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The last few occult posts have been tracing the figure of Prometheus from his ancient roots in order to understand his meaning in modern times. Modern Prometheus is a symbol of human vanity - specifically the fake notion of Progress! or the delusion that we can bank on endless growth and technical improvement in a finite environment. Or the idea that human intellect alone can make us masters over reality. A luciferian sort of figure, but without the identity confusion with Satan and more overt suffering at the hands of a divine tyrant.
P. J. Lynch, Lucifer the Light Carrier, 2011, watercolor
Lucifer is a Biblical one-off that seems to reference Satan and the Fall of the Rebel Angels. The idea of the bright morning star does align with the first among the heavenly host cast down for placing his own finite awareness above the cosmic order. Not much to build on, but a handful of wicked, decitful, and/or stupid have tried to take this passage and imagine him as something else. An empowering rebel who enlightens humanity. Prometheus the fire-bringer plugs into the same formula but without the need to explain away the satanic associations.
In this case, Lucifer/Satan is reimagined as a symbol of the objectively false myth that finite human minds can grasp transcendent truths about the nature of reality. Modernism was build on this gibberish. And look where it's brought us.
There is a reason why the Band is constantly looking not just at what we can know, but how. Liars will spout anything that tickles vanity. Assessing logic and argument is a way to smoke out nonsense. Like morons who reject the Bible because they don't like it, but use it as a source for bits of information that they do.
Torches are an occult something that will get a closer look in the near future.
We also noted how the meaning of Prometheus changed over antiquity and the Middle Ages. There are basic parameters - the theft of fire, the creation of man, the bringer of knowledge, the torture by the eagle - but not all appear in any one account. Myths had no solid scriptural foundation so they shifted and changed even in ancient times. In later ones they were pretty much free-floating symbols to be used however the user wanted.
Giuseppe Collignon, Prometheus Steals Fire from Apollo's Sun Chariot, 1814, ceiling mural, Palazzo Pitti, Florence
Like this painting. It has a traditional Classical style, but changes the myth from Prometheus stealing from Zeus to stealing from Apollo. Probably because it makes for a more dramatic picture.
The last post looked mainly at medieval Prometheus, and how he became associated with pagan error. The euhemerist error - he was a real innovator who got mistaken for a god over time - and the theological one - divine creation was real but he didn't do it. These could be combined as well. But at the end of the Middle Ages, we saw the early humanist Boccaccio come up with a different take. Prometheus isn't the real creator, but he represents pre-Christian wisdom about the nature of creation.
Prometheus constructs the first man from a 16th century French translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book I, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 117, fol. 9r.
Renaissance illumination where Prometheus creates man in a location that resembles the Creation in Genesis. A garden type setting, surrounded by beasts, sun and moon in the sky, the land and the waters, the firmament above... It's Ovid, but it would be easy to take as a traditional Creation of Adam painting without the labels.
The Christian attitude to the past was based on the notion that the Old Testament foreshadowed the New. That Jesus' new covenant was prefigured allegorically in the old Law. The thing about that though is that the Bible has a unique place in Christian thought. Once it was assembled into its final form, it's the closest thing to God's direct communique that we have. And the Old Testament is unique among pre-Christian sources for having this foreshadowing status.
Tree of Jesse Window with Reclining Jesse, King David, and Scenes from the Life of Jesus, from Swabia, Germany 1280–1300, pot-metal glass, vitreous paint, and lead, Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Tree of Jesse - a common medieval image - depicts Jesus' maternal lineage as a family tree. This one includes the Christian salvation foretold in the Old Testament ancestry. Note the prophets who did the foretelling with their prophecies between the larger scenes.
It's a pretty interesting version. You can see how the artist integrated the tree trunk with the Cross to make the connection more obvious.
The Ascension is also a nice touch, with just the feet showing as Jesus rises heavenward.
The Old Testament is part of the Christian story. The Christians were the people of the Old Covenant who recognized Jesus as Messiah, while the pharisees and their followers were those who didn't. The notion of bringing the word to the Gentiles and opening up the faith came later - prior to the apostolic period, the gentiles are simply pagans. The last post looked at how the early Christian patristics dismissed their views as erroneous half-truths - at best poorly plagiarized from the Old Testament prophets and swept away by the Christian revelation that followed.
