Ep. 1: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth — The Hero’s Adventure: An Iroquois Story:
BILL MOYERS: So perhaps the hero lurks in each one of us, when we don’t know it
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, yes, I mean, our life evokes our character, and you find out more about yourself as you go on. And it’s very nice to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature, rather than your lower.
BILL MOYERS: Give me an example.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I’ll give you a story. I’m dealing with an Iroquois story right now. There’s a motif that comes in American Indian stories very often, what I call the refusal of suitors. A girl with her mother lived in a wigwam on the edge of the village. She was a very handsome girl, but extremely proud and would not accept any of the boys. They proposed to her through the mother, and the mother was terribly annoyed with her. Well, one day they’re out collecting wood, and they have gone a long way from the village. And while they are collecting the wood, a terrific darkness comes over them. Now, this wasn’t the darkness of night descending; when you have a darkness like that, there’s some magician at work somewhere. So the mother says, “Well, let’s gather some bark and make a little wigwam of bark, wigwam for ourselves, and collect wood for a fire, and we’ll just spend the night here.” So they do that, and the mother falls asleep.
And the girl looks up and there’s this magnificent guy standing there with a wampum sash, glorious, and feathers and all this kind-black feathers. He says, “I have come to marry you, and I’ll await your reply.” She accepts the guy, and the mother accepts the man, and he gives the mother the wampum belt to prove that he’s serious about all this. So he goes away with the girl; she has acquiesced. Mere human beings weren’t good enough for her, but here’s something that really– ah. So she’s in another domain.
Now, the adventure is marvelous. She goes with him to his village, and they enter his lodge. The people in there greet her and she feels very comfortable about it and all. And then the next day he says, “I’m going off to hunt.” So he leaves the lodge and the door is closed with a flap, there’s a flap. When he closes the flap, she hears this strange sound. So there’s the whole day and she’s just in the hut, and as evening comes, she hears that strange sound again. And the door flap is flung off and in comes this prodigious serpent with his tongue darting, and he puts his head in her lap, and says, “Now, you must search my head for lice,” and things like that, and she finds all kinds of horrible things there and kills them all. And then he withdraws, and in a moment after the door has been closed, it opens again and in he comes, he’s the same beautiful young man again, and said, “Were you afraid of me when I came in just now?” No, she says, she wasn’t at all afraid.
Next day he goes off to hunt, and then she leaves the lodge to gather wood. And the first thing she sees is an enormous serpent basking on the rocks. And then another, and then another, and she begins to feel very badly, very homesick and discouraged. Then the evening. the serpent and then the man again. The third day when he leaves, she decides she’s going to try to get out of this place. So she goes out and she’s standing in the woods thinking, and a voice speaks to her. She turns, and there’s a little old man there, and he says, “Darling, you are in trouble. The man that you’ve married is one of seven brothers. They are great magicians, and like many people of this kind, their hearts are not in their bodies. There’s a collection of seven hearts in a bag that is hidden under the bed of the eldest, to whom you are married. You must go get that, and then we’ll deal with the next part of the adventure.”
She goes in and finds the bag of hearts and is running out, and a voice calls after her. “Stop. stop.” It’s the voice of the magician. And she continues to run and he says. “You may think you can get away from me, but you never can.” And just at that point, she hears the voice of the old man, he says, I’ll help you, dear.” And he’s pulling her out of the water; she didn’t even know that she was in water.
BILL MOYERS: What does that say to you?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That’s to say you have moved out of the hard land, the solid earth, and are in the field of the unconscious. And she had pulled herself into the transcendent realm and got caught in the negative powers of the abyss, and she’s being rescued now by the upper powers. What you have done has been to elevate yourself out of the local field and put yourself in the field of higher power, higher danger. And are you going to be able to handle it? If you are not eligible for this place into which you’ve put yourself, it’s going to be a demon marriage, it’s going to be a real mess. If you are eligible, it can be a glory that will give you a life that is yours, in your own way.
BILL MOYERS: So these stories of mythology are simply trying to express a truth that can’t be grasped any other way.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: It’s the edge, the interface between what can be known and what is never to be discovered, because it is a mystery transcendent of all human research. The source of life: what is it? No one knows.
BILL MOYERS: Why are stories important for getting at that?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well. I think it’s important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery and of your own mystery, and it gives life a new zest, a new balance, a new harmony to do this. I mean, in therapy, in psychological therapy, when people find out what it is that’s ticking in them, they get straightened out. And what is it that life is. I find thinking in mythological terms has helped people, visibly you can see it happen.
BILL MOYERS: How, what does it do?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: It erases anxieties, it puts them in accord with the inevitables of their life, and they can see the positive values of what are the negative aspects of what is positive. It’s whether you’re going to say no to the serpent or yes to the serpent, as easy as that.
BILL MOYERS: No to the adventure?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yes. The adventure of being alive, of living.
