When he wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell was compiling a massive amount of research into comparative mythology.   His search was driven by his love of story and his belief that, underlying all myth and legend in their manifold detail and cultural heritage, was the one true myth that told the story of this strange beast called mankind.   He termed this story the monomyth, the story that was the driving force behind all other stories, the template from which all other myth is derived.   If you were to ask him on his deathbed, he probably would have told you that he failed in his search for the monomyth, but that he was so close that he could feel it.   Such is the elusive nature of the one true story.   However, he gave us, each storytellers in our own right, many gifts, or boons in the language of mythology.   He gave us insights into our nature as human beings, teaching us that it is inherent to our very natures to tell stories and that when you peel away the various masks of gender, nationality, culture, time and space, what you find is the same need to understand our world through story.   Perhaps most importantly, though, he gave us tools to examine ourselves and our stories and an entry point into his world.    He crafted for us the Hero's Journey; as close to the monomyth as he could get us, when he ended his own journey in 1987.   The Hero's Journey breaks apart one of the most common recurring mythological stories, the journey of the hero into the other world and back, into its most basic elements.

Summary:

The mythological hero, setting forth from his commonday hut or castle, is lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the threshold of adventure. There he encounters a shadow presence that guards the passage.   The hero may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive into the kingdom of the dark (brother - battle, dragon - battle; offering, charm), or be slain by the opponent and descend in death (dismemberment, crucifixion).   Beyond the threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of which give magical aid (helpers).   When he arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward.   The triumph may be represented as the hero's sexual union with the goddess - mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition by the father - creator (father atonement), his own divinization (apotheosis), or again - if the powers have remained unfriendly to him - his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride - theft, fire - theft); intrinsically it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being. (illumination, transfiguration, freedom).   The final work is that of the return.   If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under the protection (emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformation flight, obstacle flight).   At the return threshold the transcendental powers must remain behind; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of dread (return, resurrection).   The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir).