The Hero with a Thousand Faces

CHAPTER II The Virgin Birth 1. Mother Universe

The world-generating spirit of the father passes into the manifold of earthly experience through a transforming medium — the mother of the world. She is a personification of the primal element named in the second verse of Genesis, where we read that “the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” In the Hindu myth, she is the female figure through whom the Self begot all creatures. More abstractly understood, she is the world-bounding frame: “space, time, and causality” — the shell of the cosmic egg. More abstractly still, she is the lure that moved the Self-brooding Absolute to the act of creation.

Figure 66. Nut (the Sky) Gives Birth to the Sun; Its Rays Fall on Hathor in the Horizon (Love and Life) (carved stone, Ptolemaic, Egypt, c. first century b.c.)

In mythologies emphasizing the maternal rather than the paternal aspect of the creator, this original female fills the world stage in the beginning, playing the roles that are elsewhere assigned to males. And she is virgin, because her spouse is the Invisible Unknown.

The Kalevala (“The Land of Heroes”) in its present form is the work of Elias Lönnrot (1802–1884), a country physician and student of Finnish philology. Having collected a considerable body of folk poetry around the legendary heroes Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen, Lemminkainen, and Kullervo, he composed these in co-ordinated sequence and cast them in a uniform verse (1835, 1849). The work comes to some 23,000 lines.

A German translation of Lönnrot’s Kalevala came under the eyes of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who thereupon both conceived the plan and chose the meter of his Song of Hiawatha.

A strange representation of this figure is to be found in the mythology of the Finns. In Runo I of the Kalevala^[1] it is told how the virgin daughter of the air descended from the sky mansions into the primeval sea, and there for centuries floated on the everlasting waters.

Then a storm arose in fury,

From the East a mighty tempest,

And the sea was wildly foaming,

And the waves dashed ever higher.

Thus the tempest rocked the virgin,

And the billows drove the maiden,

O’er the ocean’s azure surface,

On the crest of foaming billows,

Till the wind that blew around her,

And the sea woke life within her.^[2]

For seven centuries the Water-Mother floated with the child in her womb, unable to give it birth. She prayed to Ukko, the highest god, and he sent a teal to build its nest on her knee. The teal’s eggs fell from the knee and broke; the fragments formed the earth, sky, sun, moon, and clouds. Then the Water-Mother, floating still, herself began the work of the World-Shaper.

When the ninth year had passed over,

And the summer tenth was passing,*

From the sea her head she lifted,

And her forehead she uplifted,

And she then began Creation,

And she brought the world to order,

On the open ocean’s surface,

On the far extending waters.

Wheresoe’er her hand she pointed,

There she formed the jutting headlands;

Wheresoe’er her feet she rested,

There she formed the caves for fishes;

When she dived beneath the water,

There she formed the depths of ocean;

When towards the land she turned her,

There the level shores extended;

Where her feet to land extended,

Spots were formed for salmon netting;

Where her head the land touched lightly,

There the curving bays extended.

Further from the land she floated,

And abode in open water,

And created rocks in ocean,

And the reefs that eyes behold not,

Where the ships are often shattered,

And the sailors’ lives are ended.^[3]

But the babe remained in her body, growing towards a sentimental middle age:

Still unborn was Väinämöinen:

Still unborn the hard immortal.

Väinämöinen, old and steadfast,

Rested in his mother’s body

For the space of thirty summers,

And the sum of thirty winters,

Ever on the placid waters,

And upon the foaming billows.

So he pondered and reflected

How he could continue living

In a resting place so gloomy,

In a dwelling far too narrow,

Where he could not see the moonlight,

Neither could behold the sunlight.

Then he spake the words which follow,

And expressed his thoughts in this wise:

“Aid me Moon, and Sun release me,

And the Great Bear lend his counsel,

Through the portal that I know not,

Through the unaccustomed passage.

From the little nest that holds me,

From a dwelling-place so narrow,

To the land conduct the roamer,

To the open air conduct me,

To behold the moon in heaven,

And the splendor of the sunlight;

See the Great Bear’s stars above me,

And the shining stars in heaven.”

