Reclaiming Pandora

“The Depth of your Mythology is the Extent of your Effectiveness.” ~ John Maxwell

I love mythology. My mother’s love of stars awakened in me an insatiable hunger for the stories the constellations represented, which in turn led me to study the myths of any culture I encountered. I am always amazed at the similarity between stories told by peoples thousands of miles and milleniums apart.

I mentioned Pandora a few blogs ago… she is still part of our cultural consciousness, but for all the wrong reasons. Here is the myth as we know it:

• Zeus, infuriated by the theft of divine fire and subsequent gifting of it to man, chained Prometheus to a rock where he was doomed forever to have his liver eaten out by eagles. But Prometheus was immortal and could not die. His body repaired itself by night, only to be devoured again the next day

• But this was not punishment enough for Zeus. Mankind, too, had to pay – for not only had Prometheus gifted humans with fire in order to make tools, but he had also lit a spark within their minds that they might grow and learn. Zeus feared that the race of man might someday rival the gods

• So he gathered the Olympians together and between them they created… woman. Aphrodite made her beautiful; Athena gave her wit and charm, and Hermes… Hermes filled her heart with curiosity

• They named her Pandora – All-Gifted- because each of the gods had contributed something of themselves to her

• Zeus gave her to Epimetheus, who, upon seeing Pandora, forgot all the warnings he had ever received about accepting gifts from the King of the Gods. With her, Epimetheus accepted a box, which he was warned never, ever to open

• All went well… until Epimetheus left his bride at home alone. And then Hermes’ gift reared its head. Try as she might, Pandora could not stop thinking about the box… what could be in it that it must be forever sealed?

• The need to see for herself grew in Pandora until it was a physical pain. At last, unable to bear her curiosity any longer, she threw open the lid, and when she did dark, horrifying, demonic shapes leapt skyward, scattering to the wind… many more than could logically be held within the confines of so small a chest…. These were famine, fear, toil, prejudice, war, dischord, and disease; all the griefs and hardships that have plagued mankind ever since

• At the last moment, Pandora found the strength to slam the lid closed once more, locking within its walls the last of the god’s tortures… Hope

• Hope… which would forever be man’s one comfort against the sea of misery unleashed by Pandora.

This is the myth we know. A thousand year old story that is still relevant today because of the advent of writing. But it is also a conqueror’s myth…

One of the most insidious ways of undermining a conquered people is to corrupt their cultural stories and spiritual symbols. For example, the apple, serpent, and tree of knowledge were all symbols of the Goddess’s love before corrupted by the Father worshipping warriors who defeated her followers.

It was no different in ancient Greece. The gentle matrilineal, Goddess worshipping culture was defeated and their mythology turned against them.

This is their version of Pandora:

• The Great Mother loved all of her children; so much so that she sent to them her Kore, or earthly embodiment. The people called her Pandora, for she brought to them all the gifts that they would need to survive and thrive. She brought them abundance, vision, creativity, intuition, self-esteem, communication, and loving relationships. All these gifts, when combined, created such balance and hope within the people that they cried for joy.

The gifts of the original myth became the demons of the second; they are the shadow side of the Goddesses’ generosity. The promise that we, as human beings, have everything we need within us, became the admonition never to venture inside, to ignore the still small voice that drives us to seek more and obey the outside authority…

But what neither story denies is that, at the bottom of it all, when the demons are unmasked and the gifts recovered, when we clear out the box, what we are left with is Hope.

Maybe it’s time to come back to our roots?

“Hope…which is whispered from Pandora’s box only after all the other plagues and sorrows had escaped, is the best and last of all things. Without it, there is only time. And time pushes at our backs like a centrifuge, forcing us outward and away, until it nudges us into oblivion.” ~ Ian Caldwell

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”~ Joseph Campbell