This changes in the Renaissance. Because some guys decided it should.
Seriously.
Michelangelo, Delphic Oracle, 1508-1512, fresco, Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Like the pagan Oracle of Delphi on the Sistine Chapel between ancestors of Jesus (left and below) and an Old Testament scene (right). Many of the early Christian writers promoted the idea that elements of Christian truth were uttered by the sibyls to prepare the gentile lands for salvation. But they are extra-Biblical and theologically not of the same status at the Hebrew prophets.
This post was going to overview post-Medieval Prometheus and see if we could get to modern times. But looking at the Renaissance made us aware of a certain pattern of inversion that is not obvious on the surface, but is fundamentally satanic. And since the point of the occult posts is to dig into how evil works, it seemed worthwhile to look more closely at this. We'll get as far as we can, but what matters is what Prometheus can show us about about deeper patterns of human error. And Renaissance Prometheus foreshadows a whopper in the inversion of the moral structure of the West.
Or we can sidestep the Lucifer identity crisis and jump right to satanic inversion. One that turns Prometheus into a secular replacement for sacred revelation, only rooted in human vanity and belief in self-deification.
Literally putting man in the place of God. It's subtle - not as clear as it will become, but once you see it, the rest follows.
So how does this relate to the occult?
It is true that the occult simply refers to secrets, but simplistic definitions hide usage, and usage comes before dictionaries. When a modern person is referring to the occult, they aren't thinking about keeping the lid on a surprise party or hiding the Christmas presents. It's a kind of secret knowledge about the nature of reality behind the surface, and one generally connected to the supernatural in some way. Mainly using the supernatural to manipulate reality. It relates to esoteric, but more like a subset - the esoteric is broader and covers all sorts of bizarre "sciences". Magic, spiritualism, and demonology are typical forms of occultism. But they all share two key features:
1. some sort of inversion - moral, logical, and/or natural. The notion that the path to supernatural power or enlightenment is the inverse of what is empirically, rationally, or spiritually true. Satanist symbols are a particularly dull-witted illustration, where they just take things with Christian connotations and turn them upside-down or use things that Christians view as negative.
2. destruction of boundaries or distinctions. That things that are different "secretly" aren't. This is where it comes closest to modern secular materialism, despite it seeming like the two should be completely different. Both oppose distinctions and hierarchies for the myth of human empowerment to do what thou wilt. The differences are superficial - what boundaries to destroy, how to destroy them, and who gets the do as they wilt.
You can see both in this image:
Grand Rosicrucian Alchemical Formula from Museum Hermeticum Reformatum et Amplificatum, 1678, in Manly P. Hall. An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy, San Francisco, 1928
The inversion is intrinsic in the concept that silly symbols allow humans direct access to the mind of God. It shouldn't take more than a few seconds to see how upside-down that is.
The denial of boundaries is connected - there's no meaningful division between the physical and metaphysical. But there's also the moronic "balance" - no ethical or rational ordering of different things. And somehow this leveling out of meaningful distinction is supposed to lead "upward"? The occult is as stupid as it is evil.
The Band stretches the boundaries a little because we look at the structures behind occult thinking, and this often brings us into more mainstream areas. Western morality is Christian, and from that perspective occultism is a subset of evil, which is founded on inversion. Not all inversion / evil is occultic - many secularists deny the existence of the supernatural, yet promote things that actively invert empirical observation and logic. The lines are blurry.
Purportedly materialist elites engage in occult-seeming practices like ritual and gematria. The abortion slaughter in the name of convenience is indistinguishable from a vast cult of Moloch from a distance. Popular culture uses occult images and structures with an unconvincing wink.
Like this gem from Taylor Swift. Idiots will defend this on grounds of creative expression. What they never answer is why, with all the creative options out there, does it always come back to inversion, perversion, and evil? To anyone seeking to wave this away, that isn't a rhetorical question.
Though the middle one does look more like bathroom distress...
This is why we focus on deeper structures rather than the impossible task of proving who "really means" what. Surface obfuscation is a big part of how liars lie. But by their fruits shall we know them. And the more fundamental the inversion, the more profoundly evil the occult secret.
So Renaissance Prometheus.
