The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Figure 20. The Return of Jason (red-figure kalyx, Etruscan, Italy, c. 470 b.c.). From a vase found at Cerveteri, attributed to Douris, now in the Vatican Etruscan Collection, Rome. After a photo by D. Anderson. This is a view of Jason’s adventure not represented in the literary tradition. “The vase-painter seems to have remembered in some odd haunting way that the dragon-slayer is of the dragon’s seed. He is being born anew from his jaws” (Jane Harrison, Themis:A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 2nd rev. ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927, p. 435). The Golden Fleece is hanging on the tree. Athena, patroness of heroes, is in attendance with her owl. Note the Gorgoneum on her Aegis (compare Figure1).

Figure 21. The Temptation of St. Anthony (copperplate engraving, Germany, c. a.d. 1470). Martin Schongauer (c. a.d. 1448–1491). © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Figure 22. Psyche and Charon (oil on canvas, England, c. a.d. 1873). John Roddam Spencer Stanhope (a.d. 1829–1908). Private collection, Roy Miles Fine Paintings. © The Bridgeman Art Library.

Figure 23. Mother of the Gods (carved wood, Egba-Yoruba, Nigeria, date uncertain). Odudua, with the infant Ogun, god of war and iron, on her knee. The dog is sacred to Ogun. An attendant, of human stature, plays the drum. Horniman Museum, London. Photo from Michael E. Sadler, Arts of West Africa, International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, Oxford Press, London: Humphrey Milford, 1935.

Figure 24. Diana and Actaeon (marble metope, Hellenic, Sicily, c. 460 b.c.). Actaeon devoured by his dogs as Diana looks on. Metope from Temple E at Selinus, Sicily. Museo Archeologico, Palermo, Sicily, Italy. © Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 25. Devouring Kālī (carved wood, Nepal, eighteenth–nineteenth century a.d.). London: Victoria and Albert, India Museum.

Figure 26. Vierge Ouvrante(Opening Virgin) (polychrome wood, France, fifteenth century a.d.). © Musée National du Moyen Age et des Thermes de Cluny, Paris. Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Figure 27. Creation (detail; fresco, Italy, a.d. 1508–1512). Michelangelo Buonarroti (a.d. 1475–1564), Rome, Sistine Chapel: The Creation of the Sun and Moon (post-restoration). Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican City, Italy. © Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 28. Śiva, Lord of the Cosmic Dance (cast bronze, India, c. tenth–twelfth century a.d.). Madras Museum, Madras, India. Photo from Auguste Rodin, Ananda Coomaraswamy, E. B. Havell, Victor Goloubeu, Sculptures Çivaïtes de l’Inde, Ars Asiatica III. Brussels and Paris: G. van Oest et Cie., 1921.

Figure 29. The Fall of Phaëthon (ink on parchment, Italy, a.d. 1533). Michelangelo Buonarroti. [Jupiter, above, sits on his eagle and hurls a thunderbolt at Phaëthon, son of Apollo, who had asked to drive the chariot of the sun. To save the earth, Jupiter destroyed Phaëthon. Underneath, his sisters the Heliades, weeping, are changed into poplar trees. The river god Eridanus (the river Po) into whose river Phaëthon fell, lies underneath. From Ovid’s Metamorphoses. — Ed.] © The British Museum.

Figure 30. The Sorceror (rock engraving with black paint fill-in, Paleolithic, France, c. 10,000 b.c.). The earliest known portrait of a medicine man, c. 10,000 b.c., in the Aurignacian-Magdaleniancave known as the “Trois Frères,” Ariège, France. Drawing by George Armstrong. From Joseph Campbell, The Flight of the Wild Gander. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2002, Fig. 5.

Figure 31. The Universal Father, Viracocha, Weeping (bronze, pre-Incan, Argentina, c. a.d. 650–750). Plaque found at Andalgalá, Catamarca, in northwest Argentina, tentatively identified as the pre-Incan deity Viracocha. The head is surmounted by the rayed solar disk, the hands hold thunderbolts, tears descend from the eyes. The creatures at the shoulders are perhaps Imaymana and Tacapu, the two sons and messengers of Viracocha, in animal form. Photo from The Proceedings of the International Congress of Americanists, vol. XII, Paris, 1902.