PDF Summary:Maps of Meaning, by Jordan Peterson

In the age of science, we’ve turned our backs on the myths our ancestors believed in. However, could it be that in giving up those stories, we’ve lost a crucial part of the human experience? In Maps of Meaning, Jordan Peterson argues that mythology provides a psychological tool that helps us create meaning in a chaotic world. Beneath their fanciful trappings, creation stories and heroic quests give us the moral foundations of society and the tools for adapting to life’s challenges. Perhaps even more importantly, myths teach us to recognize our individual capacity for good and evil.

In this guide, we’ll examine Peterson’s arguments on how myth affects the mind, mythology’s fundamental archetypes and stories, and how to apply the lessons of myth to live a more well-rounded life. We’ll also look at alternative interpretations of mythological stories, what science says about the intersection of myth and cognitive development, as well as how the symbols of myth have taken new form in the stories of today.

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In truth, the motif of a Destroyer Goddess may not be as common as Peterson suggests. In Hindu myth, there are other goddesses of destruction in addition to Kali, including Durga and Chandraghanta, though all of these use their terrifying powers to serve an ultimate good. Other prominent examples, such as the Egyptian war goddess Sekhmet and the Greek queen of the underworld, Persephone, are likewise associated with healing and rebirth.

More commonly, negative portrayals of women in mythology take the form of witches, such as Circe in The Odyssey or Russian folklore’s Baba Yaga. It’s likely that many of these negative depictions arose as a means to justify patriarchal rule. In Women & Power, classics professor Mary Beard makes the case that silencing women was a central tenet of many of the stories in Western mythology.

The Father: Good King or Tyrant

The second aspect of human existence is that of the familiar, civilized world, at least as it seems in the eyes of your own culture. This is symbolized by the Father, who represents the body of cultural norms that rest upon any given mythical system. The Father, like the Mother, has two separate aspects that depend on the state of society—that of the Good King who rules wisely and fairly, and the iron-fisted Tyrant who prevents change and growth.

The Father is the figure who embodies the personality and self-image of society, like England’s King Arthur or the US’s Uncle Sam. According to Peterson, the Father’s laws and traditions hold back the threatening aspects of the Mother. He’s a conservative force that keeps cultural identity intact, but in his positive aspect, the Father is open to advice and criticism, has compassion for the weak, and prioritizes justice over following strict rules.

(Shortform note: The figure of the King has been with the human race since before recorded history began. In The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber and David Wengrow provide evidence that hierarchical structures were part of tribal societies well before the first agrarian settlements 12,000 years ago. In Reinventing Organizations, Frederic Laloux suggests that the very first organized groups were war bands centered around charismatic leaders, and that as those groups evolved into civilizations, the role of the leader was mythologized into Kingship.)

The flip side of the Good King is the Tyrant, who represents society’s power to oppress. Peterson writes that the Tyrant appears as a symbol of cultures that are static and set in their ways. The Tyrant is an authoritarian, inflexible character who would slay his own children rather than allow change or growth, as in the example of the Greek myth of Kronos, who ate his own offspring so that none could replace him.

(Shortform note: To be clear, the figure of the Tyrant doesn’t represent an individual ruler but the oppressive potential of society itself. In the ancient world, this potential can be found in nations like Sparta, whose military might rested on the back of an oppressed class of slaves. In the modern age, this oppression finds its voice in fascist ideologies that promote extreme nationalism and value the security of the state above human rights. Societal oppression can also be found in cultural racism, which Ibram X. Kendi describes in How to Be an Antiracist as the belief that one's culture is superior to all others.)

The Son: Hero and Rival

Peterson argues that the third aspect of human existence is our capacity for learning, discovery, and exploration. This is embodied as the mythical Son. Often portrayed as descended from the gods, the Son becomes the Hero of the story, venturing into the unknown and returning with new knowledge. However, the Hero has an evil twin who acts as the Rival and villain of the tale.

The mental process that the Hero represents is the same that we go through when we find the unexpected, as was described earlier in this guide. Peterson claims that the Son’s heroic aspect is a poetic abstraction of how we make sense of and give meaning to the world. In myth, the Hero leaves the safety of home, confronts the threatening outside world, and grows as a result of his hardships. Of all the various personas in myth, it is the Son’s heroic aspect that is meant to serve as a model for human behavior.

