The Call to Adventure and the Crossing of the First Threshold

THE CALL TO ADVENTURE * Background of the Call: The phenomenon signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and moved their spiritual center of gravity from within their society to an unknown zone. * The Grimm's Fairy Tale Example: 'The Frog King' (Grimm's No. $1$). * The Princess and the Golden Ball: A king's daughters were beautiful, specifically the youngest, whom the sun marveled at. Near the castle was a great dark forest with an old lime tree and a spring. * The Blunder: While playing with her favorite golden ball, the princess fails to catch it. It bounces and rolls into a spring so deep the bottom cannot be seen. * Introduction of the Herald: As the princess cries, a frog (referred to as 'old Water Plopper') offers help. * The Agreement: The frog asks for companionship—to sit at her table, eat from her golden plate, drink from her cup, and sleep in her bed. The princess promises 'anything you want' but privately thinks the frog is a simple creature that could never be a human companion. * Resolution of the Incident: The frog retrieves the ball. The princess immediately scamper away, ignoring the frog's calls to wait. * Interpretative Significance: * Freud's Perspective: Blunders are not chance; they result from suppressed desires and conflicts, representing 'ripples on the surface of life' from deep 'internal springs' of the soul. * Signs in the Tale: The disappearance of the ball is the first sign, the frog is the second, and the unconsidered promise is the third. # THE HERALD AS THE CARRIER OF DESTINY * Definition of the Herald: A preliminary manifestation of the powers breaking into play. The herald marks the 'call to adventure' and may sound a summons to live, to die, to a historical undertaking, or to religious illumination. * Symbols of the Call: * Environments: Dark forests, great trees, babbling springs. * The World Navel: The scene represents the World Navel. The frog is a nursery counterpart to the underworld serpent/dragon representing demiurgic powers of the abyss. * Cultural Parallels: * Chinese Dragon of the East: Delivering the rising sun in its jaws. * Han Hsiang: An immortal on a frog, carrying peaches of immortality. * Psychology of the Call: Freud suggests anxiety at these moments reproduces the crisis of birth (separation from the mother). Archetypal images of danger, trial, and passage are activated. * The Nature of the Herald: Often 'loathly,' terrifying, or beast-like. It represents the rejected, unknown, or undeveloped factors of existence (the 'unconscious deep'). These figures guard the nuggets in the gold hoard, the pearls of submarine palaces, or the Golden Fleece. # EXAMPLES OF THE CALL ACROSS CULTURES * King Arthur and the Questing Beast (Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, I, xix): * Arthur chases a great hart until his horse dies. While resting by a fountain, he hears the noise of $30$ couple hounds. * The 'Questyng Beast' appears: It has the noise of $30$ couple hounds in its belly, which ceases only when it drinks. This marks the beginning of the Holy Grail mysteries. * Arapaho Legend (Traditions of the Arapaho, p. $300$): * A girl chases a porcupine up a cottonwood tree for its quills. * The tree suddenly lengthens, carrying her into the sky until she and the animal reach the firmament. * The Future Buddha (Gautama Sakyamuni) and the Four Signs: * The prince was protected in $3$ palaces with $40,000$ dancing girls to prevent him from becoming a Buddha. * The Gods manifested four signs to him via his charioteer: * Sign $1$: A decrepit old man (broken-toothed, gray-haired, leaning on a staff). * Sign $2$: A diseased man. * Sign $3$: A dead man. * Sign $4$: A monk, carefully and decently clad. * Discovery: Enlightenment follows the realization that old age, sickness, and death are inevitable, leading to the desire for retirement from the world. # REFUSAL OF THE CALL * The Negative Adventure: Refusing the summons converts adventure into its negative. The subject becomes walled in boredom, hard work, or 'culture,' and life becomes a wasteland. * Biblical Warnings: * Proverbs $1:24-32$: 'Because I have called, and ye refused… I also will laugh at your calamity.' * Latin Proverb: 'Time Jesus transeuntem et non revertentem' ('Dread the passage of Jesus, for he does not return'). * Mythological Failures: * King