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The last couple of occult posts have been looking at Prometheus - the figure from Greek myth who morphed into a complex symbol human vanity and technological arrogance in the modern globalist world. Until now, we've focused on his ancient Greek roots to get a sense of where he came from, and what we found was interesting [click for part 1 and part 2]. Like Greek myth in general, there is no one canonical account of who Prometheus was and what he did. His ancestry doesn't change - he's always the same Titan, but his role certainly does. This gives us a figure with different attributes and identifiers that can be interpreted in different ways. And this will make him an ideal symbol in the future, because without a fixed identity, he is adaptable.
Jean-Simon Berthélemy and Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse, Prometheus Creating Man in the Presence of Athena, 1802, repainted 1826, fresco, Louvre Museum
There are a few key details - originally from different sources - that combine into the post-Classical Prometheus. The creation of man, teaching man the arts, stealing the fire...
Nicolas-Sébastien Adam, Prometheus Bound, 1762, marble, Louvre Museum
... and the terrible punishment with the liver-eating eagle are the main plot points.
But what these "mean" depends on the context. This post will consider the meaning of Prometheus after the end of the Classical period.
Greek art and thought was taken up by the Romans who absorbed it into their own culture. This started with the conquest of Magnia Grecia - the Greek colonies in the south of Italy, and really took off after Greece itself was absorbed into the empire.
Thomas Allom, The Sack of Corinth, 1870, oil on canvas, private collection
The utter destruction of Corinth in 146 BC ended the Achaean War and brought completed the conquest of Greece. This coming in the same year at the destruction of Carthage brought most of the Mediterranean under Roman control.
But by the time of the Roman conquest, Greece had already changed a lot. The tight, exclusive city-states of the Classical era had been replaced by the vast Hellenistic empires of Alexander's followers, and Greek culture had mingled with the civilizations of the Middle East. This included the mythology.
The Hellenistic World, 40 years before the conquest of Greece. Greek culture had spread across the ancient world in the wake of Alexander, while bringing foreign influences into what had been a small, exclusive society.
One thing about ancient myths is that the lack of a scriptural canon like the Bible made them adaptable. New cults and traditions were easy to integrate - sometimes combining them with Greek counterparts, and sometimes just adding them. After the Roman conquest this continued, and the Greek Olympians essentially became the Roman pantheon with some changes. Other gods flourished as well - Egyptian Isis was really popular, both in her native form and in hybrid ones. Mithras was a variant on a Persian god who attracted a big following in Rome.
Altar of the twelve gods, marble, 1st century AD, Louvre Museum
The Di Consentes, or 12 major Roman gods on an "altar" of unknown use. These more or less correspond to the Greek Olympians. Roman religion was different from Greek overall. The details aren't well known, but it seems more complex in terms of ritual and social dimensions.
Given the close relationship between Greek and Roman myth, it isn't surprising to see Prometheus carry over. It's worth a quick look, because it's the Roman adaptation of Greek culture rather than Greek culture itself that makes the first impact on Western culture. Ovid's Metamorphoses is a good place to start. This poetic recap of Greco-Roman mythology starts with the creation of the world and runs through the Trojan War and into Roman times (click for an interactive translation). It defies easy classification, and its main theme - transformation - seems to fit mainly with Ovid's own literary interests. It's also very concise. But we are thinking about the future, and Ovid's poem is one of the most influential works in the Western tradition. So it's worth checking out what he says about Prometheus.
Antonio Tempesta, Titlepage to Ovid's Metamorphoses, 1606, etching, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The eroticism and violence likely accounts for the popularity because the stories aren't that good. The literature of the Christian Middle Ages didn't have anything quite like Roman libertinism. And the classical origins made it "legitimate" in the Renaissance.
Ovid's creation story is much less definitive than the Greek ones - he doesn't even identify the god that shapes the world out of chaos. Like in this quote: "whichever god it was had ordered and divided the mass, and collected it into separate parts, he first gathered the earth into a great ball so that it was uniform on all sides". .
