Prometheus Studies: Finding God in Pilobilus, Tarantulas, Super Mario, and more

By Jen Finelli

From the Introduction:

"In Greek mythology, Prometheus created mankind and saved them from cold ignorance by bringing them fire. As punishment for helping humans, whom the evil rapist Zeus hated, Prometheus was bound to the top of a high mountain. There, alone for centuries but for the comfort of a passing female traveler, bitter wind

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jen Finelli
• Release date: Jan 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9780999002292

Jen Finelli

Jen Finelli is a world-traveling award-nominated scifi author who's ridden a motorcycle in a monsoon, escaped being locked in a German nunnery by the sea, discovered beautiful murals and poetry in underground urban caves, explored jungles and coral deserts, and hung out with everyone from dead babies and prostitutes to secretive Senators. She longs for stories that speak truth about the human condition and shine lights on people often hidden in the shadows of modern fiction. She’s a practicing MD, but when she grows up, she’ll be a superhero. Hit her up before the conference on Twitter @petr3pan, and maybe she'll bring you some free stuff! If you want cancer-fighting zombie fiction, dinosaur picture books, scientists jumping into volcanoes, or talking cars and peyote, you might like Jen's stuff. Preview it at: byjenfinelli.com Check out her upcoming movie: mysweetaffair.com

Book preview

Introduction

In Greek mythology, Prometheus created mankind and saved them from cold ignorance by bringing them fire. As punishment for helping humans, whom the evil rapist Zeus hated, Prometheus was bound to the top of a high mountain. There, alone for centuries but for the comfort of a passing female traveler, bitter wind gnawed at his naked flesh while every day an eagle came to feast on his liver. Suffering man, yet eternal God, pierced in his side, exposed and alone for the salvation of humanity...like Yeshua, called by the Gentiles Jesus, who died to bring fire to our hearts.

I think God leaves behind traces of pure Awesome in places we usually don't look. I am here to pick up the little glimmers and put them together: to study, through tarantulas, photons, Pilobilus, whatever, the true Prometheus and the fire that is life.

Meditation One: The Pest Quest

Remember the old Sun and the Moon metaphor? The Moon's light, as you know, is merely a reflection of the Sun. When the earth comes between it and the Sun, the Moon has no light--in the same way, for someone pursuing a relationship with God, when you let something get between you and that relationship, you dim your light. As you know, I hope for you to view some of the unknown features of the scientific world in the same metaphorical light that so many of us view the Sun, Moon, flowers, and open horizons.

Enter the Gypsy Moth, a fat little insect in a wedding dress of fluffy wings.

You know the Gypsy Moth larvae as tent caterpillars, I believe. Maybe you don't. Either way, they're huge pests, plant vampires that suck the nutrients out of backyard trees. From their point of view, however, perhaps they are peaceful, idyllic teenagers, children who live together in huge utopias built of a softer version of silk. Their silk first brought them to the Americas, because a foolish scientist wanted to see if he could breed them to produce it commercially. They escaped from his evil slavery designs, and today most young Gypsies live together until the age comes and each must leave the Community tents to take on the Quest.

When a caterpillar youth comes of age, he or she enters a deep meditation state within a pure, simple hermitage. He leaves the comforts of the mobile, spacious life and pledges to develop himself into something greater in his self-made coffin. As we all know, after the miracle of sleep, he undergoes his first trial, the Opening, and emerges as a moth, resurrected like Christ himself, or sometimes, like you. He begins the glory and the challenge of the Flight, and begins to seek the Mate.

During her deep meditation, the Mate has mastered the subconscious art of producing pheromones to draw her Questor Mate to herself. She is his everything, and he is her everything, and their union, like your union with God, fulfills the Quest.

Those outside the Community, the Humans, do not understand, and in evil futility design poisons to shrivel the Communities, de-flight the Mates, or otherwise destroy the Community of the Youth. In their giant dark laboratories, through unspeakable tortures worked upon Mates and complex chemistry, Humans have devised a simple ruse to prevent the creation of the Youth--in short, to prevent the Quest from fulfillment.

The Humans spread pheromones EVERYWHERE. The world may do this to you. The Questor Mates now follow any number of useless signals, and die frustrated or deluded in their old age, never having found true happiness and fulfilled their Quest.

Don't let anyone do this to you. The world will throw things everywhere, things that are often good, that despite all their beauty and wonder, should never get in the way of your Quest. Remember who you are, and the Community you came from, and the re-birth you claimed, and never lose sight of the One Being who is your ultimate goal.

Meditation Two: The Tarantula

Written in February 2010; RIP Mary Jane.

This morning from atop my slowly stiffening mattress I noticed an odd movement from the tarantula tank on my bedside desk. My Chilean rose hair tarantula stood on her tiptoes, oscillating her abdomen like a paintbrush as she drew web over the doorway to her log home. Her spinnerets (the sticks on her rear from which web emanates) stretched out in two different directions as she gracefully wove her acrobatic form up to the top of her little castle and down to the floor. I wish I were that limber.

This is the most work I have ever seen her