The Hero’s Journey — And How to Create Your Own Today

You don’t have to live in a “region of supernatural wonder” to create a life worthy of myth.

The concept of “the hero’s journey” has come to us in popularized form from the work of the comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell. It has served as a point of inspiration for many works of creative achievement, my own included.

Often described in a framework of 8 to 17 stages, Campbell summarized the basic idea as follows in his seminal 1949 work: The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

I’ve long been fascinated by the whole field of comparative mythology and by Campbell’s project to identify a “monomyth,” or basic underlying pattern common to mythological and religious stories across time and cultures.

I especially love how this project goes both wide and deep: the wide survey of so many stories with all their peculiar, fascinating differences, and the deep quest to identify common fundamentals that unite these seemingly diverse adventures.