Treasure, love, reward, approval, honor, status, freedom, survival … these are some of the many things we associate with the hero’s journey.
We don’t find the meaning of the hero’s journey in slaying the dragon or saving the princess—these are colorful metaphors and symbols for a more significant purpose.
Battling inner and outer demons, confronting bullies, and courting your ultimate mate symbolize a passage through the often-treacherous tunnel of self-discovery and individuation to mature adulthood.
At the end of each journey (if there is such an end), you’re different—sometimes visually, but always internally.
Today, let’s explore the meaning of the hero’s journey and see how it applies to personal development and our ability to actualize more of our potential.
What is the Hero’s Journey?
Joseph Campbell was a curious mythologist. In the field of comparative mythology, most scholars invested their time exploring how one culture’s myths are different than another.
Instead of focusing on the many differences between cultural myths and religious stories, however, Campbell looked for the similarities. And his studies resulted in what’s called the monomyth.
The monomyth is a universal story structure. It’s a kind of story template that takes a character through a sequence of stages.
The main character in the monomyth is the hero. The hero isn’t a person, but an archetype—a set of universal images combined with specific patterns of behavior. Think of a protagonist from your favorite film. He or she represents the hero. The storyline of the film enacted the hero’s journey. The Hero archetype resides in the psyche of every individual, which is one of the primary reasons we love hearing and watching stories.
Campbell began identifying the patterns of this monomyth. Over and over again, he was amazed to find this structure in the cultures he studied. He saw the same sequence in many religions including the stories of Gautama Buddha, Moses, and Jesus Christ.
Campbell outlined the stages of the monomyth in his classic book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (audiobook).
Why is the Hero’s Journey Relevant to Us?
We might ask, why explore the Hero’s Journey? Sure, Hollywood uses it as their dominant story structure for its films (more on that later), but what relevance does it have for us as individuals?
Today, when we speak of “myth,” we refer to something that’s commonly believed, but untrue. Myth, for people like Campbell and Jung however, had a much deeper meaning.
Myths, for them, represent dreams of the collective psyche. That is, in understanding the symbolic meaning of a myth, you come to know the psychological undercurrent—including hidden motivations, tensions, and desires—of the people.
And because the hero’s journey represents a monomyth that we can observe in most, if not all, cultures, it represents a process that is relevant to the entire human family.
What is this process? It’s the process of personal transformation from an innocent child into a mature adult. The child is born into a set of rules and beliefs of a group of people, and through the child’s heroic efforts he must break free from these conventions (transcend them) to discover him or herself. And in the process, the individual returns to his or her soul.
If we think of the hero’s journey as a roadmap for self-development, it can hold a lot of value for us.
The 3 Main Stages of the Hero’s Journey
So now let’s begin to break down the structure and sequence of the hero’s journey.
Stage 1: Departure
Campbell called the initial stage departure or the call to adventure. The hero departs from the world he knows. Luke Skywalker leaves his home planet to join Obi-Wan to save the princess. Neo gets unplugged from The Matrix with the help of Morpheus and his crew. In the Departure stage, you leave the safety of the world you know and enter the unknown.
Campbell writes of this stage in The Hero with a Thousand Faces:
This first step of the mythological journey—which we have designated the “call to adventure”—signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown.
Stage 2: Initiation
Now the hero must face a series of trials and tribulations. The hero’s journey isn’t safe. The hero is tested in battle, skill, and conflict. The hero may not succeed in each action but must press on. The hero will meet allies, enemies, and mentors with supernatural aid throughout the initiation stage.
Stage 3: Return
Having endured the trials and hardships of the adventure, the hero returns home. But the hero is no longer the same. An internal transformation has taken place through the maturation process of the experience. Luke is now a Jedi and has come to peace with his past. Neo embraces his destiny and liberates himself from the conventions of The Matrix.
Author: Scott Jeffrey, scottjeffrey.com
