Joseph Campbell’s concept of the monomyth outlined what he believed were stages common to myths of cultures throughout the history of the world. He called it the Hero’s Journey. It might be interesting to take this idea of the monomyth and apply it to the confusing world of conspiracy theory.

The monomyth is a slightly idealized archetypal story-format. Various myths and stories illustrate aspects of it, but may not include all components. Star Wars is a good example of a story which includes all the major elements of the Hero’s Journey. The monomyth can be described in three main phases, each of which breaks down into smaller individual stages.

Joseph Campbell was a big follower of Jungian psychology, which might be a useful way for us to understand the Hero’s Journey/Monomyth. In Jungian terms, the “hero” at the heart of the monomyth is roughly analogous to the ego-centric style of consciousness. Jung saw the ego as essential, but not the ultimate or best style of being. He believed that people must undergo the spiritual transformation to and union with the much higher archetype of the Self: a symbol of unity and wholeness. Aside from the ego and the Self, he outlined some other archetypal figures latent in all our minds. Chief among these are the shadow - the “dark side” of ourselves; the anima - the feminine side (or the animus/masculine for women); and the mana personality - sort of an old man/wizard sort of figure. All these characters played against the background of the wild unconscious mind.

Campbell basically took these figures and encoded them into a story-system which he believed was at the heart of all stories the world over. In it, the hero/ego entered the wilderness of the unconscious, met the old man and the anima who gave him aid, and fought the shadow, only to become the full and complete Self - often indicated in fairy tales when the hero becomes king (frequently by marrying the king’s daughter - the anima). Anyway, the three main phases of this story that Campbell outlined were Separation, Initiation and Return.

So how does conspiracy theory fit into all of this? Well, I’d wager that conspiracy theories function as modern individualized myths - and thus fit into the monomythic pattern. Each one is a little Hero’s Journey of it’s own, but I’ve never seen anybody try and define all the pieces/correlations. The other thing I think it would behoove us to look at is the frequency with which conspiracy theory becomes a paranoid pursuit - an endless paddling around in a fetid pond, rather than a river that flows to a much greater ocean. I feel like the monomyth pattern applied to conspiracy theory might help change that.

So let’s get started. The first phase of Campbell’s monomyth model is Separation. Here’s a great site with excellent picture examples - and another with corresponding events in both Star Wars and the Matrix which highlight each of these points.

The Separation begins with the Call to Adventure which takes the hero out of the everyday world that he knows. In conspiracy theory, we might say that this is the initial encounter a seeker has with information which doesn’t fit in with what they’ve been taught in school, or in mainstream media. Or it may be once a critical mass of such events have been strung together. The hero may also refuse the call, trying to cling to his pre-existing world, and try to put away the cognitive dissonance he encountered. In the monomyth cycle, this usually leads to things getting even worse, and the hero then sets out on the quest later in a less favorable starting position.

The next step is often referred to as Supernatural Aid:

Along the way, the hero often encounters a helper, usually a wise old man, who gives the hero both psychological and physical weapons.

The helper may also be a magic animal, like Atreyu’s horse Artax in the Never-Ending Story. This corresponds roughly to Jung’s idea of the mana personality: Obi Wan Kenobi, Gandalf, etc. In the world of conspiracy theory, this archetypal role is likely to be played by a self-styled guru or teacher. Somebody like David Icke or Alex Jones, Mike Ruppert or Laura Knight-Jadczyk of the Cassiopeans. Somebody who offers the novice seeker a set of psychological weapons or tools with which to move forward.

It’s not addressed in Campbell’s story-structure at all, but I would say that this is the first major problem that befalls conspiracy theorists. They receive the “supernatural aid” but then never progress beyond it. They end up believing that the receipt of supernatural aid equals the end of the quest. And then they stagnate, and become mindless zombies, having replaced their everyday world with a slightly modified, slightly more magical version of it.

