops, and have had people reach out and schedule calls with me just to tell me that I was wrong. While I don’t care to repeat that experience, I wouldn’t be surprised if this article ruffled some more feathers. Maybe that’s a good thing too.
Today, we need wilder, stranger, and more ambiguous stories than what the hero’s journey can provide. We need stories that flow from the bottom of the acidifying ocean like Sedna’s weeping fingers. In this time of planetary crossroads, we need tales that help us live more comfortably in the liminal cracks of our collective uncertainty, stories of fracture and breakdown and new life emerging from the ashes. When truth and lies converge into some rough beast that slouches ever towards us, we need ambiguous myths punctuated with Coyote’s endangered paw prints to show us a third way out of our predicament.
The world has changed. The time has long since passed. The hero must die.
The Myth of the Heroic Ego
There is a time and a place for heroics. Heroism can be a sacred act that is usually accompanied by immense sacrifice, often to the point of death. Talk to any military veteran, first responder, or someone who has actually faced death, and they’ll likely have a few tales of true heroism they can point to.
After all, the origins of hero worship began with honoring their death. The cult of the hero, anthropologically speaking, was the cult of the dead hero, which sprouted from tombs and burial mounds all over the world. That’s fine, because the dead don’t have an ego to inflate.
This gets complicated when that same praise, traditionally reserved for the beloved dead, or some totemic mythical figure, gets transposed onto living souls. Somewhere along the line we lost that important detail. Campbell’s work, when brought into our highly individualized culture, can easily serve to enhance individual grandiosity–the exact opposite of the original function of these “hero myths.”
Myth is full of teachings about the limits of the heroic ego. One place all heroes must venture to, and emerge from, is the underworld. Without a cultivated relationship to death, and therefore grief, without the necessary scars that silently recal the horrific ordeal, heroism becomes a hollow thing.
James Hillman wrote, “Our civilization, with its heroic monuments, tributes to victory over death, ennobles the Herculean ego, who does not know how to behave in the underworld” (1979, p. 110). To successfully travel through the underworld and emerge intact requires a different approach from what serves us up above. Inanna, Osiris, Persephone, Eshu, Hermes, Coyote, Maui, Quetzalcoatl, and other gods and goddesses of underworld descent show us how it’s done.
“So it matters very much the way we descend,” says Hillman (p. 112). “Ulysses and Aeneas . . . go down to learn from the underworld which re-visions their life in the upper world. Hercules, however, goes down to take, and he continues with the muscular reactions of the upper world, testing each phantom for its reality.” We cannot fight and win in this domain, according to myth. When we enter the underworld, we must surrender to the fact that there are some things we may never understand and will ultimately be defeated by.
After all, “the villain in the underworld is the heroic ego, not Hades,” as Hillman reminds us (p. 113).
There is a subtle notion woven throughout much of Campbell’s work that reinforces the archetype of the lone hero as the ideal of achievement and success. He was obsessed with Homer’s Odyssey, and viewed Odysseus/Ulysses as the singular archetype of Western man (we’ll revisit the gendered nature of the hero’s journey in a following essay.)
Yet the Odyssey is just one story, plucked from an ancient culture that made just as much space for murky polytheism, earth goddesses, and tales of heroic hubris and failure.
The Odyssey, for all we know, may have been a cautionary tale.
The individual hero has precedence in myth, as Campbell’s work beautifully demonstrates. Yet the shadow to the heroic deeds of mythic gods is the inflated and often destructive heroic ego that develops in the psyche of fallible human beings.
True heroism transcends the ego rather than bolsters it. Campbell would agree that the many “hero myths” he gathered from across the world depict the slow dissolution of the ego. While this remains true, these stories, when paired with the collective amnesia and egoism of modern Western culture, seem to do the exact opposite.
Instead of “relativizing the ego with the soul,” as Jung would say, the heroic ego takes us down a lonely path towards the “rugged” (or ragged) individualism that characterizes Western notions of masculine power.
Go down that road a few blocks and you’ll discover a cocktail of isolation, burnout, addiction, and narcissism that I’ve seen plague so many men today.
Walk to the creepy cul de sac at the end and you’ll find yourself in much darker territory: that of “lone wolf” shooters, incels, and other violent expressions of toxic masculine rage.
Before we go any further, let’s clarify something: The ego is not the enemy. The ego puts clothes on our backs, food in our stomachs, and keeps the fire lit. The ego ultimately wants to keep us safe, healthy, and happy. As one of my favorite professors in grad school, a Latino man from East LA turned Jungian analyst often said, “the ego is your amigo.”
The heroic ego, however, is a different story.
It is the heroic ego which destroys as easily as it creates, subjugates as easily as it serves, and fixates as easily as it fixes.
Today when people talk about someone having a “big ego,” they are often referring to the inflated, narcissistic ego. While it is heroic to venture into the unknown, to engage in inner work, to powerfully serve those who need help, the heroic ego is more involved with itself than with others.
Every narcissist is a hero in their own mind.
Part II coming next time.
Bibliography:
Hillman, J. (1979). The dream and the underworld. Harper & Row.
A few things:
If you’re in the Pacific Northwest, I’m having the official book launch at Powell’s Books on Sunday, October 20th, at 3pm. Come by!
Soon I’ll be launching a paid Substack. Once a month, I’ll be offering a 90 minute “Mythopoetic Integration Circle,” a group space where I’ll be offering psychedelic integration and dream work from a depth psychological lens, answering questions, and generally just hanging out.
I’ll also be offering exclusive audio content, as well as my full archive. If you’ve been enjoying my work, consider pledging your support.
Also, in just two weeks (!) my book Psychedelics and the Soul: A Mythic Guide to Psychedelic Healing, Depth Psychology, and Cultural Repair comes out in bookstores everywhere!
Right now its available for pre-order, which means a lot for new authors. Feel free to get yourself a copy here or wherever you like to buy your books.
As always, please like, share, and subscribe! Thanks for reading.
Thank you. I feel we have become content with a very low bar for our collective becoming. A bar still rooted in egomyths, whilst our ecological selves hunger for ecomyths yet imagined. Unshackled from what we have come to believe. Yet perhaps like Wilbur says we transcend and include as we grow and so maybe the sacred ground of Joseph Campbell’s myth making continues to nurture the new as vital creative compost 🌻
I can’t wait to read the next installation.