The Power of Myth - Bill Moyers [74]
MOYERS: Then heroes are not all men?
CAMPBELL: Oh, no. The male usually has the more conspicuous role, just because of the conditions of life. He is out there in the world, and the woman is in the home. But among the Aztecs, for example, who had a number of heavens to which people’s souls would be assigned according to the conditions of their death, the heaven for warriors killed in battle was the same for mothers who died in childbirth. Giving birth is definitely a heroic deed, in that it is the giving over of oneself to the life of another.
MOYERS: Don’t you think we’ve lost that truth in this society of ours, where it’s deemed more heroic to go out into the world and make a lot of money than it is to raise children?
CAMPBELL: Making money gets more advertisement. You know the old saying: if a dog bites a man, that’s not a story, but if a man bites a dog, you’ve got a story there. So the thing that happens and happens and happens, no matter how heroic it may be, is not news. Motherhood has lost its novelty, you might say.
MOYERS: That’s a wonderful image, though—the mother as hero.
CAMPBELL: It has always seemed so to me. That’s something I learned from reading these myths.
MOYERS: It’s a journey—you have to move out of the known, conventional safety of your life to undertake this.
CAMPBELL: You have to be transformed from a maiden to a mother. That’s a big change, involving many dangers.
MOYERS: And when you come back from your journey, with the child, you’ve brought something for the world.
CAMPBELL: Not only that, you’ve got a life job ahead of you. Otto Rank makes the point that there is a world of people who think that their heroic act in being born qualifies them for the respect and support of their whole community.
MOYERS: But there’s still a journey to be taken after that.
CAMPBELL: There’s a large journey to be taken, of many trials.
MOYERS: What’s the significance of the trials, and tests, and ordeals of the hero?
CAMPBELL: If you want to put it in terms of intentions, the trials are designed to see to it that the intending hero should be really a hero. Is he really a match for this task? Can he overcome the dangers? Does he have the courage, the knowledge, the capacity, to enable him to serve?
MOYERS: In this culture of easy religion, cheaply achieved, it seems to me we’ve forgotten that all three of the great religions teach that the trials of the hero journey are a significant part of life, that there’s no reward without renunciation, without paying the price. The Koran says, “Do you think that you shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed before you?” And Jesus said in the gospel of Matthew, “Great is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth to life, and few there be who find it.” And the heroes of the Jewish tradition undergo great tests before they arrive at their redemption.
CAMPBELL: If you realize what the real problem is—losing yourself, giving yourself to some higher end, or to another—you realize that this itself is the ultimate trial. When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.
And what all the myths have to deal with is transformations of consciousness of one kind or another. You have been thinking one way, you now have to think a different way.
MOYERS: How is consciousness transformed?
CAMPBELL: Either by the trials themselves or by illuminating revelations. Trials and revelations are what it’s all about.
MOYERS: Isn’t there a moment of redemption in all of these stories? The woman is saved from the dragon, the city is spared from obliteration, the hero is snatched from danger in the nick of time.
CAMPBELL: Well, yes. There would