The Hero with a Thousand Faces

I have been the chief director of the work of the tower of Nimrod;

I am a wonder whose origin is not known.

I have been in Asia with Noah in the ark,

I have seen the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra;

I have been in India when Roma was built,

I am now come here to the Remnant of Troia.

I have been with my Lord in the manger of the ass;

I strengthened Moses through the water of Jordan;

I have been in the firmament with Mary Magdalene;

I have obtained the muse from the cauldron of Caridwen;

I have been bard of the harp to Lleon of Lochlin.

I have been on the White Hill, in the court of Cynvelyn,

For a day and a year in stocks and fetters,

I have suffered hunger for the Son of the Virgin,

I have been fostered in the land of the Deity,

I have been teacher to all intelligences,

I am able to instruct the whole universe.

I shall be until the day of doom on the face of the earth;

And it is not known whether my body is flesh or fish.

Then I was for nine months

In the womb of the hag Caridwen;

I was originally little Gwion,

And at length I am Taliesin.

And when the king and his nobles had heard the song, they wondered much, for they had never heard the like from a boy as young as he.^[40]

The larger portion of the bard’s song is devoted to the Imperishable, which lives in him, only a brief stanza to the details of his personal biography. Those listening are oriented to the Imperishable in themselves, and then supplied incidentally with an item of information. Though he had feared the terrible hag, he had been swallowed and reborn. Having died to his personal ego, he arose again established in the Self.

The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is. “Before Abraham was, I am.”^[41] He does not mistake apparent changelessness in time for the permanence of Being, nor is he fearful of the next moment (or of the “other thing”), as destroying the permanent with its change. “Nothing retains its own form; but Nature, the greater renewer, ever makes up forms from forms. Be sure there’s nothing perishes in the whole universe; it does but vary and renew its form.”^[42] Thus the next moment is permitted to come to pass. — When the Prince of Eternity kissed the Princess of the World, her resistance was allayed.

She opened her eyes, awoke, and looked at him in friendship. Together they came down the stairs, and the king awoke and the queen and the entire courtly estate, and all looked at each other with big eyes. And the horses in the court stood up and shook themselves: the hunting dogs jumped and wagged their tails: the pigeons on the roof drew their little heads out from under their wings, looked around, and flew across the field: the flies on the wall walked again: the fire in the kitchen brightened, flickered, and cooked the dinner: the roast began again to sizzle: and the cook gave the scullery boy a box in the ear that made him yell: and the maid finished plucking the chicken.^[43]

Footnotes

* This detail is a rationalization of rebirth from the hermaphroditic, initiating father.

* In many myths of the hero in the whale’s belly he is rescued by birds that peck open the side of his prison.

* Compare the Christian Credo: “He descended into Hell, the third day He rose again from the dead....”

* “For he wist not what to say; for they were sore afraid” (Gospel According to Mark, 9:6).

* The principal text of modern Hindu devotional religiosity: an ethical dialogue of eighteen chapters, appearing in Book VI of the Mahābhārata, which is the Indian counterpart of the Iliad.

* Jainism is a heterodox Hindu religion (i.e., rejecting the authority of the Vedas) which in its iconography reveals certain extraordinarily archaic traits. [For Campbell’s further thoughts on Jainism and the Cosmic Woman, see Campbell’s Myths of Light, (Novato, California: New World Library) pp. 93–101. — Ed.]

* [Merddin = Merlin, chief wizard of the Arthurian romances. — Ed.]

Endnotes