We, the parents of today, are not the only ones shortchanged. Our young have been cheated as well, by being handed a pantheon of emasculated gods and heroes. Myth, at once primitive and sophisticated, is a pedagogy as well as a psychology. It communicates enduring human values, and speaks to people of all ages. The watering down of myth saps its power to resonate with the mind, to teach its lessons of honor, duty, love, courage, humility, wisdom, and the sanctity of all experience. One can only wonder whether these once-sacred stories might be even more popular in their authentic forms, and whether, by discovering in them the full spectrum of desire, our children might grow up more tolerant of each other, and richer in selfesteem and self-acceptance.
My only regret is that there is nothing here about the love of women for one another. Their history has been even more thoroughly effaced than that of male love2, because their oppressors were usually as close as the same bed, or the next room, and always the ones in power.3
For those of us who have grown up with the conventional view of myth and history, these stories may be nothing short of mind-altering, forcing a re-evaluation of our ancestors, lovingly outed in these pages. Would it be too much to hope for a re-evaluation of ourselves as well, and of our conventional Western pigeonholing of erotic experience?
Andrew Calimach
Tantallon, Nova Scotia
