The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Now it so happened one day that the golden ball of the princess did not fall into the little hand lifted into the air, but passed it, bounced on the ground, and rolled directly into the water. The princess followed it with her eyes, but the ball disappeared; and the spring was deep, so deep that the bottom could not be seen. Thereupon she began to cry, and her crying became louder and louder, and she was unable to find consolation. And while she was lamenting in this way, she heard someone call to her: “What is the matter, Princess? You are crying so hard, a stone would be forced to pity you.” She looked around to see where the voice had come from, and there she beheld a frog, holding its fat, ugly head out of the water. “Oh, it’s you, old Water Plopper,” she said. “I am crying over my golden ball, which has fallen into the spring.” “Be calm; don’t cry,” answered the frog. “I can surely be of assistance. But what will you give me if I fetch your toy for you?” “Whatever you would like to have, dear frog,” she said; “my clothes, my pearls and jewels, even the golden crown that I wear.” The frog replied, “Your clothes, your pearls and jewels, and your golden crown, I do not want; but if you will care for me and let me be your companion and playmate, let me sit beside you at your little table, eat from your little golden plate, drink from your little cup, sleep in your little bed: if you will promise me that, I will go straight down and fetch your golden ball.” “All right,” she said. “I promise you anything you want, if you will only bring me back the ball.” But she thought: “How that simple frog chatters! There he sits in the water with his own kind, and could never be the companion of a human being.”

As soon as the frog had obtained her promise, he ducked his head and sank, and after a little while came swimming up again; he had the ball in his mouth, and tossed it on the grass. The princess was elated when she saw her pretty toy. She picked it up and scampered away. “Wait, wait,” called the frog, “take me along; I can’t run like you.” But what good did it do, though he croaked after her as loudly as he could? She paid not the slightest heed, but hurried home, and soon had completely forgotten the poor frog — who must have hopped back again into his spring.^[1]

This is an example of one of the ways in which the adventure can begin. A blunder — apparently the merest chance — reveals an unsuspected world, and the individual is drawn into a relationship with forces that are not rightly understood. As Freud has shown,^[2] blunders are not the merest chance. They are the result of suppressed desires and conflicts. They are ripples on the surface of life, produced by unsuspected springs. And these may be very deep — as deep as the soul itself. The blunder may amount to the opening of a destiny. Thus it happens, in this fairy tale, that the disappearance of the ball is the first sign of something coming for the princess, the frog is the second, and the unconsidered promise is the third.

As a preliminary manifestation of the powers that are breaking into play, the frog, coming up as it were by miracle, can be termed the “herald”; the crisis of his appearance is the “call to adventure.” The herald’s summons may be to live, as in the present instance, or, at a later moment of the biography, to die. It may sound the call to some high historical undertaking. Or it may mark the dawn of religious illumination. As apprehended by the mystic, it marks what has been termed “the awakening of the self.”^[3] In the case of the princess of the fairy tale, it signified no more than the coming of adolescence. But whether small or great, and no matter what the stage or grade of life, the call rings up the curtain, always, on a mystery of transfiguration — a rite, or moment, of spiritual passage, which, when complete, amounts to a dying and a birth. The familiar life horizon has been outgrown; the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand.

Figure 11. Apis in the Form of a Bull Transports the Deceased as Osiris to the Underworld (carved wood, Egypt, c. 700–650 b.c.)