Minos: By retaining the divine bull instead of sacrificing it, he preferred economic advantage over the god's will, turning divinity into a monster (the Minotaur). * Apollo and Daphne (Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, $504-553$): Daphne flees Apollo and is transformed into a laurel tree by her father (Peneus) to escape. This is a 'dull and unrewarding finish' representing impotence to move beyond the infantile ego. * The Sleeping Beauty (Briar-rose): Put to sleep for 'long, long years' due to a jealous hag, signifying an arrest of development where the whole world slumbers. * Lot's Wife: Turned into a pillar of salt for looking back. * The Wandering Jew: Cursed to wait on earth until the Day of Judgment for insulting Christ. # SUPERNATURAL AID * The Benign Protector: For those who accept the call, the first encounter is often a protective figure (an old crone or old man) who provides amulets. * The Wachaga Tribe (Tanganyika): Kyazimba, seeking the sun, is transported to the zenith by a decrepit woman who wraps her garment around him. * The Navaho (Spider Woman): * The Twin War Gods meet Spider Woman in a subterranean chamber with a smoke-blackened ladder. * She gives them the 'feather of the alien gods' (a hoop with $2$ life-feathers) to protect them from crushing rocks, cutting reeds, tearing cactuses, and boiling sands. * She teaches a magic formula focusing on 'pollen' as a symbol of spiritual energy. * Female Protected Figures in Western Literature: Ariadne (thread for Theseus), Beatrice and the Virgin (Dante), Gretchen, Helen of Troy, and the Virgin (Goethe's Faust). * Masculine Guides: Hermes-Mercury (Classical), Thoth (Egyptian), the Holy Ghost (Christian), or Virgil (Dante). # THE CASE OF PRINCE KAMAR AL-ZAMAN AND PRINCESS BUDUR * Persistent Refusal: The Prince (son of King Shahriman of Persia) and the Princess (daughter of King Ghayur of China) both violently refuse marriage. * Consequences: The Prince is imprisoned in a dilapidated tower with a ruined Roman well. The Princess is shut in a chamber under the guard of $10$ old women. * Miraculous Intervention: * Maymunah (a Jinniyah) emerges from the tower's well and finds the Prince beautiful. * She encounters Dahnash (an Ifrit), who has seen the Princess in China. * They debate who is more beautiful and decide to transport the Princess to the Prince's side to compare them as they sleep. # THE CROSSING OF THE FIRST THRESHOLD * Threshold Guardians: Figures that bound the world in the $4$ directions, representing the limits of the hero's present life horizon. Beyond is the unknown sea of immortal being, often symbolized by a serpent biting its tail. * Projections of the Unconscious: Unknown regions (deserts, jungles) are fields for projecting 'incestuous libido and patricidal destrudo.' * Examples of Entities: * Hottentot Ogre: Eyes on its instep; stays on hands and knees to look behind. * Chiruwi (Central Africa): A 'half-man' who challenges travelers to fight for medical knowledge. * Russian Wild Women: Hairy bodies, fine square heads; can turn invisible or dance people to death. * Dyedushka Vodyanoy (Water Grandfather): A shapeshifter who drowns swimmers but rewards midwives with gold/silver. * Pan (Classical): Instills 'panic' fear—a sudden, groundless fright that releases 'destructive-creative dark' forces. # CONFLICTS AT THE THRESHOLD * The Failure of the Caravan Leader: * A leader from Benares leads $500$ carts into a demon wilderness. * An ogre tricks him into breaking his water chatties and throwing the water away by pretending it is raining ahead. * The caravan dies of thirst and is devoured by ogres at midnight. * The Success of Prince Five-weapons (The Future Buddha): * The Prince enters Sticky-hair's forest. * Sticky-hair is a monster as tall as a palm tree with eyes like alms bowls and a hawk's beak. * The Prince attacks with $50$ poisoned arrows, a sword ($33$ inches long), a spear, and a club—all of which stick to the ogre's hair. * Finally, the Prince strikes with his hands, feet, and head; he is snared in $5$ places and dangles from the ogre's body. * The Sixth Weapon: Unafraid, the Prince claims to have a 'thunderbolt' ($vajra$) in his belly (the Weapon of Knowledge) that will kill the ogre if he is eaten. * Outcome: Terrified, the ogre releases him. The Prince subdues the ogre, teaches him the Doctrine, and transforms him into a forest spirit.