First of all, it is important to note that not all Renaissance myths had to have a moralizing dimension. According to this book by Dennis Geronimus, pleasure, in the imagery or storytelling were often the primary motivator of mythological pictures.
Titian, Danaë, 1545-1546, oil on canvas, National Museum of Capodimonte
The first of five versions the famous Renaissance painter made of Zeus coming to one of his many adulterous affairs in disguise. Other than the putative subject, everything about this is for visual pleasure. From the reclining nude to the rich colors and textures of the paint. "Humanism" as aristocratic softcore.
According to Geronimus the best examples combined both. The sensory appeal of an exotic, imaginary image and the intellectual stimulation of classical reference. He is writing specifically about 16th-century painter Piero di Cosimo, who we saw at the end of the last Prometheus post. Titian with his seductive nudes was a far more popular painter, but in the polite society of the earlier Renaissance, lip service still had to be paid to intellectual content.
Piero di Cosimo, Perseus Freeing Andromeda, 1510 -1515, oil on panel, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Like this picture combining a good knowledge of the myth with fantastic elements and details.
You can already see the fruit of the pagan "rehabilitations" from the last post - the Ovide moralisé then Boccaccio's allegory - bearing their fruit. In the Renaissance, mythological idiocy from antiquity became a sign of culture and learning. According to Geronimus, the tales were a source of sensory and intellectual pleasure - entertainment, plus a way for windbags to impress a crowd of aristocratic parasites with their knowledge of irrelevant lies from the distant past. Though he puts it more gently. But really, what's the difference between that blend of spectacle and nonsense trivia and reactions to Hollywood today? Same mix of eye candy and ultimately worthless factoids - entertainment and fake erudition - to fritter away time.
And it's not the average person driving the occult...
An astrologer shows the future kings of France to Catherine de Medici, 18th century engraving from Eugène Defrance, Catherine de Médicis, ses astrologues et ses magiciens envoûteurs... Paris, 1911
Marie (1575-1642) came from the famous Florentine family and became Queen of France. Like most uber-elite of the day, she was a supporter of the occult. Her patronage of historic fraud Nostradamus included appointing him a Counselor.
Except there was one major difference between then and now: The Renaissance hadn't embraced inept stupidity as a pop culture value the way the modern version has. There was still a sense that being intelligent, learned, and capable were virtues. Just compare a talent like Leonardo da Vinci to the freakish products of Pedowood that are promoted as icons today to get a sense of the difference. So while our irrelevant diversions require no justification, the Renaissance's did. Which is why they had smart people writing justifications for their love of nonsense and we don't.
Not that we don't have people trying to justify it - commentary on entertainment is a vast industry.
We're even told it has "career options".
It's just that they aren't smart.
Back to occult Prometheus in the Renaissance. Take a look at Marsilio Ficino - the preeminent Renaissance Neoplatonist and occultist who was prominent in the court of an earlier Medici. That is, Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492), Catherine's great-grandfather who presided over 15th century Florence and had Ficino translating Hermes Trismagistus, Plato, Plotinus, and others, and setting up a "Platonic Academy".
Preface to Ficino's Latin translation of Plotinus’ Enneads, dedication copy for Lorenzo il Magnifico, illuminated by Attavante degli Attavanti, late 15th century, Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 82.10, fol. 3r.
Ficino was at the center of the Neoplatonic revival in Renaissance Florence, translating many key texts into Latin for the first time.
As a phiulosopher his goal was to integrate Christianity with this ancient "wisdom".
Ficino was a champion of something called prisca theologia, the projected fantasy that many ancient traditions prefigured Christianity. This echoes today amongst the unity of all religions morons who blather on about all traditions having "truth". Projected vanity may be a better description - since none of the traditions claim to be complementary, one is literally stating that they know them better than they know themselves. That one can pick and choose what's "really true" from their dogmas despite likely never reading them. It requires a lot of making stuff up like the Renaissance humanists did.
Orpheus playing the lyre, surrounded by real and mythical animals, marble, Aegina, 4th century, Byzantine Museum in Athens
Like "Orphism" - a set of ancient beliefs based on the poetry of Orpheus, a mythical figure who descended to the underworld and returned. He was said to have invented the Dionysian mysteries despite not having existed. Then again, Dionysus didn't either.
But this didn't stop Renaissance geniuses from lumping him with the other prisca theologia sages.
