Myths are different from stories and legends, in that they express crucial ideas which characterize the belief system of the culture which created it, without drawing however from actual events , like legends do, and without being considered entirely fictional either, as fairytales are. The myth has been defined differently by various authors, depending on their intention and approaches. One researcher explains myth as “a traditional story that is thought of by a specific community to be of a fundamental importance and, moreover, is considered - perhaps in contrast to the common valuation categories - to be a “true‟ one” (Lugli 53). With the progress of science and education, people stopped believing in myths and for a long time, they were dismissed as invaluable material which had nothing to add to the modern worldview. However, more recently, researchers have rediscovered mythology, and in particular, have found in myths universal truths about the human condition. Myths may become petrified when people stop transmitting them, adding to them, and valuing them as true stories. At this point, they are simplified and reduced to essence, to the extent that they become simple. Pandora’s myth is part of the Greek mythology, which is considered the cradle of the Western civilization. This myth shows how petrification is able to transform the meaning of myths and reduce them to simple metaphors for our times.
Petrification is the greatest threat to myths, because by means of this process, myths lose some of their functions, and stop being living, flourishing narratives, being simplified and reduced to their essence. As Lugli explains, “passed down through centuries by an infinite chain of narrators, mythical plots adapt to diverse historical situations. Their availability to be continually reused - taking always new contents and serving ever diverse interests - is, indeed, a prerequisite of their survival (Lugli 52). Therefore, the moment when myths stop being reused and new content stops being added to them, and then myths are in danger of becoming petrified. Most often, this occurs when societies refrain from evolving and continue to live according to their mythology, unchanged. Campbell (“Myths”) shows that in many emerging countries “every little group is fixed in its own long-established, petrified mythology, changes having occurred only as a consequence of collision” (14). However, some changes did occur, as a result of culture collision.
A representative of the Greek mythology, the story of Pandora’s box represents the values and ideologies of the Western culture, and continues to have meaning today. Pandora’s myth was first recounted in written form by Hesiod and it tells the story of a woman who shares with Eve the burden of bring misery upon the world (Leeming 177). According to the myth, Pandora was the first woman on earth. Pandora was entrusted with a jar containing evil spirits. She opened it and thus released them unto the world, and condemned all the next generations to misery. According to Leeming (177) Pandora’s myth was perverted from an earlier version, when Pandora had been an earth-goddess who presented humans with “flowering trees which bear fruit, gnarled trees hung with olives and, this, the grapevine that will sustain you” (Leeming 178). This description of the bounties of earth in concrete language shows that the Greeks valued the properties of these plants, and appreciated their capacity to sustain them. Apparently, the perversion of this myth occurred at the moment when the ancient society changed from a matriarchal ideology to patriarchal mythology. Therefore, while in the beginning, Pandora’s myth presented a metaphor of fertility, the myth became a warning against too much curiosity.
Presently, myths have become petrified because they do not accomplish their primary functions, as described by Joseph Campbell in his work. In “The Power of Myth” Campbell (37) explains that myths have a mystical function, a cosmological function, a sociological function and a pedagogical function. The mystical function refers to the myth’s ability to open the listener to mystery. Pandora’s myth, in both its original and its subsequent forms, opened the listener to the mystery of the existence of gods, and to the idea of humanity’s capacity to interact with them. In its original form, Pandora transformed a pomegranate into an apple, and the apple into a lemon, thus allowing the listeners to experience the mystical power of nature’s life-giving power. Thus, “Pandora” itself means “The Giver of All”, which suggests her mystical powers. Secondly, the cosmological function refers to the power of the myth to explain something regarding the universe. Pandora’s myth is a myth which explains the beginning of mankind, in each of its early forms. Then, its sociological function was to support the validation of a certain social order ( Campbell “The Power” 37). The early versions of this myth supported first a patriarchal social order, where Pandora was the mother of humanity, and then, a patriarchal order, where she became a femme fatale, and a flawed being whose mistake brought misery. Finally, its pedagogical function was to demonstrate the consequences of acting or thinking in a certain way.
This pedagogical function is the one which was passed on, as the myth of Pandora was petrified in the simplified form of “Pandora’s box”. Today, opening Pandora’s Box refers to unwanted consequences which occur as a result of a person’s curiosity. While the myth is only relevant today for the metaphor of Pandora’s Box, and is very little known otherwise, being only studied in schools for its cultural value, the metaphor itself was transformed to mean something different from its original signification. The ‘box’ was in the beginning meant to explain the origin of evil on Earth, and to construct women as weak but also dangerous, because of being seductive and tempting (Leeming 177). However, today, this metaphor constructs women as too curious for their own well-being and the “jar of miseries” became a symbol of dangerous or harmful secrets which should not be unveiled. This simplification of Pandora’s myth in order to address only its pedagogical function is an example of how myths become petrified once they stop being essential to the culture which created them.
Works Cited
Campbell, Joseph. Myths to Live By. New York: Viking Publishing. 1972. Web.
Campbell, Joseph and Moyers, Bill. The Power of Myth. New York: Anchor Books. 1991. Print.
Leeming, David Ada. The World of Myth: An anthology. Oxford University Press. 1990. Print.
Lugli, Ubaldo. The Concept of Myth. Journal of Studies in Social Sciences, 6.(2014): 38-57).
