The Myth Dimension of our cultures guides and perhaps shapes our lives in more ways than we can imagine, speaking to us very powerfully through images, symbols and story-telling, even as it colors not only individual patterns of life, but social, national, even trans-national patterns, attitudes and approaches.As I work with a group of young women, we talk of different ancient myths that ‘holds’ attitudes in place, and I recount a myth from the Tamil people of South India, from where my family comes. The power of the Feminine is acknowledged, but indirectly, because the story is actually offered as one where ‘removal’ of this power brings ‘true womanhood’.
The popular version of the story tells of King Malayadhvaja Pandya and his wife, unsuccessful in spite of offering numerous horse-sacrifices in their aching desire to produce a son and heir. After the ninety-ninth sacrifice, Indra as a powerful deity, realizing that one hundred performances of this ritual entitled the king to stake a claim on Indra’s own throne, cleverly intervened - suggesting that the unfortunate king should perform a different, more effective sacrifice, “that brings forth a son.”
The horror of the childless couple at the outcome can only be imagined when this sacrifice produces not a baby boy, but a three-year old girl. Not only that - she is born with three breasts.
The king, however, advised by a celestial voice to treat the daughter as if she were a son, trains her in all the manly arts as if she were the legitimate male heir to the throne.
The princess grows up to be Minakshi, and if we follow the story as told in the Tamil text Tiruvilaiyatarpuranam, she evolves into the Pandyan Dynasty monarch, just and beneficent, fearless and victorious in battle. But, she is unmarried, and this is not considered ‘proper’. Her mother laments this, but Minakshi puts her off assuring her that there are more important things she has to see to.
Those things she has to ‘see to’ are mostly to do with battle and conquest and victory, and the warrior princess goes on successfully with this till one day, in a particularly fierce battle between her forces and those commanded by Nandi, (the deity Shiva’s bull ‘vehicle’ and ally), Shiva himself appears in response to the defeated Nandi’s call for help.
Now is the significant moment where a prophecy made at Minakshi’s birth is fulfilled: “When this woman, whose form is golden, meets her lord, one of her breasts will disappear.”
According to Venkatachami Nattar, the commentator of the text, the disappearance of the third breast means a change from a male to a female for Minakshi. Some interpreters equate the third breast with the penis; not two-breasted, therefore not woman.
The warrior princess, doing ‘men’s work’ is now instantaneously transformed to the ideal of Indian womanhood. From the fierce warrior, disemboweling her victims, smearing her spear with their blood and fat, who is undefeated by powerful armies, she is now turned to the suitably demure young girl: ”She looked downward, toward her feet, with collyriumed eyes that were like kentai fish. And there she stood, shining like lightning, scratching the earth with her toes …”
The image of the third breast can also be seen as a symbol of power, its disappearance causes the woman to become submissive – power-less in the face of (supreme) maleness.
It is not the diminishing of her ‘maleness’ that is objectionable, but the depiction of what her ‘femaleness’ now requires; not a transformation of her powers, but a giving up of them – her husband now holds all of that.
In the Tamil tradition, a woman, from the moment she reaches puberty, is considered to be filled with a force/power, sometimes referred to as ananku. This power is often thought to be concentrated in her breasts, and is especially potent during menstruation, or when she has just given birth, and when she is made a widow.
If controlled, this force can produce ‘auspicious’ results; if not it is extremely dangerous. Control is often effected through marriage, and this makes the unmarried woman, as also the widow, unpredictably powerful. (I can’t help imagining how this image could have been used to empower women instead!!) Little wonder then, that these two states – because of the fear they generate – were made to embody the negative position they do even today.
After years of working mainly with archetypal patterns of myths, I find that it becomes increasingly necessary to study the myths of our lives in their historical and socio-cultural context and implications. There are certainly universal, archetypal motifs at work, but it is the details of the culture-specific that contain insights, for women in particular, to work on the layered meanings that myth enfolds, and so to peel off years of biased attitudes and sanctions for inequality that they seem to confer.
After all, it is as Helen Luke once wrote - and as I keep reminding myself about my life and my work - “Only the images by which we live can bring transformation.”
May you work to re-context the images of myths in your life.
Marguerite Theophil
The princess grows up to be Minakshi, and if we follow the story as told in the Tamil text Tiruvilaiyatarpuranam, she evolves into the Pandyan Dynasty monarch, just and beneficent, fearless and victorious in battle. But, she is unmarried, and this is not considered ‘proper’. Her mother laments this, but Minakshi puts her off assuring her that there are more important things she has to see to.
Those things she has to ‘see to’ are mostly to do with battle and conquest and victory, and the warrior princess goes on successfully with this till one day, in a particularly fierce battle between her forces and those commanded by Nandi, (the deity Shiva’s bull ‘vehicle’ and ally), Shiva himself appears in response to the defeated Nandi’s call for help.
Now is the significant moment where a prophecy made at Minakshi’s birth is fulfilled: “When this woman, whose form is golden, meets her lord, one of her breasts will disappear.”
According to Venkatachami Nattar, the commentator of the text, the disappearance of the third breast means a change from a male to a female for Minakshi. Some interpreters equate the third breast with the penis; not two-breasted, therefore not woman.
The warrior princess, doing ‘men’s work’ is now instantaneously transformed to the ideal of Indian womanhood. From the fierce warrior, disemboweling her victims, smearing her spear with their blood and fat, who is undefeated by powerful armies, she is now turned to the suitably demure young girl: ”She looked downward, toward her feet, with collyriumed eyes that were like kentai fish. And there she stood, shining like lightning, scratching the earth with her toes …”
The image of the third breast can also be seen as a symbol of power, its disappearance causes the woman to become submissive – power-less in the face of (supreme) maleness.
It is not the diminishing of her ‘maleness’ that is objectionable, but the depiction of what her ‘femaleness’ now requires; not a transformation of her powers, but a giving up of them – her husband now holds all of that.
In the Tamil tradition, a woman, from the moment she reaches puberty, is considered to be filled with a force/power, sometimes referred to as ananku. This power is often thought to be concentrated in her breasts, and is especially potent during menstruation, or when she has just given birth, and when she is made a widow.
If controlled, this force can produce ‘auspicious’ results; if not it is extremely dangerous. Control is often effected through marriage, and this makes the unmarried woman, as also the widow, unpredictably powerful. (I can’t help imagining how this image could have been used to empower women instead!!) Little wonder then, that these two states – because of the fear they generate – were made to embody the negative position they do even today.
After years of working mainly with archetypal patterns of myths, I find that it becomes increasingly necessary to study the myths of our lives in their historical and socio-cultural context and implications. There are certainly universal, archetypal motifs at work, but it is the details of the culture-specific that contain insights, for women in particular, to work on the layered meanings that myth enfolds, and so to peel off years of biased attitudes and sanctions for inequality that they seem to confer.
After all, it is as Helen Luke once wrote - and as I keep reminding myself about my life and my work - “Only the images by which we live can bring transformation.”
May you work to re-context the images of myths in your life.
Marguerite Theophil
from the circumstances of our lives and our dreams,
and, as memory arises, we invent narrative
in order to make sense of ourselves and to communicate with others.
~Tony Gee
