The Hero Of Yesterday Becomes The

From The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), p. 303, in the chapter "Transformations of the Hero." Campbell traces the mythological pattern by which a liberating hero, once victorious, can harden into an oppressive ruler if he clings to his former triumph rather than continuing to grow and transform. The warning is psychological as much as mythological: past success, crystallized into identity, becomes the obstacle to the next stage of development. Campbell draws on Jung's concept of the shadow and the hero archetypes to argue that self-crucifixion — the ongoing death of the old self — is the price of remaining a force for life rather than a force for stasis.