All 34 Uses of
boon
in
The Hero With a Thousand Faces
- A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder (x): fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won (y): the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man (4.†
p. 23.5
- Tribal or local heroes, such as the emperor Huang Ti, Moses, or the Aztec Tezcatlipoca, commit their boons to a single folk; universal heroes—Mohammed, Jesus, Gautama Buddha—bring a message for the entire world.†
p. 30.3
- Yet Pan was benign to those who paid him worship, yielding the boons of the divine hygiene of nature: bounty to the farmers, herders, and fisherfolk who dedicated their first fruits to him, and health to all who properly approached his shrines of healing.†
p. 67.0
- Her four arms exhibited the symbols of her universal power: the upper left hand brandishing a bloody saber, the lower gripping by the hair a severed human head; the upper right was lifted in the "fear not" gesture, the lower extended in bestowal of boons.†
p. 95.9
- In him are contained and from him proceed the contradictions, good and evil, death and life, pain and pleasure, boons and deprivation.†
p. 123.6 *
- The gestures of "fear not" and "bestowing boons" teach that she protects her children, that the pairs of opposites of the universal agony are not what they seem, and that for one centered in eternity the phantasmagoria of temporal "goods" and "evils" is but a reflex of the mind—as the goddess herself, though apparently trampling down the god, is actually his blissful dream.†
p. 146.4
- What greatest boon of boons could be conceived of by such a master among men?†
p. 168.1
- But the makers of legend have seldom rested content to regard the world's great heroes as mere human beings who broke past the horizons that limited their fellows and returned with such boons as any man with equal faith and courage might have found.†
p. 274.6
- From his presence boons go out; his word is the wind of life.†
p. 297.9
- No longer referring the boons of his reign to their transcendent source, the emperor breaks the stereoptic vision which it is his role to sustain.†
p. 299.2
Uses with a meaning too rare to warrant foucs:
- Moreover, if we could dredge up something forgotten not only by ourselves but by our whole generation or our entire civilization, we should become indeed the boon-bringer, the culture hero of the day—a personage of not only local but world historical moment.†
p. 12.8
- And he went back into the cities of men where he moved among the citizens of the world, bestowing the inestimable boon of the knowledge of the Way.†
p. 27.1
- The whole of the Orient has been blessed by the boon brought back by Gautama Buddha—his wonderful teaching of the Good Law—just as the Occident has been by the Decalogue of Moses.†
p. 28.1
- 1 "The Road of Trials," or the dangerous aspect of the gods
2 "The Meeting with the Goddess" (Magna Mater), or the bliss of infancy regained
3 "Woman as the Temptress," the realization and agony of Oedipus
4 "Atonement with the Father"
5 "Apotheosis"
6 "The Ultimate Boon"†p. 29.0
- And on the other hand, if the hero, instead of submitting to all of the initiatory tests, has, like Prometheus, simply darted to his goal (by violence, quick device, or luck) and plucked the boon for the world that he intended, then the powers that he has unbalanced may react so sharply that he will be blasted from within and without—crucified, like Prometheus, on the rock of his own violated unconscious.†
p. 29.4
- 1 "Refusal of the Return," or the world denied
2 "The Magic Flight," or the escape of Prometheus
3 "Rescue from Without"
4 "The Crossing of the Return Threshold," or the return to the world of common day
5 "Master of the Two Worlds"
6 "Freedom to Live," the nature and function of the ultimate boon†p. 29.7
- The meeting with the goddess (who is incarnate in every woman) is the final test of the talent of the hero to win the boon of love (charity: amor fati), which is life itself enjoyed as the encasement of eternity.†
p. 99.5
- Part 1 Chapter 2 Subsection 6 — The Ultimate Boon.†
p. 148.0
- The supreme boon desired for the Indestructible Body is uninterrupted residence in the Paradise of the Milk That Never Fails: Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her: that ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; that ye may milk out, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory.†
p. 150.8
- Their entertaining myths transport the mind and spirit, not up to, but past them, into the yonder void; from which perspective the more heavily freighted theological dogmas then appear to have been only pedagogical lures: their function, to cart the unadroit intellect away from its concrete clutter of facts and events to a comparatively rarefied zone, where, as a final boon, all existence—whether heavenly, earthly, or infernal—may at last be seen transmuted into the semblance of a lightly passing, recurrent, mere childhood dream of bliss and fright.†
p. 155.1
- The boon bestowed on the worshiper is always scaled to his stature and to the nature of his dominant desire: the boon is simply a symbol of life energy stepped down to the requirements of a certain specific case.†
p. 163.3
- The boon bestowed on the worshiper is always scaled to his stature and to the nature of his dominant desire: the boon is simply a symbol of life energy stepped down to the requirements of a certain specific case.†
p. 163.3
- The irony, of course, lies in the Fact that, whereas the hero who has won the Favor of the god may beg for the boon of perfect illumination, what he generally seeks are longer years to live, weapons with which to slay his neighbor, or the health of his child.†
p. 163.4
- The Greeks tell of King Midas, who had the luck to win from Bacchus the offer of whatsoever boon he might desire.†
p. 163.5 *
- The full round, the norm of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet, or the ten thousand worlds.†
p. 167.4
- What greatest boon of boons could be conceived of by such a master among men?†
p. 168.1
- The boon was bestowed.†
p. 168.2
- His awakening came—but with a surprising turn that throws into new perspective the whole problem of the hero-circuit, as well as the mystery of the mighty king's request for sleep as the highest conceivable boon, Visnu, the Lord of the World, had become incarnate in the person of a beautiful youth named Krsna (Krishna), who having saved the land of India from a tyrannical race of demons, had assumed the throne.†
p. 168.5
- Yet even then the traditional symbol, come to full flower through the centuries, may operate like a healing draught and divert the fatal incursion of the living godhead into the hallowed spaces of the church The magic objects tossed behind by the panic-ridden hero—protective interpretations, principles, symbols, rationalizations, anything —delay and absorb the power of the started Hound of Heaven, permitting the adventurer to come back into his fold safe and with perhaps a boon.†
p. 176.1
- Whether rescued from without, driven from within, or gently carried along by the guiding divinities, he has yet to re-enter with his boon the long-forgotten atmosphere where men who are fractions imagine themselves to be complete.†
p. 186.9
- The boon brought from the transcendent deep becomes quickly rationalized into nonentity, and the need becomes great for another hero to refresh the word.†
p. 188.8
- The triumph may be rcpresented as the hero's sexual union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition by the father-creator (father atonement), his own divinization (apotheosis), or again—if the powers have remained unfriendly to him—his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft); intrinsically it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom).†
p. 211.7
- The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir).†
p. 211.9
- The deeds of the latter frequently include the slaying of the former, the Pythons and Minotaurs who were the boon-givers of the past.†
p. 289.6
Definitions:
-
(1)
(boon) something that is of great benefit
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
More rarely, in archaic literature, a boon may refer to a favor or request. It is also a rare spelling of a last name.