What is a Hero Journey? You may have read about it from movie reviews or in creative writing articles or classes. The term was first penned by the late mythologist Joseph Campbell in his book “Hero with a Thousand Faces”.After studying many years of myths across different cultures and ages, Campbell recognized a pattern or structure of the myths and he created the term a Hero journey to describe the transformation our hero experienced before reaching his ultimate destination. From a spiritual perspective, a Hero Journey is a Soul Adventure.

Our life story can be viewed as an adventure with challenges, lessons, tears, laughter and probably most importantly, opportunities for growth to become more than who we are. 

Many Hollywood movies have followed this structure of storytelling. Most notably is perhaps The Star Wars (George Lucas has publicly acknowledged Campbell on many occasions as his mentor in storytelling), the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potters, they all have the Hero Journey structure in them.I got fascinated by Campbell’s work and he inspired me to start contemplating my own myths and my own Hero Journey as I began writing my books.

Goddess Myths and Heroine Journey

I love goddess myths, in particular, as I found them more relatable and can be highly empowering for women. Some may suggest we should call it a Heroine Journey as we are the Heroines in our stories. I don’t think it matters all that much, the most important part is for us to understand as a woman or man is that we have choices in our life, and through cause-and-effect, our actions will lead to different consequences. 

From time to time, our heart will stir, and we know that something needs to change or we have a dream or desire that got ignited in our inner world. Then the question becomes, are we willing to take a risk and answer the call? Or do we play safe and refuse to get onto the adventure?

Inner and Outer Transformation

A Hero journey essentially is a transformation. There are two parts of this journey, one part is the external journey, say a Hero in a mythical story went on a mission to rescue the princess from the dragons or finding an elixir to save his mother. There is an endpoint. In our life, it may translate into finding a career that is meaningful to us or leaving a toxic relationship or a destructive pattern. There is a goal or solution we seek. 

The other part is the internal journey. It is about the transformation of the psyche, the way we think and sees the world around us, our way to respond instead of to react. I wrote about that through the goddess myths in my book “Goddess in Many Faces”, the maiden goddess Persephone is a great example. Through her kidnapping into the Underworld, she has gone through a dramatic experience in which forced her to grow into a mature goddess. She found her voice and direction. She has become who she is meant to be. 

Certainly what happened to Persephone is a traumatic experience and many of us do not experience that and there is no need to go through such pain in order to evolve and grow into a stronger version of ourselves.

The idea is clear, however, we need to learn from our life lessons or mistakes in order to reach our destination or the solution we seek. Your lesson may be about patience, compassion, honesty, worthiness, forgiveness, self-love or something else. Your lesson is uniquely yours and it is different from mine as each of us have a different journey and destiny to fulfilled. 

Stages of a Hero Journey

In my interpretation, there are 4 stages in a Hero Journey and they ...