When you are telling stories as a Bard, you are not reproducing epics at the letter, copying every single pattern, and every single metaphor another Bard before you used in his lyrical art (this will be developed in the topic Written vs. Oral Stories later).

In fact, by telling stories of great mythological heroes around the fire, you are not taking many risks if some aspects change while you are knowing the basic patterns of Archetypes and Structures that are reproduced at all periods of history by all kinds of Storytellers such as yourself.

To know such patterns and the main characteristics of Heroes and Myths, the works of Joseph Campbell are the ultimate reference of our period, I think. I would never advice too much to read his works, so enlightening thy might be. His first massively published work was The Hero With A Thousand Faces in which Campbell describes this archetypal character, subject of all myths and all fantasies, so it is natural, I think, to begin by the very center of all good stories: the main character, the Hero.

Often enough, I am in front of people asking me: "But why are you so interested in myths and legends? After all, those stories are wrong, everyone knows that, and Science proves it a bit more everyday now. I really don't see the interest one can have in such stories, apart of telling them around a fire."

And to this I answer, as you already could have read it in the "Mythology - fake or real?" thread: "This is precisely because Myth has just this purpose of being told around fires."

The Hero With A Thousand Faces is a being that is destined to Inspire people. He doesn't bring meaning; he doesn't bring answers either. So what does he bring to us? The keys of an Initiation, of an Experience that we could use to bring us a place in society, a place as an individual AND a part of the community we live in, of the universe we are included in, our place in the world as teenagers, adults and elders, as Human beings, simply.

A Hero wanders outside of the mundane world and enters a world of surnatural wonders. There, he fights against mighty powers and creatures, wins the day, and then comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to share his experience and benefits with others.

Perhaps we could define Life, our lives, as a gigantic pedagogy in search for meaning in existence. There, myth brings us an insight, a vision of what life has been, could be or should be in some societies we may indentify with. If we remember some particular myths long after the society and culture they came from died, this is because they emphasize some concepts that go far beyond the veils of identities to reach Human Nature itself, and that is why we identify as human beings to this Hero, no matter what Face he wears.

An Heroic story finds its roots in Human Nature, and nowhere else. This is very important to understand before trying to share a story. For example, using some Freudian theories, we could say that the life of Human beings revolve around a traumatic experience - the need to leave your mother. From this concept comes a structural concept of the Hero: An individual that will be forced to leave the nest to fight against his own identity and against the whole world to finally discover an experience that will bring balance and enlightenment that will be ideally shared later with his children.

From there, with this concept, you could have the whole point of what a Hero represents, and there would be no need of more posts. Fortunately and for you, and for me, much more can be said than just Freudian theory... *ironical smile*

Indeed, there are many many different incarnations, like clothes, or Faces, to our hero, and the stories, and the background itself, knows great variations, mostly to offer a feeling of Identity to the listener and the storyteller. There is no point in telling a story with which yourself and your audience will not recogniwe themselves. There should be a way to identify with the Hero, or your bargain with the public has not been fulfilled.

Life is a cycle: you are young, and you try to learn who you qre and how you should behave in society; then comes the Trial of Life - you leave your parents, and learn by yourself, reinventing your very identity in the process; finally, rich with this experience of how you came to be yourself, you will help those in need to find themselves. Within this main archetypal cycle are loads of similar cycles in the short term, recreating this same idea over and over to form the big pattern just described above. One could wonder as well if human existence is not at the image of Science, going from the infinite small to the infinite big. That would mean that our Cycle of Life is part of a greater pattern of Cycle of Humanity, in which we are evolving in the same way, from departure to sharing of experience through trials in the meantime. This is a comforting idea, because it would be a logical reproduction through analogy of patterns constantly verified by logic that would give us a clue that God truly exists, whatever the names He or She may wear. But that is not our subject, or at least not directly.

DEPARTURE > TRIALS > RETURN

Here is the basic structure of all mythological stories featuring Heroes. This is recreated over and over, no matter the society, the period of history, the tradition.

Stage 1 - Departure: Birth of the Individual Hero

The first pattern of this part of the Hero's Life is to become someone. That means our Hero will learn who he is, what is his Legacy (important word. The Legacy of the hero, in terms of genealogy, teachers, is often expressed in the form of Gods and Divine parents or friends that will be the symbolical link of the Hero to the Idea of Numen, or eternity), how he should behave in society. He will learn how he should become what he wants to be, and what others want him to be as well, and most importantly, how those two ideas could coexist. This will bring many conflicts, and as the Hero doesn't know yet who he really is, his surrouding influences will greatly affect him, to the point where he will come into conflict, determined to be someone he yet doesn't know (quintessence of the teenager crisis) or answering a call to adventure that will give him the occasion to be on his own. And there, we are going to the Trials of the Hero.

Stage 2 - Initiation: The Personal Trials of the Hero

Somehow, this is at this period that the Hero will come to the full realization of the Cycle of his Life, and find his first answers to the Enigma of the Sphinx.

A serie of trials, most of them individual and not social in nature, will take place. Killing the dragon, for example, is a clear symbol of the resolution of an inner platonician conflict. To be yourself, you should kill part of your pulsions, desires, dreams, all that which you cannot control, to take back the purity of soul, your own symbolic Virgin held prisoner by the monster, so that you can gaze at the very nature of existence with reason and neutrality.

The Hero should win over the social, communitary, collective being he has been, and learn who he really is as an individual. In many ways, he will recreate a Mother and a Father within himself, as a kind of natural catharsis. He confronts then with the nature of universe itself, and the mighty powers playing with his individuality (gods and monsters, for instance) to win his right to be himself.

Once that is done, he will come back, perhaps after one trial like Jason, or dozens like Ulysse, and will come back to where he belongs, now holding the Flame of Experience, ready to share it and be free.

Stage 3 - The Return of the Hero

It is there that the Hero will have to realize this complex alliance between who he is as individual and who he is as a member of the community and a part of the world surrounding him. In some cases, the Hero will come back to his village, have children and teach them. But not always. Sometimes the Hero will die to enter the fields of Eternity a teach us a lesson for ages to come. For example, Arthur nearly dies after confronting his dark alter ego Mordred, Arthur symbolically being the Christ himself, and Mordred the Antechrist. Then, nearly dying, the King is brought to Avalon, the fields of Myth (mists) and Eternity, where he truly belongs. There, he will remain as an hope, a living proof that Hope is always there, and the Kingdom of Summer shall return.