Newspaper Article

Merlin myth a la New Age

Reviewed by Ashby Kinch Note: TITLE: The Return Of Merlin. AUTHOR: Deepak Chopra. PUBLISHER: (Arrow, 422 pages).

1996

Overview

As a young Mediaeval scholar, I deeply resent the co-optation of Mediaeval literature, culture and ideas by the hordes of New Agists and fly-by-night fantasy writers who look to the Middle Ages as a series of compelling and largely fabricated snapshots of an ideal world of knights and ladies coursing about on horses and jousting themselves into a tizzy of love and high moral values. Chopra is a rather good example of a writer whose purpose in retelling the Mediaeval legend of Arthur is quite clearly and unabashedly to illuminate a contemporary audience. But his book, like other modern co- optations of this same legendary material, sees a certain picture of Mediaeval life to the exclusion of the more mundane but also more human documents of this culture. Chopra has approached the fertile myth of Camelot from a very modern, religiously syncretic perspective that resembles the collection of writers who call themselves New Agists. For him, it provides a set of values to be reinterpreted through a metaphysical lens, yielding important and salient spiritual advice to modern seekers who wish to become the Merlin inside of each of us.

• Publisher: The New Straits Times Press (M) Berhad