Quotations in bold type are from the book.
Oddly enough, Campbell now turns to the Grimms’ story of the Frog King (the one who begins by rescuing the princess’ golden ball). His reason for choosing this story is that it shows how "a blunder -- apparently the merest chance -- reveals an unsuspected world...As Freud has shown, blunders are not the merest chance...They are ripples on the surface of life, produced by unsuspected springs. And these may be very deep -- as deep as the soul itself." This much of Freud I do believe. But: "the disappearance of the ball is the fist sign of something coming for the princess, the frog is the second, and the unconsidered promise is the third."
All very well in stories, but I am trying to see how that could work in real life.
The frog is supposed to be "the herald" of the forces at work in the world which the individual must deal with -- but I am wondering what happens to the princess when the herald is missing. It isn’t until she makes that rash promise to the frog that her adventure starts. What if she catches the ball and no frog appears? There are no batrachian arms to blunder into.
The herald’s call may be to some great or small endeavor: to live boldly, to die sacrificially, to make history, to be enlightened, or simply to grow up; but always to submit to and cooperate in some kind of "awakening of the self." Everybody gets born again. The rules change; you grow to fit; but it’s not the same as conformity at all.
Campbell ties the Frog King and the golden ball to other stories, wherein a frightening cold-blooded guide -- typically a frog, serpent or dragon -- brings back or is associated with a symbol of light, life or salvation. The nearly ubiquitous presence of trees and water in such scenes, he says, is a dead giveaway of our location: the World Navel.
"The disgusting and rejected frog or dragon of the fairy tale brings up the sun ball in its mouth; for [it] is the representative of that unconscious deep [symbolized by its environment, in the frog’s case, a well or marsh] wherein are hoarded all of the rejected, unadmitted, unrecognized, unknown or undeveloped factors, laws and elements of existence. Those are the pearls of the fabled submarine palaces of the nixies, tritons and water guardians; the jewels that give light to the demon cities of the underworld; the fire seeds in the ocean of immortality which supports the earth...; the stars in the bosom of immortal night...the nuggets in the gold hoard of the dragon...the herald...therefore, is often dark, loathly, or terrifying, judged evil by the world; yet if one could follow, the way would be opened through the walls of day into the dark where the jewels glow." And this is why our teens luxuriate in dark, tragic stories, the trappings (if, generally, not the reality) of devil worship, and heavy metal music. They have dropped the ball, and they know it; but who is the frog willing to bring it back, and what promises must they keep?
When the herald is a beast, Campbell says, it represents "repressed instinctual fecundity," which I think includes not only sexual fertility but fertility of all kinds -- intellectual and spiritual, for instance -- the capacity to give back.
"Whether in dream or myth, there is an irresistible fascination" about the herald -- which commends impulsiveness in such circumstances, I suppose. Also, at the beginning of the adventure, "what formerly was meaningful may become strangely emptied of value," which is a feature of just about all religious conversions. Although, as Tertullian pointed out, a person who converts to Christianity is either much improved by it or was a fine person to begin with. What I mean by citing that is that religious conversion may reinforce a person’s values as much as it changes them. A religion is attractive only as it expresses what is already precious to the potential convert. "Where your heart is, there your treasure will be also."
He ends this section by reiterating that these adventures often begin "as a mere blunder," or "when some passing phenomenon catches the wandering eye and lures one away from the frequented paths of man." Somehow, where real life is concerned, I feel dubious about this. Where’s my frog?
Here, I suppose, is the fate of the "organization man," the human worker-ant:
"Walled in boredom, hard work, or ‘culture,’ the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaningless...Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide him from his minotaur. All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration." Such is the misery of one who refuses the call to the quest.
Why refuse? In order to keep a tight grip on "what one takes to be one’s own interest" because "the future is [not] regarded in terms of an unremitting series of deaths and births," like King Minos’s refusal to sacrifice Poseidon’s bull, thereby spoiling his kingship and setting his family and people up for disaster. When you set yourself up as God, "the will of God, the power that would destroy one’s egocentric system, becomes a terror."
Well, this last phrase strikes a chord with me; for a number of years, what I had accepted as the will of God had become a terror. But I’m not at all sure that egotism had anything to do with it. No, my memory has blurred a little. It was the effect of "God’s will" on other people that terrified me. I suppose, after all, I was "harassed by the divine being that is the image of the living self within the locked labyrinth of one’s own disoriented psyche."
Now he turns to the story of Apollo chasing Daphne. In this context, Daphne’s escape by transformation into a tree does seem less of a divine favor than "a dull and unrewarding finish." For the sake of safety and conventional virtue she refuses intimacy with the searing source of enlightenment. Dull and unrewarding it may be; but I am still on the run from the love of God.