This continues into the creation of man. He gives us an origin story where he can't pin down the origin:
"Then Humankind was born. Either the creator god, source of a better world, seeded it from the divine, or the newborn earth just drawn from the highest heavens still contained fragments related to the skies, so that Prometheus, blending them with streams of rain, moulded them into an image of the all-controlling gods. While other animals look downwards at the ground, he gave human beings an upturned aspect, commanding them to look towards the skies, and, upright, raise their face to the stars."
The historical accounts tell us Ovid was a libertine - a man of the world rather than faith - and this quote certainly bears that out. But what's interesting is the absence of details - no Jupiter (the Roman Zeus), fire, the eagle - any of it. Remembering that Ovid is a poet not a mythographer, we have to view his language as more evocative than it appears. The "raising their face to the stars" references human intellect and consciousness compared to the animals and can be interpreted as a reference summing up the ingenuity that Prometheus teaches in the older stories. But that still doesn't give us Jupiter or the punishment.
Annamare, The Awakening of the First Elves at Cuiviénen, 2016, digital art
Looking to the stars as a sign of higher concsiousness reminds of Tolkien's elves awakening in The Silmarillion. They also represent higher consciousness. Applicability.
Ovid actually changes the Greek account of the Ages of Man to the Etruscan hybrid popular in Rome. Here, Jupiter doesn't preside over all of them, and his overthrow of his father Saturn (Roman Kronos) is a net negative for humanity. The Golden Age was the Age of Saturn, when everything was perfect, while Jupiter brings the Silver Age. This is still better than it will get, but the world is a harder and less hospitable place under Jupiter's rule.
Part of this is political - the pleasure-loving Ovid found himself at cross-purposes with the Emperor Augustus' push to restore Roman morality and religion and use them to unify imperial culture. The emperor had come to power through civil war and tried to create a common set of values and beliefs in his polyglot territory - a new "national" culture. We know this sort of top-down imperialist effort is impossible, but that didn't stop him from trying.
Augustus as Pontifex Maximus, around 10-1 BC, Greek and Italic marble, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome
Augustus as the high priest of Rome's complicated civic religion. Showcasing his own piety was supposed to be inspiring.
It was Virgil who Augustus' poet of choice and who proved greater and more influential writer than even Ovid. His epic The Aeneid is a far superior literary creation than The Metaporphoses and one of the foundational works in the Western canon.
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Livia, Octavia and Augustus, 1812, oil on canvas, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse
Octavia (Augustus' wife) faints at the mention of her dead son Marcellus, who Livia (Augustus' sister) is believed to have had killed. Advisors Agrippa and Maecenas seem concerned and the lighting captures the tension. Ingres straddled classicism and romanticism - classical precision and heightened emotion
The Aeneid tells a story of persistence, civic virtue, and the divinely-ordained coming of the stable Roman empire. The idea was to foreshadow the rightness of Augustus' own rule by linking him back to the ancient history of the Trojan hero Aeneas. In this context, Jupiter is the supreme power, a stable cosmic ruler who justly determines the course of fate - both Aeneas' founding of Rome, its imperial ascendancy, and rule of Augustus.
Pompeo Batoni, Aeneas Fleeing from Troy, 1753, Galleria Sabauda, Turin
Aeneas' fate is directed by the gods, from his dramatic escape from Troy, through all his adventures, and the founding of Rome. His divine mother Venus watches over his and intercedes with Jupiter on his behalf.
Ovid's poem is about the opposite of stability and divine sanction - the inevitability of change and the certainty that all things must pass. The way he downplays the role of Jupiter fits with this. It isn't surprising that a notorious playboy best known for his love poems and writings on the erotic arts would be at odds with the emperor's push for public morality. Augustus eventually exiled Ovid in 8 AD to the Black Sea outpost of Tomis where he lived out the rest of his life.
Eugène Delacroix, Ovid among the Scythians, 1862, oil on paper on wood, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Historically, the semi-civilized Scythians warmly welcomed the gifted poet - a contrast with the Romans. But Delacroix captures Ovid's dismay at the loss of his urban home.
Virgil doesn't take up the story of Prometheus other than a brief mention of the theft in the 6th Eclogue, but his version of Jupiter - even-tempered divine lord of the universe - will become the model for later Christian allegories of divine rule. If you're wondering why the monstrous Zeus of the Greek myths went, this is the answer. By the same token, Ovid's Prometheus - the maker of man without the other details - becomes a model for the future. The theft and punishment don't go away, but Prometheus as creator is central to later allegory.
