This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading.
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What is stage 7 of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey? What does the “meeting with the goddess” signify?
The meeting with the goddess is the stage of the hero’s journey when the hero encounters the goddess, the mother figure who is the epitome of beauty and represents the feminine ideal in all its aspects. The meeting with the goddess is stage 7 of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, from The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
We’ll cover what the meeting with the goddess entails and look at an example of a hero meeting with the goddess.
Connection with Our Subconscious
Removed from the confines of their safe and familiar world, the mythological hero now confronts a land of symbolic and allegorical figures—according to the psychoanalysts, the same imagery we see in our dreams. Just as the images are instrumental in helping the hero achieve their transformation, they are also puzzles that each of us must unlock in order to understand what our subconscious is trying to tell us.
Stage 6: The Meeting with the Goddess
In mythology, the hero’s journey often requires entering the underworld or the land of the dead.
The ultimate adventure often comes through the marriage of the hero to the goddess. The goddess is the epitome of beauty and represents the feminine ideal in all its aspects—mother, sister, mistress, and bride. She is the ultimate hope for the hero, assuring him that he will be returned to the blissful world he knew before the journey. This is the classic maternal goddess figure, the “good” mother. This is the meeting with the goddess.
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Here's what you'll find in our full The Hero with a Thousand Faces summary :
- How the Hero's Journey reappears hundreds of times in different cultures and ages
- How we attach our psychology to heroes, and how they help embolden us in our lives
- Why stories and mythology are so important, even in today's world
