What is the Path of the Hero? pt. 2

Arbor
Fall 2006

In this chapter, we will continue looking at the question "what is the path of the hero?" by reviewing another important work on the subject, The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth, and Drama by Lord Raglan. Raglan was a British aristocrat who served in the Sudan during World War I, where he was spared being in combat and was able to become fluent in Arabic and Lotuko, a local, indigenous dialect. He "worked independently of the academic establishment,
carrying out little original research but synthesizing existing scholarship into provocative new lines of reasoning," and published several works, among them The Science of Peace, If I Were Dictator, and How Came Civilization?, although The Hero stands as his brightest accomplishment.

The main thesis of the book is that all traditions stem from myth, as opposed to historical fact, and that all myth stems from ritual, or ancient, sacramental rites which have been passed down through time. He described myth as a "narrative linked with a rite," and stated that myth is the verbal counterpart to ritual, the things said about the things ritually done. He remained largely unconcerned with the psycho-spiritual import of the hero within tradition, myth, and drama, and instead focused on dispelling the supposed historicity of myth. Although he spends more time disposing of long-held conventions regarding tradition and myth, he offered his classic, 22 stage scale which incrementally details the events of the classical hero's life. It is precisely this
scale, which will be dealt with at length later in this paper, that is the most impressive and consequential outcome of his scholarship.

I wish to continue my study of the path of the hero by here using this book because I believe it has much to offer as a foundational, historical study of the subject. By reviewing its contents, the student is availed a work which deftly strips tradition, myth and drama of their euphemistic, murky, and ostensibly historical baggage, and places them back where they belong; as the narrative of rituals to which humankind owes it most ancient of technologies- attempting
reunion with God.

Part one of The Hero, 'Tradition,' concerns itself almost solely with disputing the convention that traditions, local and continental alike, have their basis in historical occurrences or facts. Raglan begins by defining 'history' as "the recital in chronological sequence of events that are known to have occurred," that "without precise chronology there can be no history, since the essence of history is the relation of events in their correct sequence (p. 4)." He continues to posit that real history can only be gotten from four types of sources, the first being documents from people who were present during the event, the second being the reports and accounts of participants and
eyewitnesses written down after the fact, such as a memoir. In the third class he places archaeological evidence of past events, and in the fourth the accounts of people who received the story from the actors and eyewitnesses after the event, such as "annals, chronicles . . . press reports, [and] news-letters (p. 11)."

He critiques accepted ideas of heritage and pedigree, especially ubiquitous in his aristocratic, late Victorian, British environment, by pointing out the chronology of the Norman conquest of Saxony, and the incongruence of a person claiming to be of pre-conquest Saxon pedigree while having a Norman- French name. Then he describes that the claim to Saxon pedigree by one's
surname is shoddy, in that "the Saxons had no surnames . . . a Godric might be referred to as "the timberer," or "the son of Guthlac," but these were not his names (p. 19)." In other words, the emphasis is made that, whatever ethnic heritage a modern person might think hirself to have, it remains that these suppositions are hardly ever based in historical fact, but upon traditional stories passed down from mouth to ear.

Raglan then presents the first major facet of his thesis; that local traditions and folk-tales are not local creations authored by their transmitters, but living models which find their source in ritual, or a ritualistically-comprehended reality. Usually the claim to local origin of a tradition is connected to the superstitious or cultic practices of the locality, onto which the schema of the
imported, ritually derived myth is then overlaid, provided that there exists a suitable local site, and a suitable local hero for the draping. It is similar to a game of telephone; Robin Hood is simultaneously reported to have been from at least a dozen counties in England, reportedly born over the course of many decades, and to have been of this or that heritage. Aside from these obvious inconsistencies, the details of the events of his life are widely differing in different regions of the British Isles and continental Europe. Raglan's point is not to dispute the importance of the story itself, but to emphasize (and to foretell postmodern historiography) that the indigenous hue given to local traditions dissipates quickly, in the case of many continentally-known stories, under serious historical investigation. Raglan asks

Who, then, was he? The answer is that he was the hero of a ritual drama. In the fifteenth century, and later, the May-day celebration was called "Robin Hood's festival," and he was "one of the mythical characters whom the populace was fond of personating in the semidramatic
devices and morriss-dances performed at that season."

In Scotland, as we have seen, he was as popular as in England, and in France Robin des Bois and Marion are found in the thirteenth century as characters in the Whitsuntide pastourelles, "the earliest and not the least charming of pastoral comedies." The fact that the name "Robin" is French in origin, and that we find "Robin des Bois" in France at such an early date, suggest that the name as a whole may have been imported from France, and that "Robin Hood" is merely a translation of "Robin des Bois;" hood and wood are interchangeable in several English dialects (p. 49).

