In the Beginning was the Word ~ Prometheus

- Chapter Ten -

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD
~ In the Court of the Crimson King ~

- chapter index -
pg. 1 - Intro: The Schizoid Man | pg. 2 - Night Sounds
pg. 3 - Welcome to the Machine | pg. 4 - The Laboratory
pg. 5 - Agamemnon | pg. 6 - Prometheus
pg. 7 - Paranoia's Poison Door | pg. 8 - Projective Identification
pg. 9 - The Promethean Rebel | pg. 10 - Aries and the Emperor
pg. 11 - Mirrors | pg. 12 - In the Beginning was the Word
pg. 13 - Death Seed | pg. 14 - I Talk to the Wind
pg. 15 - Said the Straight Man to the Late Man | pg. 16 - Epitaph
pg. 17 - Apollo | pg. 18 - The Fate of All Mankind
pg. 19 - Malkuth

site index

The 21st Century Schizoid Man, a product of the devaluation and complete abandonment of Eros or the feminine principle, is born via "male parthenognesis". He is, in a sense, the "son born without a mother". This "monster" is modern man and our "Sheol": the soulless, spiritless, technologically driven modern world. Both are the horrific results of man's over-reliance on scientific rationalism and the Thinking function, his complete devaluation of the unconscious.
The Fall from psychological unity is expressed in the myth of Prometheus.

"When the human vehicle was ready, the heretofore slumbering human mind awakened. The Greeks expressed it as Prometheus stealing from the gods the fire of mind for mankind."

- The Six Fundamental Propositions of The Secret Doctrine

"Here we meet Prometheus, the Titan who defied the law of Zeus and stole the fire of the gods to give to mankind, knowing full well that he would suffer for his deed. The name Prometheus means 'foresight', and the Titan possessed the gift of prophecy..."

21st Century Schizoid Man is a prophecy.

"...He was also said to have created man out of earth and the water of his own tears, while Athene breathed life into the creation. Thus Prometheus had a deep sympathy for the lot of mankind, for he had made them.

Zeus asserted his divine supremacy over mankind by withholding fire from them. This meant that there could be no progress or illumination, for without fire, mankind was condemned to live like the beasts, eating raw meat and hiding in caves. Prometheus took some of the holy fire from Hephaistos' forge, hid it in a hollow fennel stalk, and carried it to earth."

- Prometheus

The fire Prometheus stole from the gods was consciousness, a consciousness which defines our species.

"We can assert that consciousness is the most important aspect of the individual human life. It also seems clear that the formation of consciousness is the single most important step in the history of life. It is the step that permits thought. It is the step that defines mankind as human. It is the step that Teilhard de Chardin calls "hominization," or formation of man:

Historically, life (which means in fact the universe itself, considered in its most active portion) is a rise in consciousness.

In accord with his sweeping spiritual view of human evolution, Teilhard sees hominization as being important beyond the concept of the individual human.

Hominization can be accepted in the first place as the individual and instantaneous leap from instinct to thought, but it is also, in a wider sense, the progressive phyletic spiritualization in human civilization of all the forces contained in the animal world."

- The Collective Conscious

Just as consciousness is synonymous with the differentiation of the four psychological functions, Prometheus, by his act, betrayed Zeus (God/Intuition, the Self).

"In the Greek and the Jewish/Christian creation myths, the appearance of thinking human beings required a transgression of the creators’ rules by a rebel, Prometheus or Lucifer. Both myths identify the transgression with brain properties, such as the capacity of knowledge or consciousness."

- The human brain, a work accident of evolution?

"The cost has been very great. Prometheus was
punished. An ancient vase painting shows him with a
pillar driven through his middle being attacked by an
eagle. The bird may represent the mental world of the
Forethinker and it is significant that every day the
eagle comes to devour his liver the seat of the intuitive
life. All that is consumed by day grows back under the
cover of darkness but this is yet further testimony, like
Jung's discernment of the archetypes in the Collective
Unconsciousness, of the inability of the great symbols
and intuitive wisdom in our own time to influence the
daylight world.

In consequence the ambitions of Prometheus have
become literally inordinate.

"Neuro-surgeons scream for more"

The development of the rational calculating faculty at
the expense of other ways of knowing and seeing has entailed
great distress both in the landscape of the world around
and in the inner life."

- What Are You Looking For?

Prometheus Bound by Briton Riviere

"Prometheus, the god who gave fire to man is the prototypical scientist. The fire he brings is knowledge and his punishment for stealing the fire is to be chained to the rock of materialism."

- Prometheus

"Prometheus (Gr.). The Greek logos; for stealing the fire he brought to men from Heaven, Prometheus was chained by the order of Zeus to a crag of the Caucasian Mountains."

- Collation of Theosophical Glossaries

"There is a ravine of ice-clad rocks upon the peak of huge Mount Caucasus, so walled about with gaunt black precipices, so ghastly in its frozen desolation, that it might seem a very temple of Death where nothing living had ever come since the making of the world. Not the tiniest, lowliest plant that grows peeps from the crannies of its jagged cliffs; no voice of beast or bird ever echoes there save the scream of a famished eagle far aloft.

Yet it is a solitude without peace, for night and day fierce gusts sweep through the gorge, now wailing like spirits in torment, now with uproar so hideous that to hear it would drive a man from his wits."

- Prometheus The Firebringer
from "The Age of Fable" by Thomas Bulfiinch

As mentioned earlier, the opening of Twenty First Century Schizoid Man and the album cover depict the newborn human, at any age, screaming out the realization of his predicament.

"In Prometheus's case, fire and lightning indicate intuition, the idea bursting upon him as a flash. . . . "

- The Prometheus Syndrome