And allegories move to the center of things with the coming of Christianity.
The Good Shepherd, 425, mosaic, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna
Christianity used allegory from the start. Most commonly to represent a concept of divinity not seen in the ancient world - as in the Good Shepherd as a symbol of Jesus.
Sarcophagus of Jonah, around 300, marble, Vatican Museum.
Or to link Old and New Testaments together through what is called typology - Old Testament figures as types of New ones. Like Jonah as an allegory of Jesus, or Lazarus in the upper left of the detail.
The allegorical is the main method of interpreting Prometheus in the post-antique world, although it takes a while to develop. In early Christianity, there are two main approached - an early form of the allegorical and what is called the euhemerist. The first kind takes the gods and myths as symbolic references to Christian things. The second interprets them as real people who did great things and who came to be mythologized over time.
The roots of the first appear during Roman antiquity, in the writings of "satirist" and king gamma Lucian of Samosata (c. 125-200 AD). Lucian drips with the smug "wit" that in modern terms recalls tipped fedoras. His "Prometheus on Caucasus" foreshadows Prometheus as Christ-figure by describing him as "crucified", rather than bound [click for text]. Crucifixion was a common punishment in Rome, but Lucian had dabbled in and satirized Christianity, so he was probably clear on the reference. It's not much of an allegory, but an influential antique source foreshadowing the Luciferian comparison between Prometheus and Jesus.
William Faithorne, Lucian, the Satirist, 17th century engraving, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington
Here's the the punishment and a taste of the wit (click for the link):
"Though, upon my word, I blush for Zeus when I name it: to think that he should be so touchy about trifles, as to send off a God of my quality to crucifixion, just because he found a little bit of bone in his share!"
Prometheus puts his nose in the Christian tent with the Patristic writers, or Fathers of the early Church. We find versions of both interpretations here, although the allegorical ones are much less favorable than they will become. Take Clement of Alexandria - a writer typical of Alexandrian school of theology based in the legendary center of Hellenistic learning in northern Egypt. Alexandria was home to the greatest library in the ancient works, and the universalist outlook on knowledge was a forerunner to modern globalism. The Alexandrine exegetes (Bible interpreters) were open to Neoplatonic and other pagan interpretations, and Clement has been credited with introducing Greek allegorical interpretation to Christian theology. The idea is that the literal meaning of the Bible conceals deeper symbolic ones.
Illustration of the Great Library of Alexandria.
The bigoted, ignorant, anti-Christian retards blathering accusations about a "destruction" of the library that evidence indicates never happened would be funny were it not motivated by vicious wickedness. The Serapeum - a smaller library - may have been destroyed when Bishop Theophilus razed of the Temple of Serapis - but even this lacks evidence.
The story comes from Gibbon - a "Father of History" and liar who fabricated the charge.. There were other fake politically-motivated accusations, but Gibbon's stuck because it fit the Enlightenment narrative and 18th-century evidentiary standards were abysmal.
Clement originates an idea that will be big centuries later in the Renaissance - that philosophy foreshadowed Christianity to the Greeks as the Law of the Old Testament did for the Jews. While there are structural similarities in Christian and pagan thought - the Logos of the Gospel of John derives from Greek origins - Clement's equating of human thought and divine revelation is fundamentally un-Christian. It just appeals to human vanity in the same way that 'do what thou wilt' does. It also gives a sense of the free-wheeling attitude towards scripture in the Alexandrine School.
Michelangelo, Delphic Oracle, 1508-12, fresco, detail of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Vatican
He is harder on Greek wisdom than the Renaissance will be, because the Renaissance had centuries more luciferianism to draw on. It;s how you get sibyls like the Delphic Oracle on the Sistine Chapel ceiling between Hebrew prophets and the ancestors of Christ.
Clement describes Greek myth and philosophy as "plagiarism" of Biblical truth - a second-rate echo debased and poorly understood. Prometheus stealing fire becomes an allegory for this plagiarism - this pallid crappy copy in the first book of his Stromata (click for link, Prometheus is in Chpt. 17).
