Temple Key

Lore & Background

The concept was popularized by Joseph Campbell in his 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell borrowed the term 'monomyth' from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. The hero's journey has been analyzed as an example of the sympathetic plot, a universal narrative structure.

In Their Own Story

The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda—also called the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, Great Wild Goose Pagoda, or Dayan Pagoda—was built by Xuanzang in 652. Rising 63.25 meters (207.5 ft), this brick structure has seven stories and four sides, echoing an ancient Indian style. It has been renovated and redecorated multiple times since the Tang dynasty. Inside the Mahavira Hall, statues of Vairocana, Mahavairocana, and Shakyamuni are enshrined. Before Shakyamuni stand two disciple statues: Mahākāśyapa on the east and Ānanda on the west. The Eighteen Arhats sit on seats lining both side walls. The Xuanzang Sanzang Hall (玄奘三藏院) houses the sarira (sacred relics) of Xuanzang and a copper statue of him; painted frescoes on the hall’s walls depict scenes from his life. The temple, with nearly 1,400 years of history, also contains nine pagodas, each holding the relics of successive abbots, their names and birthdates carved into the stone. Among its treasures, the temple preserves 20 palm-leaf manuscript slices—sacred texts Xuanzang himself brought back from ancient India.

Reader's Guide

Campbell describes 17 stages of the monomyth, organized into three acts: departure, initiation, and return. In the departure, the hero receives a call to adventure, may refuse it, receives supernatural aid, and crosses the first threshold. In the initiation, the hero faces trials, reaches the central crisis, undergoes an ordeal, and gains a reward. In the return, the hero returns to the ordinary world with the elixir for the benefit of others.

Did You Know?

• The hero's journey is also called the monomyth.
• Joseph Campbell was influenced by Carl Jung's analytical psychology.
• Campbell's theories have been criticized by folklorists for source-selection bias.
• The phrase 'the hero's journey' entered popular discourse through documentaries in 1987 and 1988.