(Shortform note: Peterson’s presentation of the Hero, as well as that of many other writers, is almost universally masculine in nature. Yet how can a distinctly male prototype serve as a model for all human experience? In The Heroine With 1001 Faces, folklore scholar Maria Tatar brings to light the stories of women in mythology. Tatar suggests that the Heroine of myth takes a different path than the Hero, one that emphasizes communication over conquest as a route to overcoming evil and injustice.)

The inverse of the Hero is the Rival, who is defined by his refusal to accept the need for growth. The Rival, much like the Tyrant, seeks to deny anything that isn’t in his worldview. The ultimate mythic depiction of the Rival is the Devil, whom Peterson describes as a literal anti-Christ—originally favored among God’s creations, but who rejected the divine to satisfy his sense of pride. As the Hero’s polar opposite, the Rival embodies lies instead of truth and stagnation instead of growth.

(Shortform note: The Rival does more than serve as a foil for the Hero—he exists to show how the Hero could go wrong if he loses his moral center. In My Story Can Beat Up Your Story, screenwriter Jeffrey Alan Schechter explains that the best villains are just like the Hero, except that they act without moral constraint. For instance, in 1995’s GoldenEye, James Bond’s Rival is a fellow British agent who’s turned his spycraft against his own country. In 2022’s The Batman, the Riddler sees himself as following the Hero’s example, but without regard for innocent lives. The Rival is more than an enemy—he’s a warning against the Hero’s own potential for evil.)

The Basic Structures of Myth

Now that we’ve established the fundamental dramatis personae of myth, there are two general storylines that crop up all over the world. The first is Creation Myths that provide the underlying basis for society, and the other is Heroic Quests that teach through example how people should behave. Here we’ll examine the common outlines of these stories and what specific purpose each serves as a tool for interpreting the world and our actions. Beyond that, we’ll highlight Peterson’s claims that these stories reflect the unconscious process through which the human brain processes new information.

The Creation Story

Despite some modern attitudes toward them, creation stories aren’t just fanciful tales rooted in ignorance about the world’s beginning. On a deeper level, the Creation Myth explains how ordered society arises out of prehistoric chaos. Peterson lays out the steps that creation stories take, dividing the primordial “void without form” into the separate aspects of nature, and then organizing the hierarchy of the universe. Beyond explaining where everything comes from, creation stories establish the moral structure that holds society together.

In the beginning of all creation stories, the cosmos is created from a sea of potential—a form of the primeval Dragon. Peterson says this happens in one of two ways—a single deity dividing the universe into its parts (as in the Abrahamic tradition) or by the sexual, ouroboros-like union of Father and Mother deities (as in Greek myth, in which Gaia and Uranus give birth to the Titans). The first wave of gods are untamed forces of nature, such as the sun, the sea, and the sexual drive. The components of the world now exist, but haven’t been placed in their natural order.

(Shortform note: It’s not hard to stretch the metaphors of myth to bring them in line with modern theories of cosmology. In Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Neil deGrasse Tyson explains that in the current scientific model, the very early universe was an undifferentiated sea of subatomic particles—the primordial stuff of Chaos from myth. As the universe expanded and cooled, “light was separated from darkness,” and the primal Chaos divided into the constituent components of reality—matter, dark matter, energy, and dark energy.)

The new, wild gods battle for supremacy, often angering the Creator or the primeval Dragon, who then decides to end the gods’ warfare by killing them individually or by destroying the world (usually with a flood). But then, the youngest of the elder gods’ children (Zeus in the example of the Greeks) takes on the aspect of the Hero to confront and halt the destroyer god’s madness. As the victor, the young god is elevated to the highest position (that of the Good King), placing the other gods into a hierarchy beneath him and setting the stage for the world as we know it.

