Author: Marina Warner
Publisher: Vintage Books, New York
ISBN: 0-679-75924-7

What have the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park to do with Madonna? Peter Pan with Frankenstein? King Kong with the Epic of Gilgamesh? Grimms' fairy tales with the war in Bosnia? Cannibalism with the Eucharist? Marina Warner's Six Myths of Our Time demystifies the mystique of these old and new stories which tell us the truth  while making it up  about ourselves and our world. In the guise of fiction, often melded to history and fact, myths embody meaning at a deep psychic level, seeming only to entertain while actually shaping our identity.

Originally delivered as a series of six radio addresses for the BBC, Warner's Six Myths is a unique treatise on the role of myth as a means of negotiating the life cycle. An author of stories and novels, Warner has also written history and criticism. Her Six Myths is interdisciplinary in its approach  the author admits to the influence of the French school of classicists, anthropologists and historians as well as of the Freudian interpretation of myth. This is a rare review of archetypical, shaping myths as they have been handed down from ancient times to the present. Myths are far from having disappeared. Rather, as  Warner demonstrates, they have taken on a new face and speak with a new voice. Myths are no more static than history itself. Myths not only reflect the flux of changing history, they also change history by 'secretly circulating ideology through society'.'

Myths inform social systems and contribute to a society's character as much as laws and politics. Larger than the stories or events which produced them, they are immensely influential in conveying values and expectations: at their best they are ennobling, even salvific. But they have equally negative potential: a capacity to denigrate the individual, race or gender, locking us up in stock reactions, bigotry and fear.

It is this negativity which so alarms Warner. She holds before us our universal beliefs, traces their origins and predicts their consequences. This book is no tame, clinical survey. It is an impassioned call for social change.

But above all, Six Myths of Our Time is a deeply religious book, for it is about re-integration and transformation. Warner strips society of its pretensions and disguises, and asks: 'Do you really like what you see? If not, are you willing to change?' That change, she argues, must begin with our myths. They are doing the damage and they are where the change must begin.

Warner commences with the place it all begins: motherhood. For femaleness is the gender of origin. However, Warner will not allow us the comfort of maternal affection, as the title of the first talk declares: 'Monstrous Mothers – Women Over the Top'. Warner presents the terrifying velociraptors  the all-female dinosaur population of Jurassic Park, who represent gynocracy  the fearful spectre of womanly rule. With her powerful command of ancient myth, Warner traces the confrontation between nature-coded female and culture-coded male through Homer's female allegorical figures, Madness and Folly (who take possession of men) to Medea (who perverts motherhood and maternal love by infanticide). Craft and guile  woman's cunning nature for achieving ultimate sovereignty  make her the perfect scapegoat. Medea reincarnates as velociraptor to tell us, subtly but powerfully, that femininism is to blame for all social ills. Women in general are out of control, and their struggle for equality in matters of sex and sovereignty over their bodies, is the cause of family breakdown, increase in divorce and violence in children.

The prescription is obvious: all she-monsters should be killed. Slaying Medea and velociraptor are not just a victory for masculinity, but for humanity! For after all, women are a godly mistake. Be they created from the DNA found in a mosquito's blood or from Adam's rib, by the priests of the temple of science or by God himself, monstrous mothers are public enemy number one. Megastar Madonna, gyrating her pelvis before millions, is the prophetic fulfillment of Nancy Sinatra's theme song, 'These boots are made for walking, and that's just what they'll do. One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you'.

However, argues Warner, it needn't be this way. If these self-fulfilling myths are rewritten, the true image of womanhood will emerge. Sovereignty over herself, not over others, should be the theme of the future. To prove her point she calls into evidence the praying mantis  that ultimate symbol of female monstrosity  which devours the male alive after mating. Warner gives us the latest news: the female mantis has recently been found not guilty by the scientific court of appeal. Given enough to eat, that femme fatale falls pleasantly to sleep. The lesson: monstrous mothers will be truly benign when finally freed from misogynists' myths.

It is precisely to this misogynist folklore which Warner next turns our attention. 'Boys Will Be Boys' is as its subtitle informs us, about 'The Making of the Male'. Again we are led through a fantasy world of monsters  to begin with a video futurama of robotic heroes. Our perceptive author-guide exposes the two-dimensional character of such heroes as Robocop and Terminator: aggressive, but not self-reflective. Unlike Dr.Frankenstein's monster who knew himself and was a reflection of his maker, the nature of these robotic monsters of today is totally unknown to themselves. Warner turns the spotlight on us: Are they also a reflection of our own predicament?