This same logic is then extended to the Norse Sagas of Scandinavia, the story of King Arthur, the teutonic heroes Hengist and Horsa, the Irish hero Cuchulainn, the Tale of Troy, and many stories from the Old Testament. The first part of the book, 'Tradition,' is then concluded by Raglan stating that the "business of the priests is to perform the ritual with the maximum of regularity
and solemnity, but in order that they may be able to carry out successfully their all-important task of renewing the world in the ritual they must have the wholehearted support of the community, and this is to be secured by the establishment of the tradition (p. 112)."

As a deeply Cartesian agent of historical clarity, and a synthesizing illuminator of diverse pools of information, Raglan stands accomplished. However, even if it were not his expressed purpose to uncover the meaning of humankind's tenacity to common mythic structures, he certainly omits a blatant question: why are these traditions and myths important in the first place, or at all, in spite of their hidden or alien origins? It would be important to understand Raglan's perspective in space/time. He appears to parallel the then-common persuasion of western European anthropologists and historians, such as Frazer, Morgan, and Malinowski, of unwittingly focusing on explaining away the curious traditions of 'savage,' 'primitive' or 'traditional' societies as clumsy attempts to recount the archaic, as childish models of cosmology which must be investigated and corrected as a doctor treats a disease. This tendency is present in Raglan in his lack of concern regarding whether traditions and myths hold existential or spiritual value for the provincial folk who are telling and retelling them for centuries. The savages in question here are the "illiterate
peasants" who, it is repeatedly stressed, never created any of the major, known stories upon which they observedly place so much cultural, historical, and spiritual importance.

After repeating his thesis that all traditions and myths finds their origin in ritual or the ritual-drama, he mentions once, in passing, another historian who found that "all initiation rites are more or less degenerate forms of coronation rites- that is to say, rites attendant upon the installation of a king or queen (p. 42)" This mirrors the widely-found rite of the king who is deposed, killed, or both, and is supplanted with a new king, or energetic being, faced with the residual imbalances of his inherited kingdom, and the tumult of future, imbalaincing obstacles. This is basic symbolism of the ascension of one's individual consciousness to higher levels, or vibratory frequencies, of the greater Reality, which force the subject to accept new responsibilities, battle with new demons, and attain to a more rarified and lucid perception of Truth.

One would think that after delving into the historicity or importance of myth and tradition and finding them to be (merely) secondary narratives of ritual, then one would further dig into the meaning and importance of the rituals from which they came. But Raglan does not even raise the importance of these rituals in and of themselves, and how this importance might trickle down to the "illiterate peasants" in the form of folktales and myths. Because of his ignorance of the
transcendent qualities of mythic themes and archetypes, championed here in The Hero, Raglan remains awkwardly teetering between the cold materialism of early structural, evolutionary anthropology, and the prescient psycho-spiritual conclusions of contemporary and antecedent luminaries such as C.G. Jung and Joseph Campbell. Viewed solely from the latter perspective, as regards his study of tradition, he appears to be a man with very much to say about, in the
grand scheme of things, very dear little of lasting importance.

In The Hero, following the section on tradition is that on myth, and it would appear that Raglan was intent on digging deeper into the issue at hand; what of the universality and timelesness of the importance of the hero? We shall examine how well he adressed his thesis. Raglan begins this section by stating that it is incorrect to perceive myth as a "statement of historical fact clothed in
more or less obscure language," or as "fanciful or speculative explanation of a natural phenomenon (p. 117)."

The first supposedly false perception of myth, that of myth as history, or the account of the "incidents in the collective life of a people in the form of stories about individual men and women," Raglan dismisses out of hand, on account of the fact that ostensibly no one has ever provided any evidence for the historicity of myth, the subject of the last section. The second incorrect perception of myth is that they explain natural phenomena in symbolic terms, such as myths which explain why and how the universe was created, the sun comes up, or the plants
grow. Citing the familiar solar myth which found its unique form in so many variegated places across time, Raglan imposes that when the sun goes up or down, people simply say 'the sun is going down' or 'it is getting dark,' and that this is supposedly all they think about the process; that to expand our explanation beyond that would be the exclusive realm of "court poetry, not of
everyday life (p. 121)." He dismisses the theory that myth was to primitive man a form of primitive science, and criticizes the idea that "primitive man was consumed for a thirst for knowledge, and spent much of his time in speculating on the origin of the heavenly bodies, of the seasons, and of life and death (ibid)."

