Achieving Soul Integrity According to Psychological Analysis of Bemoniand Alexander Story

A real myth of a hero, moves toward a lion and a subversive dragon, is a story of soul evolution. The hero myth shows a stage in which a child is separated from dependency in order to reach to personal integrity. According to Rumi, permanent presence of journey precursors shows that there is no way to escape and not only heroes but also all humans experience passing from thresholds in order to achieve perfection (1). Joseph Campbell (a contemporary mythologist) points in " the thousand faces hero " that a hero is an ordinary person who passes limitations and achieves blessing (2). An Iranian myth that we analyze it below (Bemoni and Alexander Story) (3) is about mental and physical maturity of a hero that has the encoding of all mentioned cases. The protagonist is a human representative who attains soul health. She overcomes all physical and mental problems in the way of personal growth. The story is about a defiant and nagging girl but she changes and matures finally. First point of this story, she is born after many years. Waiting her parents for having a child, which is a motif of the story, repeats more times. It is obvious that the parents love their daughter so much and she should face difficult problems in order to know herself and be independent. Another point is that when the protagonistis in one of passing stages of her life: passing child hood to maturity, her parents perform the vow. The pomegranate symbol means that she is ready to pass from immaturity to maturity and evolution stages. In many folk tales, a woman who has not any child be pregnant by eating a pomegranate. Decoding has been considered in different nations. Decoding has been mentioned in symbolization: " pomegranate seeds are a symbol of fertility and abundance among Mediterranean, near east, India and also far places (4). In continuation of the story, Bemoni unwantedly does not use a pomegranate, and then faces many problems. The old woman, who appears twice at the end of the story and plays a main role in Bemoni's life, is a symbol of " journey precursor ". She guides heroes from immaturity to maturity in similar stories. A hero faces many tests but should show his mental power in order to achieve journey result. In such archetypal stories, however, an old woman is a symbol of a …