The Hero with a Thousand Faces

“Space is boundless by re-entrant form, not by great extension. That which is is a shell floating in the infinitude of that which is not.” This succinct formulation by a modern physicist, illustrating the world picture as he saw it in 1928,^[27] gives precisely the sense of the mythological cosmic egg. Furthermore, the evolution of life, described by our modern science of biology, is the theme of the early stages of the cosmogonic cycle. Finally, the world destruction, which the physicists tell us must come with the exhaustion of our sun and ultimate running down of the whole cosmos,^[28] stands presaged in the scar left by the fire of Tangaroaā: the world-destructive effects of the creator-destroyer will increase gradually until, at last, in the second course of the cosmogonic cycle, all will devolve into the sea of bliss.

Not uncommonly the cosmic egg bursts to disclose, swelling from within, an awesome figure in human form. This is the anthropomorphic personification of the power of generation, the Mighty Living One, as it is called in the Kabbala. “Mighty Ta’aroa whose curse was death, he is the creator of the world.” Thus we hear from Tahiti, another of the South Sea Isles.*“He was alone. He had no father nor indeed a mother. Ta’aroa simply lived in the void. There was no land, nor sky, nor sea. Land was nebulous: there was no foundation. Ta’aroa then said:

O space for land, O space for sky,

Useless world below existing in nebulous state,

Continuing and continuing from time immemorial,

Useless world below, extend!

“The face of Ta’aroa appeared outside. The shell of Ta’aroa fell away and became land. Ta’aroa looked: Land had come into existence, sea had come into existence, sky had come into existence. Ta’aroa lived god-like contemplating his work.”^[29]

An Egyptian myth reveals the demiurge creating the world by an act of masturbation.^[30] A Hindu myth displays him in yogic meditation, with the forms of his inner vision breaking forth from him (to his own astonishment) and standing then around him as a pantheon of brilliant gods.^[31] And in another account from India the all-father is represented as first splitting into male and female, then procreating all the creatures according to kind:

In the beginning, this universe was only the Self, in human form. He looked around and saw nothing but himself. Then, at the beginning, he cried out, “I am he.” Whence came the name, I. That is why, even today, when a person is addressed, he first declares, “It is I,” and then announces the other name that he goes by.

He was afraid. That is why people are afraid to be alone. He thought, “But what am I afraid of? There is nothing but myself.” Whereupon his fear was gone....

He was unhappy. That is why people are not happy when they are alone. He wanted a mate. He became as big as a woman and man embracing. He divided this body, which was himself, in two parts. From that there came husband and wife....Therefore this human body (before one marries a wife) is like one of the halves of a split pea....He united with her; and from that were born men.

She considered: “How can he unite with me after producing me from himself? Well then, let me hide myself.” She became a cow; but he became a bull and united with her; from that were born cattle. She became a mare, he a stallion; she became a she-ass, he a he-ass and united with her; from that were born the one-hoofed animals. She became a she-goat, he a he-goat; she became a ewe, he a ram and united with her; from that were born goats and sheep. Thus did he project everything that exists in pairs, down to the ants.

Then he knew: “Indeed I am myself the creation, for I have projected the entire world.” Whence he was called Creation....^[32]

The enduring substratum of the individual and of the progenitor of the universe are one and the same, according to these mythologies; that is why the demiurge in this myth is called the Self. The Oriental mystic discovers this deep-reposing, enduring presence in its original androgynous state when he plunges in meditation into his own interior.

Him on whom the sky, the earth, and the atmosphere

Are woven, and the mind, together with all the life-breaths,

Him alone know as the one Soul. Other

Words dismiss. He is the bridge to immortality.^[33]

Thus it appears that though these myths of creation narrate of the remotest past, they speak at the same time of the present origin of the individual. “Each soul and spirit,” we read in the Hebrew Zohar,