Hope, the Daughter of Love.
I’ve been in the wilderness for a while, trying to find peace, perspective, and a path forward. I think I share that sense of dislocation with most of you. These are some deeply dark days.
That sense has led to a strong impulse toward flight. So, for the past month, I’ve fled — as far away from the present darkness as I could find, away from the political, religious, ethnic, sectarian, tribal, and even technological blinders of the present day. When I began to flee, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for or where I’d go, but I knew it was not here in the present moment of loss, agony, and pain.
I’ve lived much of my life this way. When confronted by a great fear or a situation I do not understand, I see which way the crowd is running, and I bolt the other way. That goes a long way to explaining why I live down here in Guatemala rather than near my family and friends back north.
My flight in the past month has been largely into the deep past. I needed to get away from modern stories, so I went back to what Hesiod referred to as The Golden Age, the time just after the great war, the Titanomachy, fought between Zeus and his father Kronos. Kronos was allied with the Titans. Zeus had the Hecatonchires and two rebel Titan brothers at his side — Prometheus and Epimetheus, who joined the Olympians to establish a great new order in the world.
Out of fear and frustration with the present, I ended up back there, pawing around in different myths, searching blindly for a lens that might shift my perceptions and steer me back toward the light. At first, they were just beautiful stories — a wonderful escape from the chaos of today, but when I reread the legend of Pandora, I felt a stirring of meaning that told me I was coming close to what I sought, but it wasn’t quite right.
Still, to explain what I eventually found, we need the story’s elemental shape, much of which you probably remember from middle school English class. It’s one of the Greek myths that tend to stick with kids, but in case the story has faded from your memory, here’s a quick précis.
At the end of the Great War, the deliciously named Titanomachy, peace reigned across the whole of the world. Zeus was on his throne with Hera at his side. Ares, Aphrodite, Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Demeter, Hestia, Hephaestus, Hermes, and Poseidon each sat with them and had their sacred and apportioned lots, charges, and gifts. (Dionysus, mind you, was to come much later when the cast needed a ratings boost for the next season.)
All was harmonious and joyful and, for Zeus, almost unbearably dull. He needed a caper, a distraction, a lark. So, he convinced his old Titan ally and closest friend, Prometheus, to craft human beings out of mud. Prometheus, you see, was a very handy Titan — an immortal being of the most subtle, powerful art. The story of how Prometheus crafted men from mud is glorious. He wets the clay of Gaia — the earth — with the spittle of Zeus, then dries his clay men in the warmth of Apollo’s evening sun. The moment of their being brought to life is a gift of Athena, who breathes into their tender lungs. So “man” is made of all the elements — earth, water, fire, and air. It’s so poetic and beautiful I almost want to cry. Also, it must be noted I’m not being sloppy with my gendering here. “Man” was all Prometheus created.
Women were to come later.
Once Prometheus crafted man and the Gods brought them to life, Zeus multiplied them into the millions, and they scattered across the face of the Earth, wandering about, eating plentiful food, frolicking in the beautiful gardens, chasing and hunting the glorious animals, and living long and noble lives that ended in quiet, tranquil deaths.
Prometheus discovered that he was not only proud of his handiwork but that he loved them, too. So he became man’s tutor and guided them, teaching them everything they needed to know to flourish, but always avoiding the one bit of forbidden knowledge that Zeus commanded they must never possess: The knowledge and use of fire.
Of course, in the end, Prometheus loved man more than he feared Zeus, so he defied him outright. He snuck up to Olympus, took a bit of the sacred flame, and distributed it to men in his settlements around the globe. Zeus, one evening, happened to look down from Mount Olympus and saw the million campfires and was enraged, and we all know what happened to Prometheus after that. He was chained to a rock and forced to endure an eternity of having his liver devoured by vultures. But Zeus had another punishment in mind for those arrogant humans, and that is where Pandora appears in our story.
At the time, no human women existed, so Zeus called all the gods to conclave and asked them each to contribute a gift to his new creation. Her name was to be Pandora, which means “all gifted.”
Zeus then ordered Hermes to deliver Pandora to the home of Prometheus’s brother, Epimetheus, who is also a friend and champion of the human race. Pandora is the most beautiful woman — and the only woman — in the world, and Epimetheus falls for her instantly. She is quite taken with this glorious Titan, too, and they are soon married. As a wedding gift, Zeus — bent on wicked revenge — presents the bride with a special gift. Mind you; it is not a box, but a jar — a pithos. Erasmus mistranslated Hesiod’s original language in the 15th century, and that mucked up the story for half a millennium.
Though we’ll come back to the idea of “mucking up” stories in a moment, for now, back to the thread of the tale.
As you probably remember, Zeus told Pandora that, though the jar was sealed, there was nothing of value inside. It was utterly empty. Still, no matter what, she was under strict and Godly orders to never, ever open it. Yet, Pandora was as curious a being as existed, and she wondered why the jar must remain sealed. If nothing is in it, then why bother to seal it at all?
Perhaps one of Prometheus’s creations could have let that go, but Pandora had in her the fire of Athena’s mind, Hermes’s native playfulness, Ares’s astounding bravery, and Apollo’s incisive wit. She NEEDED to know.
Still, for weeks and months, she resisted the temptation and followed Zeus’s command, until one night, after a rousing celebration, she gave into her desires and . . .
Hmmmmm.
What DID she do, and why? And what happened then?