(Shortform note: The battle between gods that Peterson describes may seem alien to Abrahamic religions such as Christianity. However, an early Christian sect known as the Gnostics embraced this ideology. They drew heavily on the ideas of Plato, who suggested that a lesser god called the Demiurge created the material world in opposition to the wishes of the ruling God. The Gnostic Christians believed the Demiurge was the god of the Old Testament, while the God who fathered Christ sought to save the world from the damage done by his earlier subordinate. This interpretation of the creation bolstered the Gnostics’ belief that the material world was corrupt and that goodness could only be found through obedience to the true God.)

As cultures developed in the pre-scientific world, creation stories laid the moral groundwork for social order and the divine right of kings. Peterson writes that the king would act as a stand-in for the gods, ordering the various aspects of society just as the highest god ordered the universe. Many societies, such as the Egyptians and the Maya, viewed their rulers as gods themselves who acted as intermediaries between the heavens and the mortal realm.

(Shortform note: The doctrine of the divine right of kings held sway well into the modern era. As late as the 17th century, scholars such as Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet advanced the claim that royal privilege derived from the mandates of God. The first major dent in the divine right doctrine was made by the British academic John Locke, who argued in his First Treatise of Government that there was no Biblical basis for royal sovereignty and that political power actually derived from the consent of the governed.)

We commonly assume that someone “made up” these creation stories, but Peterson argues that isn’t the case. There are too many similarities between creation myths from all over the world. Instead, he argues that creation stories are an emergent property of human beings sharing their ideas and tribal customs through language, abstracted and fine-tuned over thousands of years into symbolic representations of societal order. Belief systems that include many warring gods transition to beliefs in hierarchical gods, representing the organizational structure of civilization. This process of abstraction continues over time toward religions in which a single god with multiple aspects (such as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) rules and embodies all Creation.

Emergence and Abstraction

An emergent property of a system—such as a community, an economy, or a natural phenomenon—is a characteristic that’s dependent on the behavior of the system’s components while being independent of the actions of any single component. For instance, stock market fluctuations “emerge” from the choices of individual investors, but aren’t affected by the actions of any single broker. The most prevalent emergent properties of human organization are language and culture, which necessarily includes religion and myth.

Abstraction is a uniquely human ability that lets us think creatively and solve problems based on limited data. Through language and metaphor, we can understand abstract concepts with no physical reality—such as good and evil. Myth, as abstraction on a cultural level, is useful in the modern world as a way to communicate across cultural boundaries. In Understanding Comics, cartoonist Scott McCloud explains that abstraction lets a storyteller strip an idea to its basic essentials. The more abstract a character is (whether it’s Achilles or Charlie Brown), the more a story’s recipient identifies with the Hero, as Peterson advises in the following section.

The Hero’s Journey

The second fundamental story, the one that permeates the rest of all mythology, is that of the heroic quest. The Hero’s Journey is similar in part to the Creation Myth, but instead of providing a foundation for society, the hero’s story is a model for individual behavior. Peterson explains the stages of the quest, from the Hero’s origin as a youth in a troubled kingdom, to their descent into the underworld where they confront the dangers threatening society, before bringing peace back to the world. Peterson elaborates on how the steps in the Hero’s story equate to how the human brain processes new information.

Once upon a time there was a golden age, but that’s not where the Hero’s story starts. The golden age represents more than a past utopia—it’s also a future to which we aspire. However, the Hero’s story begins with a kingdom in decline under the rule of a Tyrant. Because the Tyrant wants nothing to grow beyond his power, the inevitable changes in the world beyond his borders grow ever more threatening to his status quo. In myth, that threat becomes a literal danger in the form of the Mother Destroyer or the Dragon itself. The Hero is willing to face the danger, while the Tyrant seeks merely to wall the kingdom off and crush any dissent.

A Different Call to Action

In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell presents an alternate interpretation of the start of the Hero’s Journey. In Campbell’s analysis, the Hero’s story begins with a literal call to action by a figure called the Herald—such as when the burning bush speaks to Moses in the Old Testament. Campbell points out that the Hero initially resists the call before setting out on adventure. His human reluctance is the first obstacle he must overcome.

Whereas Peterson interprets the Hero’s Journey as a quest to conquer the unknown outer world, Campbell interprets the quest as an introspective endeavor. The Herald who gives the initial call to action is a manifestation of the Hero’s subconscious spurring him toward the need for spiritual growth, which in turn benefits society as a whole.