When the moon no freedom gave him,

Neither did the sun release him,

Then he wearied of existence,

And his life became a burden.

Thereupon he moved the portal,

With his finger, fourth in number,

Opened quick the bony gateway,

With the toes upon his left foot,

With his knees beyond the gateway.

Headlong in the water falling,

With his hands the waves repelling,

Thus the man remained in ocean,

And the hero on the billows.^[4]

Before Väinämöinen — hero already in his birth — could make his way ashore, the ordeal of a second mother-womb remained to him, that of the elemental cosmic ocean. Unprotected now, he had to undergo the initiation of nature’s fundamentally inhuman forces. On the level of water and wind he had to experience again what he already so well knew.

In the sea five years he sojourned,

Waited five years, waited six years,

Seven years also, even eight years,

On the surface of the ocean,

By a nameless promontory,

Near a barren, treeless country.

On the land his knees he planted,

And upon his arms he rested,

Rose that he might view the moonbeams,

And enjoy the pleasant sunlight,

See the Great Bear’s stars above him,

And the shining stars in heaven.

Thus was ancient Väinämöinen,

He, the ever famous minstrel,

Born of the divine Creatrix,

Born of Ilmatar, his mother.^[5] 2. Matrix of Destiny

The universal goddess makes her appearance to men under a multitude of guises; for the effects of creation are multitudinous, complex, and of mutually contradictory kind when experienced from the viewpoint of the created world. The mother of life is at the same time the mother of death; she is masked in the ugly demonesses of famine and disease.

The Sumero-Babylonian astral mythology identified the aspects of the cosmic female with the phases of the planet Venus. As morning star she was the virgin, as evening star the harlot, as lady of the night sky the consort of the moon; and when extinguished under the blaze of the sun she was the hag of hell. Wherever the Mesopotamian influence extended, the traits of the goddess were touched by the light of this fluctuating star.

A myth from southeast Africa, collected from the Wahungwe Makoni tribe of South Rhodesia, displays the aspects of the Venus-mother in co-ordination with the first stages of the cosmo­gonic cycle. Here the original man is the moon; the morning star his first wife, the evening star his second. Just as Väinämöinen emerged from the womb by his own act, so this moon man emerges from the abyssal waters. He and his wives are to be the parents of the creatures of the earth. The story comes to us as follows:

Maori (God) made the first man and called him Mwuetsi (moon). He put him on the bottom of a Dsivoa (lake) and gave him a ngona horn filled with ngona oil.* Mwuetsi lived in Dsivoa.

Mwuetsi said to Maori: “I want to go on the earth.” Maori said: “You will rue it.” Mwuetsi said: “None the less, I want to go on the earth.” Maori said: “Then go on the earth.” Mwuetsi went out of Dsivoa and on to the earth.

The earth was cold and empty. There were no grasses, no bushes, no trees. There were no animals. Mwuetsi wept and said to Maori: “How shall I live here?” Maori said: “I warned you. You have started on the path at the end of which you shall die. I will, however, give you one of your kind.” Maori gave Mwuetsi a maiden who was called Massassi, the morning star. Maori said: “Massassi shall be your wife for two years.” Maori gave Massassi a fire maker.

In the evening Mwuetsi went into a cave with Massassi. Massassi said: “Help me. We will make a fire. I will gather chimandra (kindling) and you can twirl the rusika (revolving part of the fire maker).” Massassi gathered kindling. Mwuetsi twirled the rusika. When the fire was lighted Mwuetsi lay down on one side of it, Massassi on the other. The fire burned between them.

Mwuetsi thought to himself, “Why has Maori given me this maiden? What shall I do with this maiden, Massassi?” When it was night Mwuetsi took his ngona horn. He moistened his index finger with a drop of ngona oil. Mwuetsi said, “Ndini chaambuka mhiri ne mhirir (I am going to jump over the fire).” [This sentence is many times repeated in a melodramatic, ceremonial tone — Translators.] Mwuetsi jumped over the fire. Mwuetsi approached the maiden, Massassi. Mwuetsi touched Massassi’s body with the ointment on his finger. Then Mwuetsi went back to his bed and slept.