"There is then in philosophy, though stolen as the fire by Prometheus, a slender spark, capable of being fanned into flame, a trace of wisdom and an impulse from God. Well, be it so that the thieves and robbers are the philosophers among the Greeks, who from the Hebrew prophets before the coming of the Lord received fragments of the truth..."
Creation of Adam, finished by 1143, mosaic, Palatine Chapel, Palermo, Sicily
"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Genesis 2:7 (KJV)
The "dust" was likened to the clay in the Prometheus story.
Prometheus and Athena create the first man, detail from a Roman sepulchral relief of around 185, marble, Museo del Prado, Madrid
In the myth, the goddess Minerva adds the soul to the body Prometheus forms, while in the Bible, God provides both. But the images make it clear how similar the imagery in the accounts are. It's this similarity that made it easy to claim Prometheus was a debased copy of or allegory for divine creation.
Tertullian (c. 155-240) is more orthodox in his interpretations than Clement, including a more restrained approach to allegory. Unlike the free-wheeling and borderline occult Alexandrines, he mostly uses allegory as a way to link the two Testaments, and rejects it if it is not consistent with the literal meaning. This is much closer to standard typological exegesis, where the literal comes first and the figurative meanings build on that. Tertullian does away with Clement's idea of plagiarism and created a more directly allegorical connection between God and Prometheus. One example appears in Chapter 18 of his Apology" (click for the link), where he refers to God as "the true Prometheus who gave order to the world by arranging the seasons and their course".
Limbourg brothers, creation detail from Les Très Belles Heures de Notre-Dame, fol. 240, 1390-1410, tempera on vellum, Bibliothèque nationale de France, NAL 3093
Of all the Patristics, Lactantius (c. 250 - c. 325) most clearly connects the notion of Prometheus as a Christian allegorical error to the euhemerist concept of a real origin. This is found in Book II (Of the Origin of Error), Chapter 11 of his Divine Institutes (click for the link):
"The poets also have not given a different account respecting this formation of man, however they may have corrupted it; for they said that man was made by Prometheus from clay. They were not mistaken in the matter itself, but in the name of the artificer..." "...Prometheus made the image of a man of rich and soft clay, and that he first originated the art of making statues and images... And thus the truth was corrupted by falsehood; and that which was said to have been made by God began also to be ascribed to man, who imitated the divine work. But the making of the true and living man from clay is the work of God."
This brings a lot together. Prometheus' creation is an erroneous version of the real creation that gets the making from clay right, but credits the wrong maker. But the source of the error isn't corrupted Hebrew wisdom, but the deification of a notable man - Prometheus was actually the inventor of sculpture. Over time, this kernel of truth was blown up into the claim that he invented mankind.
The Creation of Man by Prometheus, 3rd century AD, Roman marble relief, Louvre Museum
He even looks like a sculptor. This relief is pretty much contemporary with Lactantius. It's easy to see how the euhemerist account would be compelling.
The euhemerist idea - Prometheus was a real guy misrepresented over time - is carried into the Middle Ages by the great encyclopedist and compiler Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636). Isidore wasn't known for his original thought as much as his immense efforts to gather the legacy of ancient knowledge and preserve and transmit it. He is best kown for his Etymologiae, the first Christian attempt at a summa or compilation of ancient knowledge, and his text involves hundreds of classical sources.
Table of contents from a 9th-century version of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies from Northern France, British Library Harley MS 2686, f. 5r
The myth that the Renaissance "recovered ancient learning" is irritating. It focused on certain forms of ancient writing, but the West was trafficking in ancient knowledge since shortly after the collapse of the Western Empire. They just didn't treat it as an end in itself, but as something practical.
The British Library has made a lot of progress digitizing their huge collection of medieval manuscripts. This is a significant contribution to the history of the West and a nice change from the usual converged nonsense. Note the Germanic animal style interlace in the big D.
Isidore included Prometheus in his Chronicon, a brief world history from around 616 (click for link. Prometheus appears in the "Third Age" section). His perspective is the euhemerist one he includes him with other ancient founders of arts that became mistaken for Gods. This is typical of the earlier medieval attitude - the interest isn't in turning Prometheus into some kind of allegory for higher truth. Just accounting for what was believed, and offering a possible explanation for the origins.
