Dionysus as an "avatar of Christ" (1904) as "Ivanov's monomyth". The phrase "the hero's journey", used in reference to Campbell's monomyth, first entered into popular discourse through two documentaries. The first, released in 1987, The Hero's Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell, was accompanied by a 1990 companion book, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work (with Phil Cousineau and Stuart Brown, eds.). The second was Bill Moyers's series of seminal interviews with Campbell, released in 1988 as the documentary (and companion book) The Power of Myth. Cousineau in the introduction to the revised edition of The Hero's Journey wrote "the monomyth is in effect a meta myth, a philosophical reading of the unity of mankind's spiritual history, the Story behind the story". Summary In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Campbell summarizes the narrative pattern of the monomyth as follows: A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. Campbell describes 17 stages of the monomyth. Not all monomyths necessarily contain all 17 stages explicitly; some myths may focus on only one of the stages, while others may deal with the stages in a somewhat different order. In the terminology of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the stages are the individual mythemes which are "bundled" or assembled into the structure of the monomyth. The 17 stages may be organized in a number of ways, including division into three "acts" or sections: In the departure part of the narrative, the hero or protagonist lives in the ordinary world and receives a call to go on an adventure. The hero is reluctant to follow the call but is helped by a mentor figure. The initiation section begins with the hero then traversing the threshold to an unknown or "special world", where he faces tasks or trials, either alone or with the assistance of helpers. The hero eventually reaches "the innermost cave" or the central crisis of his adventure, where he must undergo "the ordeal" where he overcomes the main obstacle or enemy, undergoing "apotheosis" and gaining his reward (a treasure or "elixir"). In the return section, the hero must return to the ordinary world with his reward. He may be pursued by