Campbell says that "such desperate situations" as Daphne’s are common in psychoanalytic literature and "represent...an impotence to put off the infantile ego, with its sphere of emotional relationships and ideals. One is bound in by the walls of childhood; the father and mother stand as threshold guardians, and the timorous soul, fearful of some punishment, fails to make the passage through the door and comes to birth in the world without."
If you remember that "ego" means, more or less, the conscious personality, this makes perfect sense and goes far to explain why I became one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. And why, as a Witness, despite all the talk of resurrection and the glory of "keeping integrity until death" I was so timorous. I was definitely "fearful of some punishment." I was growing up in Berkeley, California, during the ‘60’s and early ‘70’s, when an outspoken student population was tearing itself apart over the Vietnam War and ecological degradation. By the age of sixteen I was more than half-convinced that the world would not last another generation. (Consider also the case of Sleeping Beauty, which Campbell also cites: "not only the child, her entire world went off to sleep.")
Along came the Witnesses, cheerily proclaiming, "Yes, this world will be destroyed, but all that is good will survive." It turned out that they defined "all that is good" much too narrowly, but I did not believe so for many years.
When he writes "fear of some punishment," Campbell throws in a terse footnote: "Freud: castration complex." I am inclined to sneer. What do women suffer in place of castration complex? (More recent research has proved that "penis envy" in girls is nonexistent, but that "womb envy" is not all that uncommon in men.)
Well, "not all who hesitate are lost. The psyche has many secrets in reserve. And these are not disclosed unless required. So it is that sometimes the predicament following an obstinate refusal of the call proves to be an occasion of some unsuspected principle of release."
Why do I think this chapter sheds some dim light on masochism? I can’t articulate it, but might it not be possible to seek out suffering in search of a breakthrough? Might it not, in some cases anyhow, be an attempt to combine sex with asceticism? (Sexual mysticism has not been terribly uncommon in the world’s religious history.)
Hiding away is not necessarily a bad thing. "It is one of the classic implements of creative genius" and if the personality is strong enough, results in "an almost superhuman degree of self-consciousness and masterful control." This kind of positive hiding away is not a reaction to fear but consists of a refusal to be impressed by "anything but the deepest, highest, richest answer to the as yet unknown demand of some waiting void within: a kind of total strike, or rejection of the offered terms of life, as a result of which some power of transformation to a plane of new magnitudes, where it is suddenly and finally resolved." The rest of the chapter is taken up with the beginning of a tale from the Arabian Nights, about a Persian prince and a "Chinese" princess who are both determined never to marry, despite censure, threats, solitary confinement -- and doubt.
Here we deal with those oh-so-convenient kindly helpers who appear in fairy tales, telling you how to get through the dangers ahead and offering you powerful talismans in return for trivial acts of service -- or for no discernible reason at all. (Maybe it’s empathy.) Campbell describes several such figures from around the world -- all female -- and says in passing, "the hero who has come under the protection of the Cosmic Mother cannot be harmed." These helpers tend to be old women, but not always. The Virgin (Mother of Jesus) features in European stories, and Ariadne was a young woman when she aided Theseus. The Goddess revived by neopagans is said to be triune: Maiden, Mother and Crone. Says Dante of the Virgin, "Thy benignity not only succors him who asks, but oftentimes freely outruns the asking." (The Bible says the same of its God, but He lost interest in me long ago. So I am understandably skeptical of such promises.)
Such helpers, says Campbell, "represent...the benign, protecting power of destiny," which I have never truly believed in. "The fantasy is a reassurance [an oxymoron if I ever heard one] that the peace of Paradise, which was known first within the mother womb, is not to be lost; that it supports the present and stands in the future as well as in the past; that...protective power is always and ever present within the sanctuary of the heart and even immanent within, or just behind, the features of the unfamiliar world."
Yes, it’s very pretty indeed to think so. In fact, I would go out of my way not to disabuse a small child of this notion. But anyone who follows the news knows that "protective power" is just a series of past and present accidents, reinforced (insufficiently) by empathy rooted in the blood and nerves of family, friends and the occasional stranger. There is no reason why your child should not be kidnapped, why the jungles should not be cut down for the money they might yield, why your house should not be demolished by tornado, flood or earthquake, why you should not die horribly or go mad. The vast universe has no way to care about such things.
Anyway, this helper figure is just as likely to be male, "some wizard, hermit, shepherd or smith" (like Odin, or Wayland as he is called in England), whom Campbell traces back to the spirit guides into the land of the dead, in the old mythologies: Hermes, Mercury, Thoth -- or, in Christian terms, the Holy Ghost. He tucks in a footnote on Hermes Trismegistus, who was quite something, apparently: "The patron and teacher of all arts, especially alchemy," in charge of initiations, he even played a role similar to the holy spirit as described in John 1:29.
Back to the Persian prince (Kamar al-Zaman) and the "Chinese" princess (Budur): despite refusing the call, they each get supernatural helpers. The prince’s prison cell had an old well in it, inhabited by a demon princess (remember the Frog King). She was a good Moslem, too. She fell in love with Kamar’s beauty.
