Adrian Says: "Kamala is the goddess we never knew we needed."

   Recently, we had just finished the book Siddhartha and I think we can all agree that there are many signs of Joseph Campbell's 17-steps of the Hero's Journey present in Siddhartha. Now to not make this blog a whole recap of the 152 pages of Siddhartha, I'm going to focus on the Goddess/Temptress stage of the Hero's Journey. Now some of you might have had an image of Kamala appear the moment you read the words "goddess/temptress" and fortunately for you, you are correct. 

This image of Kamala was taken from the 1972 Siddhartha Film

    I'm going to focus on the scene where Siddhartha first met Kamala. Now in my eyes, I see this scene as both meeting with the goddess and woman as the temptress. Now some of you may have mixed opinions on this and for that I allow you to rant your thoughts under the comment section. Just make it family friendly please. Shifting back to the topic, the reason why I chose this important scene as both steps in the hero's journey is because the meeting with the goddess, according to Wikipedia, states that the hero is given items that will help him in the future. Now the "item" that I believe helps Siddhartha is the test of living as an "ordinary person." While it doesn't benefit Siddhartha physically, it does help him come back to his sense as to why he went on this journey in the first place. Of course, we see this occur when Siddhartha reflects back on himself and looks on the journey that he went through in order to realize this feeling of despair and regret that probably couldn't be shared by anyone else unless they have also experienced the same thing. I mean, that same feeling also led him to do some PG rated stuff but let's focus on the bright side, he didn't die!

    The most obvious reason as to why I chose woman as the temptress is because Kamala is a woman who tempts Siddhartha onto this tedious side quest and because Siddhartha is a sucker for love, he accepts the quest, forgetting who he used to be along the way.  Instead of taking the journey as a Samana, going through hunger and the thought of salvation, being bare and almost naked with no fancy clothes, Siddhartha now feeds himself and dresses himself in fancy clothes and shoes with the money he makes as Kamaswami's partner. These types of actions were obviously not what Siddhartha would previously do at the beginning of the book but rather the opposite. As mentioned before, he starts feeling all miserable and sad after realizing how he was set out to find enlightenment but instead he found the opposite of that, working a 9 to 7 job until the thought of retirement hits. The main takeaway of this paragraph is to realize that Kamala is the reason behind Siddhartha's despair. Siddhartha got a job because of Kamala, he got new clothes because of Kamala, and he was even fed by Kamala (both physically and mentally). 

    I see these two steps connect to each other by the meeting with the goddess being a way to help the hero overcome the temptations that lies in woman as the temptress. For example, although Kamala led Siddhartha down this path of being a workingman, it also taught Siddhartha the values and desires of other workingmen, allowing him to understand and feel empathy. Furthermore, it also allows him to reach that "Master of Two Worlds" step where he now understands the material world along with the spiritual world. To sum it all up, basically Siddhartha meets Kamala (the goddess) and she tempts him into this life of wealth and riches for a couple decades until he gains the knowledge of a workingman and leaves Kamala not empty-handed, but with the mastery of the material world which would aid him on his journey to enlightenment.