The Hero leaves home and becomes an apprentice in order to find his place in the world. Once there, Peterson says they see the threat to the kingdom and willingly venture into the unknown, often represented as a literal journey through the underworld. The hero discovers a solution to what’s threatening the kingdom through creative thinking and a process of discovery. Once the threat has been resolved, and the world beyond has been explored and understood, the Hero returns home with his newfound knowledge and replaces the Tyrant as the kingdom’s new, benevolent Father—until the cycle repeats itself again.

(Shortform note: Mythological stories rarely end with a “happily ever after.” Instead, many myths emphasize the cyclical patterns of time through stories of death and rebirth, downfall and redemption. The ancient Greeks believed the world fluctuated between periods of order and chaos. The Egyptians viewed time itself as cyclical, as was reflected in their mythic chronology. The Maya used their mythology of death and rebirth as the basis for their calendar, as does the Hindu faith, which measures cycles of time in millions of years.)

A prime example of the Heroic Quest is the legend of Perseus, human son of Zeus. When Queen Cassiopeia foolishly compares her daughter Andromeda’s beauty to the gods, the angered gods respond with destruction in the form of the sea monster Cetus (the Dragon). An oracle tells King Cepheus that to save his kingdom he must sacrifice his daughter (just as the Tyrant Father slays his children). However, Perseus finds the means to kill Cetus by taking the head of Medusa (the terrifying Mother). After rescuing Andromeda, Perseus weds her and becomes the new Good King.

(Shortform note: Not everyone accepts that the Hero’s Journey is as universal as Peterson and others claim. Some critics accuse Peterson of interpreting myths of Heroes defeating Chaos through the lens of his own political views while ignoring the social and historical context within which different cultures’ mythologies developed. Others argue that the Hero’s Journey model distorts the stories of non-Western cultures to make them fit a Eurocentric mold.)

The Meaning of the Journey

The Hero’s Journey is prevalent in stories throughout the ages because it’s a myth that tells us how to face the unknown and turn it into personal growth. More than that, it rings true because it reflects the path to learning that takes place in our brains.

Peterson draws a one-to-one connection between the steps on the Hero’s journey and the process the mind goes through when responding to a surprise or a threat, as described earlier in this guide. The kingdom’s golden age is the left-brain process where everything is blissfully as we expect—until the moment that it’s not. The limbic system’s trigger of fear and curiosity is the kingdom’s immediate reaction to threat and the Hero’s call to adventure. The right-brain process of creation and discovery is the Hero’s journey through the underworld, and the left-brain’s acceptance of new information is the Hero’s triumphant return.

Of course, our ancient forbears weren’t neurologists, but according to Peterson, the Heroic Quest pervades myths worldwide precisely because it matches the process that takes place in our heads. Coping with unexpected shocks to our lives is a fundamental and unavoidable part of human experience, and so (as verbal creatures) we abstract that experience into stories. Over thousands of years, those stories have gravitated toward a certain formula—one that expresses the fundamental truth about how people learn and grow.

The Heroic Formula in Modern Cinema

Peterson’s argument that folklore and myth developed over time to fit a certain formula has a corollary—namely, that the Heroic Quest should continue to evolve into the modern age. In The Writer’s Journey, author Christopher Vogler updates the quest structure for present-day screenwriters, explaining how the same formula can be applied to many different human situations, including introspective journeys of personal growth.

Even modern versions of the classic myths may restructure their stories to better fit the Hero’s Journey. For instance, the legend of Perseus described earlier in this guide was adapted into the 1981 film Clash of the Titans, which made notable deviations from the original Greek source. The film rearranges the sequence of events so that Perseus only begins his quest after the threat to the kingdom and includes a literal journey to the underworld, aided by the ferryman Charon. The film even adds a Rival archetype in the character Calibos, who is a demigod like Perseus, follows the same quest, yet does so to prevent the kingdom’s salvation. All these modern changes strengthen the parallels to the Hero’s Journey arc.