And if this reminds you of modern pagan and unity of all religions occult LARPing - there is a pattern...
The Christian version of this arrogance is heretical in that it denies plainly stated Biblical claims about faith in Jesus Christ as the ONLY path to salvation from our fallen state. This is typical of the modern blasphemy of churchianity, where fake Christians elevate their whims and appetites over what is clearly expressed in the Bible. It's worth looking at a few quotes - not just for modern churchian solipsists who value desire over scripture, but for Ficino and the Renaissance prisca theologia fabulists as well.
Stained-glass window at the Neptune Society Columbarium, San Francisco
Readers are welcome to search for passages justifying Christian salvation by rejecting Jesus but being a good dude, or finding wisdom in the Buddha, or reading Plato. We won't wait, but feel free to post them in the comments when you find them..
Ficino wasn't blatant enough in his heresy to outright deny the necessity of Jesus in salvation while pretending to be Christian - but the roots of replacing scriptural truth with faddish whims were definitely there. Prisca theologia cracks open the door by replacing the unique historical relationship between the Old Testament and the Gospels and pretends that it is applicable to any scrap of pagan "wisdom" that seems to read like Christian revelation. Like the idea that ancient Greek oracles point to the coming of Jesus in the same way as the Old Testament prophets
Persian Sibyl, from Sibyllae et prophetae de Christo Salvatore vaticinantes, made in Tours around 1490, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cod.icon. 414
The sibyls are historically complex. Many patristic writers recognized them as having legitimately foretold the coming of Jesus. The problem is that their collected utterances - The Sibylline Oracles - only survive in a 6th-7th century edition, and are not the ancient Roman holy books that were burned in the 4th. Click for a link with excerpts. Infogalactic describes them as an "odd pastiche of Hellenistic and Roman mythology interspersed with Jewish, Gnostic and early Christian legend".
The early Fathers embraced them enthusiastically - likely because they were themselves former Roman pagans and pagan revelation appealed to them. They made a comeback with the Renaissance fetishizing of "antiquity". Like this lavish collection of 25 miniatures depicting them. While they have been called part of the Pseudepigrapha no canonical lists of any Church includes them.
Hermes Trismagistus was the poster boy for prisca theologia for at least two reasons, and his importance to Renaissance humanism and occultism was immense. Lorenzo de' Medici had Ficino delay his translation of Plato to get to Hermes. He is less well known now outside of
Marsilio Ficino’s introduction (argumentum) to his Latin translation of the Corpus Hermeticum dedicated to Lorenzo il Magnifico, Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 21.8, fol. 3r. 1491
Prestige texts in humanist circles like this would have a manuscript presentation copy for the patron long after the invention of printing. It was more of a work of art, while the printed books disseminated content.
They're an attractive throwback to the old illuminated manuscript culture of the Middle Ages.
Two reasons why Hermes was the poster boy for prisca theologia:
1. Renaissance humanists like Ficino thought he was incredibly ancient - the wellspring of Egyptian mystical knowledge and probably older than Moses. The whole prisca theologia tradition through Orpheus, Pythagoras, and down to Plato started with him. The appearance of Christian and Neoplatonic themes in something this "ancient" seemed to justify the whole Renaissance philosophy that the older the source the purer the knowledge. This let them build a tree going all the way back to the most distant antiquity - almost back to the Flood - off purely pagan sources.
2. He was fake. The Corpus Hermeticum was 2nd-3rd century AD forgery that resembled Neoplatonic and Christian ideas because it came after them. Even the "author" was a syncretic pastiche of Greek Hermes and the Egyptian Thoth - a figure that didn't exist historically before late antiquity. But to understand Ficino we have to pretend its real.
Hermes Trismegistus, 1480's, floor inlay in Siena Cathedral, Italy
Popular enough to get floor space in a cathedral. It's the same attitude that put sibyls on the Sistine Chapel. It appears that the Renaissance could have used some fact checkers.
It's a good piece of stonework, and Hermes looks appropriately exotic with his turban and odd robes.
The Platonic Theology - Ficino's magnum opus - was an effort to prove the immortality of the soul in Neoplatonic terms. It is historically interesting, but fundamentally un-Christian in that it relies on Platonic and Neoplatonic - Hermes and Plotinus mainly - arguments rather than the Logos of Jesus. Ficino's hierarchy from God through angelic mind through world soul into matter is more Gnostic than Christian. He himself shielded his arguments by downplaying the seriousness of them, but the effort that went into the Platonic Theology belies this.
