The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Neither did the sun release him,

Then he wearied of existence,

And his life became a burden.

Thereupon he moved the portal,

With his finger, fourth in number,

Opened quick the bony gateway,

With the toes upon his left foot,

With his knees beyond the gateway.

Headlong in the water falling,

With his hands the waves repelling,

Thus the man remained in ocean,

And the hero on the billows.^[4]

Before Väinämöinen — hero already in his birth — could make his way ashore, the ordeal of a second mother-womb remained to him, that of the elemental cosmic ocean. Unprotected now, he had to undergo the initiation of nature’s fundamentally inhuman forces. On the level of water and wind he had to experience again what he already so well knew.

In the sea five years he sojourned,

Waited five years, waited six years,

Seven years also, even eight years,

On the surface of the ocean,

By a nameless promontory,

Near a barren, treeless country.

On the land his knees he planted,

And upon his arms he rested,

Rose that he might view the moonbeams,

And enjoy the pleasant sunlight,

See the Great Bear’s stars above him,

And the shining stars in heaven.

Thus was ancient Väinämöinen,

He, the ever famous minstrel,

Born of the divine Creatrix,

Born of Ilmatar, his mother.^[5]2. Matrix of Destiny

The universal goddess makes her appearance to men under a multitude of guises; for the effects of creation are multitudinous, complex, and of mutually contradictory kind when experienced from the viewpoint of the created world. The mother of life is at the same time the mother of death; she is masked in the ugly demonesses of famine and disease.

The Sumero-Babylonian astral mythology identified the aspects of the cosmic female with the phases of the planet Venus. As morning star she was the virgin, as evening star the harlot, as lady of the night sky the consort of the moon; and when extinguished under the blaze of the sun she was the hag of hell. Wherever the Mesopotamian influence extended, the traits of the goddess were touched by the light of this fluctuating star.

A myth from southeast Africa, collected from the Wahungwe Makoni tribe of South Rhodesia, displays the aspects of the Venus-mother in co-ordination with the first stages of the cosmo­gonic cycle. Here the original man is the moon; the morning star his first wife, the evening star his second. Just as Väinämöinen emerged from the womb by his own act, so this moon man emerges from the abyssal waters. He and his wives are to be the parents of the creatures of the earth. The story comes to us as follows:

Maori (God) made the first man and called him Mwuetsi (moon). He put him on the bottom of a Dsivoa (lake) and gave him a ngona horn filled with ngona oil.* Mwuetsi lived in Dsivoa.

Mwuetsi said to Maori: “I want to go on the earth.” Maori said: “You will rue it.” Mwuetsi said: “None the less, I want to go on the earth.” Maori said: “Then go on the earth.” Mwuetsi went out of Dsivoa and on to the earth.

The earth was cold and empty. There were no grasses, no bushes, no trees. There were no animals. Mwuetsi wept and said to Maori: “How shall I live here?” Maori said: “I warned you. You have started on the path at the end of which you shall die. I will, however, give you one of your kind.” Maori gave Mwuetsi a maiden who was called Massassi, the morning star. Maori said: “Massassi shall be your wife for two years.” Maori gave Massassi a fire maker.

In the evening Mwuetsi went into a cave with Massassi. Massassi said: “Help me. We will make a fire. I will gather chimandra (kindling) and you can twirl the rusika (revolving part of the fire maker).” Massassi gathered kindling. Mwuetsi twirled the rusika. When the fire was lighted Mwuetsi lay down on one side of it, Massassi on the other. The fire burned between them.