Everyone is a hero in his birth

I'm up late for the book deep in archetype and leadership's hideout, the R-Complex. Some random notes...

It's a cycle. It's a going and a return, that's the hero cycle. A child has to give up his childhood and become an adult, has to die, you might say, to its infantile personality and psyche and come back as a self-responsible adult. To get out of that... psychological dependency into one of psychological self-responsibility, requires a death and resurrection and that is the basic motif of the hero journey. Leaving one condition, finding the source of life to bring you forth in a richer, or more mature, or other condition. Otto Rank, in his very short book, The Myth of the Birth of The Hero, says that everyone is a hero in his birth.

That was Joseph Campbell. Here's Mircea Eliade:

In the West we’ve had to give up faith in exchange for the truth, that knowledge was more important.

Carl Jung:

No science will ever replace myth, and a myth cannot be made out of any science. For it is not that ‘God’ is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of a divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth, rather it speaks to us as a Word of God.

God made us? Or we made Myth, which stars "God"? A happy God? Angry? To what end? Here's Neale Donald Walsch, who says he's had Conversations With God about such things.

God: Evil is that which you call evil. Yet even that I love, for it is only through that which you call evil that you can know good; only through that which you call the work of the devil that you can know and do the work of God. I do not love hot more than I do cold, high more than low, left more than right. It is all relative. It is all part of what is.

I do not love "good" more than I love "bad." Hitler went to heaven. When you understand this, you will understand God.

For a brain that truly does means-test and conserve compassion, that's not such a crazy Gnostic string of words. But, if that Hitler thing didn't freak you out too badly, nor the concept of an idealized God-like self, here's a nice cooldown from G.S. Kirk, defining the characteristics of myth:

1. Narrative force, power or character
2. Offering an explanation for some important phenomenon or custom.
4. Recording and establishing a useful institution.
5. Expressing an emotion in some way that satisfies some need in the individual.
6. Reinforcing a religious feeling.
7. Acting as a powerful support or precedent for an established ritual or cult practice.

An important part of myth seems to be that it also reveals us to ourselves as human beings in ways that are "truer" than truth itself, with fairy tales we want to beleive. Eliade wrote of the legend of the monk Savanarola and Lorenzo DeMedici. The Monk is said to have refused last rites to the dying but ever vindictive mega-merchant of Florence. History had it that way for a long time, a history written by eyewitnesses. But it wasn't true. The witnesses lied. An unabsolved, "lost soul DeMedici" was too good a lesson not to pass on. It said too much about getting your just deserts after a life of opulence and manipulation. Too bad for Savanorola. He performed his duty properly and kindly, as ordained. The truth just wasn't good enough for the rest of us. And on and on it goes, for you, for me, for air-headed ex-actors named Reagan or for arrogant posing know-it-alls named Gore--we stage-direct and typecast those we wish to admire, and to abhor.

The Archetypal truth is that which we want to believe to be true about ourselves or others, not often the actual truth. The shrinky way to say that is "we project" desires and beliefs via their messengers, archetypal or mythical narratives, onto others and other things. Too good to be true has a cousin in this case, too perfect to be human. And it's a wacky prism thru which to view the world. The irony is that the "acceptable" truth is often far more cartoonish than the actual truth that our brain is busy rejecting. It's a case of psychic tin-ear, where a "wart" of character proves the greater overall heroism of the subject being evaluated. To those not getting the vibe, an old saying about charm captures the outsider's confusion: She burps and you hear violins.

Last bit, from Lord FitzRoy Somerset, 4th Baron Raglan. It's a handy checklist, carefully vetted and compiled against all the available literary and notable John Waynes. The Hero: A study in Tradition, Myth and Dream

1. The hero's mother is a royal virgin.
2. His father is a king and
3. often a near relative of the mother, but
4. the circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5. he is also reputed to be the son of a god
6. at birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or maternal grandfather, to kill him, but
7. He is spirited away, and
8. reared by foster-parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. on reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future kingdom.
11. After a victory over the king and or giant, dragon, or wild beast
12. he marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor and
13. becomes king.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully and
15. prescribes laws but
16. later loses favor with the gods and or his people and
17. is driven from from the throne and the city after which
18. He meets with a mysterious death
19. often at the top of a hill.
20. His children, if any, do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. he has one or more holy sepulchres.

And here's a tally.

Oedipus scores 21
Theseus scores 20
Moses scores 20
King Arthur scores 19
Jesus of Nazareth scores 19
Dionysus scores 19
Romulus scores 18
Perseus scores 18
Hercules scores 17
Llew Llaw Gyffes scores 17
Bellerophon scores 16
Gilgamesh scores 15
Jason scores 15
Mwindo scores 14
Robin Hood scores 13
Pelops scores 13
James T. Kirk scores 13
Sigurd scores 11.

Kirk gets a 13. Slacker.