This changes in the later Middle Ages. By this time, an established aristocracy has grown up in Europe, adding an internationalist parasite culture that prefigures the globalist elites in important ways. This is something we're exploring in the regular Band posts - for our purposes here it is enough to note a few key features.
Limbourg brothers, Household of John, Duke of Berry Exchanging New Year Gifts, detail from January page in the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, f.1v., tempera on vellum, Condé Museum
It made sense in the early Middle Ages for villagers to feed and work for a local lord and his men who would shelter and protect them in times of trouble. But the bloated courtly teat-riders of the later medieval courts contributed little more than supporting service economies geared around luxe tastes. Which isn't nothing, but it isn't optimal either. Think of the high-end shopping street in any world city for a decent modern analogy.
Limbourg brothers, detail from Octtober page in the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, f.10v., tempera on vellum, Condé Museum
Money is sucked out of rational economies and burned on the inflated rents and costs of the elite district. Consider the relative impact of the cost of Davos vs. leaving that money in the local economies where it came from.
But worse than economic predation is the moral degenracy. The aristocracy, like elites anywhere, were a closed-off group wallowing in unearned wealth and privilege and outside any social standards of decency. In other words, pretty much free to do what they wilt. But they were also seen as aspirational, in that ordinary people wanted to be like them. This made their corrupt culture appealing and influential. Just as it is now.
Court of the God of Love, early 14th century, ivory, traces of polychromy, Louvre Museum
Ivory was a high value item and the carvings celebrate carnal love for its own sake. That it is the back of a mirror takes it up another level. It is a lovely object, but everything about it captures the de-moralized hedonism of the late medieval elites. That is seems tamely innocent today is just proof that slippery slopes are real.
It's the luxe appetites of the late medieval elites that undermined moral standards, but they were way less far along the debauchery curve than modern elites. The arts that they blew money on were really high quality, unlike the mixture of self-loathing pretension and money laundering of today's trash culture. It gave us the art movement known as the International Gothic that was known for refined courtly beauty. Religious art was aesthecized and secular subjects came onto the scene in a significant way.
The Virgin of Jeanne d'Evreux, between 1324 and 1339, gilded silver, stones, pearls, and enamels, Louvre, Paris
Jeanne d'Evreux was Queen of France when she donated this golden idol to the Royal Abbey of St. Denis. The elegant pose, tender expressions, and luxury materials are all typical of the International Gothic. It is beautiful and has a religious purpose. But it is also conspicuous consumption - excess for the sake of excess.
If this is the context for religious art, it's not surprising to see the return of Ovid. Although not in his original form. The moral slide wasn't far enough along for that.
The Ovide Moralisé was an early 14th century Burgundian French translation and interpretation of the Metamorphoses that was six times longer than the original. Ovid's verses - many scandalous to medieval Christian morality - were given lengthy glosses to turn them into "allegories" and make them more acceptable. It's an early version of the courtly art collectors that covered their walls in painted soft-core that was ok because they were "Venuses" and mythology was highbrow. Here's a version from 150 years later to show how popular this remained. Notice the title - the Bible of Poets. The claim that Ovid was a source of legitimate moral wisdom is boldly stated with a direct analogy to the Bible. Click for a link to an extensive coverage of the imagery.
How the companions of Ulysses are turned into Pigs by Circe and how Ulysses defeats the enchantment by his prudence, from La Bible des poëtes, Métamorphose d'Ovide moralisée byThomas Walleys, translated by Colard Mansion, Paris: Antoine Vérard, 1493-94.
The allegorical moral applies the basic Classical idea that man has two parts or directions - a base animal nature and a higher spiritual one. The transformation into pigs represents the degradation to the animal aspect when he gives in to the passions. Prudence and restraint - as shown by Odysseus - is the path to our higher nature. Then we recall the Circe story from the Odyssey...
Battista Franco Veneziano, The Story of Circe and Odysseus, 1550s, oil on panel, Palace Museum in Wilanów
We are less clear whether the "prudence" that gives the moral weight includes the married Odysseus "dallying" with Circe for a year and fathering an illegitimate son. On the other hand, this fits perfectly with the "courtly love" moral inversion popular with late medieval aristocrats.
