DeConick A.D

29
THE MATRIX OF ANCIENT SPIRITUALITY
Zeus, the king of the Olympians, is not pleased, because these gifts blur
the distinct lines between god and human, diminishing the power differential
between the two races. To draw the lines again, Zeus indentures
humans to serve the gods. Zeus decrees that a portion of every animal
cooked by humans must be given to the gods as food. Prometheus is not
powerful enough to undo Zeus’s decree, but he is able to trick Zeus into
accepting only the bones and fat as the gods’ share of the meal. Zeus
does not take this trick lightly. Angry, he unleashes upon men the guile of
beautiful women like Pandora, and all the evil and suffering in the world
that such women bring.
Yet, in the bottom of Pandora’s box is hope. This is not the bright,
shiny hope of a life blessed with the kiss of the gods but the hope that the
human can ward off the retribution of the gods through submission and
humiliation in the face of the gods’ extreme power. By bowing down to
the limits of the human condition and to the lot of mortality, the human
might be able to stave off divine judgment, at least until after death.
Did anything about the human survive death to be rewarded or punished?
In classical Greek religion, there exist skiai (shadows) of the deceased,
who reside in the underworld after death but who also can wander
in and out of the dreams of the living as ghosts. These are viewed as
images of the deceased, the likenesses of the departed. As time went on,
there developed in Greek religion the concept of an afterlife judgment
that occurs after the deceased have been ferried to the house of Hades. If
the deceased are judged wicked, they are thrown into the pits of Tartarus
or endure endless tortures, such as immersion in a lake with no ability to
ever drink. If the judgment goes well, they are taken to live in the blessed
netherworld fields of Elysium.
The Immortal Soul
By the time of Plato, an innovation in the understanding of the human
being had occurred. The concept of a psyche as something distinct from
the body and immortal had emerged in the Greek world. The idea can
be traced to Pythagoras, who taught that the soul enters the body with
a child’s first breath. It comes from a heavenly realm, and after death it
returns to live in the upper atmosphere, within the Milky Way, or re incarnates
in another body, if purity of soul has not yet been achieved.