And my original country is the region of the summer stars;
Idno and Heinin called me Merddin,*
At length every king will call me Taliesin.
I was with my Lord in the highest sphere,
On the fall of Lucifer into the depth of hell.
I have borne a banner before Alexander;
I know the names of the stars from north to south;
I have been on the galaxy at the throne of the Distributer;
I was in Canaan when Absalom was slain;
I conveyed the Divine Spirit to the level of the vale of Hebron;
I was in the court of Don before the birth of Gwdion.
I was instructor to Eli and Enoc;
I have been winged by the genius of the splendid crosier;
I have been loquacious prior to being gifted with speech;
I was at the place of the crucifixion of the merciful Son of God;
I have been three periods in the prison of Arianrod;
I have been the chief director of the work of the tower of Nimrod;
I am a wonder whose origin is not known.
I have been in Asia with Noah in the ark,
I have seen the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra;
I have been in India when Roma was built,
I am now come here to the Remnant of Troia.
I have been with my Lord in the manger of the ass;
I strengthened Moses through the water of Jordan;
I have been in the firmament with Mary Magdalene;
I have obtained the muse from the cauldron of Caridwen;
I have been bard of the harp to Lleon of Lochlin.
I have been on the White Hill, in the court of Cynvelyn,
For a day and a year in stocks and fetters,
I have suffered hunger for the Son of the Virgin,
I have been fostered in the land of the Deity,
I have been teacher to all intelligences,
I am able to instruct the whole universe.
I shall be until the day of doom on the face of the earth;
And it is not known whether my body is flesh or fish.
Then I was for nine months
In the womb of the hag Caridwen;
I was originally little Gwion,
And at length I am Taliesin.
And when the king and his nobles had heard the song, they wondered much, for they had never heard the like from a boy as young as he.[40]
The larger portion of the bard’s song is devoted to the Imperishable, which lives in him, only a brief stanza to the details of his personal biography. Those listening are oriented to the Imperishable in themselves, and then supplied incidentally with an item of information. Though he had feared the terrible hag, he had been swallowed and reborn. Having died to his personal ego, he arose again established in the Self.
The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is. “Before Abraham was, I am.”[41] He does not mistake apparent changelessness in time for the permanence of Being, nor is he fearful of the next moment (or of the “other thing”), as destroying the permanent with its change. “Nothing retains its own form; but Nature, the greater renewer, ever makes up forms from forms. Be sure there’s nothing perishes in the whole universe; it does but vary and renew its form.”[42] Thus the next moment is permitted to come to pass. — When the Prince of Eternity kissed the Princess of the World, her resistance was allayed.
She opened her eyes, awoke, and looked at him in friendship. Together they came down the stairs, and the king awoke and the queen and the entire courtly estate, and all looked at each other with big eyes. And the horses in the court stood up and shook themselves: the hunting dogs jumped and wagged their tails: the pigeons on the roof drew their little heads out from under their wings, looked around, and flew across the field: the flies on the wall walked again: the fire in the kitchen brightened, flickered, and cooked the dinner: the roast began again to sizzle: and the cook gave the scullery boy a box in the ear that made him yell: and the maid finished plucking the chicken.[43]
* * *
Footnotes
* This detail is a rationalization of rebirth from the hermaphroditic, initiating father.
* In many myths of the hero in the whale’s belly he is rescued by birds that peck open the side of his prison.
* Compare the Christian Credo: “He descended into Hell, the third day He rose again from the dead....”
* “For he wist not what to say; for they were sore afraid” (Gospel According to Mark, 9:6).
* The principal text of modern Hindu devotional religiosity: an ethical dialogue of eighteen chapters, appearing in Book VI of the Mahābhārata, which is the Indian counterpart of the Iliad.
* Jainism is a heterodox Hindu religion (i.e., rejecting the authority of the Vedas) which in its iconography reveals certain extraordinarily archaic traits. [For Campbell’s further thoughts on Jainism and the Cosmic Woman, see Campbell’s Myths of Light, (Novato, California: New World Library) pp. 93–101. — Ed.]
* [Merddin = Merlin, chief wizard of the Arthurian romances. — Ed.]
* * *
Endnotes
[1] Viṣṇu Puraṇa, 23; Bhagavata Puraṇa, 10:51; Harìvansha, 114. The above is based on the rendering by Heinrich Zimmer, Maya, der indische Mythos (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1936), pp. 89–99.
Compare with Kṛṣṇa, as the World Magician, the African Edshu. Compare, also, the Polynesian trickster, Maui.
[2] “Taliesin,” translated by Lady Charlotte Guest in The Mabinogion (Everyman’s Library, No. 97, pp. 263–64).
[3] See Gertrude Schoepperle, Tristan and Isolt: A Study of the Sources of the Romance, (London and Frankfurt-am-Main, 1913).
