Joseph Campbell, the American Mythologist, brought the monomyth to popular culture in his 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
The hero’s journey, also called the monomyth, is the story line of many books and movies such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, King Arthur, and more.
In some combination of figurative and literal ways, we are all meant to be on the hero’s journey because it is designed to grow us up so we can discern truth and do our part in the world.
Each “hero” must go on an adventure that requires them to leave “home,” they meet with a crisis while on the journey, they overcome the crisis, and then come “home” changed or transformed only to find that another journey with more challenges awaits.
First among the best of these stories is Homer’s The Odyssey, composed in the 8th century BC right after the founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus. Athens and Sparta were super powers. The Odyssey had a powerful influence on European literature, which influenced all of Western culture.
The poem focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus (also known as Ulysses in Roman mythology) and his long journey home to Ithaca following the fall of Troy. His adventurous ten-year journey took him through the Ionian Islands, the Peloponnese and as far away as Egypt, North Africa and the western Mediterranean.
The archetypes encountered by the hero include:
-Mentor
-Ally
-Herald (represents need for change)
-Trickster
-Shapeshifter (can be ally, enemy or both)
-Guardian (tests hero before challenge by telling them to give up)
-Shadows or Villains (mirror the hero in some way)
Every hero is looking for the same thing
Heroes face trials but they persevere. They all are at times the recipient of injustice and the perpetrator of injustice. Each hero carries within both good and bad or darkness and light.
Every hero is looking for a sense of home and belonging. That search is a God longing hardwired into us all. We don’t get to choose the adventure and characters we’ll meet along the way, but we do get to decide if we’ll heed the call to set out on the journey or not.
The cost and promise is we’ll never be the same again. Risky, yes. But you can’t know till you go.