How a Myth Can Change the World

During the Copenhagen climate change conference, I am looking at the energetic underpinnings of the problems in the world.

I work with the energies underlying patterns. I look at the root, core movement of things to discover where the true lever of change lies.  And I do magic to move that lever in the right direction.

If we only work at the level of surface reality (politics, policies), and never challenge the underlying stories and myths that have driven us for millennia, the face of the policies and powers may change, but the dynamic of profiting from cruelty will not.

When I look at the energetic underpinnings of the problems in the world today, I see a wave of cruel, destructive energy that seems rampant and unstoppable.

It calls to me the story of Pandora’s box.

Pandora Got a Bum Rap

In brief: Pandora has a box, and she’s told not to open it, but she’s so curious she can’t help but open it. And all the evils of the world are released. Only hope remains in the box.

That’s what it feels like, when I look deep beneath the world’s problems: it’s like somebody unleashed evils upon the world.

So I went back and read up about the Pandora myth. And I found some things that surprised me:

First of all, the name Pandora means “all-giver”.

Secondly, “box” is a mistranslation. She actually had a jug.

Let us think about her name and her jug for a second, before we get to the myth as we know it.

She is an all-giver with a jug.

Jugs of course are for carrying water. And water is life. We look for water on Mars because if there is water there is life. The mythic jug represents the source of life. Pandora is the all-giver source of life.

The Goddess who is the source of all.

How the Goddess Became the Villain

The first known writings about Pandora are by the ancient Greek Hesiod. According to Hesiod, Pandora was not a goddess. Hesiod says that Pandora was the first mortal woman. To boot, she was responsible for all the evils of mankind when she opened this jug of hers.

Therefore, he concludes, all women are to blame for the ills of the world.

How do we get from Pandora being the bountiful giver-of-all, source of everything, to being the cause of the evils in the world?

And if you check in any history, book, you quickly see that the people out doing evil on a grand scale have pretty much always been men.

So Hesiod’s revisionist Pandora story is beginning to look like a shell game.

Hesiod split Pandora’s gift in two. She used to be the giver of everything. A Goddess of multiplicity – the source of all that is.

But Hesiod split “everything” into “good” and “evil” and left poor Pandora only with the “evil”.

So, to recap: here I am, looking at the energetic underpinnings of the great problems of the world, and I see a Pandora’s-box kind of energy there.

And at the heart of that story is the gifts of the all-giving Goddess being split in two:

Evil and good.

The Rift in our Myth

It strikes me that the heart of the source of our problems is in fact this dualism. Dualistic thinking.

Separating “everything” into “good” and “bad”.

Us vs. them.

Winners vs. losers.

Mind vs. body.

Humans vs. the earth.

Nations picking sides in conflicts.

It's already changing

But there are signs everywhere I look that we are leaving dualism behind.

We are seeing that we have to work together to save our climate, to save humanity. There is no more “us” and “them”.

Kids are thinking in multiplicities. They talk, text, watch videos and surf simultaneously. This is how they are thinking.

All around us we are mixing more and more our heritages. Most people I know are “mutts” of one kind or another. Soon there will be no more “white” and “black”.

Science shows us that the air I breathe out is the air someone in Africa breathes in. Molecules from me become molecules in you.

Men are honouring more feminine qualities in themselves; women are doing things only men used to do. Some people identify as multiple genders.

We are entering the age of multiplicity. Not either/or but both/all. Ambi/Omni.

And I say Pandora is getting her “all” back.

Let's Heal the Rift

Let us heal the fracture caused by Hesiod’s dualitistic thinking.

Let’s honour Pandora as the source of all.

Sing with me: Pandora, you are the giver of all.

Pandora’s fractured jug is healed by these words.

By this song, the river of evil that is said to have come from her jug is bound together with all-that-is. Diluted. United. Integrated.

Myths are powerful. The myth of women-as-the-cause-of-evil was used to oppress women for millennia. Let us revise the Pandora myth again. Let us say, we are all in this together. We are all one. Dualistic thinking was a shell game. Pandora is the all-giving goddess of the earth, and everything on this planet – you, me, George Bush – are a part of her.

And so comes the healing of the world.

And the healing of me and you.