Misotheism (a mistake, be warned)

When Zeus noticed his eyes were stinging, he looked over at the torches and sacrifices. It was an unusual irritation, and the odor was not from Olympus. His nose and eyes watered and he appeared to be crying. Man was up to something, and he knew it. He saw small lights below, like stars on the earth. THEY HAD FIRE! Immediately, he accused Prometheus. That prankster must have taken such a liberty; no one else had the gall.

His daughter Athena was always "stirring the bitches' brew"(A.J.) and near the center of such deviance. He called her and she came forward, a mischievous smile barely subdued. Zeus' eyes rolled back into his head. Until he could find and collect penitence from Prometheus, he would curse his brother Epimetheus. Prometheus was given to intuit this, and warned his brother in advance not to accept any gifts, that Zeus was not likely to render any magnanimity for either of the brothers.

Hephaestus was ordered to create a woman in fine craftsmanship, under the direction of the gods and goddesses who would design and adorn her in a mutual symbols of gifts. She would be the undoing of Epimetheus and the men "to their great trouble, no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth." And thus from the four winds Pandora was born. Epimetheus ignored his brother and accepted the lascivious smile, ample breasts, perfect legs, and beautiful eyes. Of course, he could only be blamed for this so much.

Prometheus was summoned and presented to Zeus. He was chained in the Caucasus, with his liver garnished, to be eaten each day by the ripping talons and knifing beak of an eagle. Such an easy meal would not be passed up by the bird, and each night Prometheus' liver regenerated in his immortality. This was a sentence with no date of completion, and no indication that it would ever satisfy Zeus' anger.

Pandora and her daughters would continue to seduce men. Men would send their gifts of prayer and petition to the gods, prostrated by the evils which had been unleashed without meditation from a jar she brought with her. She opened the jar out of boredom and mischievous curiosity, knowing full well that it was a foolish enterprise. From it presently sprung all sort of burdensome toil and sickness, disease, and a myriad of other pains.

As she was overwhelmed, she was unable to close the jar until nearly all evils had been born and scattered throughout the lands and seas; when she did but one was left, Hope. Blind Hope, by proxy through Zeus, Epimetheus, and Pandora, the cursed blessing of Prometheus, was left for man. It was, it would seem, the will of Olympus and her Zeus. Perhaps it was of a merciful turn in making edifice some comforting theodicy.

Eventually, Prometheus would have a last word. Words, however, do not make actions. At best they make lessons, maybe understanding, and in the reflection of hindsight (ironically), wisdom. Some three million or thirty years later, Prometheus was released from his torturous jail by Heracles. He then defied Zeus and Olymus. He saw the gift of Hope, blind and whole, to be a mockery of man and of himself, of Foresight. In a fitful rage he shouted at the heavens.

As was written by Goethe,

Shroud your heaven, Zeus,
With cloudy vapours,
And do as you will, like the boy
That knocks the heads off thistles,
With oak-trees and mountain-tops;
Now you must leave alone
My Earth for Me,
And my hut, which you did not build,
And my hearth,
The glowing whereof
You envy me.

I know of nothing poorer
Under the sun, than you, you Gods!
Your majesty
Is barely nourished
By sacrificial offerings
And prayerful exhalations,
And should starve
Were children and beggars not
Fools full of Hope.

When I was a child,
And did not know the in or out,
I turned my wandering eyes toward
The sun, as if, beyond, there were
An ear to hear my lament,
A heart, like mine,
To be moved to pity for the afflicted.

Who helped me
Against the pride of the Titans?
Who delivered me from Death,
From Slavery?
Did you not accomplish it all yourself,
My holy, burning Heart?
And shone, young and good,
Deceived, your thanks for salvation
To the sleeping one above?

Should I honour you? Why?
Have you softened the sufferings,
Ever, of the burdened?
Have you stilled the tears,
Ever, of the anguished?
Was I not forged as a Man
By almighty Time
And eternal Fate,
My masters and thine?

Do you somehow imagine
That I should hate Life,
Flee to the desert,
Because not every
Flowering dream should bloom?

Here I sit, I form humans
After my own image;
A race, to be like me,
To sorrow, to weep,
To enjoy and delight itself,
And to heed you not at all -
Like Me!

A bold and defiant Prometheus ignored the simple truth that in his provocation of Zeus' wrath in by stealing the fire, and before this in deceiving him in a deviant game of choice where he misrepresented offerings untoothsome as such and lavish as slim for pickings, that he, Prometheus brought the pain and evil into the world. It was fire that he bore, and light by it that felled the men he claimed love for. It was not love for man but his own pride and defiance, the challenge of outwitting omniscience, of disproving omnipotence that he loved.

Any witted soul can fall into this trap, but only one without respect for his place in the ever greater scales of realm, one that can persist in such a blind treachery to oneself and also those suckered by association into culpability, through gaming mischief and lawyering around with the laws of divinity, a soul such as Prometheus' will find itself bound with fetters of one's own doing.

This is all that caused so much pain for so many hearts of men. The games and antics of a trickster. In a way, he was instrumented to give blind hope to the hearts of men by god greater than he. There is a lesson to be seen in that emergent resolution, of the eventuality of the will of powers ultimate and greater than. For every web to snare righteousness he cast, he found himself tangled the more into evil. The heavens govern even this and until that day he finds it he will continue to bear the humiliation and pain, spreading it and winding it, casting it and drawing it. His redemption and amazing contribution to the affairs of the universe unknown and eclipsed by his shameful defiance and failsome knavery.