This warrior strength is nothing new; it dominates the literature of ancient Greece. But the Greek heroes had multiple virtues unlike the brutal, programmed-to-kill heroes of today. Survival of the fittest may always have characterised the male identity, but it was often accomplished by mental agility and intellectual force. In recent times, Charlie Chaplin and Woody Allen conquer physically superior adversaries, proving cleverness a more attractive male trait than mere physical strength.

The Greek hero of antiquity had his tragic flaw which made him an object of debate. Those heroes faced obstacles, both externally and internally, which were the basis for moral argument and counter-argument. Their weaknesses and mistakes provoked terror and pity, making them counter models. But today's heroes of masculinity have no such apparent flaws  even their heartless, emotionless constitution is considered a virtue. The killer-rapist is today's hero, Warner submits. Advertisements, video games and comic strips  all prime sources of myth  feature static role models that show no inner growth.   Warner offers a bleak prognosis: unless our myths change, we face the likelihood of a world populated by Little Monsters, not Little Angels. For as she explains, 'the culture that produces irresponsible fathers openly extols a form of masculinity that is opposed to continuity, care, negotiation and even cunning  qualities necessary to make lasting attachments between men and children, men and women.'

'Little Angels, Little Monsters – Keeping Childhood Innocent' is the subject of the third talk. It is a subject in which humanity has a huge investment. For children represent a utopian state, a hope that  Eden or Never Never Land is still possible. The Peter Panish Michael Jackson (before his recent escapades) and his Neverland ranch symbolised childish innocence. The apparent innocence of such figures conveys purity and is linked to the inner self or soul. They represent what we were and what we may once again become.

But the myths are tumbling, transforming. Michael Jackson married and is now divorced. The injured child of Les Miserables has become the contemporary icon of humanity  the battered child, the starving child, reaching out, appealing to our sense of loss of innocence. This is the childhood of today; a fearful reminder of what we have become.

However, the transformation  of myth does not end with abuse and impoverishment. Childrens' cartoons, a ripe breeding ground for myth, emphasise violence. Psychoanalytic theories recommend that children compensate for their hapless dependence by envisioning themselves in a savage state in which they are allowed transgressive behaviour never imagined by adults. The resulting myths, foreshadowed in classics like The Lord of the Flies, have attained their most brutal realisation in everyday news accounts. Dennis the Menace was lovable, but some of his real-life look-alikes today are life-threatening.

Certainly the children are not to blame for their lost innocence. It is the adults who have given them centre stage; sexually encoded them at a younger age; succumbed to their 'pester power' to make them a consumer powerhouse.

How shall we recover this lost innocence? We need to close the gap between ourselves and them bring them closer into the family, with all the members sharing together a common experience of life. If we want little angels instead of little monsters, we should not expect them to 'act as the living embodiments of adults' inner goodness, however much adults may wish it. Without paying attention to adults and their circumstances, children cannot begin to meet the hopes and expectations of our torn dreams about what a child and childhood should be.'

'Beautiful Beasts - The Call of the Wild',' is yet another exposé on the search for innocence. Warner provides us with a most unusual interpretation of the beastly nature: the wild man represents the innocence of mankind, symbolised by oneness with nature. He is the healing figure for today's ills. Nature is understood as uncontaminated and contrasted to civilisation's progress. With God cast out of the current worldview, humanity herself is next in line for sacrifice, for she is replaceable by robots, those heartless, bloodless hulks of perfection. Beastliness is a refuge from this humanoid nightmare. Besides, beasts offer a standard by which human identity and exploits can be measured and exalted.

Tales of beasts such as Enkidu from the Epic of Gilgamesh have been around for five thousand years. In fact, wild men have always had a prominent place in myth and legend. In recent times, King Kong presented us a beast, who while clearly a monster, is recognisably human in emotion. While we hope to tame these wild men and make them like ourselves, we inwardly pray they may not be conquered, lest their natural innocence be lost. There is a desirableness in being beastly; in fact, these myths call into question the very value of being a human at all. The failure of these 'wild men' to conform to society's mores is not depicted as a triumph of civilisation, but rather serves as a critique of its failings.

