The Death of the Hero and the True Occult

The Hero is a concept, an archetype if you are of the Jungian belief, of perfection, of purpose, of quintessential ideas. The concept of the hero or heroism is imbedded within the minds of everyone. Ask a young child what he or she wants to be, and you’ll hear fireman, police officer, nurse, doctor, or superhero. Why? The answer is quite simple, they want to be a hero. They want to rescue someone, they want to protect someone, they want to heal someone, or they want to transcend the limitations of humanity and fight evil, for everyone. Campbell asserts that these desires stem from an unconscious awareness of a connection that transcends our conscious understanding of the world. An understanding that the hero and that “someone” are parts of the same whole, and to save that “someone” is to save a part of yourself. “It is an impulse rising below the plane of our conscious living and judging, from our knowledge of a deep truth: that I and that other are one.” (204-205) This is the simplest understanding of the Self concept found in the East. Why else should someone sacrifice themselves for another being, unless the two shared a connection beyond cultural, political, or physical ties, a connection of a metaphysical nature. This is the basis for the occult, and why the hero is the central figure in the occult. Every belief system has at least one hero, Moses of Judaism, Buddha of Buddhism, Lao Tzu of Taoism, Jesus Christ of Christianity, Lord Krishna of Hinduism, Theseus of Greece, Cuchulain of Ireland, William Wallace of Scotland, Okuninushi of Japan, Odin and Thor of the Norse (Vikings), and Quetzalcoatl of Mexico. There are of course many, many more heroes found in every culture and religion, but that is a good list.

The heroes (and some of the gods) of the Occident and Orient were usually quite similar. Their stories were so similar that some mythologists and historians wonder if they all were actually from the same original belief structure, a belief structure created by a group of people that eventually populated the Earth. Anthropologists might claim that these were the belief structures of the first cave-dwelling humans, while occultists and conspiracy theorists might claim that they are Atlantean or alien in origin, but nevertheless, there is a connection between occult beliefs and the hero myth. The myths were so common, and the gods were so similar, in fact, that the god of one group was easily recognized as the god of another group (with just different names, and perhaps slightly different powers and/or reign). Thus, there was hardly any conflict between the religions and belief structures of various occultists. Why? It is merely because they were wise enough to recognize that the various groups of people were worshipping the same deity, thing, or what have you. Like I stated earlier when I introduced the Hero Myth, the hero myth provides the cement for foundation myths to harden. Without them, foundation myths, and occult beliefs themselves, fall apart.

Monotheistic traditions of the Levantine claim their heroes, Zoroaster, Moses (and Abraham), Jesus Christ, and Mohammad, to be the only hero or in some cases, the last hero, the last of God’s prophets. Monotheistic religions are based around tribal deities, or a Supernatural God that has chosen a specific group of people spread the truth and shine a light onto this world of darkness. The creator or continuing prophet of that religion is put forth as a hero, and all other “heroes” are connected to some evil being, whether it be a demon or Satan himself. Thus, not only is the hero “killed” by monotheism, but all other manifestations of the hero are connected to a source of evil.

The death of all other heroes continues on with the attack on the gods of other beliefs. According to Robert Goldenburg, Christianity and Judaism, both religions that demand faith to one God and deny all other gods, share a hate towards other faiths, “Certain biblical authors, however, do present an attitude of vehement and unrelenting contempt and rejection toward the religions of other nations, a stance distinguished for its principled denial that foreign deities have any reality at all.” (p. 22) Campbell agrees with this notion, and the rise of Judaism, and subsequently Christianity and Islam, gradually deteriorated the mythical occult (which centered on a metaphysical aspect of nature). Also, this created a new type of occult, a “two-way occult: on the hand, the approved cult, which is worship of our own tribal deity (Semitic God)… and… the diabolic occult of the powers of the nature religions, who are…independent enemies of Yahweh, but in the Christian tradition…a devil who can only act with the permission of the one true and only God.” (212, 213) Campbell does not delve into the reasons Judaism and Christianity adopted a hate towards occult practices, other than the disparities between their “supernatural” God, and the occult’s belief in a metaphysical nature; however, he does suggest that the rise of these religions led to the decline of the mythological occult, and the rise of a new occult, the occult most commonly recognized today. This occult, or “black magic” or paganism, usually revolved around practices that were outlawed by Christianity. (213) They typically believed and worshiped “the Devil”, and/or “mother nature”, and since God is viewed as a man, and the Devil is the source of evil, the leaders of Christianity labeled it heresy. This heresy was soon transformed to every other practice, which explains the Crusades (Christianity viewed Islam as its enemy, and Allah as the Devil), and was adapted to every form of non-Christian worship.



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