While working on the drawings for my zodiac calendar last year, I noticed that the sequence of the signs throughout the seasons followed some kind of pattern: a departure in the springtime, crossing into unfamiliar territory in summer, followed by a descent in the darkness through the fall, then a return in the winter. If this sounds familiar, it is. It’s the pattern of a hero’s journey.
Already presents a similar idea, called the Grand Cycle of Life (click here to view a PDF of it). It divides the zodiac in twelve periods of life: the first half (from Aries to Virgo) is more subjective, unconscious, and manifests in the objective world, while the second half (from Libra to Pisces) is objective and conscious, with growth happening on the inside.
I wondered what would happen if I mashed up the two circles of the zodiac and the hero’s journey and tried to align them with my zodiac illustrations… the result looks like the diagram below, where the journey follows Joseph Campbell’s stages from The Hero With a Thousands Faces. To bring the number of steps from seventeen down to twelve, I put “Belly of the Whale” together with “Crossing the First Threshold” under Cancer, “Apotheosis” with “Atonement with the Father” in Scorpio, and then grouped the four return steps into one “Return” stage under Capricorn.
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The two stages Meeting with the Goddess and Woman as the Temptress are perhaps the most “feminine” part of the journey – which I think is just as much of a heroine’s than a hero’s journey. In Campbell’s own words:
, wherever they may stand along the scale. Therefore it is formulated in the broadest terms. The individual has only to discover how own position with reference to this general human formula, and let it assist him past his restricting walls.
Beginning in Aries and moving through Taurus and Gemini, the ego/hero crosses into the special world at the sign of Cancer (the
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In springtime, the Earth wakes up from it’s winter slumber and days are getting warmer with more and more light. Expressed in a human life, this is the time of youth, when the ego is turned toward the outer world, community, and the task of learning to sustain one’s own life. The symbols of the zodiac for this period are mainly domestic animals – a ram, a bull and two horsemen – and the elements are fire, earth and air, ending with the sign of the Twins as metaphor for the creation of a persona and unconscious shadow.
The myth of Aries, the Golden Fleece, sets the stage for the original conflict behind the whole adventure. An angry cloud nymph who’s husband king left her for another woman creates a drought. The new wife plots to have the king’s children sacrificed to save the town’s crops, so the cloud mother sweeps in with a flying ram to save her children. The ram is then sacrificed and its fleece hung on an oak tree sacred to Mars (Aries’s ruling planet).
The call to adventure comes when the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit, says Campbell. The herald calling to destiny is often dark and judged evil, as is the anger of the cloud nymph, the ram, whose fleece is pinned on a tree sacred to the god of war. The oak then becomes the place of adventure, of both treasure and danger, which later calls Jason and the Argonauts on their quest.
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Venus, ruling Taurus in her earthly aspect, can “give military victory, sexual success, good fortune and prosperity, ” making life indeed so comfortable the hero might just refuse the call and dismiss the adventure.
Refusing the call converts the adventure into its negative, says Campbell, eventually turning the flowering world of the hero into a wasteland even if, like King Minos, he succeeds in building a great empire. For the king’s greed turns all that fertile energy inward, which results in a walled labyrinth hiding a monstrous creature: the Minotaur. Thankfully, Theseus comes and kills the monster, and so the adventure continues.
Every quest comes with some form of help or guidance: the hero meets a mentor, receiving what Campbell calls supernatural aid. This figure represents some protecting power of destiny, or helpful forces from the unconscious, which appears once the hero is committed to the quest.
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Thus Mercury, ruler of Gemini and messenger of the gods, brings helpful information. Also present in the myth of the twins Castor and Pollux (themselves regarded as helpers of mankind) is the same kind of communication between conscious and unconscious. One twin is immortal, the other is not. But they strike a deal with Zeus so the twins can share their days between Olympus and the underworld (conscious and unconscious).
Moving into summer, the light has reached its peak and started to regress: the ego now turns inward toward the personal unconscious. Here the signs and myths symbolize a progressive breaking of the ego as it assimilates the shadow: first there’s the fairly easy shell of the Crab, then the impenetrable skin of the Nemean Lion, and finally the earth itself opens up and takes Persephone into the underworld.
Having made contact with supernatural forces, the hero is ready to leave the limits of what is known and cross the first threshold to venture into the unknown. This stage occurs under the rulership of the moon and its instinctive need for home and security.
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In the myth of Cancer, Heracles fights the multi-headed monster Hydra, which lives at the entrance of the underworld, acting as a threshold guardian. Sensing that Heracles is winning, the goddess Hera sends the giant crab Karkinos to distract him but the hero crushes it under his foot. Thus he emerges from the crab’s regressive pull in a kind of rebirth, similar to what Campbell describes as a final separation from the hero’s known self and world, or belly of the whale.
Now moving into the unknown, the hero embarks on the road of trials where he must face a series of tests to begin the transformation (often in patterns of threes).
Under the sign of Leo and rulership of the Sun – associated with the conscious ego, personal power, creativity and leadership – the mythical hero Heracles prepares to fight the Nemean Lion. The challenge lasts thirty days, during which he first tries to kill the lion with normal weapons and fails, then makes clever use of the darkness (a supernatural aid) to knock out the lion and strangles it with his bare hands. He then fails at skinning the lion with his knife, again receiving supernatural help with Athena telling him to use one of the lion’s claws. Finally, he wears the lion’s skin, in this way symbolizing the transformation.
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After the trials and transformation comes the meeting with the goddess, a sacred marriage where the hero must reconcile the dual nature of life (or love) and find unity within a greater totality. Ruling Virgo at this stage is Mercury as keeper of boundaries and acting like a bridge between upper and lower world.
The myth tells the story of Persephone, taken by Hades while picking flowers in a field, thus becoming queen of the underworld. In terrible grief, Demeter interrupts the growing of crops while searching for her daughter, forcing Hades and Zeus to accept the demand for her return. But having eaten a few seeds from a pomegranate, Persephone now must stay below ground part of the year. This reconciles the upper and lower worlds, creating the cycle of the seasons and for the hero, a larger world including both light and dark.
We’ve now reached autumn and the fall equinox. As the nights progressively take over the days, the ego becomes less and less in control, and the signs and myths all reflect how the collective unconscious acts on the ego: Themis maintains order with her scales, Artemis brings her wild revenge on Orion, and the centaur Chiron gives up his immortality for the fire of Prometheus.
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With collective forces now coming into play, the adventure becomes a balancing act. Campbell calls this step woman as the temptress, meaning that the hero now has to face the moral problem of being part of a world which includes both light and dark. Thus the side of Venus ruling Libra, at this stage, is her more divine aspect – favoring beauty, harmony, grace, and the urge to sympathize or unite with others.
Balancing the scales and forces of the universe, Themis – goddess of justice, divine order, law and custom – holds the hero to a high standard, as do the norms of society. Themis is not wrathful, but when she is disregarded Nemesis steps in and brings retribution. Testing the hero’s integrity, the quest at this point may require going against what others think, say or want, in order to remain true to herself or to the adventure.
Now comes the darkest point of the journey: an atonement with the father, by which the hero must break past the ego and its fear of death. Governing
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