hero quest unifying pattern

one of the two great unifying mythic patterns (the other being the Eternal Return, the death-rebirth cycle), is the mythologem of the hero quest, the cultural paradigm for the growth of the society … triune dynamic: a) leaving home, departing the old ego concept, b) enduring the enlargement of conscious- ness through suffering, and c) achieving a new place, a new home from which one must also, in time, depart … not only a model for individual growth, it is also how a culture’s vision is enlarged