Mythology and Art: Pandora
Created | Updated Dec 22, 2013
Our resident artist has a Christmas gift for us all.
Pandora
A quick, fun little picture, my take on the Pandora myth. Pandora was created as the first woman by the Greek Gods. They intended to punish mankind, after the Titan Prometheus disobeyed them (the gods, that is, not the humans) and taught them (the humans, not the gods) the gift of using fire. So the gods gave a jar to Pandora. Pandora was curious … and here I'm portraying her as being a bit of a headstrong type, her hair standing straight up out of intrinsic contrariness! So she opened the jar, and I'm picturing her as being delighted at the weird critters that poured forth from it! But it turned out they were plague demons that brought all manner of ills to humanity. But one thing remained in the jar – Hope!
In some ways Pandora is the Greek mythological equivalent of Eve in Christianity. She too was the first woman and brought evil into the world. But it's wrong to blame Pandora! She was not malicious, at worst a bit naïve. The Gods are the ones who put the evils in the jar. And they knew, Pandora being who she was, that the jar was never going to stay sealed!
But there's also some ambiguity to the mythology. There's at least some suggestion that the jar Pandora got contained gifts, not plagues. Her name means ‘The All-Gifted' or ‘The All-Giving'. But also … maybe much of what we consider to be curses may be blessings in disguise, and the things we consider plagues may not be bad in themselves, but merely seen that way because of our attitude to them, and I am giving a hint of that as well in this picture.