Next comes the Threshold Crossing:

The hero eventuallu must cross into a dark underworld, where he will face evil and darkness, and thereby find true enlightenment, but first he/ she must get past a guardian who guards the threshold.

These steps, of course, aren’t necessarily linear. I would look at them more of as clustering together. It’s also important to understand that these steps may be combined together. In regards to what we just talked about in relation to “supernatural aid” we might very well postulate that sometimes the being who grants you aid is also the threshold guardian who needs to be “slayed” before you are able to proceed on with the rest of your adventure.

Conspiracy theorists who survive the slaying of the guardian threshold often find themselves in a position where they are basically suspicious of any and all teachers. This is ultimately a healthy thing and has a corresponding element in the monomyth: The Belly of the Whale.

Having gotten past the threshold guardian, the hero finds him/herself in a place of darkness. It’s an ambiguous place of fluid dream-like forms.

People who get stuck at this phase of the adventure end up adopting something similar to the premise: “nothing is true everything is permitted“. This may in turn devolve into acute anxiety and paranoia, because you’ve by this point realized that you can’t turn back. But neither can you see the way forward.

But really, the game’s just getting started. We now enter the next of the three major monomyth phases: The Initiation. Firstly, we have the Road of Trials. Basically, the hero systematically encounters and overcomes a whole bunch of obstacles. In Star Wars it happens around the Lightsaber practice session, and in the Matrix it’s when Neo spars with Morpheus, and does the jump-program and the rest. The thing to consider at this stage of the game, conspiracy-wise, is that your skills are now being honed. You’ve gotten through the first round, the passage into the new realm. And now you’re starting to get good at what you’re doing. You’re going through that part in movies where they have a montage of the hero (such as Rocky) exercising, training really hard, sweating, putting in the man hours. I suspect movies give a somewhat false impression of how long this takes, since they always do that damn montage crap. In real life, this shit goes on for a good damned long while.

In Campbell’s original monomyth model, the next stage after that is called Meeting With the Goddess. In our terms, we might have this be Leia or Trinity. Or we could look at Jung’s anima making an appearance. Basically, it means that once we’ve trained hard and gotten all geared up, we’ve now got to soften the edge. We’ve got to encounter the goddess. We’ve got to embrace an ideology of love, or respect or goodness, or whatever you want to call it. Even if our skills are indomitable, without “love” we will become an unfeeling machine, we will become too convinced of our own abilities, arrogant. In conspiracy theory: thinking we have all the answers, and that all the problems which face us can be solved exclusively through rational deconstruction. Again, this is a major hurdle for most conspiracy theorists. If they’ve gotten this far, they’ve done an amazing job. It’s not easy to get here, and they should be proud. But they shouldn’t let this pride control them, because it will ultimately ruin them. In order to move forward, they need to somehow “fall in love” whether that means seeing the inherent beauty and goodness in humanity, or the world, or whatever.

Campbell also said that the womanly virtues here could become a problem of their own: he called it Woman as Temptress. Fall too much in love and you think you’re done. You don’t need to move any further, and the world’s problems will take care of itself. This kind of attitude might be well-illustrated by various New Age philosophies - although it’s debateable they engage in the Hero’s Journey at all. Just as the supernatural aid figure may need to be slayed as the threshold guardian, so too may the anima figure at this point. More modern researchers renamed this stage the Temptation away from the true path. The temptation of the Dark Side. When Cypher decides to betray his fellows in the Matrix. When Boromir tries to take the Ring by force from Frodo - or when Frodo meets Galadriel and offers her the Ring, she becomes a terrible demon, but then the trial passes. Perhaps in conspiracy theory this is a time when someone is liable to be swayed again by false ideologies and easy explanations which are manipulative, racist or somehow unfairly scapegoat a group of people. Again, these do overlap with each other quite a bit.

The next stage is Atonement With the Father:

Father and son are often pit against each other for mastery of the universe. To understand the father, and ultimately the self, the hero must reconcile with this ultimate authority figure.