[4] Harva, op cit., pp. 543–44; quoting “Pervyi buryatsii šaman Morgon-Kara,” Isvestiya Vostočno Siberskago Otdela Russkago Geografičeskago Obščestva, XI, 1–2 (Irkutsk, 1880), pp. 87 ff.
[5] John White, The Ancient History of the Maori, His Mythology and Traditions (Wellington, 1886–89), vol. II, pp. 167–71.
[6] Grimm's Fairy Tales, No. 79.
[7] C.G. Jung, The Integration of the Personality (New York, 1939), p. 59.
[8] See Apollonios of Rhodes, Argonautika: the flight is recounted in Book IV.
[9] Ko-ji-ki, “Records of Ancient Matters” (a.d. 712), adapted from the translation by C.H. Chamberlain, Transactions of The Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. X, Supplement (Yokohama, 1882), pp. 24–28.
[10] Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa, 3.28.5.
[11] Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes, pp. 85–87.
[12] Tomobe-no-Yasutaka, Shintō-Shoden-Kuju.
[13] Shintō-Gobusho.
[14] Izawa-Nagahide, Shintō-Ameno-Nuboko-no-Ki.
[15] Ichijo-Kaneyoshi, Nihonshoki-Sanso.
[16] Urabe-no-Kanekuni.
[17] All of the quotations above will be found in Genchi Kato, What Is Shintō? (Tokyo: Maruzen Company Ltd., 1935); see also Lafcadio Hearn, Japan, an Attempt at Interpretation (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1904).
[18] Ko-ji-ki, after Chamberlain, op cit., pp. 52–59.
[19] Kramer, op cit., pp. 87, 95. The conclusion of the poem, this valuable document of the sources of the myths and the symbols of our civilization, is forever lost.
[20] Gospel According to Matthew, 26:51; Gospel According to Mark, 14:47; Gospel According to John, 18:10.
[21] Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad, 5.
[22] Washington Irving, The Sketch Book, “Rip van Winkle.”
[23] Book of Genesis, 5.
[24] Curtin, op cit., pp. 332–33.
[25] From Sir James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, one-volume edition, pp. 593–94. Copyright 1922 by the Macmillan Company and used with their permission.
[26] Ibid., pp. 594–95. By permission of the Macmillan Company, publishers.
[27] Adapted from Burton, op cit., III, pp. 231–56.
[28] Gospel According to Matthew, 17:1–9.
[29]
A certain element of comic relief can be felt in Peter’s immediate project (announced even while the vision was before his eyes) to convert the ineffable into a stone foundation. Only six days before, Jesus had said to him: “Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church,” then a moment later: “Thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men” (Matthew, 16:18, 23).
[30] Bhagavad Gītā, 11; 1:45–46; 2:9. From the translation by Swami Nikhilananda (New York, 1944).
[31] Bṛhadāranyaka Upaniṣad, 1.1.1: translated by Swami Madhavananda (Mayavati, 1934).
[32] Robinson Jeffers, Cawdor, p. 116. Copyright 1928 by Robinson Jeffers. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.
[33] Summa contra Gentiles, I, 5, par. 3.
[34] Kena Upaniṣad, 2:3.
[35] Bhagavad Gītā, 11: 53–55.
[36] Gospel According to Matthew, 16:25.
[37] Shankaracharya, Vivekachudamani, 542 and 555.
[38] Bhagavad Gītā, 2:22–24.
[39] Ibid., 3:19 and 3:30.
[40] “Taliesin,” op cit., pp. 264–74.
[41] Gospel According to John, 8:58.
[42] Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV, 252–55.
[43] Grimm's Fairy Tales, No. 50, “Little Briar-rose” (better known as “Sleeping Beauty”); conclusion.
CHAPTER IV
The Keys
The adventure can be summarized in this diagram:
The mythological hero, setting forth from his common-day hut or castle, is lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the threshold of adventure. There he encounters a shadow presence that guards the passage. The hero may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive into the kingdom of the dark (brother-battle, dragon-battle; offering, charm), or be slain by the opponent and descend in death (dismemberment, crucifixion). Beyond the threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of which give magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero’s sexual union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition by the father-creator (father atonement), his own divinization (apotheosis), or again — if the powers have remained unfriendly to him — his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft); intrinsically it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom). The final work is that of the return. If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under their protection (emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformation flight, obstacle flight). At the return threshold the transcendental powers must remain behind; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of dread (return, resurrection). The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir).
The changes rung on the simple scale of the monomyth defy description. Many tales isolate and greatly enlarge upon one or two of the typical elements of the full cycle (test motif, flight motif, abduction of the bride), others string a number of independent cycles into a single series (as in the Odyssey). Differing characters or episodes can become fused, or a single element can reduplicate itself and reappear under many changes.
