Re: birth

From: Loren Miller <loren_at_hops.wharton.upenn.edu>
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 1995 12:58:38 -0500 (EST)


Martin shoehorns one sequence of birth events into the hero's quest. Here's another, far more traditional, attempt at it.

Call to Adventure = boy meets girl, falls in love.

Crossing the threshhold = love declared and reciprocated. intercourse and conception are likely from this point on.

Tests & Helpers = courting, convincing parents and society

Sacred Marriage = marriage and intercourse, conception

Flight = pregnancy. many obstacles are thrown in the mother and child's way as they advance towards the moment when the growing child can enter the world.

Crossing the return threshhold = birth

Elixir brought into the world = raising the child in society.

> Birth is dramatic and universal. It was probably the most
> dramatic event in early humans' lives.

That's why birth is the model for crossing the return threshhold, and why intercourse is so often compared to entering a cave or a dark underground area.

Intercourse = crossing the threshhold
Male Climax = elixir
Birth       = crossing the return threshhold

> I had the strangest experience in the OR during my wife's c-
> section. I was the only man in the room until the neonatologist
> came in. I felt like I had wandered into the Sacred Ceremony of
> the Sisterhood.

Um, Martin. You did. The witchy sisters had their ceremony. Now there's a young hero to take the place of the old tyrant, which would be you. :-) At least that's what overadherence to the Campbellian heroic cycle would have you believe.

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