| The divine blacksmith Hephaistos, "famed for his craft," is the Greek god of art and technology. Born clubfooted and cast at birth from the heights of Olympus by his mother, Hera, Hephaistos is the only cripple among the Olympian gods. Later returned by the order of Zeus, "father" of the gods, who has need of his skills, Hephaistos is said to be the only Olympian who works.; This work presents Hephaistos as representative of the archetype of the maker, a mythic image that has become fragmented. Whereas contemporary cultural norms image the artist and technologist as having divergent aims and values, the examination of Greek and other myths undertaken as part of this study shows that they were anciently connected, and revered, as aspects of the same archetype.; This research traces the beginnings of the changes in the cultural meanings of the archetype of the maker that have resulted in its fragmentation, as discernable in two mythopoetic themes. One is the "wounded artist," exemplified in recent depth psychological writing that depicts Hephaistos as emblematic of the "mother-wounded" and thus psychically impaired creative masculine. The second is "monstrous technology," seen in recent works of fiction and cinema that identify the Hephaistean archetype with the dangers of technological hubris and with the "military-industrial complex."; The archetype of the maker is initially discerned through an examination of the meanings of relevant Greek terms. These include techne, meaning "practical knowledge" and the root of the word technology; and metis, meaning "cunning intelligence," or "intuitive knowing." Hephaistos embodies both ways of knowing. Examination of the terms poiesis ("making") and ekphrasis ("poetic description") establishes the field of making as encompassing both the production of material objects as well as poetic making. The Greek root-words of mythology, mythos and logos are shown to have changed meanings between the time of Homer and Plato such that a groundwork is established for understanding the historical origins of the fragmentation of the image of the maker.; This study concludes with a depth-psychological examination of the constructive purposes of myth, and examples of contemporary re-mything of the archetype of the maker. |
