Part of the Casswiki article series Mythology and Shamanism and archaic esotericism
Joseph Campbell, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces”), distinguishes several common traits shared by the great heroes of myth. This common pattern forms the heroic archetype.
There is an unusual birth and childhood. Perseus”) was the son of a princess and Zeus. Percival was the widow’s son. Both grow up secluded and without a father. They are gifted but the gift may be latent and they live without worldly recognition and are generally unsophisticated or naïve when it comes to the ways of the world.
They are called to complete a quest. Perseus was set up to fail by his stepfather when he was sent to fetch Gorgon’s head. He had no choice, though, as he needed to save his mother.
There is often some arduous work of preparation or purification. Hercules was called to clean the Augean stables. This is an allegory for inner work as well as leaving the routines of the ordinary world behind.
They receive supernatural help. Athena”) gives Perseus a reflecting shield.
They enter an otherworldly, terrifying situation and they achieve a victory. This allows them to return with a new power. From the Gorgon’s blood sprang the winged horse, Pegasus.
They return and claim what was theirs but was denied them before. In so doing they bring some boon to the land. Perseus saves Andromeda in the nick of time, claims her as his wife and proceeds to bring justice to the land.
The path of the hero is beset by dangers. The world of legend is full of failed heroes. Percival”) forgets the essential key question when he finally attains the Grail, although he succeeds later. Prometheus”) cheats the gods and while he does give fire to man he is destroyed in the process. Most do not get past the call to the adventure and remain in the world of the ordinary and do not enter the archetypal. King Minos, whose touch turned all to gold was cursed with a poetic punishment for his materialism.
Even in the first Harry Potter”) novel, we see the basic, classic stages of the heroic journey.
It is not for nothing that the epic legends are often called cycles, as in Arthurian Cycle. Cycle means a repeating whole, a sequence. Looking deeper, we see the idea of cyclic time, or an archetypal form that is again and again projected in the visible world and lends its spirit to each such mythic cycle. The hero is ever new, yet the same. The rebirth of the hero through victory is like a branching point in time, a privileged moment at which the gap between the archetypal world of the “higher densities” and the visible world can be bridged and new life and truth brought to the world below.
This idea is expressed at many scales from personal to planetary. Still, there is an enduring and invariant quality to the heroic journey.
In the context of the present work, we perceive a global re-enactment of the land falling into chaos before some radical event that will redefine past, present and future. The call to adventure for the hero is abundantly clear. The point of encountering the Gorgon, the decisive moment towards which all is drawn as by destiny is the as yet unseen moment of which much esoteric tradition speaks. In the Cassiopaean terminology, this is called the Wave.
An in-depth discussion of the forms of the heroic archetype can be found in Laura Knight-Jadczyk’s The Wave Series books.