Carl Jung: Genesis and Promethean Guilt
The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
Genesis represents the act of becoming conscious as a taboo infringement, as though knowledge meant that a sacrosanct barrier had been impiously overstepped.
I think that Genesis is right in so far as every step towards greater consciousness is a kind of Promethean guilt: through knowledge, the gods are as it were robbed of their fire, that is, something that was the property of the unconscious powers is torn out of its natural context and subordinated to the whims of the conscious mind.
The man who has usurped the new knowledge suffers, however, a transformation or enlargement of consciousness, which no longer resembles that of his fellow men.
He has raised himself above the human level of his age (“ye shall become like unto God”), but in so doing has alienated himself from humanity.
The pain of this loneliness is the vengeance of the gods, for never again can he return to mankind. He is, as the myth says, chained to the lonely cliffs of the Caucasus, forsaken of God and man.~Carl Jung, “The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious” (1953) CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P. 243.