Second edition of Plato's Opera (Works) translated from Greek into Latin by Marsilio Ficino with Ficino's Platonica theologia de immortalitate animorum.(Platonic Theology of the Immortality of the Soul), Venice, 1491.
This shows the cover, the dedication to "Divine Plato" and two pages from the Platonic Theology,
So why is this relevant to Prometheus?
Because in Ficino's world of pagan "truth", mythic figures are allegories for real wisdom. And the "truth" represented by Prometheus reflects on Ficino's take on human nature.
For Ficino, the soul is the pivot between the material and the divine - it is drawn to the higher but embodied in the lower. In his thought everything has souls - not just humans - because souls are what animate and drive the material world. But he singles the human soul out as unique for its consciousness and ability to move up or down volitionally - by will.
Note the two things that we don't see in Ficino's Christian soul: Christ and faith.
It shouldn't need to be stated that the entire point of Christianity is that our souls can't fly to heaven on their own.
As he writes in his On Christian Religion - "the soul (as our Plato agrees) can fly back to the heavenly father and its native land with its two great wings (that is the intellect and the will)" and "the philosopher depends chiefly upon the intellect" while "the priest depends upon the will". He constructs a false dichotomy between "religion" and "wisdom" when what he is actually referring to is non-Christian dogma and Platonic philosophy.
Seeing this fraud base his fake Christianity on "disciples of wisdom and ... the caretakers of piety" brings us back to our opening remarks on the occult. The inversion is replacing the need for faith - for God's grace - with purely human agency. As we've seen in earlier occult posts, will in particular is the luciferian path to spiritual ascent. Again, Ficino soft-peddles it, but we are looking at patterns - what opens the door to that dark fruit down the road. Even positing that will and intellect are the path to the soul's restitution with God is a fundamentally occult inversion.
Symbol and basic of law of Thelema
The primacy of will was central to Aleister Crowley's vision as well
Note that the Fall is also absent from this fraud's fake Christianity. From Crowley and the Luciferians too, but they don't pretend to be Christian. It has to be, because if he acknowledged our fallen nature, then will and intellect couldn't restore the soul to it's divine state. Instead he makes up his own fake reason - that it's the location of the soul between divinity and matter that causes its wretchedness. Embodied in a deceptive and dark material world, the soul "forgets" it's nature and sinks into depravity.
And we're back to the basic occult patterns that we started with:
1. Fundamental inversion. Christian metaphysics are based on the notion that we are inherently fallen. It isn't a choice - voluntary or involuntary - and can't be overcome by our means alone. This is why the Incarnation and Resurrection were necessary - to open the path that is otherwise closed.
Thomas Cole, The Expulsion from the Garden, 1828, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Christianity 101: This isn't a suspension between heaven and earth, and there is no will or intellect that's going to reverse it.
Ficino's fake metaphysics were reverse engineered to ensure humans were masters of their own fates - not just in this world but in the next. Which is fundamentally un-Christian and the satanic path of vanity and self-deification. To be fair, there is value in Neoplatonic metaphysics. They do a good job of mapping levels of reality. But their notion of the soul is opposite Christian salvation.
2. Elimination of distinctions and boundaries when "Christianity" is expanded at will. Not just the Sibyls, who at least had some standing in the early Church, but the whole gamut of ancient thinkers - including clear anti-Christians like Zoroaster and Mohammed and even fakes like Hermes and Orpheus. And once again, the driving reason is willful vanity and self-agrandizement. Ficino is a smart boy who read some books, antiquity is fashionable, and the money men like Humanism. So blow up the revealed Truth to be accepted on faith and replace it with dudes you think are cool.
Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl, Souls on the Banks of the Acheron, 1898, oil on canvas, Belvedere, Vienna
It's easy to see the coming of modern churchianity and unity of all religions idiocy.
But it's not Christian.
