Between human and divine
The hero is a human being that includes all of the most noble characteristics of men and manages to use them with will, courage and coherence that seem to come from a superhuman dimension. His virtues are always used for the common good, for goals that go beyond his direct interest.
From the Greek Argonauts involved in the search for the Golden Fleece to the Manhattan Fire Brigade engaged in the evacuation of the Twin Towers, the heroes are not only seen for the function of what they did and the challenges and pitfalls that they have endured but above all, by the feelings that they aroused in those who witnessed their deeds and told stories about them.
Sometimes even, according to the stories: Ayrton Senna, champion of Formula One, has never accomplished such deeds to be remembered in a “heroic” way but for personal charisma, style, skill, and of course for the fact of having disappeared so young and at the height of power. Like Achilles and Ettore before him, like the Orlando paladin, there is no doubt that for many he represents an inimitable example of a postmodern hero, a human who already had something divine.
Is a hero born that way or do they become one?
Two faces, one coin
Classical culture affirms that the hero is someone who is the son of love between a deity and a human being, and who both possesses, even if not completely developed, this nature.
Today, more often, we consider someone to be a hero who at some point manifests greater gifts than we normally know how to exercise.
The two apparently different conceptions are actually different sides of the same coin.
That of the hero is a dimension present in every human being. In Damanhur we say that inside each one lives a small god, a fragment of the great divine energy of the universe that has the task of witnessing our true nature and bringing us back to communion with the Whole. If we wish, of course if we do not wish it, little by little we will be reabsorbed and transformed into energy useful to sustain the lives of others.
Four basic stages
In other words, we are a “human” creature that hosts a “divine” creature within it. Is it so different from saying that we are children of different natured parents?
Joseph Campbell, historian of American religions, who lived in the last century and considered one of the fathers of the study of the relationship between mythology and psychology, indicated four fundamental stages in the formation of the hero: often mysterious birth, difficult relationship with the family, withdrawal from society and return to it thanks to the acquisition of new experiences. These are present situations, perhaps in different meanings, in the lives of many, perhaps all, if we know how to observe the events with appropriate eyes.
And so, each of us is a hero waiting to show himself. Each of us, a child unaware of a divine part and of a human part, has as its destiny the encounter between these two natures and the liberation of their most creative and powerful energies. It is our destiny to become a hero.
Become the hero
How you do it? The hero myth accompanies the myth of the journey. It is the displacement in space, it is the pursuit of an objective outside of oneself, important also for others, which allows the hero to reveal himself as such. Aeneas, while having within himself all the prerogatives to be so, would not have become a hero by remaining in Troy to fight for his own people. He had to go, and not by his choice but by following an indication of the gods, he goes.
Anansal, one of the heroes through which Falco Tarassaco has recounted his idea of man, is aware of his own superhuman nature but also of the fact that in order to reach the fullness of himself he must leave the house of the “first mother” – as written in Falco’s work – and face his enemy, facing all the fears and overcoming indecision.
There is always a journey at the center of our changes: physical, intimate, metaphorical, but it is challenging. In the journey, the human being becomes a hero. He turns into something that was already there, but had been incomplete. He joins the divine root of one’s soul and is man and God together.
