The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The motif of the difficult task as prerequisite to the bridal bed has spun the hero-deeds of all time and all the world. In stories of this pattern the parent is in the role of Holdfast; the hero’s artful solution of the task amounts to a slaying of the dragon. The tests imposed are difficult beyond measure. They seem to represent an absolute refusal, on the part of the parent ogre, to permit life to go its way; nevertheless, when a fit candidate appears, no task in the world is beyond his skill. Unpredicted helpers, miracles of time and space, further his project; destiny itself (the maiden) lends a hand and betrays a weak spot in the parental system. Barriers, fetters, chasms, fronts of every kind dissolve before the authoritative presence of the hero. The eye of the ordained victor immediately perceives the chink in every fortress of circumstance, and his blow can cleave it wide.

The most eloquent and deep-driving of the traits in this colorful adventure of Cuchulainn is that of the unique, invisible path, which was opened to the hero with the rolling of the wheel and the apple. This is to be read as symbolic and instructive of the miracle of destiny. To a man not led astray from himself by sentiments stemming from the surfaces of what he sees, but courageously responding to the dynamics of his own nature — to a man who is, as Nietzsche phrases it, “a wheel rolling of itself” — difficulties melt and the unpredictable highway opens as he goes. 5. The Hero as Emperor and as Tyrant

The hero of action is the agent of the cycle, continuing into the living moment the impulse that first moved the world. Because our eyes are closed to the paradox of the double focus, we regard the deed as accomplished amid danger and great pain by a vigorous arm, whereas from the other perspective it is, like the archetypal dragon-slaying of Tiamat by Marduk, only a bringing to pass of the inevitable.

The supreme hero, however, is not the one who merely continues the dynamics of the cosmogonic round, but he who reopens the eye — so that through all the comings and goings, delights and agonies of the world panorama, the One Presence will be seen again. This requires a deeper wisdom than the other, and results in a pattern not of action but of significant representation. The symbol of the first is the virtuous sword, of the second, the scepter of dominion, or the book of the law. The characteristic adventure of the first is the winning of the bride — the bride is life. The adventure of the second is the going to the father — the father is the invisible unknown.

Adventures of the second type fit directly into the patterns of religious iconography. Even in a simple folktale a depth is suddenly sounded when the son of the virgin one day asks of his mother: “Who is my father?” The question touches the problem of man and the invisible. The familiar myth-motifs of the atonement inevitably follow.

The Pueblo hero, Water Jar Boy, asked the question of his mother.

“Who is my father?” he said. “I don’t know,” she said. He asked her again, “Who is my father?” but she just kept on crying and did not answer. “Where is my father’s home?” he asked. She could not tell him. “Tomorrow I am going to find my father.” — “You cannot find your father,” she said. “I never go with any boy, so there is no place where you can look for your father.” But the boy said, “I have a father, I know where he is living, I am going to see him.” The mother did not want him to go, but he wanted to go. So early next morning she fixed a lunch for him, and he went off to the south-east where they called the spring Waiyu powidi, Horse mesa point. He was coming close to that spring, he saw somebody walking a little way from the spring. He went up to him. It was a man. He asked the boy, “Where are you going?” — “I am going to see my father,” he said. “Who is your father?” said the man. “Well, my father is living in this spring.” — “You will never find your father.” — “Well, I want to go into the spring, he is living inside it.” — “Who is your father?” said the man again, “Well, I think you are my father,” said the boy. “How do you know I am your father?” said the man. “Well, I know you are my father.” Then the man just looked at him, to scare him. The boy kept saying, “You are my father.” Pretty soon the man said, “Yes, I am your father. I came out of that spring to meet you,” and he put his arm around the boy’s neck. His father was very glad his boy had come, and he took him down inside the spring.^[20]