Quotes: The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Myth and Dream

“Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, myths of man have flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind.” pg 1

“The wonder is that characteristic efficacy to touch and inspire deep creative centers dwells in the smallest nursery fairy tale – as the flavor of the ocean is contained in a droplet or the whole mystery of life within the egg of a flea. For the symbols of mythology are not manufactured; they cannot be ordered, invented, or permanently suppressed. They are spontaneous productions of the psyche […]” pg 1-2

“[…]Freud, Jung and their followers have demonstrated irrefutably that the logic, the heroes, and the deeds of myth survive into modern times. In the absence of an effective general mythology, each of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dream.” pg 2

“[The unconscious] is the realm that we enter in sleep. We carry it within ourselves forever. All the ogres and secret helpers of our nursery are there, all the magic of childhood. And more important, all the life-potentialities that we never managed to bring to adult realization, those other portions of ourself, are there; for such golden seeds do not die.” pg 12

quoting Sigmund Freud: (about dream symbolism)
“This symbolism is not peculiar to dreams, but it characteristic of unconscious ideation, in particular among the people, and it is to be found in folklore, and in popular myths, legends, linguistic idioms, proverbial wisdom and current jokes, to a more complete extent than in dreams.”

“Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind.” pg 14

Comedy and Tragedy

“Modern romance, like Greek tragedy, celebrates the mystery of dismemberment, which is life in time. The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world , as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved”
pg 19

“…tragic kathersis (i.e. the ‘purification’ or ‘purgation’ of the emotions of the spectator of tragedy through his experience of pity and terror) corresponds to an earlier ritual katharsis …” pg 19

pg 20 tragic art: love of fate. fate that is inevitably death

happily ever after:
“… our little stories of achievement seem pitiful; too well we know what bitterness of failure, loss, disillusionment, and ironic unfulfillment galls the blood of even the envied of the world! Hence we are not disposed to assign to comedy the high rank of tragedy. Comedy as satire is acceptable, as fun it is a pleasant haven of escape, but the fairy tale of happiness ever after cannot be taken seriously; ..” pg20-21
“The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth , and the divine comedy of the soul is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. […] Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible” “…kathodos and anodos, which together constitute the totality of the revelation that is life, and which the individual must know and love if he is to be purged of the contagion of sin, and death.”

“It is the business of mythology proper, and of the fairy tale, to reveal the specific dangers and techniques of the dark interior way from tragedy to comedy. Hence the incidents are fantastic and ‘unreal’: they represent psychological, not physical, triumphs.” pg 21
pg 22 the journey of the hero is inward

The Hero and the God

pg 30 the difference between fairy tale and myth
“Typically, the hero of the fairy tale achieves a domestic, microcosmic triumph, and the hero of a myth a world-historical, macrocosmic triumph […] [one] prevails over his personal oppressors, the latter brings back from his adventure the means for the regeneration of this society as a whole”

According to Joseph Campbell, Pimu is a Hero

The Power of Myth: The Hero’s adventure
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2775949135649155858

About 5 min in, Joseph Campbell talks about the Hero, why a character is called a hero, and why everyone is in their own life, a hero.

Hero is someone who has done something beyond normal range, experience, achievement. How is Pimu a hero?

Campbell says, a hero involves a death and rebirth. He goes on to explain that one example of a Hero’s journey that we all must face is leaving behind childhood to prepare for the psychological self responsibility of an adult.

Pimu is a hero because he does just that. We watch him struggle with the maturity of knowing the right path, and what his childlike nature says he deserves. If he chooses to keep the star against its will, the child will have won and Pimu will never grow up. The moment he decides to let the star go and watches something he loves disappear into the sky, Pimu has been reborn. He has learned to care for another creature, not because it brings him happiness in the end, but because it brings happiness to another.

@15:40

Campbell: Losing thinking of yourself and your own protection and giving yourself to another. That’s a trial in of itself is it not? There’s a big transformation of consciousness. And what all myths deal with is transformation of consciousness.
Interviewer: And how is the consciousness transformed?
Campbell: By trials. Tests, or certain illuminating revelations.

– Campbell after discussing the trials and temptations of Christ, Buddha, Moses