The Hero, the Hanged Man and the Christ

We all know that human literature is chock-full of archetypal symbolism. Authors from Shakespeare to the writers of soap operas may be steeped in the mythology of the ages, and place that mythos into the vehicle they have. The level of symbolic depth can be simply incredible — when you have a brilliant creator focusing on a project perhaps for years, what else would you expect.

A theme that’s come to fascinate me is when these archetypes seem to manifest directly into both life and literature, in a way that’s hard to explain in terms of conscious intent. Sometimes, it can feel as if the Gods themselves are directing humanity's creative endeavours.

A few months ago I had a strong sense of this ‘directing’, whilst watching the British TV show The Summit. The premise of the show is that a group of strangers must climb together to the summit of Mount Head, a 2,600 meter peak located in the Southern Alps on New Zealand's South Island. Those — and only those — who make it to the top would share up to 200 thousand pounds of prize money.

Along the way contestants would vote each other off, based on either who they thought was holding the group back, or conversely, who they thought would make it all the way and share the pot. The game, therefore, asks deep questions about human nature: when life changing money is on the line, are we cooperative or cutthroat?

Right away the archetypal ‘cutthroat’ character is introduced. Dockers openly announced his intention to win at all costs. He cared for no one, although was willing to pretend to, in order to take as much of that prize money for himself only.

The group was a mixture of celebrities and ordinary people. One celebrity who immediately butted heads with Dockers was Warren Furman — better known as Ace, from the 90s TV show Gladiators. After leading a fast paced life during his years of fame, Warren came to Christ and is now a pastor. 

The initial clash with Dockers came after Warren perceived — not incorrectly — that he had employed manipulative tactics to have a perfectly viable member of the team eliminated. Things got heated, with Warren referring to Dockers as a ‘snake’ — not generally a positive thing to be in the Christian mythos, yet profound given what was to come.

The scene is set for continued conflict between them, but then Warren flips the script. In spite of him having arguably a very good point about Dockers behaviour, and admirably standing up to a man who was acting as a bully, Warren chose to apologise. Irrespective of whether he was right or wrong, he saw his conduct as unacceptable. Apologising when you’re in the right is not an easy or common thing to do. 

After this, the two men formed a strong bond. This was especially the case after Dockers realised who Warren was: none other than his childhood Gladiator hero, Ace! He goes as far as to refer to him as being like a father figure. Along the way Warren gains Dockers further respect by offering to step out so that a slower member of the group can go on. The group refuses Warren’s choice, but it is clear that Dockers is affected by meeting a man whose integrity is so genuine — who would make a choice he never would.

The penultimate episode concludes with Warren being left hanging upside down on a rope bridge, looking overwhelmingly as if he’s not going to make it to the other side. With his arms outstretched he essentially forms an upside down crucifixion scene, symbolic of death and sacrifice. The other image it conjures is that of the Hanged Man, from Tarot, which uses suspension upside down to symbolise contemplation and seeing from a different perspective.

After all seemed lost, Warren resurrected, pulled himself back up and made it to the other side. There was a real embodying of the Hero archetype here, as Dockers literally shouted about him being his childhood hero in that moment. 

The Hero is not a hero because he wins (that’s the Champion). The Hero’s journey is defined by departing, dying and returning. He has to almost not make it. Like Odysseus, he must travel to the underworld, or like Gandalf, fall with the Balrog, or like Jesus, he must die and resurrect. 

Ace was a champion; the strongest man, the fastest, the best. Warren Furman has become something more than that: the Hero capable of dying and resurrecting. It’s actually in the name: the Ace card is both the highest and lowest in the deck, and Warren can now span that bridge.

In the final episode, Warren sacrifices his place on the team in order that the other three contestants might go on. This is a profound moment, which brings in symbolism of both the Christian tradition, and also of the Hanged Man: as Warren had a fundamentally different perspective on what the show was about.

After witnessing Warren’s act of sacrifice, Dockers ultimately chose to sacrifice a significant sum of money in order that his two remaining team mates would make it to the summit. This parallels the Christian motif that the acceptance of sacrificial love is fundamentally transformative. Warren won the game by — like the Hanged Man — seeing it differently. Dockers won by finding what mythologist Joseph Campbell calls ‘the ultimate boon’ — the inner transformation that is the real, yet unexpected, prize of the quest.

Perhaps I am being naive as to how TV shows contrive these incidents. At the same time, I’m barely scratching the surface of them. We also have the Mountain's Keeper, a helicopter-Demiurge figure who seeks to divide the contestants, Joel Fearon, a literal Olympian God-in-disguise who plays out the archetype of Moses by guiding others to the summit whilst not reaching that promised land himself, and best of all, the host being called Ben Shephard — literally Mountain Shepherd. 

I find it fascinating that this spiritual drama played out on the nation's TV screens, with no one seeming to notice it. Not even the church seemed to recognise the giant evangelical act that took place. How many people were touched and transformed vicariously through this Passion Play? Maybe the Gods really are reaching out to the nation, acting out an archetypal Christian pattern of redemption through sacrificial love.