Warner does not let us miss the point that in both cases  Enkidu and Kong  'it was beauty who killed the beast'.' Whether the harlot used as bait to ensnare Enkidu, or a lithe Fay Wray in the massive Kong's grip, the female spells doom. Warner is quick to point out that we are witnessing a reversal in the traditional role-playing: now it is the female who is culture-coded, the male nature-coded. But women are still a bad thing, here defeating the unrepressed male sexuality and individuality. What kind of myths are these, Warner asks finally, which transform man from his dominion over the animals, to becoming one of them?

And what act more aptly demonstrates human beastliness than cannibalism, the subject of the fifth essay, 'Cannibal Tales – The Hunger For Conquest'. From the Ogre in the fairytale Jack the Giant-Killer who dines on the flesh of Englishmen, to Dante's Inferno, where the damned eat their own and each other's flesh, cannibalism is tied to fears of swallowing and being swallowed; hence, the loss of personal identity. Often it was used to justify colonialism: the cannibalistic natives must be conquered and civilised for their own good. In such cases, the practice of cannibalism is used to define the alien, though in reality it often mirrored the conquerors as the essay's title implies.

Cannibalism, however, is not always connected with barbarousness or monstrousness. The Christian mass, for example, is a symbolic celebration of consuming Christ's blood and body. Even ordinary social intercourse betrays cannibalistic tendencies. Warner cites lovers biting. Or, as she humorously notes, a mother squeezing her child: 'Mmm, you're so good I'm going to eat you'. These images of transgressive acts of intimacy, she informs us, are clearly cannibalistic metaphors. Active social patterns combine with myth, 'defining the forbidden, and the alluring, the sacred and the profane, conjuring demons and heroes, saying who we are and what we want'.

Perhaps no myth informs us more of our expectations than the one that Warner saves for last: 'Home 'Our Famous Island Race' and 'Homelessness – the predicament of our time'. Though her focus is upon England, the implications are universal. For the myth of home is inextricably tied to a national identity, and when the boundaries collapse ― due to political, economic, racial or other reasons ― an existential crisis ensues. For home is ultimately the story of personal identity and belonging.

For Odysseus, one of the first homeward-bound voyagers, home simply meant native land ― property and a place to govern. But times have changed: one rents one's home, rests in a motel or wanders homeless as a refugee.Whatever one's circumstance may be, the nostalgia of home conjures memories of belonging. To the British it reminds them of a supposed national insularity which, as Warner wryly notes, is an historical absurdity. The 'Empire' belies the fact that England was ever an 'island race'.' Yet the myth remains, reinforced by politicians who mine it for its nationalist value. But when the Empire has collapsed, the treasury drained and the home usurped by the very peoples she once colonised, the myth becomes strained and threadbare. Ethnic nationalism explodes as the colonised fight the colonisers for that small island patch of land each now calls home.

At the core of the struggle is the way the story of place is told. The colonisers (or those who claim to be their descendants) conveniently forget the historical contingency of their total dependence on others; while the colonised, dispossessed of their original homeland, now consider themselves part of 'imaginary homelands' ― countries of the mind. Yet for all, as Warner rightly notes, 'home takes us back to a golden afternoon in the past, and this brings in the question of memory, which in turn raises history as an issue.' 'The politics of nostalgia' often brings out hatred and monsters worse than any myth could conjure.

In the wake of the Bosnian bloodbath we cannot ignore Warner's ultimate question: Can there be another way of talking about home without harking back to nostalgic lies? We need a new mythology of home. And this new way of thinking must be free of geographic boundaries, for the truth is, there is no home today except in the mind. The communication and transportation revolution is fast creating a universal homeland. 'We are all wayfarers,' declares Warner. 'What does it mean to belong and yet not to belong,' she asks, searching for the answer which plagues us at the close of the millennium.

How, then, does one find one's way home? Our author-guide gives us a final hint: 'No home is an island; no home-grown culture can thrive in permanent quarantine.' Good advice to us all, to be remembered whenever circumstance or conviction leads us toward isolation.

