The heroine’s journey includes three major stages: preparation, the journey and the return. During the preparation stage, we are challenged to prove our competence, our courage, our humanity and our fidelity to high ideals. On the journey, we leave the safety of the family or tribe and embark on a quest where we encounter new travel companions, challenges, love and new treasures. But most important, our story about ourselves and thus ourselves, is transformed. In myth that transformation is often symbolized by the finding of a treasure. On our return from the quest, we become Masters of our own universe, which is transformed because we are changed. But we must also continually be reborn and renewed or we become tyrants, clinging dogmatically to our old truts to the detriment of our universe. Whenever we lose our sense of integrity and wholeness or begin to feel inadequate to current life challenges, we must embark on the quest again.
Preparation
The first four archetypes help us prepare for the journey. We begin dreaming and from the Dreamer we learn optimism and trust. When we experience the ‘fall’ we become Independent, we learn that we need to provide for ourselves and stop relying on others to take care for us. When the Warrior comes in to our lives, we learn to set goals and develop strategies for achieving them, strategies that almost always require the development of discipline and courage. When the Caregiver becomes active, we learn to take care of others, and eventually to care for ourselves as well. These four attributes – optimism, the capacity to support yourself, the courage to fight for yourself and others and compassion and care for yourself and others, together provide the basic skills for living in society. But almost always, we still feel unsatisfied if this is all we can do, even though we have learned what is necessary to be happy, passionate and successful in the world.
The Journey
We begin to yearn for something beyond ourselves and become Explorers, searching for that ineffable something that will satisfy. Answering the call and embarking on the journey, we find that soon we are experiencing privation and suffering as the Rule Breaker takes away much that had seemed essential to our lives. It is complemented, however, by an initiation into Eros, the Lover, the Passion as we find ourselves in love with people, causes, places, work. This love is so strong it requires commitment – and we are no longer free. The treasure that emerges out of this encounter with breaking the rules and commitment to love is the birth of the true self. The Creator helps us begin to express this self in the world and prepares us to return to our world. These four abilities, to strive, to let go, to love and to create – teach us the creative, innovation, storytelling process, to re-imagine the old story and tell the new story. The process prepares us to return to our world and change our lives.
The Return
When we return, we realize that we are the Masters of our world. At first we may be disappointed at the state of this realm. But as we act on our new story and are more fully true to our deeper sense of identity, the wasteland begins to bloom. As the Magician is activated in our lives, we become adept at transforming oursleves and others so that our world can continually be renewed. However we are not completely fulfilled or happy until we face our own subjectivity and so the Sage helps us know what truth really is. As we learn to both accept our subjectivity and let go of imprisonment to illusions and petty desires, we are able to reach a state of nonattachment in which we can be free. We are then ready to open to the Commediant and learn to live joyously in the moment, without worrying about tomorrow. This final set of attainments – taking total responsibility for our lives, transforming ourselves and others, nonattachment and a commitment to truth, and a capacity for joy and spontaneity – is itself the reward for our journey.
The Spiral Nature of the Journey
Thinking of the heroine moving through stages of preparation, journey and return, and being aided by twelve archetypes in order, is useful as a teaching device, but in most cases, of course, growth really does not happen in such defined, linear way. Our guides come to to us when they – and at some level we – choose.
The pattern is more like a spiral, the final stage of the journey, epitomized by the archetype of the Commediant, folds back into the first archetype, the Dreamer, but at a higher level than before. This time, the Dreamer is wiser about life. On the spiral journey, we may encounter each archetype many times, and in the process gains new gifts at higher or deeper levels of development. Each encounter enriches your story. Archetypes we have not yet experienced are like holes in your story; experiences that we have little or no way of understanding simply pass enough.