ABSTRACT
Both humans and animals had been fashioned by God from dust. Clearly, the special knowledge of good and bad evidently made all the difference. After gaining that knowledge, humans became more godlike than ever before. The story of Prometheus, originally recorded in the eighth century BCE by the poet Hesiod, is actually the oldest source for the story of human creation. Whether well-intentioned toward mankind as was Prometheus, or irresponsibly vain like Pandora, it mattered not at all to the gods of ancient Greece: they obviously did not much care about human well-being. The marriage of the god Eros with the goddess-to-be Psyche, however anthropomorphic, is altogether symbolic. The incredible hardships Psyche has to endure suggest the difficulties man encounters when the highest psychic qualities are to be wedded to sexuality. Not physical man, but spiritual man must be reborn to become ready for the marriage of sexuality with wisdom.
