Exactly how steamy is this story?
G…or R?
Honestly? It depends on how you look at it.
The mythic cycle that Campbell discusses is actually super concerned with the act of knocking boots, both as a goal unto itself and as a means of reproduction. He talks about it most specifically when his anonymous hero meets up with the mother-goddess.
Things get Freud-tastic in Campbell-land:
The mystical marriage with the queen goddess of the world represents the hero's total mastery of life; for the woman is life, the hero its knower and master. And the testings of the hero, which were preliminary to his ultimate experience and deed, were symbolical of those crises of realization by means of which his consciousness came to be amplified and made capable of enduring the full possession of the mother-destroyer, his inevitable bride. (111.1)
So yeah, we get into the steamy side of things pretty heavily here. But at the same time, Campbell isn't interested in getting us, erm, excited. Instead, he wants us to think about sex in terms of the big picture: how it all connects to the universe and our own enlightenment. So in some ways, the book is very frank and open about sexuality. In other ways, it has anything but sex on its mind.
This is actually in keeping with the theme of the book. The Hero's Journey, Campbell argues, is about resolving paradoxes in existence: reconciling the mortal with the divine, for instance, or realizing that good and evil are all parts of the same universe. It's only fitting that his book would be as steamy as they come…while really not being steamy at all.
Mind = blown.