For Ficino and other Renaissance Humanists, Prometheus symbolizes the soul's quest for truth in the Intellectual realm. For this reason, he stands for the higher aspects of man, as opposed to his foolish brother Epimetheus, who represents the lower, animal aspect. The stolen fire keeps its connection to technical knowledge since Prometheus is a symbol of this more practical truth than a revelation of spiritual things. But it is still "stolen" because it is not innate to the material world, but the product of the higher functions of the soul.
Louis de Silvestre, The Formation of Man by Prometheus with the Aid of Athena, 1702, oil on canvas, Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France
The fire often gets paired with Athena animating the figure to represent two types of knowledge - the higher spiritual and more technical. But both are divine as opposed to brute matter.
At this point, the Prometheus allegory has morphed completely into a positive symbol of human self-empowerment. It is set up for what will be the modern secular form of self-willed mastery over nature through technology when grasping materialism has replaced Christianity. Because once the metaphysical is removed from consideration, all that is left is technical knowledge in a material world. It's grotesquely inadequate to account for the human condition, but if that's all that's allowed to be discussed, that's all that's allowed. It's also why the modern world is circling the bowl culturally and ethically.
Paul Manship, Prometheus, 1934, gilded cast bronze, Rockefeller Center, New York
It remains a perfect metaphor on so many levels.
In Ficino's allegory, Prometheus' terrible punishment represents the consequence of the soul bringing divine knowledge into a less perfect material reality. Its immortal aspect can grasp it, but its material nature can't handle it. Remember, Ficino's soul is caught between material and divine and desires to escape the worldly prison and return to the source. This is the eagle - the agony Prometheus suffers after his theft symbolizes the suffering of the soul that "steals" this glimpse of the divine truth that it longs for, but can't get to.
And how does the suffering end? In the Prometheus story, it is when Hercules kills the eagle and releases Prometheus from his bondage. This symbolizes of the soul released from its material prison - through death - and returning to the divine.
Pat Foley, Prometheus Unbound, 1972, bronze, The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research, Houston
Consider the major moral dilemna that we identified in the ancient Prometheus posts about the nature of his rebellion. Was Zeus a wicked tyrant who should be resisted and Prometheus a moral hero, or was he a metaphor for divine authority and the rebellion luciferian self-interest? But in Ficino's version, there really isn't a rebellion because Zeus or Jupiter really doesn't factor in as a character. As the source of the fire he stands for the divine in a general Neoplatonic way, but isn't part of the allegory. It's purely the figure of the human soul torn between the divine gift of knowledge and material limitations.
Thinking about the modern Prometheus, we once again have an image of human empowerment in the guise of Christianity but where Christian metaphysics are conspicuously absent.
Pericle Fazzini, Crucifix, 1974, bronze, Vatican Museums
Like a "Christian" cross without Christ, as in this monstrosity by the artist behind the Pope's Satanic Throne in the Vatican.
When we pay attention to patterns, it's easy to see where things that seem inexplicably terrible on the surface actually come from. And this is important in a world where so much seems to be going off the rails at once. Because as bad as it appears on the surface, one reboot can take care of it all.
A broader conclusion emerges from the technical quality of Prometheus' knowledge. Technology is a two-edged sword - especially to Renaissance thinkers captivated by ancient notions of the Golden Age. To them, the primitive state was one of innocence, and the wickedness of humanity came with civilization. It is historical nonsense, but consistent with a line of thinking that praised the Arcadian - a mythical, rustic earthly paradise of shepherds, nymphs and other mythical entities where none of the wars and other ills of civilized life applied.
Josef Rebell, Wooded Landscape with Temple, 1809, oil on canvas, The Princely Collections, Liechtenstein
This picture is much later than the Renaissance, but the idealized natural beauty, peaceful people, rustic temples and lighting that is both warm and distant all capture the spirit of the Arcadian Golden Age.
The boundary-blurring occultists of the Renaissance liked to pretend that this was an ancient version of Eden, but here too their idiot phantasy not only misses but inverts the moral/metaphysical point. In Christianity, man falls while in the garden. It isn't something "lost" in the sense that you can get back to - like getting back on a diet or exercise program. It is a fundamental and irreversible change of state that can only be rectified through grace and faith. The technical arts are an aftermath, not a cause.
Harold Freedman (designer) and Tony Barese, Joe Attard and David Jack (mosaicists), The Legend of Fire detail, 1980-1982, mosaic, Eastern Hill Fire Station, Melbourne
From a doctrinaire Christian perspective, Prometheus is bringing fire from the heavens to those who have already fallen. There may be positive and negative consequences, but they are expressions of our nature and not causes of it.