I shall take her advice to heart, for I subscribe to a belief system whose traditions are rooted in the most ancient of narratives. By narratives I do not mean to imply that they are lies, half-truths, legends or any other form of fiction. Rather I am speaking of narrative as the story of a culture, a religion, and hence of God and heroes. Yet despite their ancientness and even their divine origin, the narratives which have shaped my tradition's beliefs need to be examined, and where necessary, their explanations updated.

Take for example the myth of Monstrous Mothers, a myth which haunts Marina Warner like an eerie ghost, appearing and disappearing throughout her six talks. There is a feminist agenda to her book which she makes no attempt to conceal. But being the Monstrous Author that she is, even I, a member of a traditionally patriarchal institution, find little in her views to protest. Rather, as one of her enlightened readers, I offer the following in appreciation.

Our Vedic tradition describes the ultimate Monstrous Mother ― Maya, the illusory material potency who keeps all conditioned souls captive in the prison house of this material world. The ten-armed Maya comes equipped with twenty of the most ghastly weapons which she uses to behead male miscreants. She drinks their blood as it spouts from their headless napes and tosses their severed heads as play balls to her assistants.

Because she is encoded female, those who share her gender are considered to be her representatives. This places women at a dreadful disadvantage, for which they have suffered through millennia. The obvious solution is a reworking of the Maya persona. But how are we to tamper with her identity or gender when her very personality is intrinsic to our theology? It would be like trying to cast Hillary Clinton as Republican male candidate for the Presidency. A more acceptable proposal is to attach a fair and philosophical explanation to the narrative.

A proper understanding reveals that any unfair sexual bias implied by the Maya narrative is due to a philosophical misunderstanding. For the feminine gender is generic to all souls including those who are masculine embodied. All souls are categorised as energy (read female) and God as the supreme energetic (read male). When this philosophy is properly understood, all souls irrespective of their sexual bodily encoding will relate with each other harmoniously. Boys Will (Not) Be Boys, but rather servants of God. They will respect their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters also as servants of God. This is the actual Vedic understanding and men need to be emphatically reminded of it, lest they succumb to the very illusion for which they are now imprisoned.

By overcoming the bodily, sex-encoded identification, members of either gender can gain release from material existence. Then they shall meet Sri Radha, the feminine aspect of the Godhead, the personification of motherhood and the antithesis of the monster. She is protective, nurturing, the mother of devotion. And above all, as the supreme energy, she is expert in pleasing the supreme energetic. Radha and Krsna together are the Absolute Truth, the Divine Couple welcoming all souls back home, back to Godhead.

Which brings us to where Warner ended ― Home. The Vedas make no mistake by recommending a home within Maya's world of illusion. Vedic philosophy describes the soul's constant transmigration from one body to another, one home to another, as the progress of a prisoner moving from cell to cell. Fighting for homeland is merely a symptom of the 'skin disease' of bodily identification. Vedic gods and demons battling for cosmic control or the petty or not-so-petty quarrels of us mere mortals ― all are but the behaviour of animalism. Wisdom demands that we rise above our bodily identities, both corporeal and national. Using the mind, and travelling through consciousness, we should search not for an 'imaginary homeland' of nostalgic lies, but rather for that eternal resting place of the soul.

The dilemma of what it means to belong and not to belong is not just a contemporary question. Rather it is a reflection of humankind's primordial bewilderment. Though our present age may be characterised by an ever-shifting population, the need for identifying one's place within the world and the universe is as deeply felt today as it was in bygone ages. In fact, our present homeless condition provides us with a unique advantage: gone is the illusion that I can call any place of this world 'home'.

Humankind has been left at the door of the twenty-first century like a newly born motherless babe. Like a premature infant torn from the womb, we reach out blindly, searching for someone or something we can recognise. But the myths that confront us, and offer to teach us, will not serve us as favourably as their prototypes did our forebears. Growth is painful and we fear what we may become. Cradled in the arms of strange guardians, we feel insecure, confused, ill-nurtured. The babe screams for its real parents.

We are craving to know the meaning of life and the means to negotiate its cycles. Marina Warner has done us a great service by unmasking our custodians, those still potent shaping myths which determine our identity. With her wry sense of humour and sophisticated wit she may have succeeded in distracting their attention just long enough to give us time to look for others; to successfully integrate those which seem favourable; and exchange those which are not. How we respond to the six archetypical myths she has identified  may well determine not only our own future but that of generations to come.

Tamal Krishna Goswami