Prometheus & Unkulunkulu's Story
Manners of Evil
Before the Gods there was the Titan. Zeus' father , Kronos, led the Titans and Zeus led the Gods who felt theTitans were leading a repressive regime and treating their offspring as too insignificant, The gods under Zeus were successful and the Olympians imprisoned the Titans in Tartarus. Most versions of the legend however does not have Kronus being imprisoned but being killed or murdered by Zeus.
However, two of the Titans, Prometheus and Epimetheus,were spared imprisonment in Tartarus because they had not fought with their fellow Titans during the war with the Olympians. They were given the task of creation.
Prometheus had assigned Epimetheus the task of giving the creatures of the earth their various qualities, such as swiftness, cunning, strength, fur, wings. Unfortunately, by the time he got to man Epimetheus had given all the good qualities out and there were none left for man. So Prometheus decided to make man stand upright as the gods did and to give them fire.
Prometheus loved man more than the Olympians, who had banished most of his family to Tartarus. So when Zeus decreed that man must present a portion of each animal they scarified to the gods, Prometheus decided to trick Zeus.
He created two piles, one with the bones wrapped in juicy fat, the other with the good meat hidden in the hide. He then bade Zeus to pick. Zeus picked the bones. Since he had given his word Zeus had to accept that as his share for future sacrifices.
In his anger over the trick he took fire away from the man. However, Prometheus lit a torch from the sun and brought it back again to man. Zeus was enraged that man again had fire. He decided to inflict a terrible punishment on both man and Prometheus.
To punish man, Zeus had Hephaestus create a mortal of stunning beauty. The gods gave the mortal many gifts of wealth. He then had Hermes give the mortal a deceptive heart and a lying tongue. This creation was Pandora, the first woman. A final gift was a jar which Pandora was forbidden to open. Thus, completed, Zeus sent Pandora down to Epimetheus who was staying amongst the men.
Prometheus had warned Epimetheus not to accept gifts from Zeus but Pandora's beauty was too great and he allowed her to stay. Eventually, Pandora's curiosity about the jar she was forbidden to open became too great. She opened the jar and out flew all manor of evils, sorrows, plagues, and misfortunes. However, the bottom of the jar held one good thing - hope.
Zeus was angry at Prometheus for three things: being tricked on sacrifices, stealing fire for man, and for refusing to tell Zeus which of Zeus's children would dethrone him. Zeus had his servants, Force and Violence, seize Prometheus, take him to the Caucasus Mountains, and chain him to a rock with unbreakable adamantine chains. Here he was tormented day and night by a giant eagle tearing at his liver. Zeus gave Prometheus two ways out of this torment. He could tell Zeus who the mother of the child that would dethrone him was. Or meet two conditions: First, that an immortal must volunteer to die for Prometheus.
According to the theogony of Apollodorus Bibliotheca, a great flood had occurred ten thousand years before his time, as opposed to only "one or two thousand years that have elapsed" since the discovery of music, and other inventions. Plato also alludes to a well-known event of great destruction, in Statesman where he writes that "only a small part of the human race survives".
So we all know the Biblical flood story of Noah and from the Sumerian/Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh, but there is also the Vedic myth of Manu and the Great Flood..
The Mayan creation story, Popol Vuh, mankind, after being created, is wiped out, and then recreated by the gods. Likewise there is the Inca Legend of Viracocha and the Recreation of Humanity.
In all of these stories there is the idea of man becoming evil and after the few survive, obeisance to gods becomes necessary.
The Navajos actually have multiple creations where everything is destroyed and the Dine populate the fourth world. The earlier worlds ended when the creatures acted selfishly and unbalanced the world of their existence and the Dine are charged with maintaining the necessary balance to avoid the collapse once again.
The San legend has man becoming fearful of the creation when it becomes dark and is taught that such fears will destroy the balance necessary for survival. The fear of the darkness separated man from communicating directly or understanding the languages of plant and animal and only by attempting to maintaining and respecting other beings that they could no longer communicate could the San people’s own existence continue and replace their fear with balance.
History has it that the indigenous people of the south (of Africa) originated from the north in the forests along the Nile river in Egypt. According to oral historian Senzo “Maswidi” Mkhanyiseni Mbatha as far as he knows the first black person that we hear of is ‘Ntu’, the ancestor of all African people. The plural noun ‘abantu’ is a result of Ntu’s name being used in plural form to categorize his descendants.
After Christian and Muslim influences, the Xhosa/Zulu conception of Unkulunkulu became a supreme being, but the actually a proper understanding might be that Unkulunkulu was very very old ancestors from which thy all sprang and maintaining a harmonious relationship with all other lifeforms would maintain existence itself and the relationship of each to Unkulunkulu became recognizing and becoming Unkulunkulu upon death by those who had not separated themselves from their ancestral balance and harmony between types of life.
What we end up with, no matter the direction of the myth as downfall and the need to worship gods, or downfall and the need to maintain a balanced existence is a recognition that man y trying to assume authority over nature or man creates a conflict and that this conflict thereafter becomes what we term evil.
The unbalanced nature of some that destroys any part of creation and endangers existence itself. Evil therefore is no longer respecting each for its value and what it brings to existence, but thinks all value can be measured by what one hoards of existence.
But in all respects this is the converse of what is needed to maintain the future of existence and is the road that will condemn itself to perdition.