The Hero's Quest and the Shaman's Journey

The renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces argues that there is a fundamental myth (what he calls a ‘monomyth’) that underlies many—indeed perhaps most—of our great narratives. That myth, the hero’s quest or the hero’s journey, describes the plotline of the myths that define many cultures. Such myths today range from Crusaders of the Lost Ark to Star Wars to Eat, Pray, Love, along with many other great stories, novels, and movies. This journey or quest is much the same one that is involved in the path to revealing and working with your inner shaman so that you can become the healer, connector, sensemaker serving the world that your particular gifts empower.

Here is how Campbell describes the hero’s journey:

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.[1]

In Campbell’s telling, the hero is ‘called’ to a new world, to transformation, to greater awareness—ultimately, to adventure. Fearful of unknown realms, the call to the non-ordinary realities represented by whatever the adventure is, or settled in ordinary life, the hero typically initially resists the call. So it is with many shamans who are called to a purpose or a life of healing work that they might not have intended. Yet frequently helpers in the form of mentors, sages, and wise persons come along to help make the transition to adventure in whatever form it takes. In mystical traditions, these mentors and sages can be spiritual helpers, but in our ordinary reality today, they can be many different people—friends and colleagues who listen carefully to how we want to be ‘seen,’ therapists, teachers, spiritual advisors, wise elders, and family members. These helpers guide us in dealing with the fear of embarking on the new adventure that the call to being shaman represents.

Embarking on the adventure, the hero-to-be (or shaman-to-be) needs to walk through the fears associated with responding to the call. Such adventures inevitably mean going into unknown territory. That territory can be the darker, mystical, and deeper aspects of self or the world. Or it can mean crossing new boundaries, learning new skills, meeting new people, or, sometimes, facing real dangers. As pirates were supposed to be wont to say, over that horizon ‘thar be dragons.’ Typically, the ‘dragons,’ whatever form they take, represent some sort of test or obstacle to be overcome. Fearsome antagonists and ‘dragons’ of various kinds, both internal and external, real and imagined, must be dealt as the hero/shaman descends into what Campbell calls the abyss, the darkest and most difficult part of the journey.

The abyss represents a form of death—a death to the old ways of doing things and being in the world (and in many stories, actually coming near death). Facing the worst, the abyss, changes the hero. Having faced the abyss, the darkest part of the journey, the hero comes out the other side renewed and reborn, transformed in some important way. The hero, having received whatever ‘gift’ has been offered by the transformation then begins the sometimes long and difficult journey home. As Thomas Wolfe said, however, ‘you can’t go home again,’ at least not the same way that you left. The hero must adjust to and sometimes make atonements for the changes and transformation that has been gifted. Then the hero or emerging shaman needs to figure out what to do with the gift or boon that has been offered, whether that is a gift of new awareness and insight or some other type of benefit for others or the world. The point is, like the gift of the shaman, the boon must be used to bring about healing of some sort, not for selfish purposes. Ultimately, the boon is a gift for the world.

Back home, the transformed hero becomes what Campbell calls ‘the master of two worlds,’ the world of ordinary reality or day-to-day life and the world of whatever new or non-ordinary reality the hero has adventured, which has been transformative during the course of the journey. Call these worlds inner and outer, spiritual and physical, ordinary and non-ordinary, ‘reality’ and mystical, being and becoming, fear and love. By whatever designation, they result in a changed person, with something healing—a ‘boon’ in Campbell’s term—to offer the world. The hero and the shaman have connected with non-ordinary reality by traversing new realms in some way and now must now use the sensemaking skills of the shaman to bring that gift back to the ‘ordinary’ world to help it heal in some way.

The gift or ‘boon can take many forms. It can, for example, be knowledge, insight, or learning. In many tales, it is some sort of physical gift that, i.e., helps to save the world from destruction. Or it can be self-discovery and greater self-awareness. In other tellings, the boon can be love, that brings a capacity to live life healed and transformed, thereby helping to heal loved ones, or the adventurer can put the wisdom that has been gained to good use in the world.

Such transformative hero’s journeys, like the journey to being and becoming a shaman, can be difficult, fraught with risks, obstacles, and dangers. What the hero’s journey, as monomyth, tells us, though, is that we all have our own demons and need to embark on our own quests. We are all, as novelist Mary McCarthy once said, heroes of our own lives. We all need in some sense to be transformed. We all go through at least some of the steps in the hero’s and the shaman’s journeys. When we are aware of the changes taking place as a result of these processes, we all have the potential (and need the courage) to tap our inner resources as shamans to ‘become fully who we are’ and return to our worlds changed and enabled to bring our own gifts to the world around us.

Endnotes

[1] Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Novato: New World Library, 1949, p. 23.