The Path Of A Hero In Real Human Life. From The First Raised Sword To Returning Home

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Introduction:

For me, "The Hero's Way" described by D. Campbell is still a kind of guide along the road of separation and increasing independence, including in my current life (since I myself am still in the first half of it). This very ancient motive clearly shows how he feels himself: a young man moving out of his parental home, cultivating the desired career for himself, climbing the social ladder, as well as an adult man working additionally, who forgets about time, or even an elderly man who is angry with his own age-related inability to do something. Also, I want to note that this "route" is aimed at our separation "from the mother's skirt" and increasing independence, starting with our own constitution (for lovers of esotericism - the "assemblage point").

And if a person refuses to walk along it without starting it, or turning off the path at some of the stages, he returns to the start again - the need will again push him onto this very path, or he will do everything in order not to follow it. pass, forcing his own energy to stand idle, which he never allowed for self-realization.

If we describe this scheme with rough strokes, then it consists of:

1. Call - a new age motive

2. Symbolic death - the loss of the old

3. Meeting with the Mother - the temptation to return

4. Trials - personal-social victories

5. Meeting with another woman (one of the prerequisites to become a father yourself)

6. Coming to the Father - the need to understand social laws

7. Serving him - Increasing socialization

8. Becoming a Father - achieving personal goals and increased status

9. Exhaustion - the danger of being proud

10. Returning home with gifts - returning to oneself with neoplasms (mental / material / social)

So, towards adventure!

1. The call is the emergence of a new motive, which is the potential for a transition to a more mature level of development, it is often even (especially at first) alien to the Ego - Bellerophon was forced to leave his hometown, otherwise he would have been seized. In everyday life, an example can be the passionate desire of a young guy to live with his special person (only he has not yet decided where? How? And for what?..).

2. After the hero obeys the call and decides to rush on the road (in real life he does something that will require effort, courage, endurance and independence from him), he will die of past less mature models of his behavior (mythical heroes experienced something similar, sitting in the stomach of a whale, dragon, or wolf), quick-witted people may find that this is a figurative expression of the process of birth into the world, which is not simple for a child, but vitally necessary.

3. Meeting with a maternal figure is nothing more than developing a new way of interacting with a maternal one, literally it can sound like: "No, mom. Now I live separately, earning my own living, but I can come to visit." In the experiences of the ancients, this is described as the appearance of the Goddess, dissuading with her tricks) the hero from continuing the campaign.

4. The moment of testing is described very vividly, since this is a kind of "icing on the cake", a young man has to find a job, get up in the morning, count the money so that there is enough for everything, every month putting aside for a communal apartment (or maybe for rent), and if he shows weakness, he will not just come back with nothing, he will lose time and get a low self-esteem of a defeatist (briefly about how, for example, 40-year-old men living with their mother appear), so I sincerely wish everyone to defeat all their chimeras;

5. The next stage, it would seem, is logically connected with the appearance of the influence on the hero of the Other Woman (or women), it describes the need to learn how to get along with other persons of the opposite sex, not being left alone and at the same time not shifting its responsibility to the shoulders of the "new mother" learning to live with them in a mutually fruitful relationship is not the same with coming to a witch, or drowning with sirens, playfully luring you into the abyss.

6. Coming to the father is kneeling before the king, whatever he may be (after all, he is a king!). In reality, this looks like systematic actions to increase competencies, status, work, and, as a result, money. The hero will still have to reckon with the laws of society and its processes, and if he wants to live well, he must constantly study them without losing sight of them.

7. Serving the father is a new milestone of trials, which in real life are always associated with the pursuit of pro-social goals (the notorious increase in income, career advancement, and / or an increase in one's own professional demand).

8. The zenith of any glory, an important point of achieving what you want, coming to what you wanted for so long - this is identification (rapprochement) with your father. The hero either kills the king he hates (in reality, he stops dealing with those who do not like him, because he has become quite popular), or is rewarded by the king for the feats he has done with his daughter and half of the kingdom in addition. The hero no longer obeys the king, he is now the king himself - either in the organization and / or in his prof. life.

9. When the status position is already enviable to many, and there is enough gold in the "treasury," the least thing you want is to take off the crown. It is easy to get fed up with your own attractive social mask, "fused" with it. If the hero (now more like an old man in soul and / or body) gets stuck at this stage, he can behave like a teenager, having mistresses, be a workaholic, or show some kind of despotism, behind which is envy of youth, the stage encourages a person to be that only after he made his desired status position with his own hands, his path goes further - to adult wisdom, and the acquisition of a new meaning (life is not for the sake of conquest, but for the sake of satisfying personal more spiritual needs).

10. At the last stage, the hero returns home, changed in the wandering and dying, carrying treasure with him (Odysseus - experience, Bellerophon - Pegasus), the elderly man pays more and more attention to his (now his own) family, stands next to his wife as then, when he met her for the first time - after separation from his mother, unless they do not look like young men, and he - has a treasure of life experience, and with it, perhaps, business, professional career, scientific recognition, and / or many children and grandchildren raised by him so he returned home truly changed after his personal Odyssey.

Afterword:

As you probably already understood, in this article I described the hero's circle as a metaphor for an ordinary normal male life in order to show that in a sense the hero's path is our life cycles (their figurative description), but also not it is worth forgetting that in a miniature format it consists of many such "trips", to the extent that we go through the cycle "from ourselves - to social adaptation - and back" every day: getting ready for work early, achieving pro-social goals, and thinking before going to bed "where do I really go through life, and what to do?"

Recommended reading:

1. N. Kuhn. The myths of ancient Greece and Rome.

2. D. Campbell. A thousand-faced hero.