Myth’s Model for Life

If the Creation Story outlines the structure and reason for society, and the Hero’s Journey gives a model for coping with a dangerous world, how then do we apply these stories to our lives? Peterson argues that personal growth is a multistage process in which we can use the roadmap provided by myth to fully realize our potential. We begin as children in a safe family unit, then leave that family to be part of our larger society. However, once we realize that society doesn’t provide all the answers, we have to strike out and find our own path. If we don’t, if we deny the possibility of growth, we fall prey to the darker aspects of human nature. Only by voluntarily challenging our beliefs can we develop into the best version of ourselves.

(Shortform note: Changing personal beliefs is difficult. Psychological research has repeatedly shown that facts aren’t enough to change people’s minds. A recent study even suggests that when people do change their beliefs, they’re often not aware that they’ve done so. Nevertheless, experts on mental well-being insist that challenging your own beliefs is essential to personal growth. In Thinking In Bets, Annie Duke highlights the value of uncertainty as a tool to examine your own belief structure. In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins insists that you can identify your own unhelpful beliefs in order to take control of your life.)

In childhood, everything is new and mysterious. Our sheltering family is the Mother of myth: all-powerful and nurturing, yet inscrutable and frightening. By imitating our parents, we make our first stories, our first mental diagrams of the narrow world that is home. However, as we get older, the wider world beckons, but we’re not yet equipped to face it alone. Society steps in and helps us transition from being a member of a family to being a part of a group.

We go off to school, we get baptized in church, and we learn the secret handshake to join the Cool Kids Club. The rite of passage is common worldwide, symbolizing a death and rebirth of identity through which we’re indoctrinated into the myths of our culture. We leave the arms of the Mother to come under the rule of the mythical Father. Peterson insists that this stage is vital—being part of a group identity teaches us to value society’s needs while giving us skills essential for life that we’d never figure out on our own.

(Shortform note: Despite the perils of groupthink and mob mentality, being part of a tribe has always been crucial to long-term human survival. In The Art of Thinking Clearly, Rolf Dobelli explains that the human mind is biologically preconditioned to seek out group membership and conform to its culture. In Reinventing Organizations, Frederic Laloux says that isn’t necessarily a bad thing because the way that human groups organize themselves has evolved in step with advances in human consciousness to become more fluid and open to new ideas.)

But that’s not the end of the story. It’s inevitable that sooner or later we’re confronted by something outside our realm of experience or that of the group we’re a part of. Perhaps new immigrants have moved into town, or a group of activists is protesting an issue that’s core to our cultural values. Perhaps the threat is personal—a scientific discovery challenges a deeply held belief, you’re laid off by a trusted employer to whom you’d given your all, or maybe you fall in love with a person whom society says that you shouldn’t be with.

Peterson says that at this point you’re given a choice—deny the challenge to your worldview and double down on seeking safety in your old identity, or discover what the challenge to your world has to teach you and forge a unique identity of your own. The latter path is that of the Hero; the former is that of the Rival. It’s in this moment of choosing right from wrong and giving meaning to that which is outside your experience that myth has its greatest power. Myth, not science, gives us the ability to create meaning out of struggle, not by providing a set of commandments, but by showing the way to grow and persevere.

Institutional vs. Personal Belief

Because we tend to view religions as institutions, which would fall into Peterson’s “group stage” of life, it may seem that a logical conclusion of his argument is that leaving religion behind is a necessary, heroic act. However, that doesn’t have to be the case.

In his 1902 book The Varieties of Religious Experience, American philosopher William James differentiates between institutional religion and personal religion, while stating that personal faith, which encompasses our individual experience of the divine, is the source of the true religious experience. James suggests that a personal religion doesn’t even necessitate belief in a literal god—only an acknowledgment of the unseen forces and ideas that rule our lives.

James argues that a healthy individual is one whose personal religion lets them see the duality of the world—light and dark, good and evil—and who makes the conscious decision to overcome the negative aspects of the world, much like the struggle of Peterson’s Hero.

The Problem of Evil

The Hero’s Journey is a hard path to follow, and many people don’t take it. However, Peterson argues that to hide within the strict confines of culture is the root of the greatest evils perpetrated by the human race. Evil begins by rejecting the value of looking beyond culture’s limiting borders. It then tempts us with the pseudo-myths of ideology and relieves any moral disquiet we feel by allowing us to ally with the dark side of society, the mythical Tyrant.

