The Nomadic Alternative – Page 37

fangs and claws (Today it is mechanized and explosive.), and jealously hoarding a treasure, threatens the inhabitants of the land with total destruction unless they cringe before it and appease its bloodthirstiness with sacrificial victims. The hero fights and kills the monster, rewards himself with the treasure and a bride, returns home to the jubilant acclamations of his proud parents and people, and they all live happily ever after.

Here is where the pantomime or fairy story breaks off. But a sequel follows. After many years of success and honour, another monster looms to torment the people. Once again the ageing hero feels the call of adventure, arms himself, takes leave of his family and disappears to fight. He is then deserted by his companions, and this time he disappears for good. The people bewail his death but cheer up at once. Life must go on and his memory stays.

Some read this journey in their history books, some know it from mythology, others from their dreams. A few heroes perform the journey in actuality. Other aspirants make psychic journeys or 'spiritual' quests, for this archetypal sequence is rooted in the psychology of every individual. Fact dovetails with mythology, and national historians unconsciously doctor facts to fit the pattern. The defeat or descent precedes the victory, discipline precedes enlightenment.

The sailors of Columbus croaked with fear of Leviathan in the weedy waters of the Sargasso before sighting Hispaniola. The Israelites passed the narrow passage of the Red Sea on their way to the Promised Land. Jason escaped the clashing Rocks on his way to the Golden Fleece. Odysseus bore the battering of Poseidon secure in the hope of wife and hearth. Orpheus descended, Jonah was swallowed, and Daniel was pushed.

A human life is a journey of initiations in which the hero faces the monster, 'dies' a little, only to be reborn and enjoy the rewards of life. Thereafter he may disappear. The Wonder Voyage is thus indissociable from the biological fact of life, and it matters little if the Road of Trials leads to the Otherworld in the brain, the Otherworld of Outer Space, a remote archipelago or a Land