- [Narrator] Heroes are made in the hour of defeat.
Success then, can be described
as a series of glorious defeats.
Before we get started,
have you seen that TEDx video on the hero's journey?
If not, we'll link it below for you to watch after this.
It's gold.
(soft music)
Now, if I was to ask you what makes a hero,
you could probably rattle off
some pretty common fantasy tropes, right?
Heroes generally come from humble beginnings,
go on quests of some kind,
have to fight against an evil army or big bad guys,
maybe slay the occasional dragon.
Although I much prefer it when the dragon
bestows magical wisdom or grants wishes.
Oh, and of course we have damsels in distress,
magic rings, tricksters, traps, power-ups,
and maybe some sort of special wedding at the end,
where our hero becomes the next king or queen,
and ushers in a new era of light, goodness, hope,
and whatever else the author can pick-up
from the idea store.
As you can probably tell, this formula is everywhere.
Like literally everywhere,
and I mean across the whole world.
If you're an aspiring author and you take your story
to a publishing house and it has this formula,
the editor will probably just read the first sentence
and bin it.
It's probably the most done story structure ever
in human history.
To quote TEDx, what do Katniss Everdeen, Harry Potter,
and Frodo all have in common with the great heroes
of antiquity like Hercules, Gilgamesh and Achilles?
Maybe all those stories are just descended
from one original OG hero, whose story got reproduced
in every culture across the world throughout history.
Now, there's actually a name for this archetype
in narrative studies and comparative mythology,
it's called the hero's journey, journey, journey.
Aka the monomyth, mith, mith.
It's a style as old as time,
and no one knows quite where it came from.
There's a bunch of different theories though.
I've read that the archetype goes back
to the late homonym dispersal period, very unlikely.
Or that it was invented separately by different cultures
to help explain local events that happened.
Or that it's a representative of psychological layers
within our own collective unconscious.
Basically, it's one of those things that we can see
a lot of in stories and myth, and is super common,
but we have no idea where it came from or who invented it.
Historically, while the phrase hero's journey
was given to us by historian Joseph Campbell in 1949,
the studies of similarities in myth can be traced back
to 1871, with anthropologist,
Edward Burnett Tylor's observations
of common patterns in the plots of world religions.
And before coming into the hands of Joseph Campbell,
the hero's journey had a little brother of sorts
known as the Rank-Raglan mythotype
that basically listed different cross-cultural traits
often found in the accounts of heroes,
including mythical ones.
But the hero's journey, at least in the modern sense,
comes to us from Campbell,
who after reading up on the work of Carl Jung
and his view of the myth, borrowed the word monomyth
from James Joyce and used it in his book,
"The Hero With a Thousand Faces", faces, faces, faces.
Sorry, I'm gonna stop doing that.
The monomyth is usually broken down into different stages,
but everyone who talks about it uses different names
and sometimes groups them together to try and condense it,
so it gets a tad muddled.
Campbell himself believed there was 17 stages,
but not all myths around the world would have all 17.
Some might focus hugely on the early parts
and ignore the endings,
so this formula is really just a general framework.
To make it simple, the 17 stages
can usually be broken down into acts.
Luckily, they're not as generalized
as beginning, middle, and end, which is a nice change.
The three acts more or less are
departure, initiation, and return.
Now, we won't be going into a full discussion
of each stage here,
because there's way more individual stages
underneath each one,
and there's tons of YouTube videos that already do that.
And of course, we'll link a few of those below.
However, we'd love to explore the outline of this cycle
with you, which goes something like this,
first is the birth.
Basically, there is some special prophecy
or spiritual intervention that lets us know
our budding baby hero is special or chosen.
Or at the very least a key player in the story.
After some time passes, we see the call to adventure,
where some weird event or messenger calls our hero
to start their journey.
And they'll sometimes say no, only to be guided,
or let's be honest, or like pushed into it anyways.
Once on the journey, near the beginning we'll see the mentor
or helper, where our protagonist will get a training montage
and meet their teacher, often an entity
or supernatural figure who can be a wizard,
a retired old hero who became a recluse after a failure,
a fairy godmother, or even a god themselves.
Think ancient sage with flowing white hair,
and you're probably on the right track.
A lot of the time, the mentor will give them some artifact
or special weapon that they use to save the day,
often right before their tragic
and probably very dramatized death.
With new artifact in hand and new skills ready,
we reach the threshold arc.
This is the part of the story where our hero crosses over
from the mundane world into the adventurous worlds beyond.
Since most of these are myths and fairytales,
the worlds are pretty literal in the sense
that they've actually crossed over into some kind
of other world or spirit world that's different
from the physical one, and a home to all kinds of entities
or beings different from what they might be used to.
In "Lord of the Rings", there's people and orcs and goblins
and trolls and all manner of crazy things.
But it's not always a spiritual mystery something,
rather, it can be as simple as entering into a cave.
But the important thing is that it's a departure
from your everyday life or world
into a new and strange form of existence.
Like any good quest, once in the adventure world,
we find our hero getting tested.
They'll go through a series of ordeals
in their new world, where they might fight monsters,
dragons, or whatever else lives in the new world,
and each success they have further proving the heroiness
of our hero.
Now, what's our story missing so far?
That's right, a smart mouth, lovable comic relief character
or sidekick, who helps the hero beat all the tests
with the power of friendship.
Usually, the hero will have a sidekick comes
to them and helps them somehow
or lifts them up when they're about to quit.
Sometimes though, they'll meet that person
in the other world.
And oftentimes, it's a woman.
Which is actually one of the biggest critiques
of this structure, as it's for the most part,
very masculine-dominated.
And most of the women that are met by the hero are passive,
or exist solely to serve or help the hero in some way.
So you know, it's a good thing we had
"Final Fantasy XIII" mixing things up.
With the test conquered,
and nearing the end of the other world arc,
we reach the most important stage, the boss fight.
You know how this goes.
This is where that training montage from earlier comes
in handy, and the hero and the big villain duke it out
to the death.
A lot of times, this is also the naughtier, lowest point
for the hero.
And the first time around, they often lose.
In some cases, they might even die.
But fear not, we're not at the end just yet.
So they're often saved by plot magic.
- Hurray!
- [Narrator] While unconscious or dead,
the hero will often go through a spiritual rebirth,
and meet the ghost of their master or God.
Or get some kind of supernatural assistance
or deus ex machina leading to a rebirth
that makes them resurrect stronger
and more Opie than ever before.
With this new found knowledge
of themselves and probably some kind
of new superpower magic, or maybe just, you know,
the power of friendship, they defeat the villain.
(chuckles)
With the villain defeated or the magic potion
or elixir taken, we reach the flight stage.
This is where the hero, having conquered
the other world, begins the journey back
to the threshold from earlier.
If they find a bad guy or monster,
this section can add a bit of dramatic flare.
But otherwise, if the hero just gets a potion or something,
it's an all around chilled experience.
Nearing the end, we reach the return arc.
This is where our hero crosses that threshold again
and transitions back into the normal world
or reality that they started in.
And like earlier, this return to the physical world
can sometimes take the form
of a rebirth, resurrection, or spiritual awakening.
Having returned home after their big journey,
we reach the final stage, the elixir or homecoming.
This is when that object, blessing or knowledge
that the hero acquired in the other world,
maybe by defeating the boss
is put to use in the physical or everyday world.
A lot of the time, it serves some kind of healing function,
helping to heal old wounds and trauma in society
and the world for the better.
But most importantly, it defines the hero's role
in the world and why they went on the journey at all.
Now for us, and of course that's the whole reason
we made this video, I think the whole idea
of entering a profound spiritual world
and bringing back a new sense of knowledge is important,
as it reminds us that even though
we can experience amazing things during meditation,
plant medicine experiences,
or even just key stages of our lives
where there's much growth,
part of the purpose of those experiences
are to help heal the world as well as ourselves.