Active rejection of the Hero’s journey is core to the concept of evil, great or small. That rejection is the “big lie” that everything of value has already been learned, that the old, traditional ways are always best, and that any new ideas that disrupt the status quo are themselves the work of evil and should be stamped out. In particular, Peterson accuses the major world religions of undermining the true value of myth by calcifying their mythological stories into anti-science dogma, leading many people to reject religion outright, along with the moral value it brings.

(Shortform note: Many people today disagree with the premise that morality derives from religious belief. In Good Without God, Greg M. Epstein traces the history of moral doubt back to Socrates, who asked whether God defines what is good or if God is subject to a higher morality. Epstein replaces the moral value of religion with humanism—the desire for each individual to become their best self and to help others do so as well.)

The big lie of evil (the path of the Rival) leads people to find comfort in simplistic ideologies. Peterson says ideologies are pseudo-myths that deny a fundamental truth—that every person, action, object, or institution has both positive and negative aspects. At its core, an ideology states that “one way is right, all others are wrong.” The most insidious ideologies of all tell people all their problems are someone else’s fault, a belief that’s led to the worst atrocities ever committed. When large groups of people, out of fear or desperation, refuse to look beyond the safety of their culture while viewing others as an existential threat, then people who would never consider themselves evil are able to take part in acts of tyranny and genocide.

(Shortform note: The drive toward good or evil is more than a philosophical question. In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt explores the evolutionary imperative toward group behavior and the physiological mechanisms that cause us to act with empathy for our own group but not for outsiders. Haidt argues that evil ideologies such as fascism appeal directly to our “in-group” biochemistry. While mythology taps into this same biological process, it does so to build community, enable generosity, and encourage selfless behavior.)

The Moral of the Story

The secret, then, to living a moral life isn’t in following a strict set of rules. The strength of seeing the world through a mythic lens is that it helps you recognize when those rules aren’t enough. Peterson states that by understanding the true lessons of mythology, you can inoculate yourself against ideology’s temptations while mentally preparing yourself to face the unexpected and the unfamiliar with curiosity instead of fear.

As opposed to narrow-minded views of the world, mythology teaches that all things are both creative and destructive, including ourselves. Nature is beautiful, majestic, and verdant, but it’s also savage, cruel, and heartless. Society protects us by creating order and enabling people to work for common good, but it also lets the few oppress the many and can often stifle innovation. Individuals can be generous and kind, but they can also be selfish and sadistic. The oldest, deepest myths don’t view the world in black and white, but as a cyclical balance between the two. Myth teaches that within us, we can find both the Hero and the Rival.

Likewise, when you emulate the Hero’s Journey, you cultivate a sense of curiosity and wonder about the many things in life beyond the walls of your personal world. Peterson proposes that this particular spark—the willingness to set aside safety and comfort to explore the mysteries of life—is the essence of the divine that exists in each of us. By fanning the flames of curiosity, you become like the Hero, enriching yourself and the world.

(Shortform note: Most definitions of “divinity” explicitly relate it to qualities of godly origin, though yoga practitioners attribute divine qualities to the mental and spiritual essence of the individual, much as Peterson does. In The Untethered Soul, Michael A. Singer argues that a personal connection to the divine can only be found through your inner experience. In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari defines divinity as the ultimate goal of the human race, which will not be achieved through supernatural means but by reaching our highest potential as a species.)

The Power of Love

Peterson presents the Heroic Journey as mythology’s model for living a good life. However, Joseph Campbell offers an alternate path in his essay “The Mythology of Love,” appearing in his book Myths to Live By. Campbell argues that mythological depictions and concepts of love represent a transcending of individual experience to bridge the gap between people and cultures, or even between the mortal and the divine. The divide is crossed not by conquest and assimilation of ideas, as in the Hero’s Journey, but by the marriage of hearts and minds.

In conversation with Bill Moyer in the television program The Power of Myth, Campbell points out that the emergence of the value of romantic love was originally a threatening concept to both Eastern and Western institutions. However, Campbell elucidates that myths about the expression of love, from ancient times to the age of chivalry, drive home the importance of living an authentic life, including love for oneself, one’s enemies, and all humanity.