With a hat-tip Stewart Brand and all due deference to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces and Christopher Booker here are the seven stages of the mythic journey:
- The vision
- The point of departure
- The labyrinth of darkness, challenge and disorientation,
- The reassuring sight of the vision
- The payoff - and the unexpected payoff: the thing you gained that was beyond the vision
- The slow return to the ordinary world, so assimilate what you have gained
- The memento: a phyiscal reminder of your journey for you to keep