Of course, for all his dependence on historical evidence, he provides none for the position that primitive man did not conceive of these questions, a conveniently impossible task. To explain his idea that myths definitely do not and have never served the purpose of explaining natural phenomena, he unashamedly asks "how many of us have tried seriously to understand the
theory of relativity or the donctrine of the atonement (p. 123)." It is a curious question, perhaps because most of the people I know and millions more like them are indeed consumed by these and similar questions. Perhaps it simply never occured to Raglan to wonder at such obvious and detrimental occurences; if so, one has to wonder why he was researching and writing books at all. He defends this position by saying that to consider these problems, one must have at one's disposal a complicated and abstract set of tools, or terms, with which to deconstruct and understand nature, examples of which he lists: "cause, effect, creation, origin, result, nature, reason, idea, image, theory, problem," stating that these words are "lacking in savage, and even in semi-civilized languages (ibid)." Of course, again, he gives no evidence for this ridiculous statement, once again in spite of his supposedly strict obsession with facts.

After dismissing myth as the explanation of history, or the explanation of natural phenomenon,
Raglan moves on to the marrow of the book; the subject of the myth as an explanation or narrative of a ritual or rite. He says the "purpose of ritual is to confer benefits on, or avert misfortunes from, those by whom or on whose behalf the ritual is performed . . . which from a scientific point of view are entirely ineffective, except in so far as they produce a psychological effect upon the participants themselves (p. 127)." Myths are then, for Raglan, the spoken
version of an "entirely innefective" ritual. However, if they are, why have they lasted over the course of countless milennia?

Perhaps the answer is that rituals are the recitation or perpetuation of a primeval mysterious, magical process by which the gods, goddesses, or both bestowed their original beneficience upon humanity. By repetition of the rite, this beneficience is secured and prolonged. Why have the rituals seen so many ages and places by the same themes and details? Instead of venturing that the themes themselves may have some inherent, hardwired, human importance, Raglan says that they have not fundamentally changed since antiquity because of the human mind's "inertia which is in general its most salient characteristic (p. 148)." So we simply have always been too lazy and comfortable to deviate from the familiar themes of our myths; it can't be that possibly they have importance outside of historical, terrestrial, and material occurences.

An explanation of the psychological import of ritual is attempted later in the chapter, when Raglan quotes the famous Egyptologist E.A. Wallis Budge as saying that the patterns of myth "consisted of a dramatic ritual representing the death and resurrection of the king, who was also the god, performed by priests and members of the royal family," that they "comprised a sacred combat, in which was enacted the victory of the god over his enemies, a triumphal procession in which the neighboring gods took part, an enthronement, a ceremony by which the destinies of the state for the coming year were determined (p. 150)." The eucharist, then, is a ritual psycho-drama by which the redemptive efficacy of Christ's sacrifice is not merely remembered and celebrated, but again made manifest and enlivened by the attendant priests which perform it. The purpose of myth is to ensure that the ritual can be experienced by whomever, priest or slave, without having to participate in or perform the ritual, in that at least the narrative can be expressed and retold anywhere. It is a recounting of a 'reality lived,' versus a mere story.

The most important contribution of The Hero is Raglan's twenty two stage index of the benchmarks of the typical hero's life, as found in myth and tradition.

They are as follows:

1) The hero's mother is a royal virgin;
2) His father is a king, and
3) Often a near relative of his mother, but
4) The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5) He is also reputed to be the son of a god.
6) At birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or maternal
grandfather, but
7) He is spirited away, and
8) Reared by foster parents in a far country.
9) We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10) On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future kingdom.
11) After a victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast,
12) He marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor, and
13) Becomes king.
14) For a time he reigns uneventfully, and
15) Prescribes laws, but
16) Later he loses favor with the gods, and/or his subjects, and
17) Is driven from the throne or city, after which
18) He meets with a mysterious death,
19) Often at the top of a hill.
20) His children, if any, do not succeed him.
21) His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22) He has one or more holy sepulchres.

Raglan then continues to 'score' several major heroes according to this list, with Oedipus receiving twenty one points, Theseus twenty, Romulus eighteen, Heracles seventeen, Jason fifteen, Asclepios 'at least' twelve, Apollo eleven, Moses twenty, Elijah nine, King Arthur nineteen, and Robin Hood thirteen.

It is apparent, even if some of the heroes chosen scored as low as eleven, that there is some sort of ritual pattern or structure existent within mythology. But what does the pattern signify? Earlier we mentioned how all dramatic or religious rituals are, in essence, coronation rites, or rites which represent and celebrate the passing on of a crown from one king to his successor, and the psychological analog to this which represents certain aspects of our own inner development. And we see that the hero's life is more or less divided up into three types of stages; "those connected with the hero's birth, those connected with his accession to the throne, and those connected with his death (p. 186)." It is noted that the hero, as warrior or in battle, "never fights with ordinary men, or even with ordinary animals . . . and the king whom he fights is the king he shall succeed, and who is often his own father (p. 190)." Another aspect of the mythic hero's life is that he must show power over the forces of nature, for "power over the elements is the most unvarying characteristic of the divine king, and it would seem that sometimes at least the candidate for the throne had to pass in a rain-making test. Our hero, then, has to qualify for the
throne in two ways: he must pass a test in some such subject as rain-making or riddle-guessing, and he must win a victory over the reigning king (p. 190-91)."