When Mwuetsi wakened in the morning he looked over to Massassi. Mwuetsi saw that Massassi’s body was swollen. When day broke Massassi began to bear. Massassi bore grasses. Massassi bore bushes. Massassi bore trees. Massassi did not stop bearing till the earth was covered with grasses, bushes, and trees.

The trees grew. They grew till their tops reached the sky. When the tops of the trees reached the sky it began to rain.

Mwuetsi and Massassi lived in plenty. They had fruits and grain. Mwuetsi built a house. Mwuetsi made an iron shovel. Mwuetsi made a hoe and planted crops. Massassi plaited fish traps and caught fish. Massassi fetched wood and water. Massassi cooked. Thus Mwuetsi and Massassi lived for two years.

After two years Maori said to Massassi, “The time is up.” Maori took Massassi from the earth and put her back in Dsivoa. Mwuetsi wailed. He wailed and wept and said to Maori: “What shall I do without Massassi? Who will fetch wood and water for me? Who will cook for me?” Eight days long Mwuetsi wept.

Eight days long Mwuetsi wept. Then Maori said: “I have warned you that you are going to your death. But I will give you another woman. I will give you Morongo, the evening star. Morongo will stay with you for two years. Then I shall take her back again.” Maori gave Mwuetsi Morongo.

Morongo came to Mwuetsi in the hut. In the evening Mwuetsi wanted to lie down on his side of the fire. Morongo said: “Do not lie down over there. Lie with me.” Mwuetsi lay down beside Morongo. Mwuetsi took the ngona horn, put some ointment on his index finger. But Morongo said: “Don’t be like that. I am not like Massassi. Now smear your loins with ngona oil. Smear my loins with ngona oil.” Mwuetsi did as he was told. Morongo said: “Now couple with me.” Mwuetsi coupled with Morongo. Mwuetsi went to sleep.

Figure 67. The Moon King and His People (rock painting, prehistoric, Zimbabwe, c. 1500 b.c.)

Towards morning Mwuetsi woke. As he looked over to Morongo he saw that her body was swollen. As day broke Morongo began to give birth. The first day Morongo gave birth to chickens, sheep, goats.

The second night Mwuetsi slept with Morongo again. The next morning she bore eland and cattle.

The third night Mwuetsi slept with Morongo again. The next morning Morongo bore first boys and then girls. The boys who were born in the morning were grown up by nightfall.

On the fourth night Mwuetsi wanted to sleep with Morongo again. But there came a thunderstorm and Maori spoke: “Let be. You are going quickly to your death.” Mwuetsi was afraid. The thunderstorm passed over. When it had gone Morongo said to Mwuetsi: “Make a door and then use it to close the entrance to the hut. Then Maori will not be able to see what we are doing. Then you can sleep with me.” Mwuetsi made a door. With it he closed the entrance to the hut. Then he slept with Morongo. Mwuetsi slept.

Towards morning Mwuetsi woke. Mwuetsi saw that Mo-rongo’s body was swollen. As day broke Morongo began to give birth. Morongo bore lions, leopards, snakes, and scorpions. Maori saw it. Maori said to Mwuetsi: “I warned you.”

On the fifth night Mwuetsi wanted to sleep with Morongo again. But Morongo said: “Look, your daughters are grown. Couple with your daughters.” Mwuetsi looked at his daughters. He saw that they were beautiful and that they were grown up. So he slept with them. They bore children. The children which were born in the morning were full grown by night. And so Mwuetsi became the Mambo (king) of a great people.

But Morongo slept with the snake. Morongo no longer gave birth. She lived with the snake. One day Mwuetsi returned to Mo-rongo and wanted to sleep with her. Morongo said: “Let be.” Mwuetsi said: “But I want to.” He lay with Morongo. Under Morongo’s bed lay the snake. The snake bit Mwuetsi. Mwuetsi sickened.

