The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Ko Hung evolved several other very interesting receipts, one bestowing a body “buoyant and luxurious,” another the ability to walk on water. For a discussion of the place of Ko Hung in Chinese philosophy, see Alfred Forke, “Ko Hung, der Philosoph und Alchimist,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, XLI, 1–2 (Berlin, 1932), pp. 115–26.

[163] Herbert A. Giles, A Chinese Biographical Dictionary (London and Shanghai, 1898), p. 372.

[164] A Tantric aphorism.

[165] Lao Tze, Tao Teh Ching, 16 (translation by Dwight Goddard, Laotzu’s Tao and Wu Wei, New York, 1919, p. 18). Compare to the concept of Yin-Yang.

[166] “Paradiso,” XXXIII, 49–57 (translation by Norton, op cit., vol. III, pp. 253–54, by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers).

[167] Kena Upaniṣad, 1:3 (translation by Swami Sharvananda; Sri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore, Madras, 1932).

[168] Poetic Edda, “Hovamol,” 139 (translation by Henry Adams Bellows, The American-Scandinavian Foundation, New York, 1923).

[169] Jataka, Introduction, i, 75 (reprinted by permission of the publishers from Henry Clarke Warren, Buddhism in Translations [Harvard Oriental Series 3], Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1896, pp. 82–83).

Figure 44. The Return of the Prodigal (oil on canvas, Holland, a.d. 1662)

CHAPTER IIIReturn1. Refusal of the Return

When the hero-quest has been accomplished, through penetration to the source, or through the grace of some male or female, human or animal personification, the adventurer still must return with his life-transmuting trophy. The full round, the norm of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet, or the ten thousand worlds.

But the responsibility has been frequently refused. Even the Buddha, after his triumph, doubted whether the message of realization could be communicated, and saints are reported to have passed away while in the supernal ecstasy. Numerous indeed are the heroes fabled to have taken up residence forever in the blessed isle of the unaging Goddess of Immortal Being.

A moving tale is told of an ancient Hindu warrior-king named Muchukunda. He was born from his father’s left side, the father having swallowed by mistake a fertility potion that the Brahmins had prepared for his wife;* and in keeping with the promising symbolism of this miracle, the motherless marvel, fruit of the male womb, grew to be such a king among kings that when the gods, at one period, were suffering defeat in their perpetual contest with the demons, they called upon him for help. He assisted them to a mighty victory, and they, in their divine pleasure, granted him the realization of his highest wish. But what should such a king, himself almost omnipotent, desire? What greatest boon of boons could be conceived of by such a master among men? King Muchukunda, so runs the story, was very tired after his battle: all he asked was that he might be granted sleep without end, and that any person chancing to arouse him should be burned to a crisp by the first glance of his eye.

The boon was bestowed. In a cavern chamber, deep within the womb of the mountain, King Muchukunda retired to sleep, and there slumbered through the revolving eons. Individuals, peoples, civilizations, world ages, came into being out of the void and dropped back into it again, while the old king, in his state of subconscious bliss, endured. Timeless as the Freudian unconscious beneath the dramatic time world of our fluctuating ego-experience, the old mountain man, the drinker of deep sleep, lived on and on.

His awakening came — but with a surprising turn that throws into new perspective the whole problem of the hero-circuit, as well as the mystery of the mighty king’s request for sleep as the highest conceivable boon,

Viṣṇu, the Lord of the World, had become incarnate in the person of a beautiful youth named Kṛṣṇa (Krishna), who having saved the land of India from a tyrannical race of demons, had assumed the throne. And he had been ruling in Utopian peace, when a horde of barbarians suddenly invaded from the northwest. Kṛṣṇa the king went against them, but in keeping with his divine nature, won the victory playfully, by simple ruse. Unarmed and garlanded with lotuses, he came out of his stronghold and tempted the enemy king to pursue and catch him, then dodged into a cave. When the barbarian followed, he discovered someone lying there in the chamber, asleep.

“Oh!” thought he. “So he has lured me here and now he feigns to be a harmless sleeper.”