Culture: "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" (1949)

Fundamentally, most tabletop role-playing games seek to tell thrilling yarns about heroes triumphing in the face of great odds.  So, this week I wanted to give a shout out to the seminal work of comparative mythology, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces":

Written by legendary mythologist Joseph Campbell, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" is a hugely influential study that combines modern psychology with comparative mythological analysis.  Building on work from earlier scholars, Campbell found heroic legends from all over the world and from many different periods of time shares many similar elements of plot, structure, theme and symbolism.  

This begged the question of why heroic legends possessed so many similarities, despite being separated by great gaps of space and time?  Campbell's tremendous insight was that the reason for this universality was that these heroic legends were reflections of and expressions of elements of the collective unconscious of humanity.  According to Campbell and legendary psychologist Carl Jung, the collective unconscious produces "archetypes," which form the basis of many myths.

Furthermore, Campbell was able to break down these heroic legends into a basic narrative pattern which he called the monomyth or "The Hero's Journey", which he summarized as follows:

"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."

The concept of "The Hero's Journey" has been widely acclaimed since the 1970s.  Moreover, Campbell's ideas have been adopted and adapted repeated in popular culture, perhaps most famously in Star Wars, but also in many, many, many other works.

“In the three decades since I discovered The Hero with a Thousand Faces, it has continued to fascinate and inspire me. Joseph Campbell peers through centuries and shows us that we are all connected by a basic need to hear stories and understand ourselves. As a book, it is wonderful to read; as illumination into the human condition, it is a revelation.” - George Lucas

A Call to Adventure!

So, if you are a fan of mythology and want to learn and understand more about the hows and whys of heroic legends, check out one of best written books of the 20th century!