Huck Finn's Journey







40 Year Old Virgin-Hero?







Notes and Story Elements For Departure
Joseph Campbell

The call to adventure: The Journey always begins with a “call” to embark. This may not be as obvious as a phone call. Thus, we must be attentive to subtle cues in our environment and remain open to new possibilities, otherwise we may miss the invitation that would change our life. That which gives the call is called The Herald. The herald is a sign or extension of the World Navel, which we will hit head on in chapter on Initiation.

This critical sign may be an unexpected begging which does not fit in with your plans in any obvious way. Indeed, the Herald issues a Call to leave behind the plans and projects that belong to the superficial world of ordinary life, it’s a call from the beyond. In fact, a blunder or mere chance happenstance may be the Call, a rift in the expected order of things.

The point of the journey we are called to could be historical or religious. Not all Journeys have the same point or serve the same cosmic purpose. The Hero is at the service of the higher needs of mankind or the cosmos as a whole, and will only understand her specific calling as the journey proceeds. Destiny has summoned the Hero.

The Hero will transfigure, radically re-shape, his center of spirit from the norms engrained into him by society to a new,unknown, spiritual center. The new place where the Journey unfolds is fluid , polymorphous, full of torment and superhuman forces.Refusal of the Call

Many are called, but few answer. An unanswered call makes the would-be hero a victim now needing to be saved by a hero. This is an interesting psychological point made by Campbell. Our need to be saved and desire and victimization are actually the result of our own failure to answer the calls presented to us, a failure to recognize the Herald in our midst. But we express this as victimization, or the need to be saved. What a tangled web we weave when we refuse the call. King Minos is given as an example: whatever house he builds will be a house of death, always creating new problems to be solved by a hero

Why do we refuse the call? We are required to give up what we believe (falsely) to be in our best interest. This is called Egoism: Always pursuing what is in our self-interest. Many of us act in this way, and society even encourages it. However, being able to recognize and accept the call requires that we surrender our preconceptions about what is in our interest. If we refuse to reconsider this we are too rigid mentally to heed the call.

There are dangerous psyschological implications to refusing the call. We will be harassed from within by the self wanting freedom and release, fighting against the self that won’t change. Our inability to put off the infantile ego and its sphere of emotional relationships keeps us bound by the walls of childhood.

Sometimes refusal at first leads to revelation and release later. Almost every sane person would hesitate to give up an entire way of life for an unknown promise, one full of dangers and challenges. Time is often given by the Herald for the Hero to contemplate what is before her. The introspection in this process requires the psyche to confront it’s fundamental depths. This can be terrifying, destructive, and liberating, as we are experiencing depths of the psyche never before encountered.

The Supernatural Aid

This is a protective figure that provides amulets and armiture for the dragon forces ahead. The Hero is coming from the ordinary realm of man and is not equipped to contend with the more-than-human terrain ahead. This may require the mastery of new tools, like Luke Skywalker’s mastery of “the force”, or may require honing existing powers within the person that have hitherto been dormant powers.

The Supernatural aid is benign, a protective power of destiny, a sign of the promise of paradise. In Lord of the Rings, this appears to be the old wizard Gandolf.

The gift of the Supernatural Aid requires trust on the Hero’s part, trust in the viability of his mission and the purpose served. Only then will the guardians appear.

The Herald and the Supernatural Aid are related, extensions of the same spirit reaching out to the Hero. The Hero now has a sense that there are unified forces that are on her side. This is encouraging, but this is just the beginning.

Crossing The Threshold

There is always a “threshold guardian” to the zone of magnified power. The Supernatural Aid guides the Hero through the outlying area of the new realm where the journey takes place, educating and preparing her along the way. The first significant point is the Threshold, this clearly divides the old world of the Hero from the new world she will enter to complete the mission.

At this point the Hero sees threats of violence, mystery, seductive beauty on the other side. This is what awaits. There is both good and evil, risk and gain, but all are of a higher order than previously experienced.

Pan (see www.mytheweb.com) is the classical example of a guardian outside the gates.

An interesting point made by Campbell is that reason itself can be a threshold. Reason usually provides the boundaries within which we think and act. But this may be precisely the threshold that the Hero must cross. A paradox is that our Hero must therefore be irrational in some sense in order to progress on the higher calling. She cannot rationally justify this next step.

Buddha, who was formerly Siddhartha Guatama, is an example of a person transfigured by a heroic journey. He left the protected and lavish lifestyle behind the royal gates, was beckoned to a new way of life by the awareness of suffering outside the gate, and attained enlightenment after battling with the forces of his new path.

Belly of the Whale
Now we are really get to the crux of things. Passage beyond the threshold takes us to a place of rebirth; the world-wide womb. Campbell calls this the Belly of the Whale. The belly exemplifying the womb and life-giving center, the whale symbolizing the world or cosmos.

Our Hero does not conquer at this point, she is swallowed into the unknown and appears to have died. The individual now ceases to be an individual, being absorbed into the universe itself. If you pour a cup of tomato juice into the ocean, that cup of tomato juice does not exist any more, it is incorporated into the huge powerful currents of the ocean. The Hero is like the cup of tomato juice at this point.

The origins of the Olympian Gods can be traced to birth of this sort. Kronos, ruler of the cosmos under the Titan rule, swallowed each of his children. Zeus was one of them, but was saved by his mother Gea when she tricked Kronos into swallowing a rock instead of his newest son. Zeus then causes Cronos to regurgitate his swallowed children, releasing them from the Belly of the Whale into the world. The rest is history.

The passage beyond the threshold is a form of self-annihilation, the big step out of the old life into a new life which destroys the old self and creates a new one. This is likened to a worshipper going into a temple and recalling that he is only dust and ashes. We pass many thresholds of this kind.

The Hero is a devotee at the moment of entry and undergoes a metamorphasis. No creature can attain a higher nature without ceasing to be what they were. Nietzsche calls this ‘self-overcoming’ which can only be achieved by self-loathing. To create the new we must put to rest the old.