After the snake had bitten Mwuetsi, Mwuetsi sickened. The next day it did not rain. The plants withered. The rivers and lakes dried. The animals died. The people began to die. Many people died. Mwuetsi’s children asked: “What can we do?” Mwuetsi’s children said: “We will consult the hakata (sacred dice).” The children consulted the hakata. The hakata said: “Mwuetsi the Mambo is sick and pining. Send Mwuetsi back to the Dsivoa.”

Thereupon Mwuetsi’s children strangled Mwuetsi and buried him. They buried Morongo with Mwuetsi. Then they chose another man to be Mambo. Morongo, too, had lived for two years in Mwuetsi’s Zimbabwe.^[6]*

It is clear that each of the three stages of procreation represents an epoch in the development of the world. The pattern for the procession was foreknown, almost as something already observed; this is indicated by the warning of the All-Highest. But the Moon Man, the Mighty Living One, would not be denied the realization of his destiny. The conversation at the bottom of the lake is the dialogue of eternity and time, the “Colloquy of the Quick”: “To be, or not to be.” Unquenchable desire is finally given its rope: movement begins.

The wives and daughters of the Moon Man are the personifications and precipitators of his destiny. With the evolution of his world-creative will the virtues and features of the goddess-mother were metamorphosed. After the birth from the elemental womb, the first two wives were prehuman, suprahuman. But as the cosmogonic round proceeded and the growing moment passed from its primordial to its human-historical forms, the mistresses of the cosmic births withdrew, and the field remained to the women of men. Thereupon the old demiurgic sire in the midst of his community became a metaphysical anachronism. When at last he grew tired of the merely human and yearned back again to the wife of his abundance, the world sickened a moment under the pull of his reaction, but then released itself and ran free. The initiative passed to the community of the children. The symbolic, dream-heavy parental figures subsided into the original abyss. Only man remained on the furnished earth. The cycle had moved on. 3. Womb of Redemption

The world of human life is now the problem. Guided by the practical judgment of the kings and the instruction of the priests of the dice of divine revelation (see the hakata of Mwuetsi’s children, p. 263), the field of consciousness so contracts that the grand lines of the human comedy are lost in a welter of cross-purposes. Men’s perspectives become flat, comprehending only the light-reflecting, tangible surfaces of existence. The vista into depth closes over. The significant form of the human agony is lost to view. Society lapses into mistake and disaster. The Little Ego has usurped the judgment seat of the Self.

This is in myth a perpetual theme, in the voices of the prophets a familiar cry. The people yearn for some personality who, in a world of twisted bodies and souls, will represent again the lines of the incarnate image. We are familiar with the myth from our own tradition. It occurs everywhere, under a variety of guises. When the Herod figure (the extreme symbol of the misgoverning, tenacious ego) has brought mankind to the nadir of spiritual abasement, the occult forces of the cycle begin of themselves to move. In an inconspicuous village the maid is born who will maintain herself undefiled of the fashionable errors of her generation: a miniature in the midst of men of the cosmic woman who was the bride of the wind. Her womb, remaining fallow as the primordial abyss, summons to itself by its very readiness the original power that fertilized the void.

“Now on a certain day, while Mary stood near the fountain to fill her pitcher, the angel of the Lord appeared unto her, saying, ‘Blessed art thou, Mary, for in thy womb thou hast prepared a habitation for the Lord. Behold, light from heaven shall come and dwell in thee, and through thee shall shine in all the world.’”^[7]

The story is recounted everywhere; and with such striking uniformity of the main contours, that the early Christian missionaries were forced to think that the devil himself must be throwing up mockeries of their teaching wherever they set their hand. Fray Pedro Simón reports, in his Noticias historiales de las conquistas de Tierra Firme en las Indias Occidentales (Cuenca, 1627), that after work had been begun amongst the peoples of Tunja and Sogamozzo in Colombia, South America,

