Nietzsche's 'Sketch on Prometheus', line 16

16. On the structure of the whole: the vulture speaks to himself and says: I am Prometheus's vulture and due to the most unusual cirstances I have been FREE since yesterday. When Zeus gave me the task of eating Prometheus's liver he wanted to get rid of me, for he was jealous because of Ganymede.

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Commander's Commentary on line 16;

I find this somewhat obscure. I would venture that Nietzsche is conflating once again; this time "Prometheus's vulture" is conflated with "Zeus's eagle".

Of course, "Zeus's eagle" was actually Zeus himself in the FORM of an eagle.
So is Prometheus's vulture also Prometheus himself?
This certainly helps to explain the above passage from the Sketch.

"Ganymede, cupbearer to the gods, a beautiful young Trojan prince who was seized and carried up to Olympus by Zeus's eagle".
[Hamilton]

The mention of Ganymede is also suggestive; Zeus as an eagle actually S Ganymede and then kidnaps him;

"There, too, flushed Ganymede his rosy thigh
Half buried in the eagle's down,
Sole as a flying star shot through the sky
Above the pillared town".
[Tennyson, The Palace of Art]

The mythologers usually tell us that Hera is jealous of Ganymede, but here Nietzsche has Zeus as jealous. Could Zeus's of Ganymede have been motivated by jealousy as well as by unnatural lust?
Some ancient writers bear this interpretation out;

"Because of his beauty, Zeus kidnapped Ganymede by means of an eagle, and set him as cup-bearer in the sky".
[Apollodorus 3.141]

And;

"But an eagle caught up Ganymede for Zeus because he vied with the immortals in beauty".
[Catalogue of Women Frag 40A (from Oxyr Papyri Frag. 3)]

This fits in with Zeus's general attitude towards moratals in the Prometheus myth, but it contrasts with Goethe's version, where any suggestion of jealous is absent;

"How, in the light of morning,
Round me thou glowest,
Spring, thou beloved one!
With thousand-varying loving bliss
The sacred emotions
Born of thy warmth eternal
Press 'gainst my bosom,
Thou endlessly fair one!
Could I but hold thee clasp'd
Within mine arms!".
[Goethe, 'Ganymede', 1789, first stanza]

In some accounts, it is not a vulture, but an eagle which eats Prometheus's liver.
The symbolism of the vulture and the eagle differ.
"The Eagle symbolises spiritual power, royalty, victory and favour.
An attribute of Zeus and as his lightning-bearer sometimes has a thunderbolt in his talons.
Originally an emblem of Pan who yielded it to Zeus; emblem of Ganymede as funerary; Ganymede depicted as watering an eagle is the overcoming of death.
The eagle symbolises release from ".
[Encyclopedia of Symbols]

"An eagle red with blood
Shall come, a guest unbidden to your banquet.
All day long he will tear to rags your body,
Feasting in fury on the blackened liver".
[Hamilton ib.,]

The liver itself has some significance;
"we could look at the regeneration of the liver ... as [being] the 'unbroken strength of will' ... the gift of blood as was Prometheus' gift of fire to mankind".
[Irene 08-24-03]

Reading that back, it occurs to me that the 'blackened liver' may be related to the Black Sun which is, as we know, the deep purple colour of dried blood.
The regeneration of the liver = the regeneration of the Black Sun.

"K.M. Wiligut also provided a further source for the myth of the Black Sun; an ancient sun called Santur, a second sun that shone 230,000 years ago upon the Hyperboreans in the North Pole and promoted their spiritual development.
Santur still orbits in the vicinity of our planet today as an extinct star, the invisible, but as a Black Sun it still emits a powerful intelligence".
[Black Sun, Goodrick-Clarke]

"The North Pole is the 'theonium' of the world associated with Prometheus and represents the the spiritual source of all Aryan strength".
[ib.,]

"The Black Sun shines above the Midnight Mountain. The human eye cannot see it - and yet it is there: its light shines within".
[ib.,]

"Blood is a condensation of light; the Aryan, Hyperborean Blood is just that - but not the light of the Golden Sun, not a galactic sun, but the light of the Black Sun".
[ib.,]

"The SS are an esoteric order of initiates seeking the Holy Grail of Hyperborean blood".
[ib.,]

"The Black Sun illuminates a Reich and will never set".
[ib.,]

Also, and incidentally, the notion of the Black Sun is predicated on an eccentric view of the universe. There is no 'one centre' of things, but only the struggle of a multiplicity of genuine perspectives, and of as many suns.
The centre of the Universe is where you are now.

The centre cannot hold.


Nietzsche's 'Sketch on Prometheus', line 17

17. All religion is somewhat detrimental to the human being.
What would have happened if Prometheus had not been deceptive at Mecone!
State of things under the son when the priests devour everything.

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Commander's Commentary;

17. Zeus then INVENTED religion to the 'detriment' of mankind, just as he made woman for the same reason.
If Prometheus had not defied Zeus then woman [Pandora] would not have been created by Zeus, and neither would Christianity have been foisted on mankind by his son [i.e., Christ]
It is when "things are under the son" that the priests "devour everything" - parallel to the vulture's devouring of Prometheus's liver.
Mecone was the place where Zeus and other gods were busy in conference while Prometheus, already having given fire to mankind, used the moment to deceive Zeus and aid mankind further.
He took the sacrifice made by men to the gods, and arranged that men should "get the best parts" [i.e., the meat] "and the gods the worst [i.e., the bones and fat]. Zeus was angry when he saw the bones craftily tricked out. But he had made his choice and he had to abide by it ..."
[Hamilton]
So Mecone denotes the moment when when Zeus "swore to be revenged, on mankind first and then on mankind's friend Prometheus ...When Zeus had punished men by giving them women he turned his attention to the arch-sinner himself ... Zeus had his servants, Force and Violence, seize Prometheus and take him to the Caucasus, where they bound him ..."
[ib.,]


This final passage is the longest;

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Nietzsche's 'Sketch on Prometheus', 21

21. The gods are stupid (the vulture blabbers like a parrot); when Zeus created Achilles, Helen, and Homer he was short-sighted and was not familiar with human beings; the real result was not the destruction of human beings, but instead Greek culture.
Whereupon he created the world conqueror in the form of man and woman (Alexander and Roma, science); his son Dionysos the overcomer of the world (foolish - fanciful, bleeds himself, becomes a fanatical Hades shade on earth, establishment of Hades on earth).
The overcomers of the world embrace the idea of the world conqueror - and with that things seem to be over for human beings. Zeus nearly perishes from this, but Dionysos - overcomer as well.
Prometheus sees how all human beings have become shades, ruined to the core, fearful, evil. Out of pity he sends them Epimetheus along with seductive Pandora (Greek culture). Then things get completely ghostly and disgusting and pulp-like among human beings. Prometheus despairs ...

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Commander's Commenatry;

This seems to fill out the basic themes already touched upon, but introduces the figure of the 'world conqueror' as the 'overcomer' [cf., later Overman and Masters of the Earth].
Greek culture carried the seed within it of its own destruction, culminating in Christianity. However, another son of Zeus, Dionysos, will overcome Christianity and install the New Aeon [as mankind survives].
Prometheus [in reality a mask of Dionysos] sends his double-walker Epimetheus and the Pandora's box of Greek Culture [in its terrifying Dionysian aspect] to bring about this Revaluation.

Parrot: Imitation; unintelligent repetition.