Pandora, the Awakening of the Ego

The sacrifice of Mecone comes at a price. Immediately, it manifests as the punishment of Prometheus: simple, brutal. But there is another, more subtle punishment, and this is where Pandora appears. Indeed, this capacity for analysis, coupled with the prospect of obtaining the best portions, allows man to develop an even greater self-consciousness: the Ego. This Ego, materialized by Pandora, is the direct and necessary consequence of the theft of fire and the sacrifice. If men, despite their awareness of the world, had chosen to respect the order of things and leave the best portion for the gods, they would have remained in ignorance of the rest. Much like the Original Sin, we realize that man, whether comfortable or not, will always seek more, and elsewhere. This is, in fact, what condemns him in all mythologies.

Pandora, this idealized vision of the human emerging from the way man understands Nature, is thus given to humans accompanied by a box. She is not the first woman. Human beings already existed as a dual couple, like the rest of creation. It is precisely in this configuration that we can recognize the text as symbolic. Why would the people of that time have believed that the gods created all animals, males and females, directly, whereas for humans, this creation took place in two stages?

This box, the materialization of individual consciousness, arrives with the Ego and contains the potential for the gaze of self upon others. As a component of the human being, Pandora is endowed with the same curiosity and desire that motivated human behavior during the sacrifice. She wants more; she opens the box. In other words, she casts a critical gaze upon the situation, looking beyond appearances. And what does she see? What does she become aware of by doing so? Of all the evils that human beings suffer in Nature. Death, disease, and famine existed until then, but humans viewed them as normal, even fatal. With Pandora's awareness of herself, of her comfort, of Beauty, arises the idea that the human is something else.

It is also the failure to become aware of Hope, which remains at the bottom of the box. Indeed, upon opening the box, Pandora sees all the evils of the world escape. Instinctively, she closes the box immediately. Only Hope remains at the bottom. In a symbolic reading, this is the image that, when becoming aware of a situation, however difficult it may be, one must not close the box and remain stuck in one's initial viewpoint, but go to the end, for at the end lies Hope.

This illustrates the discrepancy between our management of the positive and the negative. When modern thought integrated the supernatural by identifying it with the unconscious, it immediately integrated demons as our neuroses. The expression "the demons of..." has entered common parlance to signify neuroses, anxieties, etc. Yet, angels remain our guardian angels. They have not become a better part of ourselves that would push us to do better; they remain external to us, like a part of ourselves that we fail to recognize. For yes, Hope is a scourge just like the rest. It is what pushes us to move forward, to face things, to fight.

But the story of Pandora does not end there. Cunning and the ability to "think ahead" are no longer possible with the Ego; these are attitudes that require humility and discretion. This is why the gift is transmitted to humans by Epimetheus, once Zeus has disposed of Prometheus. Pandora and her box are accepted by the one who "thinks after," the one who endures, chooses comfort, and seeks amusement—not the one who is proactive. Faced with this situation, proactivity transforms into impotence and anger towards destiny. This is the eagle eating the liver.

One might say that the sacrifice represents the human awakening to their capacity to manage the gods—a form of the emergence of knowledge and science. Consequently, the one who "thinks ahead," the faculty of anticipatory reflection, finds themselves paralyzed by their perpetual observation of the world. Their will dissolves and regenerates in rhythm with these observations. This is the symbolism of the liver: the will, the anger, constantly devoured, gnawed away by pride, the eagle.

The situation resolves over time when one becomes aware that the gods too have a destiny; that reality is coherent and structured. Omnipotence, without limits, has no place. Thus, liberation becomes possible, freeing oneself from the Ego and attachment. On the other side, the Ego is endured by the one who "thinks after," forcing them to observe all the evils suffered by humans.

This capacity can only be liberated through learning, represented by the 12 Labors of Hercules. It is when this anger and immobility allow one to anticipate not the gods in relation to men, but the gods themselves in their own destiny. This is how Prometheus comes to understand that even the gods have a destiny and are subject to it. He thus reveals to Zeus that the next son of his mistress Themis will be more powerful than his father. If Zeus had had one with her, what would he have been? Instead, Zeus abandons her and marries her to a mortal. She will give birth to Achilles, who will die before the walls of Troy.

This illustrates the maxim of the Temple of Delphi: "Know thyself, and thou shalt know the Gods and the Heavens." The forced immobility of Prometheus leads him to contemplate the world from the most remote point of the known earth, the Caucasus, and to understand the destiny of the gods themselves. It is also the liberating awakening of consciousness that manages to think beyond itself, its desires, and the world, to envision fullness and immortality through the abandonment of its duality: human/animal, emotion/reason. This is symbolized by the death of Chiron the centaur, wounded by Hercules.