I don’t think anybody involved in conspiracy theory needs to have explained to them that they have a somewhat weird obsession with “authority figures.” Whether you prefer secret societies, politicians, reptilian overlords or archons, the same fixation can manifest in a variety of costumes. I remember Joseph Campbell used to always make the play on words that “Atonement” was really an “At-one-ment” where you become one with that which has plagued you. In the Jungian language, you overcome your shadow (your dark side) by fusing together with it. In Star Wars this is when Luke and Darth Vader are reconciled. Before that, Luke had begun to turn into his father when he was tempted by the Emperor - which is evidenced by his mechanical hand (which Darth Vader subsequently cuts off during their atonement battle, as I recall).

It’s hard to find a good example of this stage of the game in conspiracy theory. One example near at hand, I think, is this idea of trying to take conspiracy theory, and turn it into something good which we’re doing right now. Toward that end, Rob Brezsny (of Free Will Astrology) has a new book out called Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

This leads us into the next step in Campbell’s monomyth: Apotheosis, which literally means “changed into a god” or deification. This is the point in the Matrix when Neo stops the bullets, and exercises his true transcendent power as the One. I forget if this happens before or after he jumps inside of Agent Smith, but either way the two are closely linked. It’s only by fusing with the enemy/authority, “at-one-ment”, recognizing that he is you and you are him, that the battle will be one and you will truly explode past all the boundaries you’d imagined before.

Perhaps in the realm of conspiracy theory this would take the form of some kind of recognition that the conspiracy theorist himself is no different than the police state, the destructive civilization, the secret society or reptilian overlord which he has railed against so long. This recognition means that the evil, the rift, can be healed in the macrocosm by turning inward and healing it there - that there is no difference.

After the Apotheosis comes what Campbell called The Ultimate Boon. Brezsny’s book title above includes the phrase “being showered with blessings.” In fairy tales the Ultimate Boon often takes the shape of a curative elixir, or a magic item. Both of these are utilized heavily in video games as well. The restoration of this lost item, or the bestowal of this Ultimate Boon then heals and unites the entire kingdom. In games like the original NES Super Mario Bros and Legend of Zelda I and II (which I’ve written about elsewhere) you also “rescue the princess.” This, of course, is none other than Jung’s anima who we saw earlier in the quest. In this instance, the feminine side of the ego/hero was being trapped and abused by the shadow. Once the shadow has been embraced, so too comes the union with the anima, which is esoterically called the Hieros Gamos or the Sacred Marriage. At this point too, the hero may ascend to the throne of the land - becoming king, merging with the greater archetypal Self, and leaving behind ego consciousness. Another good example here is the end of the Highlander movie, where Connor McCleod becomes the lone survivor of the Quickening, and he gains whatever mystic power to help act as the world’s steward.

This completes the Initiation stage of the monomyth. Campbell described one more after this, called the Return. If we think of the last stage as when the Buddha achieves enlightenment, the Return basically consists of him coming back into the world to teach people what he found. Once you achieve the Ultimate Boon, it doesn’t do anybody any good unless you come back to the “real” world and use it. Maybe an even better example is the Bodhisattva - a being who is just about to become a Buddha, but at the last minute hears the cries of the world, the suffering, and vows to come back and not become a Buddha until every other creature has become one as well. Again, I’m hard pressed to really find a useful contemporary example of somebody who embodies this in conspiracy theory today, but oh well. I think you probably get what I’m saying by this point.

Anyway, I’ve found this rather useful for my own understanding. I’d like to come back and polish this up, maybe fill in more and better examples for everything, along with more ideas of how people stuck at various stages of the Hero’s Journey can gather the strength to move onward and upward towards their goal. If anybody has any other good links or examples to highlight various areas, I’d love to see them. It might also be a fun game to look at individual popular conspiracy theorists and try to sort of “map” where they themselves seem to be stuck in the game, and then come up with creative solutions using them as examples. Anyway, more on this soon!