The Rebirth of the Hero: Mythology as a Guide to Spiritual Transformation

The myth of the hero’s journey is an archetypal pattern of human experience, a symbolic portrayal of the individual’s struggle for greater consciousness, psychological wholeness, and spiritual realization. In this book, Keiron Le Grice draws on the ideas and life experiences of C. G. Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Friedrich Nietzsche to explore the spiritual journey of the modern self, from existential crisis and the “awakening of the self” to the dramatic encounter with the underworld of the psyche and the arduous labor of psychological transformation. In a work of wide-ranging scope and insight, Le Grice analyzes myths, religious texts, and scenes from a number of popular films—Jason and the Argonauts, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and more—to illuminate the stages and themes of the hero’s journey, helping to make the deepest of transformative experiences more readily intelligible to us all. “It is a great gift when a scholar has the ability to synthesize ideas from several deep thinkers and multiple disciplines, and then write with a clarity and directness that renders those ideas accessible to a wide readership. It is an even greater gift when that author has integrated these ideas with his own personal journey, so that what he writes has the emotional authenticity and existential relevance of life lived, not merely books studied. In The Rebirth of the Hero, Keiron Le Grice has brought those gifts to his readers in a way that many will find of immense value as they pursue the spiritual adventure of our age.” ––Richard Tarnas, author of The Passion of the Western Mind and Cosmos and Psyche. “an outstanding contribution in offering a freshly-laid path for the individuation process. . . .[Le Grice] invites us to renew the value of myth, which, in turn, transforms the individual, culture, and the heartbeat of the earth.” ––Kathryn Madden, Editor-in-Chief, Quadrant: The Journal of the C. G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology, and author of Dark Light of the Soul.