On her way to eavesdrop on the angels one night, who should she meet but the demon who has fallen in love -- oh, most platonically -- with Princess Budur. (These two most upright demons allow themselves a single chaste kiss between the beloved’s eyes every night.) The two Jinni exchange descriptions of the two humans’ beauty and actually come to blows out of sheer disbelief that there could be two such beautiful people in the world. Nothing will suit the demon princess but to have Budur brought to the sleeping Kamar’s cell so that the two can be compared. "And so...the destiny of Kamar al-Zaman began to fulfill itself, without the cooperation of his conscious will."
Here we get into a discussion of Pan, Dionysos, water sprites, and assorted bogeymen. The function of these creatures is to keep people within bounds by making them afraid of the unknown. Yet the first task of the hero, once he has met his helper, is to challenge these creatures (and in some cases, to get on their good side. Some of the water sprites described married human men; Pan gave food and wisdom to those who paid him homage). There is an ogre of the Kalahari who fights every human he sees: the losers he kills; the victors he teaches medicine. So if you stay away from these fearsome spirits, you stay out of trouble; on the other hand, nothing ventured, nothing gained. "For anyone with competence and courage the danger fades." Well, maybe. I see no guarantee that I can rely on. My motto has always been "Nothing ventured, nothing lost." My friends think this is infuriating.
Competence -- and shrewdness -- are certainly essential; overconfidence is fatal. A story from India illustrates this: A merchant set out to cross the desert with a huge caravans of goods. He took along abundant supplies of water. But the local ogre took exception to this and decided to decoy him into throwing the water away. So he appeared with a gorgeous cart and huge retinue, everything mud-spattered, dripping with water, and decked with water lilies. He assured the merchant that the country up ahead was "one mass of water." Sure enough, the merchant dumped his water supplies, and sure enough, the ogre was lying.
The other cautionary tale quoted here has a happy ending. It is a version of the Tar Baby story -- with a holy twist: Prince Five-Weapons tangles with the ogre Sticky-Hair. But the prince is undeterred for he has a sixth weapon that he had forgotten about -- the thunderbolt of Knowledge in his belly. For it turns out that Five-Weapons is the Future Buddha, on his way up. The prospect of being poisoned by that spiritual thunderbolt so terrifies the ogre that he converts to the way of righteousness. But it was not until he remembered that sixth weapon, "that which he remembered himself to be" that the prince was able to free himself.
Now we glance into widely varying mythologies in search of a new theme: the hero is swallowed by a monster. It might be a whale, or elephant, or the father of the gods (as in the Greek myth).
Campbell leaps to the conclusion that to be swallowed by the monster is equivalent to "the passing of a worshiper into a temple -- where he is to be quickened by the recollection of who and what he is, namely dust and ashes unless immortal." (I have been very conscious of the dust and ashes lately; I don’t believe in the immortal part.) In other words, to be born again. Rather than go out beyond the known world, the hero here turns inward -- this much is plausible, but, my religious experience being so limited, I can’t make out the connection between the whale’s belly and the temple. Maybe it’ll come clear as I read and write.
Furthermore, he says, the two are identical to heaven, wherefore "the approaches and entrances to temples are flanked and defended by colossal gargoyles: dragons, lions, devil-slayers with drawn swords, resentful dwarfs, winged bulls." They are just like the bogeymen met at the start of the adventure, "or like the two rows of teeth of the whale." As long as you continue to perceive them as ogres or devils, you are not really inside the temple, however eagerly you stride though the gate. Once you get on their good side, though, you’re well and truly in. Prince Five-weapons remembered his Buddha nature and conquered and converted Sticky-Hair; on the other hand, the traveling merchant got nowhere with the ogre, and was stranded and slain in the hostile desert.
I think I’ve got it now.
I’ve been doing a certain amount of kissing up to Pan since I became a UU; not that the job is finished, by any means. I’m in a somewhat different case from the Indian merchant, though: rather than throwing away full water jars, I discovered that most of mine were empty.
"‘No creature,'" writes Ananda Cooraswamy, ‘can attain a higher grade of nature without ceasing to exist.’" This gives Campbell an excuse to drag in the dismemberment of Osiris, which was apparently only the first of his sufferings, and similar ordeals of the Twin War Gods of Navajo mythology, which include a daring trip between two clashing rocks much like Scylla and Charybdis -- which brings us back to Greece and King Minos again. A dizzying survey, but -- he includes a medieval woodcut which compares Joseph in the well (from Genesis), Jesus in his tomb, and Jonah in the whale’s belly. Each of them is in hiding, suffering (or just having suffered) before emerging into his vocation. Maybe it isn’t so far-fetched after all.
© 1996 Michaele Maurer
Created Friday, February 9, 1996