You can argue that technology can make it easier to bring out our worst nature, but that nature is innate.
Civilization isn't a choice in that sense - we squabble and die wherever we are. Urban life may be unnatural and suboptimal, but there is no going back to the Garden in this life - not by Prometheus, or even Woodstock.
The aspect of suffering through technical or civilizing knowledge also connects Prometheus to Adam in a weird way - since Adam's sin also involved divine knowledge and its terrible consequences. And here we see the problem with fake syncretic metaphors - Adam's will deliberately contravened God's command - the divine order. Promethean knowledge is only a glimpse of heavenly reward if you completely invert the message of the Bible. Adam's knowledge isn't a preview of a divine fate he longs to achieve - it was a transgression that cast him out of God's grace and deprived him of the divine forever. Or at least until the coming of Jesus, occurred many generations after his own death.
Albrecht Dürer, Christ's Descent into Limbo, around 1510, woodcut
The Harrowing of Hell is Christian doctrine - not universally accepted - that during the three days in the tomb Jesus delivered the righteous souls that had dies before him from Hell. This included Adam and Eve, who presumably had repented their primordial transgression.
Whether you accept it as doctrine, it's the only way the Fall could be undone.
If anything, the comparison with Adam highlights the inversion of Renaissance "Christianity" by calling attention to the uselessness of will or intellect in achieving restitution with God. Ficino's "wings" are broken in a true Christian sense, and only faith can bridge the gap. Will does have a supporting part to play in driving one to act on faith and keep the commandments, but it it is secondary.
With this in mind, lets come back to Piero di Cosimo's Myth of Prometheus picture before drawing a few final conclusions from the Renaissance version to set the stage for modernity. First, a quick reminder:
Piero di Cosimo, The Myth of Prometheus, 1515, oil on panel, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
The picture is one of a pair of paintings - spalliera - that would have appeared in a domestic space, like on a chest or a headboard. The symbolism is strange, but touches nicely on our look into Ficino.
On the left, Epimetheus is shown kneeling while Jupiter destroys his failed attempt at modeling a man. The ape behind him is a reference to imitation - aping - that calls attention to the difference between his creation and real man.
Note that Jupiter is dressed in the traditional colors and style of Jesus, while Epimetheus wears a hair shirt like a Renaissance John the Baptist. The stories don't line up, but Piero is playing with identity confusion between the Christian and the pagan.
In the center is Prometheus' successful figure - a noble bronze in a classic contrapposto stance.
This reminds us of the older notion of Prometheus as the inventor of the art of sculpture.
On the right, Minerva (Roman Athena) comes to Prometheus and takes him to heaven to retrieve the animating fire. Her flying version points upward like the statue in the middle to make a visual connection between them.
The figure on the far right struggling with a basket of spilled mushrooms has been interpreted as savage or ignorant man before the enlightenment of Promethean fire. It makes sense, but doesn't fit with a strict chronology - man in the center is still a statue.
Note that Prometheus also wears a John the Baptist-type hair shirt.
Piero di Cosimo, The Myth of Prometheus, 1515, oil on panel, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
The 2nd panel continues the story, starting with the theft of fire in the middle of the sky. On the left, Prometheus touches the fennel stock with the spark to the figure and transforms it to flesh. On the right, Mercury strings him to a tree rather than a rock ad punishment while the eagle waits. And in the middle, Pandora is created to further punish humanity.
The second panel works better as a sort of diagram
On the outsdes - the two edged sword of Ficino's divine knowledge as something that both enlivens and torments man. There is an inverted symmetry that strengthens the tie.
Up the center - divine knowledge in terms of the soul.
It brings about our divinity - Prometheus rising into the sky - and our ruin in the form of Pandora.
There are a lot of associations without a clear conclusion. The hair shirts portray Prometheus as someone who points the way, but he is also a creator and a Christ-like sacrificial victim. Jupiter appearing like Jesus, Minerva directly helping Prometheus, then Jupiter punishing him makes little sense. But Piero wasn't a philosopher, and it isn't as if Ficino was bursting with coherence. What we have looks like an impressionistic take on the humanist Prometheus - a mythical figure used to comment of fundamental aspects of human nature in a way that teases being Christian, but isn't.