According to Hesiod, she opened the jar while her husband slept and released — in a terrifying rush — all the evils of the world into the ether. The world of men in the Golden Age knew no fear, but now illness, murder, deceit, discord, malice, old age, violent death, war, and terror were on the wind.
So sayeth Hesiod. (And, if you want a really rousing version, so sayeth Stephen Fry.)
Yet, in later retellings of the story, it is not the horrors of the world that escape the jar but rather . . . the graces — fairness, mercy, harmony, freedom, happiness, peace, and virtue.
That’s strange, right?
Yet in both versions of the story, when Pandora realizes what she’s done, she reseals the lid and traps one last little spirit inside the jar. She is smaller and slower than the rest to rise, but she is mighty, too.
Pandora traps inside the jar a fluttering of Hope.
When I read Hesiod’s version — along with a modern version by Fry — and compared that to the Renaissance retellings wherein the graces escape, the thing I didn’t know I had been searching for on my flight rose up and pierced my thick skull. But it wasn’t the story itself. Rather, it was the understanding that storytellers are MEANT to change the tale to fit the times in which they live. We’re MEANT to move about the pieces and reinvent the lessons of old into lessons of now, if not for our readers, then for ourselves.
For all the rapidity of changing trends and technology, our modern world holds onto its ossified stories like demon barnacles. We cling to narratives — and hatreds — that are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. So many of us are wedded to old battles, old gods, and old ideologies that we lose our way into the future by constantly checking on the coordinates of the past. And that is nuts.
Mythological systems are made to be rewritten, as are all religions, philosophies, and economic systems. If we’re to hold onto something meaningful of the past, then we must have some freedom to move the pieces about on the board, to reinvent the metaphor, when the need for a new answer arises.
Think about it. Think about how much the story of Pandora changes between Hesiod’s time and the Renaissance — and then changes BACK again over the past five hundred years. In the ancient story, Pandora’s actions — both the jar’s opening and the lid’s closing — are nothing more than arrogance, hubris, and bumbling, stumbling stupidity. She not only releases hell on the earth, she imprisons Hope itself, thereby condemning humanity to nearly endless generations of torment.
(Until Zeus destroys everything in a big flood and starts again, but that’s a different story.)
Then, two thousand years later, in the 1500s, we have the same myth retold. There is the same origin story of Prometheus, Zeus, and the boredom of the Golden Age. Only now, the lesson is inverted to fit the Christian era. In the Renaissance, Pandora opens the jar and lets loose onto the winds, not the world’s evils, but all the unique blessings of the human heart.
She does harm by allowing the graces to scatter to the four corners of the earth, but they are not lost forever. Instead, they must be gathered and tamed, given structure and form. Yet, holding true to the original tale, what remains, clinging to the lip of the jar after Pandora’s sin of disobedience, is a flowering, delicate Hope, the essence of Faith and the predecessor of redemption.
I love both of the stories, but what I learned in my time away is that if I’m gonna make it through the darkness ahead, if any of us are, we need to embrace the freedom and the duty to rewrite the script. And to that end, I’ve drafted a new ending to the story of Pandora and Epimetheus — and it’s how I’m trying to navigate my way back home.
In my version, Pandora isn’t a dupe or a fool. She’s not a sinner or a fallen soul. She’s quick-witted and inquisitive, always tempted by the unknown, the mysterious, and the far away. When a puzzle arises, she is compelled to solve it — Gods and stupid Rules be damned. She is a wanderer through the world, heroic, brave, brash, and bold. She doesn’t fear bearded arrogances up there in clouds, no matter how many lightning bolts they hurl per minute.
Yet, like us all, she is not perfect. She makes mistakes and suffers through the consequences — like she was forced to do after opening that too-damn-tempting jar.
Yet, in my story, when she unseals the lid out of curiosity and a desire to know — when all the horrors escape in a terrible tumult — it sets her bedroom ablaze. At first, she is panicked and afraid, confronted suddenly by the cacophonous chorus of misery, lies, discord, deceit, murder, and war.
She is confronted by Fear — this new thing in the world, and yet she does not lose her composure. She looks first toward the one she loves. She needs to know he is there, and through the churning bat’s wings and black smoke of this seething hell, she sees Epimetheus rushing to her side.
Their eyes meet in the warzone, and they know, for the very first time, the fiery power — the Titanic power — of pure human love, gods and demons be damned. And from that Love — in that very instant — a new force enters the world in the space between their outstretched arms: It is their daughter, Hope.
Her arrival dives out the terrors from the bedroom, scattering those demons to the winds. They are not gone entirely and will never be gone entirely, but they are gone for now, from here. In the silence that follows, Pandora and Epimetheus open their hearts, and each gives this child of light a home. They now know darkness — but also they know that where Love abides, Hope will have a home.
I’m still reeling from the horrors of this world. I’ve not been this afraid and heartbroken for humanity in as long as I can remember. I’m terrified that, unless this war ends soon, it will engulf us all. I have friends in Israel and friends with family in Palestine. I have friends in Egypt and Lebanon, too. I’m frightened for them all and for every one they hold dear. For weeks, that fear has kept me searching around in the past, trying to escape this particular moment in time, and what I’ve found so far isn’t much, but it’s a start: Where Love abides, Hope will have a home.
Or at least that’s the story I’m telling myself so I can sleep at night. If you’ve got a better version, then please, please, please, tell it to me now. Tell it to all of us now. When there’s this much darkness, it’s your duty — our sacred duty — to bring light.
Love and Hope to you all.