This is why the we describe the "moralizing" as a thin fig leaf to cover the celebration of dyscivic immorality.
Limbourg brothers, February page from the Tres Riches Heures du duc de Berry f.2v., between 1412 and 1416, illumination on vellum, Condé Museum
Dyscivic because monogamous family households were the basis of medieval social stability. The abolition of cousin marriage - outside the aristocracy of course - drove improvements in genetic stock. Here's an aristocratic picture of a late medieval peasant household getting through the winter.
The hedonistic crap represented by Ovid shows the aristocrats felt unbound by morality or social good and free to do what they wilt. When this trickles into the public, modern de-moralized trash culture is the end result.
This is a very different kind of allegory than the errors of Clement or Turtullian. The Patristics were writing at the end of antiquity - often to pagan readers - and were explaining old beliefs in new terms. The premise is that Ovid's verses contain Biblical and moral wisdom and are worth reading for their educational value. They didn't but that's the point - the moralizing was a completely made-up fiction intended to get Ovid back into circulation. The Ovide Moralisé was a deliberate revival and rehabilitation of long buried erotic pagan mythology. There was neither reason nor demand for it other than the desire of aristocrats for titilation. It was totally cynical. Which is why it is such a great example of aristocratic immorality and a very gentle bellweather of the secularizing hedonistic elite culture to come.But it put Ovid back on top of the medieval bestseller lists over a millennium after his exile.
And look... Prometheus!
Creation and Animation by God and Prometheus, Ovide Moralisé, early 14th century, Lyons, Bibliothèque de la Ville MS. 742
As a surprise to no one, Prometheus is presented as an allegory of divine creation - not as a mistake in information or identity, but a foreshadowing of truth. Something worthy of consideration as a representation of God in Christian terms. If pagan morality can slip in under the cover of ancient sexual attitudes, why can't the fake creator become a sign of the real one? It isn't hard to see how this creates an easy pathway from "augmenting" wisdom to potentially replacing it.
The Ovide Moralisé foreshadows the Renaissance treatment of antiquity as an end in itself, but at least maintains the illusion that is is just allegorizing. Then when we get to the actual Renaissance - an Italian cultural movement that started in the mid-14th century and completely inverted moral priorities.
Michelangelo, David, 1501-1504, marble, Accademia, Florence
The David is stunning - a masterpiece of technical brilliance and expression. But the venue - an Old Testament prophet and hero of the Church is totally inappropriate for a classical nude. The Band has no problem with nudes in art per se. It's the idea of deliberately adding carnal and often homoerotic allure to religious subjects in the name of "antiquity" that blurs moral boundaries. Why does ancient Roman statuary become an "authority" for Christian themes?
This is an ususual take - the Renaissance is usually held up as a great leap forward in human progress. But that's the point - the progress is the path of materialism, de-moralization, and literally impossible human self-deification. The tell is the inversion - the replacement of an integrated medieval Christian world view with a morally-bankrupt pagan antiquity. If you're interested in a long regular Band post on Renaissance inversion, click for the link. We'll be looking deeper at it in the roots of the West series after a few posts.
For now, a brief excerpt from leading 15th-century Neoplatonist, synchronist, and occultist Marsilio Ficino will have to do - this from the opening to his De Christiana Religione [On the Christian Religion]. Guess what - it isn't all that Christian...
You can see the corruption in the first paragraphs. "Will" and "intellect" as paths to divine Wisdom? Not what isn't there - faith. The one indispensible thing from a Christian perspective. And his authority? Plato.
Look closer and you realize that he is doing that luciferian-Gnostic thing where humans power their own divination. Will and intellect are things that you determine. To an actual Christian, salvation is a divine gift. A reward for faith. Beyond understanding how to behave morally, "intellect" has nothing to do with it. We'll look at this heretic when the roots of the arts series get here.
The Renaissance Prometheus, will be the subject for the next occult post as we follow him into the modern age. For now we'll wrap up with a transitional figure - the early Renaissance humanist Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75) who wrote a treatise on Classical myths and set the stage for the Prometheus to come.
