This is brilliant.
The Hero's Jounrney is Nonesense
Contrast with my earlier thoughts in Hero's Journey.
I was delighted to read this. I read a pirated PDF of Campbell's original screed, and wondered at the cross-cultural references. They were singletons, anecdotes. What we sometimes call "artisinal data": not bulk data, summarized, but a nugget of data, picked from the low-hanging fruit. (Did I mix enough metaphors?)
I like the structure Campbell pitches.
His background/justification and notion of "universality" is nonsense.
But. The quest and the failures and the "try again" is good. The notion of an Apotheosis is helpful for me. The literal temptation by the goddess is one potential interpretation, and it's the one he lifts up. But it's not the only one.
I'm working up to creating a proper presence in the Mastodon fediverse somewhere. Not sure which server to choose, right now. The Wandering Shop has a lot of appeal, but the current #amwriting WIP is #Western #Horror, which doesn't properly fit Wandering Shop's focus on F&SF.