the demon of that place began giving contrary doctrines. And among other things, he sought to discredit what the priest had been teaching concerning the Incarnation, declaring that it had not yet come to pass; but that presently the Sun would bring it to pass by taking flesh in the womb of a virgin of the village of Guacheta, causing her to conceive by the rays of the sun while she yet remained a virgin. These tidings were proclaimed throughout the region. And it so happened that the head man of the village named had two virgin daughters, each desirous that the miracle should become accomplished in her. These then began going out from their father’s dwellings and garden-enclosure every morning at the first peep of dawn; and mounting one of the numerous hills about the village, in the direction of the sunrise, they disposed themselves in such a way that the first rays of the sun would be free to shine upon them. This going on for a number of days, it was granted the demon by divine permission (whose judgments are incomprehensible) that things should come to pass as he had planned, and in such fashion that one of the daughters became pregnant, as she declared, by the sun. Nine months and she brought into the world a large and valuable hacuata, which in their language is an emerald. The woman took this, and, wrapping it in cotton, placed it between her breasts, where she kept it a number of days, at the end of which time it was transformed into a living creature: all by order of the demon. The child was named Goranchacho, and he was reared in the household of the head man, his grandfather, until he was some twenty-four years of age.

Then he proceeded in triumphant procession to the capital of the nation, and was celebrated throughout the provinces as the “Child of the Sun.”^[8]

Hindu mythology tells of the maiden Pārvatī, daughter of the mountain king, Himalaya, who retreated into the high hills to practice very severe austerities. A tyrant-titan named Taraka had usurped the mastery of the world, and, according to the prophecy, only a son of the High God Śiva could overthrow him. Śiva, however, was the pattern god of yoga — aloof, alone, indrawn in meditation. It was impossible that Śiva should ever be moved to beget a son.

Pārvatī determined to change the world situation by matching Śiva in meditation. Aloof, alone, indrawn into her soul, she too fasted naked beneath the blazing sun, even adding to the heat by building four additional great fires, to each of the four quarters. The handsome body shriveled to a brittle construction of bones, the skin became leathery and hard. Her hair stood matted and wild. The soft liquid eyes burned.

One day a Brahmin youth arrived and asked why anyone so beautiful should be destroying herself with such torture.

“My desire,” she replied, “is Śiva, the Highest Object. Śiva is a god of solitude and unshakable concentration. I therefore am practicing these austerities to move him from his state of balance and bring him to me in love.”

“Śiva,” the youth said, “is a god of destruction. Śiva is the World Annihilator. Śiva’s delight is to meditate in burial grounds amidst the reek of corpses; there he beholds the rot of death, and that is congenial to his devastating heart. Śiva’s garlands are of living serpents. Śiva is a pauper, furthermore, and no one knows anything of his birth.”

The virgin said: “He is beyond the mind of such as you. A pauper, but the fountainhead of wealth; terrifying but the source of grace; snake-garlands or jewel-garlands he can assume or put off at will. How should he have been born, when he is the creator of the uncreated! Śiva is my love.”

The youth thereupon put away his disguise — and was Śiva.^[9]

Figure 68. Coatlicue of the Serpent-woven Skirt, Earth Mother (carved stone, Aztec, Mexico, late fifteenth century a.d.) 4. Folk Stories of Virgin Motherhood

The Buddha descended from heaven to his mother’s womb in the shape of a milk-white elephant. The Aztec Coatlicue, “She of the Serpent-woven Skirt,” was approached by a god in the form of a ball of feathers. The chapters of Ovid’s Metamorphoses swarm with nymphs beset by gods in sundry masquerades: Jove as a bull, a swan, a shower of gold. Any leaf accidentally swallowed, any nut, or even the breath of a breeze, may be enough to fertilize the ready womb. The procreating power is everywhere. And according to the whim or destiny of the hour, either a hero-savior or a world-annihilating demon may be conceived — one can never know.

Images of virgin birth abound in the popular tales as well as in myth. One example will suffice: a queer folktale from Tonga, belonging to a little cycle of stories told of the “handsome man,” Sinilau. This tale is of particular interest, not because of its extreme absurdity, but because it clearly announces, in unconscious burlesque, every one of the major motifs of the typical life of the hero: virgin birth, quest for the father, ordeal, atonement with the father, the assumption and coronation of the virgin mother, and finally, the heavenly triumph of the true sons while the pretenders are heated hot.