We can assume that either there was one original mythological prototype who initiated this pattern into collective memory, or that the pattern itself existed before any one person's life was thought to follow it. If the former is true, then the assertion of Raglan earlier that the "inertia" of the human mind is responsible for the unvarying characteristics of hero-myth to be true. If the latter is true, however, we can assume that their is some sort of hardwired program or process
in our collective unconcious or 'racial memory' which compels us all to recognize the importance of these stages, and they have not changed significantly since Osiris because they are processes inherent to our psyche's, and not because our minds are lazy, as Raglan, peculiarly, would have us believe.

It is curious, once again, that after demonstrating such intriguing similarities and patterns in the lives of so many important mythical heroes, Raglan stays clear from the subject of the nature and relevance of their universal meaning. It is obvious that the coronation process, which the stages of the king or hero's life dramatize, represents a major theme within the path of the hero.
But are we to think that this passing on of crown and sceptre represent merely the temporal authority of a king, such as we find in history? It is my belief that the rituals represent a desired pattern which is transcendent of place and time, which communicates to us something of a rubric for how we should live, or at least what we can expect if we are going to become heroes in our own place and time, not as real kings or queens fighting real dragons and monsters, but as
human beings overcoming the tragedies of earthly existence. We see in the twenty two stages that the odds we face are often cruel and unfair, that perhaps hero-nature is not concerned with terrestrial authority, but really with authority over the inner voices and interests of the Self, over the sanctum of angels and demons which we daily find within ourselves. For instance, the authority which, according to Raglan, the hero must at one point acquire is that over the
elements. I believe that in this case the elements, or physical laws of the earth, are actually representative of the passions and addictions of the body, which must be studied and overcome if self mastery is in store. We cannot erase or do away with them, but we can work with them and manipulate them to our advantage.

Another curious omission of Raglan's is that the life of Jesus, undeniably the most salient and important figure in western history over the past two milennia, is not included in his chapter on the twenty two stages. For if we look at his life, or at least the scant amount we know of it from the 'official' sources, we find it to be very sympathetic to Raglan's system. Let us look closer. Jesus was (1) born of a virgin, (2) fathered by a king (in this case, the king of all kings), with (4) an unusual conception, (5) definitely reputed to be the son of a god. Upon his birth, an attempt is made (6) by Herod to destroy his life, because of which he is (7) temporarily "spirited away" to Egypt, we are (9) told nothing of his childhood or early adulthood, and upon reaching manhood he (10) returns to his future kingdom (Galilee, in this case symbolic of the earth), is (11) victorious over a beast (the devil in the desert), (13) becomes king (of the Jews, in this
case symbolic of the people of the earth, (15) prescribes laws such as the beatitudes and his other teachings, (16) loses favor with his subjects (the Jews), upon which he is (17) driven from his place of authority, meets (18) with a heinous and mysterious death, at the (19) top of a hill, succeeded by (20) no children, with an ultimately (21) unburied body, yet has (22) manifold holy
sepulchres.

Jesus Christ easily scores eighteen points of Raglan's scale, even despite the fact that the official record of his life in the Holy Bible omits the years of his life between the ages of 12 and 30. So why would Raglan not use him as an obvious example of the veracity of his index? I believe it is simply because, whether he actually considered himself to be a christian or not, Raglan did not
want to offend the sensibilities of his contemporaries by comparing Jesus to the other heroes he used as examples, that this could amount to blasphemy in the christian culture which he came from and lived within. In any case, the similarities of the life of Jesus Christ to Raglan's scale are
indeed striking.

We may conclude our investigation of The Hero by stating that, although Raglan omitted several key points which are glaring upon review of the book, there are still many noteworthy and sometimes excellent ones to be found within it. His primary purpose is apparently to focus on the theory that folk-tales are never authored by the folk themselves, that traditional and mythic accounts are hardly ever historically based, and that the patterns of the mythic hero's life are
widespread and commonplace. He succeeded in these endeavors, in spite of the demonstrable fact that he cared to little contribute to the transcendental and universal meaning of hero-nature itself, and why we humans have so ponderously and vociferously recounted the importance of hero-nature over the course of all recorded history.