Boccaccio's Geneology of the Pagan Gods was written to combine the pagan and Christian into a unified set of wisdom. We don't have Patristic error - allegorical or eumhemeristic - or even the thin justification for worldly pleasure. This treats the pagan as a source of real wisdom - pointing to Christian truth, but containing value and truth on its own.
Genealogical tree from Giovanni Boccaccio, Genealogia deorum gentilium, 1388 parchment codex copy from Venice, British Library, Egerton 1865 f26.
Boccaccio was original for his use of genealogical trees to try and sort out the relationship between the pagan gods. This was adapted from the Biblical notion of the Tree of Jesse or ancestry of Jesus and is typical of his muddying the waters between Christian and pagan wisdom.
He claimed the gods were spawned by a fake entity called "Demogorgon" that never existed. It seems to have been a scribal error regarding Plato's demiurge - the generative force below the Forms that made the world and became central in Gnostic thought. This is interesting for the accidental insight it give us about the gods in the Renaissance.
Demogorgon hangs around for a while, but the connection to the Demiurge - the notion that the gods represent entities in the cosmic hierarchy - is more important. This was an old Platonic idea - Plato was trying to explain them away within the terms of his philosophical system, but Plato also will come back in the Renaissance as a legitimate authority. Boccaccio wasn't a Platonist - he was too soon for that, since Plato really only became a central focus in the mid-15th century, but his Prometheus foreshadows what's to come.
That is, "Classical wisdom" as a parallel alternative path to Truth to Christian faith.
Friedrich Heinrich Füger, Prometheus Bringing Fire to Mankind, 1817, oil on canvas, Neue Galerie, Kassel, Germany
For Boccaccio, the stolen fire represents divine wisdom that Christians and pagans recognized as necessary to raise the human above the animal and towards it's own divine nature. Only is isn't a "wisdom" that comes through faith and revelation. It is a consequence of human philosophical striving that foreshadows the Ficino quote mentioned above.
When we think of Prometheus as a symbol of self-elevation through wisdom, we taking a first step on the occult path of becoming your own god. That is the Prometheus-Lucifer parallel we see in modernity.
By this account, the eagle becomes the symbol of the suffering that attaining divine wisdom brings a fallen human - the wisdom draws us upward, but we are tormented by the inability of our mortal bodies to fulfill the potential of our higher selves. The punishment isn't the psychopathy of a cosmic madman, but one more limitation to be overcome through a mastery of occult learning.
Giuseppe Baldrighi, Hercules Liberating Prometheus, late 18th century, oil on canvas, Galleria Nazionale, Parma
So the eventually freeing of Prometheus and the killing of the eagle represents our final ascent into enlightened wisdom and the overcoming of this limited human nature.
Boccaccio doesn't offer it up as the alternative to knowledge through faith - that bit of incoherence only comes later. But the basic structure is there for every Gnostic, pen of light wielding moron to come.
So the modern Prometheus starts to shuffle into view in Boccaccio's treatment. It's not as clear as it will be, but we can see how the Renaissance love of antiquity opened the potential for paganism - that is, an internally derived human path - to lead to divine wisdom. One where human powers replace faith and divinity as the road to abstract Truth.
And that's the key - the humanists will swoon for Plato, but Plato's Prometheus was an allegory of human wisdom - techne or technical knowledge below the higher wisdom represented by Zeus. It drew on the older notion that Prometheus gave fire, the means of life, or taught technology. Boccaccio's based his version on the later idea of Prometheus as creator, and allegorized him as the source of divine wisdom. See the shift? It's our old friend secular transcendence - the moronic fiction that transcendent things are attainable by limited human minds, and the source of all the de-moralized trash culture, fake enlightenment "truths" and occult garbage that the Band has been pushing against since the start. Like magic, what was technical knowledge becomes divine - humanity is divinized - and Prometheus is the poster boy.
It is logically impossible and incoherent, but so is modern secularism and the luciferian do what thou wilt b.s. that serves as its morality. The next post will bring us there.
Piero di Cosimo, The Myth of Prometheus: Prometheus Fashions the First Man, 1515, oil on panel, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
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