The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Figure 45b. Perseus Fleeing with the Head of Medusa in His Wallet (red-figure amphora, Greece, fifth century b.c.). This figure and the one preceding it appear on opposite sides of the same amphora. The effect of the arrangement is amusing and lively. (See Furtwängler, Hauser, and Reichhold, op. cit., Serie III, Text, p. 77, Fig. 39.)

Figure 46. Caridwen in the Shape of a Greyhound Pursuing Gwion Bach in the Shape of a Hare (lithograph, Britain, a.d. 1877). Lady Charlotte Guest, “Taliesin,” The Mabinogion, 2nd ed., 1877, vol. III, p. 493.

Figure 47. The Resurrection of Osiris (carved stone, Ptolemaic, Egypt, c. 282–145 b.c.). The god rises from the egg; Isis (the Hawk of Fig. 12) protects it with her wing. Horus (the son conceived in the Sacred Marriage of Fig. 12) holds the Ankh, or sign of life, before his father’s face. From a bas-relief at Philae. E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, London: Philip Lee Warner; New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911, vol. II, p. 58.

Figure 48. Amaterasu Emerges from the Cave (woodblock print, Japan, a.d. 1860). Utagawa Kunisada (a.d. 1785–1864). Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Art Resource, NY.

Figure 49. Goddess Rising (carved marble, Italy/Greece, c. 460 b.c.). [This marble relief makes up the back panel of a seat found in 1887 on a piece of ground formerly belonging to the Villa Ludovisi; it is known for this reason as the Ludovisi Throne. Perhaps of early Greek workmanship. — Ed.] Museo delle Terme, Rome. Photo: Antike Denkmäler, herausgegeben vom Kaiserlich Deutschen Archaeologischen Institut, Berlin: Georg Reimer, vol. II, 1908.

Figure 50. The Reappearance of the Hero: Samson with the Temple-Doors • Christ Arisen • Jonah (engraving, German, a.d. 1471). A page from the fifteenth-century Biblia Pauperum, German edition, 1471, showing Old Testament prefigurements of the history of Jesus. Compare Figure 41. Edition of the Weimar Gesellschaft der Bibliophilen, 1906.

Figure 51. Kṛṣṇa Leads Arjuna onto the Battlefield (gouache on carton, India, eighteenth century a.d.). Photo by Iris Papadopoulos. Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Stätliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 52. The Cosmic Lion Goddess, Holding the Sun (single-leaf manuscript, India, eighteenth century a.d.). Courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City.

Figure 53. The Cosmic Woman of the Jains (gouache on cloth, India, eighteenth century a.d.). Rajasthan. Jaina world image in the form of a great goddess.

Figure 54. The Fountain of Life (paint on wood, Flanders, c. a.d. 1520). Central panel of a triptych by Jean Bellegambe (of Douai). The assisting female figure at the right, with the little galleon on her head, is Hope; the corresponding figure at the left, Love. Courtesy of the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille.

Figure 55. The Aztec Sun Stone (carved stone, Aztec, Mexico, a.d. 1479). Tenochtitlán, Mexico. Museo Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, Mexico City, D.F., Mexico. The Bridgeman Art Library.

Figure 56. The Cosmic Woman of the Jains — Detail of Cosmic Wheel (gouache on cloth, India, eighteenth century a.d.). This is a detail of the center of Figure 53. About this image, Campbell has this to say: “At the level of the waist of the great cosmic being...the passage of time is marked by the ever-returning cycle of twelve stages already reviewed, the incarnations through which we all have passed many times and are still passing.” Joseph Campbell, Oriental Mythology, The Masks of God, vol. II. New York: Arcana, 1991, p. 225. [For Campbell’s extended exploration of Jain cosmology, see Oriental Mythology, pp. 218–234. — Ed.]

Figure 57. The Makroprosopos (engraving, Germany, a.d. 1684). Christian Knorr Von Rosenroth, Kabbala Denudata, Frankfürt-am-Main, 1684.

Figure 58. Tangaroaā, Producing Gods and Men (carved wood, Rurutu Island, early eighteenth century a.d.). Polynesian. From the Tubuai (Austral) Group of Islands in the South Pacific. Courtesy of the British Museum.

Figure 59. Tuamotuan Creation Chart — Below: The Cosmic Egg. Above: The People Appear, and Shape the Universe (Tuamotua, nineteenth century a.d.). Kenneth P. Emory, “The Tuamotuan Creation Charts by Paiore,” Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 48, no. 1 (March 1939), p. 3.

Figure 60. The Separation of Sky and Earth (Egypt, date uncertain). A common figure on Egyptian coffins and papyri. The air-god Shu-Heka separates Nut and Geb at the order of Ra, who wished to keep the incestuous twins apart. This is the moment of the creation of the world. F. Max Müller, Egyptian Mythology, The Mythology of All Races, vol. XII, Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1918, p. 44.

Figure 61. The Murder of Ymir (lithograph, Denmark, a.d. 1845). Lorenz Frölich (1820–1908).