There was once a certain man and his wife, and the woman was pregnant. When her time came to be delivered of her child she called her husband to come and lift her, that she might give birth. But she bore a clam, and her husband threw her down in anger. She, however, bade him take the clam, and leave it in Sinilau’s bathing-pool. Now Sinilau came to bathe, and flung the coconut-husk that he had used to wash himself with on the water. The clam slid along and sucked the coconut-husk, and became pregnant.

One day the woman, the mother of the clam, saw the clam rolling along toward her. She angrily asked the clam why she had come, but the shellfish replied that it was no time for anger, and asked her to curtain off a place in which she could give birth. So a screen was placed, and the clam gave birth to a fine big baby boy. Then she rolled off back to her pool, and the woman cared for the child, who was named Fatai-going-underneath-sandalwood. Time went on, and lo, the clam was again with child, and once more came rolling along to the house that she might give birth there to her child. The performance was repeated and again the clam bore a fine boy, who was named Myrtle-twined-at-random-in-the-fatai. He, too, was left with the woman and her husband to be cared for.

When the two children had grown up to manhood the woman heard that Sinilau was going to hold a festival, and she determined that her two grandsons should be present. So she called the youths, and bade them prepare, adding that the man to whose festival they were going was their father. When they came to where the festival was being held they were gazed at by all the people. There was not a woman but had her eyes fixed on them. As they went along a group of women called to them to turn aside to them, but the two youths refused, and went on, until they came to where the kava was being drunk. There they served the kava.

But Sinilau, angry at their disturbing his festival, ordered two bowls to be brought. Then he bade his men seize one of the youths and cut him up. So the bamboo knife was sharpened to cut him, but when its point was placed on his body it just slipped over his skin, and he cried out:

The knife is placed and slips,

Do thou but sit and gaze at us

Whether we are like thee or not.

Then Sinilau asked what the youth had said, and they repeated the lines to him. So he ordered the two young men to be brought, and asked them who their father was. They replied that he himself was their father. After Sinilau had kissed his newfound sons he told them to go and bring their mother. So they went to the pool and got the clam, and took her to their grandmother, who broke it open, and there stood a lovely woman, named Hina-at-home-in-the-river.

Then they set out on their return to Sinilau. Each of the youths wore a fringed mat, of the sort called taufohua; but their mother had on one of the very fine mats called tuoua. The two sons went ahead, and Hina followed. When they came to Sinilau they found him sitting with his wives. The youths sat one at each thigh of Sinilau, and Hina sat at his side. Then Sinilau bade the people go and prepare an oven, and heat it hot; and they took the wives and their children, and killed and baked them; but Sinilau was wedded to Hina-at-home-in-the-river.^[10]

Footnotes

* That is, the tenth summer after the breaking of the eggs of the teal.

* This horn and oil play a conspicuous role in the folklore of South Rhodesia [the modern-day nation of Zimbabwe — Ed.]. The ngona horn is a wonder-working instrument, with the power to create fire and lightning, to impregnate the living, and to resurrect the dead.

* Zimbabwe means roughly “the royal court.” The enormous prehistoric ruins near Fort Victoria are called “The Great Zimbabwe”; other stone ruins throughout Southern Rhodesia are called “Little Zimbabwe.” [Note by Frobenius and Fox, African Genesis.]

Endnotes

[1] The version quoted here is from the translation by W.F. Kirby (Everyman’s Library, Nos. 259–60).

[2] Kalevala, Runo I, pp. 127–36.

[3] Ibid., pp. 263–80.

[4] Ibid., pp. 287–328.

[5] Ibid., pp. 329–44.

[6] Leo Frobenius and Douglas C. Fox, African Genesis (New York, 1937), pp. 215–20.

[7] The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Ch. ix.

[8] Kingsborough, op cit., vol. VIII, pp. 263–64.

[9] Kalidasa, Kumarasamibhavam (“The Birth of the War God Kumara”). There is an English translation by R. Griffith (2nd ed., London: Trübner and Company, 1897).

[10] E.E.V. Collocott, Tales and Poems of Tonga (Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin, No. 46, Honolulu, 1928), pp. 32–33.