<P> 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 metamyth, a philosophical reading of the unity of mankind's spiritual history, the Story behind the story". </P> <P> 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 . </P> <P> The 17 stages may be organized in a number of ways, including division into three "acts" or sections: </P> <Ol> <Li> Departure (also Separation), </Li> <Li> Initiation (sometimes subdivided into IIA . Descent and IIB . Initiation) and </Li> <Li> Return . </Li> </Ol>

What is the magic flight in the hero's journey