And that by bringing that knowledge
and understanding back to society and grounding it in,
is just as important a part of the journey.
The trick in returning then,
is to retain the wisdom gained on the quest,
to integrate that wisdom into a human life,
and then maybe figure out how to share
that wisdom with the rest of the world.
Interestingly, Campbell thought that the return arc
had another component.
For a human hero, it may mean achieving a balance
between the material and the spiritual.
In a successful return,
the person will become comfortable and competent
in both the inner and outer worlds,
perhaps that the protagonist has the freedom
to pass back and forth across the world divisions
and exist in both worlds at once.
To quote Campbell himself,
"The individual, through prolonged psychological discipline,
"gives up completely all attachment
"to his personal limitations, idiosyncrasies,
"hopes and fears, and no longer resists
"the self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth
"in the realization of truth, and so becomes ripe,
"at last for the great at-one-ment.
"His personal envisions being totally dissolved,
"he no longer tries to live, but willingly relaxes
"to whatever may come to pass in him,
"he becomes, that is to say an anonymity."
A great example of this is in "Star Wars".
By the time of return of the Jedi,
Luke has become a Jedi Knight
and former Jedi Knight and Anakin sheds his alter ego
as Sith Lord Darth Vader,
spoilers, but I mean, come on it's "Star Wars",
when he hits the emperor down the shaft.
And in doing so, returns as a forced spirit after his death.
I think part of the reason
why we can't find a distinct origin for this story archetype
is because maybe there isn't one,
it doesn't belong to a single culture or group.
As much as people might argue
that it has its origins in the early spread of humans,
or the Proto-Indo area
in semitic Australasian ethnic groups,
I think part of the reason that it's endured this long
is because it simply is a human story.
Whatever form it takes, at its heart,
it's the same narrative.
It's the story of a person overcoming
a hardship in their life through their own effort.
Sure, you can embellish it with drama,
and supernatural and paranormal stuff
to make it interesting,
but at its core, it tells the story of a human experience,
a story of adventure, a journey into the unknown,
and a return to normality with a new, more mature,
spiritually evolved perspective.
In a way, it's a metaphor for our own journey of growth,
whether physically into adulthood,
or spiritually into a higher understanding.
Now, there have even been some organizations
like the mythopoetic movement
that sees a kind of self-help potential
with the story archetype.
You know, the whole idea of facing a problem or your demons,
and going on your own quest of discovery and enlightenment,
and eventually returning to solve your problems,
and experiencing your own inner growth.
Movements like this have a tendency
to retell old tales and stories,
and engage in their insights
as a tool for personal growth and awareness.
A lot of the time, people in this line of thought
will engage in storytelling with music, image and acts,
all of which could arguably be seen
as a modern extension of the new age shamanism,
popularized by Michael Harner around the same time
that the mytopoetic movements came out to the public.
Now, don't get us wrong,
there's some pretty valid criticisms
of the hero's journey.
Aside from it being super formulaic and overdone,
for one, historically, the hero has always been male
and the role of women in stories
are often relegated down to some simple helpers,
with no real character.
Partly because most of the myths studied
were from ancient cultures,
where a patriarchy was the go-to societal structure.
And even Campbell himself has been argued to be sexist
in some of his interpretations.
So there's definitely a room for improvement of the formula
to bring into modern day.
But the bottom line is, anyone can use it
to better themselves, regardless of who they are.
The best heroes have character, not gender.
So to finish up, I encourage you
to employ the stages of the hero's journey in your own life,
and to become the hero of your own tale.
You are the lead protagonist of your life,
so what monsters are you facing,
and what can you gain by defeating them?
And most importantly, what kind of knowledge
and enlightenment can you bring back in the process?
Please let us know in the comments below,
and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already.
Until next time, toodles.
(soft music)