Prometheus. The Archetypal image of human existence | Karl Kerenyi

Prometheus is the god who stole fire from heaven and gave it to people. As punishment, Zeus chained him to a rock, on which the eagle constantly tormented his liver until Hercules freed him.. For the Greeks, the myth of the liberation of Prometheus reflected the original law of existence and the fate of mankind.

Karl Kerenyi studies the history of Prometheus and the process of myth-making itself as a reflection of the archetypal function, trying to understand how this ancient legend acquired a comprehensive meaning first in the imagination of the Greeks, and then in the Western tradition of romantic poetry. Kerenyi traces the myth from Hesiod and Aeschylus to its development in Goethe and Shelley; he proceeds to consider the myth from the point of view of Jungian psychology, considering it an archetype of human fearlessness, indicating the transformation of suffering into the sacrament of sacrifice.