That's enough Renaissance Prometheus. Coming back around to the basic occult patterns that we started with is a nice way to end the post. We'll close with a closer look at why this Christ-less, faithless salvation and syncretic acceptance of paganism is so fundamentally un-Christian.
Consider the Creation in Genesis. The Band is uninterested in blather over Priestly vs. Yahwist narratives - both are there, so both will be dealt with. Secularists who dither over where the Bible came from are less than useless. Of course it was written down by someone. And of course those someones used the language of their day. Noting that Genesis reads like something written in the ancient Near East is banal to the point of truism.
The Band writes in modern English. To fixate on that rather than considering our content is myopic to the point of retardation. And a bit insulting.
Or more likely - in the case of the Bible "scholars" - a deliberate red herring to obscure the message for the less insightful. Anyhow, that's enough space wasted on the "secular" Bible scholarship a-holes.
The Creation accounts in Genesis are written is spare language with simple declarative sentences and little explanation. Genesis 1 is more cosmic, Genesis 2 more personal, but neither are what you would call rich in exposition. This makes sense, since they are dealing with what philosophers call ultimate reality - the absolute transcendent foundation of all that is or can be. We can label ultimate reality, but it is so far beyond us that it defies clear classification. The greatest philosophical minds from Aristotle through Aquinas through Kant through Heidegger all punted in the face of it - admitting either the necessity of faith or simply declaring it outside comprehension. To even try and narrate God bringing creation into Being means working in the simplest of images and descriptions. Nothing else is possible.
So how does it begin?
Ivan Aivazovsky, The Creation of the World, 1864, oil on canvas
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
Genesis 1:2
The promordial stuff of Creation is a formless chaos. An indeterminate mess. And the acts of creation that follow share a fundamental quality - ordering. The rest of the Creation story is a series of divisions and classifications. The light from the dark, the land from the waters, then all the various forms of life, each "according to it's kind". Clear division and definition.
Tintoretto, Creation of the Animals, 1551-52, oil on canvas, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
Genesis 2 defines a garden, outlines rivers, establishes what isn't to be eaten, and creates woman as counterpart to man. Adam names the animals - more definition, this time tying linguistic distinctions to the existential "according to it's kind" in Genesis 1. The serpent preaches the inverse - to break the boundaries and deny the definition - to be that which we aren't. But of course we can't. The order is divine, and the overreach a cruel trick.
Simply put: having knowledge of Good and Evil is not the same as being able to determine and manage Good and Evil.
Gustave Dore, Back to the thicket slunk The guilty serpent, around 1870, engraving for Milton's Paradise Lost
Good and Evil are moral absolutes beyond the scope of finite human beings. This was managed in a prelapsarian state by keeping man innocent within the Garden.
Fallen man is faces with conditions that are beyond his limited nature. Breaking boundaries landed us in a condition that we couldn't get out of. Alone, that is.
If Creation is making distinctions and separations, breaking boundaries and collapsing differences is anti-Creation. The inverse of the divine, both in us and God. Elsewhere we called it entropy. A regression to the primodial state of chaos that is fundamentally hostile to our very Being.
Antonio Canova, Tomb of Duchess Maria Christina of Saxony-Teschen, 1798-1805, Carrara marble, Augustinian Church, Vienna
Now compare Genesis to our empirical reality, where we are aware of ourselves as thinking, feeling entities apart from the world. Where our thoughts and feelings come from is irrelevant - more postmodern obfuscation to try and confuse clear lines. Of course we are conditioned by our surroundings. That's also banally self-evident.
What matters is that we can only think and feel for ourselves. Our fundamental empirical reality as ourselves is predicated on distinction and definition. Dissolve that and we cease to exist.
But look at the long march of modernity. Ficino's boundary breaking will give way to secularism of the Enlightenment, where humans claim absolute knowledge. Which will give way to our current state where do what thou wilt reigns in popular culture and fundamental distinctions are under constant attack. So when Prometheus comes into the modern world on a cloud of inversion and broken distinctions, it is fair consider him in an occult post.
The truly satanic comes next.
Yuri Bosco, Prometheus, 1975, Palace of Culture, Tolyatti, Russia
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