The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Persia was overrun by the zealots of Mohammed, a.d. 642. Those not converted were put to the sword. A poor remnant took refuge in India, where they survive to this day as the Parsis (“Persians”) of Bombay. After a period of some three centuries, however, a Mohammedan-Persian literary “Restoration” took place. The great names are: Firdausi (940–1020?), Omar Khayyam (?–1123?), Nizami (1140–1203), Jalal ad-Din Rumi (1207–1273), Saadi (1184–1291), Hafiz (?–1389?), and Jami (1414–1492). Firdausi’s Shah Nameh (“Epic of Kings”) is a rehearsal in simple and stately narrative verse of the story of ancient Persia down to the Mohammedan conquest.

No longer referring the boons of his reign to their transcendent source, the emperor breaks the stereoptic vision which it is his role to sustain. He is no longer the mediator between the two worlds. Man’s perspective flattens to include only the human term of the equation, and the experience of a supernal power immediately fails. The upholding idea of the community is lost. Force is all that binds it. The emperor becomes the tyrant ogre (Herod-Nimrod), the usurper from whom the world is now to be saved.

Figure 74. Young Maize God (carved stone, Mayan, Honduras, c. a.d. 680–750)6. The Hero as World Redeemer

Two degrees of initiation are to be distinguished in the mansion of the father. From the first the son returns as emissary, but from the second, with the knowledge that “I and the father are one.” Heroes of this second, highest illumination are the world redeemers, the so-called incarnations, in the highest sense. Their myths open out to cosmic proportions. Their words carry an authority beyond anything pronounced by the heroes of the scepter and the book.

“All of you watch me. Don’t look around,” said the hero of the Jicarilla Apache, Killer-of-Enemies;

Listen to what I say. The world is just as big as my body. The world is as large as my word. And the world is as large as my prayers. The sky is only as large as my words and prayers. The seasons are only as great as my body, my words, and my prayer. It is the same with the waters; my body, my words, my prayer are greater than the waters.

Whoever believes me, whoever listens to what I say, will have long life. One who doesn’t listen, who thinks in some evil way, will have a short life.

Don’t think I am in the east, south, west, or north. The earth is my body. I am there. I am all over. Don’t think I stay only under the earth or up in the sky, or only in the seasons, or on the other side of the waters. These are all my body. It is the truth that the underworld, the sky, the seasons, the waters, are all my body. I am all over.

I have already given you that with which you have to make an offering to me. You have two kinds of pipe and you have the mountain tobacco.^[22]

The work of the incarnation is to refute by his presence the pretensions of the tyrant ogre. The latter has occluded the source of grace with the shadow of his limited personality; the incarnation, utterly free of such ego-consciousness, is a direct manifestation of the law. On a grandiose scale he enacts the hero-life — performs the hero-deeds, slays the monster — but it is all with the freedom of a work done only to make evident to the eye what might have been accomplished equally well with a mere thought.

Kans, the cruel uncle of Kṛṣṇa, usurper of his own father’s throne in the city of Mathurā, heard a voice one day that said to him: “Thy enemy is born, thy death is certain.” Kṛṣṇa and his elder brother Balarāma had been spirited to the cowherds from their mother’s womb to protect them from this Indian counterpart of Nimrod. And he had sent demons after them — Pūtanā of the poison milk was the first — but all had been undone. Now when his devices had failed, Kans determined to lure the youths to his city. A messenger was sent to invite the cowherds to a sacrifice and great tournament. The invitation was accepted. With the brothers among them, the cowherds came and camped outside the city wall.

Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma, his brother, went in to see the wonders of the town. There were great gardens, palaces, and groves. They encountered a washerman and asked him for some fine clothes; when he laughed and refused, they took the clothes by force and made themselves very gay. Then a hump-backed woman prayed Kṛṣṇa to let her rub sandal-paste on his body. He went up to her, placing his feet on hers, and with two fingers beneath her chin, lifted her up and made her straight and fair. And he said: “When I have slain Kans I shall come back and be with you.”

The brothers came to the empty stadium. There the bow of the god Śiva was set up, huge as three palm trees, great and heavy. Kṛṣṇa advanced to the bow, pulled it, and it broke with a mighty noise. Kans in his palace heard the sound and was appalled.