NOTE: You are welcome to link to this article, but do not copy or repost it. If you would like a PDF copy to use in your class or work, please contact me. Insight through Illustration I began teaching the hero’s journey back in 1975. At that time, I taught it only as a heuristic […]
NOTE: You are welcome to link to this article, but do not copy or repost it. If you would like a PDF copy to use in your class or work, please contact me. A Journey of Bonding [2015 Note: Fly Away Home (1996) may be dated, but it still works well in the classroom. Other […]
Annotated Contents Introduction Three articles that introduce the philosophy and approach to teaching the Hero’s Journey: “A Myth to Live By: The Soul’s High Adventure,” “We Live in Story: The Hero’s Journey as a Personal Narrative” and “Hero’s Journey Approach to Lesson Planning.” 1. Teaching Transformation: “Ritual and the Rite of Passage” Lesson Plan and […]
Joseph Campbell’s monomyth is the standard model for the Hero’s Journey pattern. However, even Campbell acknowledged that creating a single model of the journey is almost impossible because individual journeys have an infinite number of variables. Our guide addresses this complexity by consolidating Campbell’s original 17 stages into a simpler eight-stage model that better illustrates […]
NOTE: You are welcome to link to this article, but do not copy or repost it. A Myth to Live By (This is the introduction to The Hero’s Journey: The Path of Transformation, our comprehensive guide to teaching the Hero’s Journey.) This guide is about teaching the Hero’s Journey. But it’s not just about teaching. […]
Our choices build our character In the Sierra Nevada Mountains, each juniper is unique, shaped by winter’s icy winds and heavy snows. As with the juniper, the challenges we face help shape our character. For…
Tag Archives: Transformation At its essence, the Call signifies death and rebirth, the death of our old self or old life and the rebirth of the new. We tend to think of the Call only as a call… Read More » In our journeys we use many “rafts,” tools or vehicles that carry us from […]
The Call: Ringing Up the Curtain In his seminal book on the hero’s journey, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), mythologist Joseph Campbell described the first stage of the journey, the Call, writing that, …the call rings up the curtain, always, on a mystery of transfiguration…which, when complete, amounts to a dying and a […]
The Call Refused: Evoking the Shadow Journey is a supplement to The Hero’s Journey: Teaching the Basics. This unit introduces students to the concept of refusing the Call and deepens their understanding of the Hero’s Journey using literature, film and writing activities. It encourages students to look at how refusing the Call shapes characters and […]
The Hero’s Journey: Teaching the Basics takes you through the four stages of teaching the basic hero’s journey pattern to your students. 1. Activating students’ existing narrative (journey) schema 2. Introducing the three-stage process of transformation 3. Exploring the eight-stage model of the hero’s journey 4. Applying the journey pattern to literature, film and life […]
Comparing Hero’s Journey Guides We offer two teaching guides for the hero’s journey: a comprehensive guide and a basic guide. The comprehensive guide, The Hero’s Journey: The Path of Transformation, contains up to seven weeks of lessons and more than 100 pages of resource material for teachers. The basic guide, The Hero’s Journey: Teaching the […]
Monthly Archives: April 2013 A symbol is “like a mirror swinging out from the mind, able to look back on itself.” In the symbol, we can explore our own mythology. We can step away from our lives for a… Read More » Mythic thought touches the essence of our experience: the meaning and significance of […]
Tag Archives: Call Refused We don’t really “take” a journey: we “unfold” a journey. Our journeys evolve organically as a dialogue between ourselves and our world. We act and the world responds by giving us feedback, which opens…
Growth by Evolution: Ripening as a Hero's Journey
NOTE: You are welcome to link to this article, but do not copy or repost it. If you would like a PDF copy to use in your class or work, please contact me. Growth by Evolution Rather than Acquisition Growth is not always a matter of acquisition or conquest. Sometimes it comes through the slow […]