Pandora

11:31:00 Giovanna Cerise 0 Comments

Zeus took revenge on Prometheus by sending an evil which would counterbalance the benefits of the gift of fire.  He told Hephaistos, the craftsman god, to create a maiden, his most beautiful creation, a woman who would be invested with gifts from each and every god.  Athena taught her women’s work (Athena is goddess of weaving, wisdom, and war, and is tauted at the cleverest of all the gods); Aphrodite endowed her with beauty; Hermes gave her a deceitful nature; the Charities and the Horae adorned her with beautifully delicate clothing, flowers, and a golden crown.  Hermes, the messenger, took Pandora to Epimetheus as a gift.  Prometheus, still loving humans, locked away in a casket all the evils that might plague the world.  This was given to Pandora as a dowry.  Prometheus had warned Epimetheus not to accept any gifts from Zeus (beware of Greeks bearing gifts), but Epimetheus forgot and married Pandora.  Remembering too late his brother’s warning, he forbade Pandora to open the box.   One day her curiosity got the better of her and she opened it, releasing all the scourges to humankind.  Only hope remained.  Some say it was Prometheus who gave humans desire and wild hope.  The myth tells that before the arrival of woman/Pandora, men lived without evil and hardship.  With her coming, they fell from grace and have suffered ever since in a dangerous and unhappy world.
Pandora and fire are somewhat equivalent in that fire is energy and one of the aspects of energy is desire.  Pandora becomes the object of desire.  As the ego is given the powers of desire, will, and longing, it also receives the contents of Pandora’s box: the sufferings of human life. (Note the parallel to Adam & Eve).  Being born into ego consciousness is both blessing and curse, with joy and suffering going hand in hand.
As described in these myths, the unconscious state is paradise, and the expulsion from paradise (the archetypal primordial, undifferentiated unconscious, as represented by the creator gods and goddesses) is the equivalent of birth into the ego-conscious state wherein suffering and strife work to develop the individual Self (remember Heraklitos' idea of strife as the creative force).
Prometheus, then, becomes the consciousness-bringing principle itself.
In Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, Prometheus says that until his interference in the affairs of humankind, they wandered aimlessly, like children, without reason and with no purpose  “…until I taught them to discern the seasons by the rising and the obscure setting of the stars.  Numbers I invented for them, the chiefest of all discoveries; I taught them the grouping of letters, to be a memorial and record of the past, the mistress of the arts and mother of the Muses.   I first brought under the yoke beasts of burden, who by draft and carrying relieved men of their hardest labors; I yoked the proud horse to the chariot, teaching him obedience to the reigns, to be the adornment of wealth and luxury.  I too contrived for sailors sea-faring vessels with their flaxen wings….”  He also gave them divination, medicine, metallurgy; in short, all the human arts are from Prometheus.
Mythic parallels can be found in Greek, Hebrew, and Christian stories.
There is an advocate in the archetypal realm, whether it be Prometheus, Christ, or Isaiah to assist the ego in overcoming the isolation and suffering.
Two main aspects of the psychological meaning:
1)  consciousness is accompanied by suffering
2)  the ego doesn’t have to do all the suffering alone.
Taken by:
http://iws.collin.edu/mbailey/jungianarchetypes.htm