4 replies to this topic

[BlueMage]

I've been working through the Initiate's Book of Pathworkings by Dolores Ashcroft-Dowicki. One of the pathworkings is the story of Pandora and Pandora's box.

The story seems a bit different from the wikipedia version. In the book Pandora was forced to open the box by her husband who wanted to show off. In wikipedia the story has Pandora open the box just because she was curious.

One part of the wikipedia version does not make sense to me, it says that in the end nothing was left in the box/jar except Hope. So they are saying there is no hope in the world?

My main question though is, which version is traditional? Did she open it because she was curious or did her husband make her open it?

[8people]

Pandora was the created woman by the olympians who was gifted to Epimetheus, many gods were involved in creating her and she was gifted an earthen vessel she was told not to open for it would bring a shadow upon the earth. As far as I know she opened it because of curiosity not because she was forced to (otherwise her husband would have opened it himself, surely?)

Old age, sickness, balding, madness, vice, death, etc flooded out of the box/jar but she managed to close it before hope escape. If hope *had* escaped the darkness would have overwhelmed it. The nasty things that had been released from the jar crowded the lands until Zeus/Poseidon ordered a great flood that wiped many of them away leaving manageable amounts of each so hope could be released with a chance to survive and thrive.

[BlueMage]

In the version from the book, only Pandora could open the box, the husband could not do it himself.

[Dagion]

no there is no hope in the world it is in every one of us. we all have a box with our name on it let the aflictions stay out of it.

[Rose]

This is a translation of Hesiod's take on the myth:

http://www.stoa.org/...s_pandora.shtml

I don't know if there's an earlier written version. But I fancy a telling of Pandora that isn't misogynistic, that doesn't give her sex any particular importance. Scapegoat stories are boring (see: Eve, devil as scapegoats - YAWN). Stories about the attainment of knowledge, experience, and the strength to continue discovering - now that's good stuff!

I think Pandora is also a story about the survival of innocence, that no action (whatever the consequences) destroys a person's innocence. But that's just me, hoping.

The telling that you reference strikes me as some kind of weird allegory for male-to-female spousal abuse. The man feels powerless (can't open the box), so he forces something on his wife (an act of power) from a desire to show off (a display of power), and she gets blamed for it (oh, the sexism!). Personally I'd rather have Pandora be hated for choosing than subdued into not having a choice... I understand it as a story about choice. Even in Hesiod's version, choice strikes a stronger chord than misogyny. That's how I choose to interpret it. >_>