In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche recounts the myth of Epimetheus and Pandora. Nietzsche uses the mythic figure of Epimetheus to make a commentary on the limits of Promethean rationality and calculative forethought.

As in The Birth of Tragedy, wherein he had positively contrasted ecstatically irrational and inspired “Dionysian” madness with “Apollonian” rationality, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra the “Epimethean” willingness to be irrationally seduced by the erotic power of Pandora is contrasted with the rational forethought of Prometheus.

Nietzsche embraces the Epimethean despite, or perhaps because of, all the dangerously destructive calamities that may be attendant to this seduction. Nietzsche sees this as an inevitable aspect of human existence.

In fact, it is a seduction to evolve beyond the merely human, an evolutionary potential that we have precisely because (according to the Greek myth) Epimetheus forgot to endow us with any innate nature or species being of the type possessed by various animals.

- Jason Reza Jorjani, PSYCHOTRON

Artwork: Daniel Sabater y Salabert - A Spanish Woman in Hell, 1928 / La Force, Tarot de Marseille / Vali Myers, 1974