The outlines of myths and tales are subject to damage and obscuration. Archaic traits are generally eliminated or subdued. Imported materials are revised to fit local landscape, custom, or belief, and always suffer in the process. Furthermore, in the innumerable retellings of a traditional story, accidental or intentional dislocations are inevitable. To account for elements that have become, for one reason or another, meaningless, secondary interpretations are invented, often with considerable skill.[1]
In the Eskimo story of Raven in the belly of the whale, the motif of the fire sticks has suffered a dislocation and subsequent rationalization. The archetype of the hero in the belly of the whale is widely known. The principal deed of the adventurer is usually to make fire with his fire sticks in the interior of the monster, thus bringing about the whale’s death and his own release. Fire making in this manner is symbolic of the sex act. The two sticks — socket-stick and spindle — are known respectively as the female and the male; the flame is the newly generated life. The hero making fire in the whale is a variant of the sacred marriage.
But in our Eskimo story this fire-making image underwent a modification. The female principle was personified in the beautiful girl whom Raven encountered in the great room within the animal; meanwhile the conjunction of male and female was symbolized separately in the flow of the oil from the pipe into the burning lamp. Raven’s tasting of this oil was his participation in the act. The resultant cataclysm represented the typical crisis of the nadir, the termination of the old eon and initiation of the new. Raven’s emergence then symbolized the miracle of rebirth. Thus, the original fire sticks having become superfluous, a clever and amusing epilogue was invented to give them a function in the plot. Having left the fire sticks in the belly of the whale, Raven was able to interpret their rediscovery as an ill-luck omen, frighten the people away, and enjoy the blubber feast alone. This epilogue is an excellent example of secondary elaboration. It plays on the trickster character of the hero but is not an element of the basic story.
In the later stages of many mythologies, the key images hide like needles in great haystacks of secondary anecdote and rationalization; for when a civilization has passed from a mythological to a secular point of view, the older images are no longer felt or quite approved. In Hellenistic Greece and in Imperial Rome, the ancient gods were reduced to mere civic patrons, household pets, and literary favorites. Uncomprehended inherited themes, such as that of the Minotaur — the dark and terrible night aspect of an old Egypto-Cretan representation of the incarnate sun god and divine king — were rationalized and reinterpreted to suit contemporary ends. Mt. Olympus became a Riviera of trite scandals and affairs, and the mother-goddesses hysterical nymphs. The myths were read as superhuman romances. In China, comparably, where the humanistic, moralizing force of Confucianism has fairly emptied the old myth forms of their primal grandeur, the official mythology is today a clutter of anecdotes about the sons and daughters of provincial officials, who, for serving their community one way or another, were elevated by their grateful beneficiaries to the dignity of local gods. And in modern progressive Christianity the Christ — Incarnation of the Logos and Redeemer of the World — is primarily a historical personage, a harmless country wise man of the semi-Oriental past who preached a benign doctrine of “do as you would be done by,” yet was executed as a criminal. His death is read as a splendid lesson in integrity and fortitude.
Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved. Such a blight has certainly descended on the Bible and on a great part of the Christian cult.
To bring the images back to life, one has to seek, not interesting applications to modern affairs, but illuminating hints from the inspired past. When these are found, vast areas of half-dead iconography disclose again their permanently human meaning.
On Holy Saturday in the Catholic Church, for example, after the blessing of the new fire,* the blessing of the paschal candle, and the reading of the prophecies, the priest puts on a purple cope and, preceded by the processional cross, the candelabra, and the lighted blessed candle, goes to the baptismal font with his ministers and the clergy, while the following tract is sung: “As the hart panteth after the fountains of water, so my soul panteth after Thee, O God! when shall I come and appear before the face of God? My tears have been my bread day and night, while they say to me daily: Where is thy God?”[2]
On arriving at the thr
eshold of the baptistry, the priest pauses to offer up a prayer, then enters and blesses the water of the font, “to the end that a heavenly offspring, conceived by sanctification, may emerge from the immaculate womb of the divine font, reborn new creatures: and that all, however distinguished either by sex in body, or by age in time, may be brought forth to the same infancy by grace, their spiritual mother.” He touches the water with his hand, and prays that it may be cleansed of the malice of Satan; makes the sign of the cross over the water; divides the water with his hand and throws some towards the four quarters of the world; breathes thrice upon the water in the form of a cross; then dips the paschal candle in the water and intones: “May the virtue of the Holy Ghost descend into all the water of this font.” He withdraws the candle, sinks it back again to a greater depth, and repeats in a higher tone: “May the virtue of the Holy Ghost descend into all the water of this font.” Again he withdraws the candle, and for the third time sinks it, to the bottom, repeating in a higher tone still: “May the virtue of the Holy Ghost descend into all the water of this font.” Then breathing thrice upon the water he goes on: “And make the whole substance of this water fruitful for regeneration.” He then withdraws the candle from the water, and, after a few concluding prayers, the assistant priests sprinkle the people with this blessed water.[3]
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