As we noted in the introduction, the premise of the framework we are calling the Archetypal Calculus follows from Northrop Frye’s hypothesis that the structure of myth and story can provide a unifying pattern for an understanding of the humanities and, by extension, humanity. We capture that idea by positing an archetype called the Human which represents the entire human lifecycle, and we posit that the human lifecycle is the same cycle that Joseph Campbell discovered in his comparative study of mythology from across cultures. He called that cycle the Hero’s Journey.
There are countless resources online for those who want a deeper understanding of the Hero’s Journey and Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces remains the best starting point. This overview will be mostly concerned with the specific way in which the Hero’s Journey concept fits into the framework of the Archetypal Calculus which we are building out in this series of essays.
Campbell was strongly influenced by Jungian psychology, and his work has a pronounced Jungian flavour to it. For example, he sees the Hero’s Journey as a descent into the unconscious mind, with the hero’s return at the end of the story signifying the prize that has been retrieved and incorporated into consciousness. This works as a description of the Esoteric (psychological) aspect of the Hero’s Journey. However, the Archetypal Calculus is also concerned with the Exoteric (outer-facing) aspects. As we will see, the Hero’s Journey pattern works just as well at the Exoteric level as it does for the Esoteric. In fact, these are just two sides of the same coin.
The Hero’s Journey is a cycle. Viewed psychologically, the hero begins the story in consciousness, descends into the unconscious, and then returns back to consciousness at the end. As we will see later when we introduce the levels of the being concept, stories are cycles that resonate across multiple domains, including the physical. To take an example that most people would know, in the movie The Matrix, Neo begins in the matrix living his normal life. He then leaves the matrix only to return again. In short, he ends in the same place where he began.
But the hero has changed by the end of the story and this brings us to the second property of the Hero’s Journey which is that it is a cycle that ends in transcendence. Neo might still be in the matrix at the end of the story, but he now knows what the matrix is and how to operate within it. He has attained agency, and this qualitative change is the transcendence that he has won by stepping into the unknown (in Jungian terms, facing the unconscious).
Thus, the Hero’s Journey pattern is the cycle ending in transcendence. Within this broad pattern, there are numerous sub-sections that we could go into. However, for our purposes, a high level appreciation of the major segments of the cycle is all that is needed, which we can describe as follows.
At the beginning of every Hero’s Journey, we find the hero in stasis. They are in their normal, everyday life, doing normal everyday things. They might be a king in a castle, a princess wandering dreamily by a river, or a good-natured bandit plotting the next robbery. Because they are in their normal environment, the hero is in control of themselves and their lives.
But there is something that the hero desires. The hero is not consciously aware of what they really want, and that is why the psychoanalytic concept of the unconscious works so well in analysing story and myth because the journey that the hero will undertake is to confront the deeper values and desires that they hold. In psychoanalytic terms, the hero must confront the unconscious.
The implication is that the hero has been avoiding this task. But that is the normal state of affairs in our lives. Unless we live in particularly difficult circumstances, we spend much of our time in equilibrium, following the accrued habits and practices that have served us well until now. That is where the hero is at the start of every Hero’s Journey: in stasis.
It is because we do not willingly remove ourselves from stasis that the Call to Adventure that the hero receives comes from outside themselves (or, at least, outside their conscious mind). The Call to Adventure is symbolically tied to the deeper desires that the hero has been supressing. In Jungian terms, it is accurate to say that the Call to Adventure comes from the unconscious.
Two classic examples from Shakespeare are the three witches who tell Macbeth that he will become king and the ghost of Hamlet’s father telling his son to avenge him by killing Claudius. These shadowy figures are perfect symbols for the unconscious. In both cases, the Call to Adventure represents the hero’s desire for power and vengeance, respectively.
The psychoanalytic lens works well to describe the Esoteric dimensions of the Hero’s Journey. But note that both Shakespeare stories just mentioned also include an Exoteric dimension. Macbeth has the opportunity to become king. This is not a title he can achieve legally or morally, but it is available to him via regicide. Meanwhile, Hamlet can claim some moral justification for his right to become king. There is, after all, something rotten in the state of Denmark since Claudius usurped the throne.
These Exoteric, socio-political sides to the stories cannot be ignored. In fact, they mirror the Esoteric (psychological). It is for this reason that the Hero’s Journey works so well as a unifying pattern that can connect the nominally disparate disciplines of the humanities. In stories, the political, economic, and psychological are all inextricably connected, just as they are in “the real world”. Academia splits these disciplines apart but, like all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, has no way to put them back together again. That is the problem that Frye had highlighted and which the Archetypal Calculus aims to address.
When the hero accepts the Call to Adventure, they go on the high-stakes journey that leads towards both the Esoteric and Exoteric manifestation of their desire. Because the hero has now stepped out of stasis, they find themselves in a new world where their old skills and knowledge no longer work. The Hero’s Journey is a step into the unknown as the hero comes to grips with the new world in which they are no longer in control. The main body of the story involves the hero trying to regain control and agency.
The final phase of the story is what we have called transcendence. Here the literary distinction between comedy and tragedy is relevant. A comedy is where the hero “wins”, while in a tragedy the hero “loses”. Technically speaking, we might say that transcendence does not occur in a tragedy since the hero does not gain what they had hoped for. It is more complex than that, however, because the hero still learns something from their failure, and therefore they are qualitatively different at the end of the story than at the beginning. In a tragedy, the hero’s lesson is not something they ever wanted to learn, and they may be tempted, like Oedipus, to dash out their eyes in an attempt not to see. Still, the hero’s fate cannot be unseen and the great tragedies are still transcendent even though the hero “loses”.
Putting it all together, we get something like the following as a schematic representation of the Hero’s Journey:-
Note that the literary distinction between tragedy and comedy plays a not insignificant part in the theological aspects of myth and story. In the western tradition, we have the ancient Greek tragedies that align with the implied theological beliefs of the Greeks that life itself was a tragedy since we were all born to lose, just like the tragic hero. The story of Jesus is technically a comedy since Jesus ascends to heaven at the end. We can see that the Hero’s Journey provides a template for an understanding of the whole human lifecycle and can be extended to account for what comes before or after that lifecycle too.
Every hero in a story or myth can be assigned an archetype, which is usually specific to a phase of life. Thus, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet are Orphans. Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and King Lear are Adults etc. The great theological stories, on the other hand, usually encompass the whole human lifespan. Thus, the story of Jesus begins with the birth in a manger, proceeds through initiation (the temptation of the devil), to the death on the cross and the ascent to heaven.
Since the Archetypal Calculus is predicated on cross-cultural and cross-historical study, we will refer to the archetype that maps to the entire human lifecycle as the Human. A Hero’s Journey featuring a Human hero accounts for an entire lifespan. Each of us is currently living through such a cycle.
The Human is the archetype for the whole lifecycle, but that lifecycle is made up of sub-archetypes that map to the phases of life. Thus, there is the Child, the Orphan, the Adult and the Elder. Each of these has its own Hero’s Journey with a specific mission. Each of these also has a role in the overall Hero’s Journey that is the whole human lifecycle.
What this means is that the Hero’s Journey is fractal in nature. Every Hero’s Journey is made up of smaller Hero’s Journeys each of which is a cycle ending in transcendence. We may live one life, but that life is made up of many mini-lives. This fact was captured in the Bible by Jesus’ notion of being born again. Every Hero’s Journey we undertake in life is a chance to be born again.