Pagan Portals Pan

Dark Lord of the Forest and Horned God of the Witches

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Contents

The Power of Images

In Coven of the Scales schooling, Meriem Clay-Egerton always saw Pan as the Horned God ... and the Horned God as Pan. This was a traditional British Old Craft coven that honoured Aegocerus the 'goat-horned' – an epithet of the Greek Pan – not Cernunnos, the stag-horned deity the Celts had brought with them from northern Europe. It should also be understood that although Coven of the Scales held firmly to the philosophy and opinion that all faiths were One and all Paths led to the same Goal, it did not advocate what is now referred to as 'eclectic paganism'. So how on earth could this ancient, pre-Olympian Greek deity find his way into the beliefs of traditional witchcraft in Britain?

What CoS did teach was the desire for knowledge and experience, regardless of source. Each new experience was, however, studied within the confines of that particular religion, path or tradition, but each new discipline was kept completely separate from the other. Only when the student had a thorough understanding of the tenets of each discipline were they encouraged to formulate them into their own individual system. So why, despite the fact that no other foreign deities were ever added to the mix of traditional British Old Craft, was Pan accepted as a facet of the Horned God so far from his native shores?

In Greek religion and mythology, Pan (ancient Greek: [??], Pan) was the god of the wilderness and rocky mountain slopes, of shepherds and flocks, woodland glades and forests, hunting and rustic music, and companion of the nymphs. Yet even the Greeks were often hard-pressed to know how to categorise this most ancient of deities who had been revered in his native Arcadia long before his name and cult spread to other parts of Greece.

Pan has no part in the traditional Olympian pantheon because, like other archaic nature spirits, he appears to be much older than the squabbling, fornicating, incestuous tribe that resided atop Mount Olympus. In the Homeric Hymn to Pan, however, where he commences his 'literary' career, he is identified as the son of Hermes (also a pastoral god of Arcadia) who fell in love with Dryope:

Homeric Hymn XIX to Pan

[1] Muse, tell me about Pan, the dear son of Hermes, with his goat's feet and two horns – a lover of merry noise. Through wooded glades he wanders with dancing nymphs who foot it on some sheer cliff's edge, calling upon Pan, the shepherd-god, long-haired, unkempt. He has every snowy crest and the mountain peaks and rocky crests for his domain; hither and thither he goes through the close thickets, now lured by soft streams, and now he presses on amongst towering crags and climbs up to the highest peak that overlooks the flocks. Often he courses through the glistening high mountains, and often on the shouldered hills he speeds along slaying wild beasts, this keen-eyed god. Only at evening, as he returns from the chase, he sounds his note, playing sweet and low on his pipes of reed: not even she could excel him in melody – that bird who in flower-laden spring pouring forth her lament utters honey-voiced song amid the leaves. At that hour the clear-voiced nymphs are with him and move with nimble feet, singing by some spring of dark water, while Echo wails about the mountain-top, and the god on this side or on that of the choirs, or at times sidling into the midst, plies it nimbly with his feet. On his back he wears a spotted lynx-pelt, and he delights in high-pitched songs in a soft meadow where crocuses and sweet-smelling hyacinths bloom at random in the grass.

[27] They sing of the blessed gods and high Olympus and choose to tell of such a one as luck-bringing Hermes above the rest, how he is the swift messenger of all the gods, and how he came to Arcadia, the land of many springs and mother of flocks, there where his sacred place is as god of Cyllene. For there, though a god, he used to tend curly-fleeced sheep in the service of a mortal man, because there fell on him and waxed strong melting desire to wed the rich-tressed daughter of Dryops, and there be brought about the merry marriage. And in the house she bare Hermes a dear son who from his birth was marvellous to look upon, with goat's feet and two horns – a noisy, merry-laughing child. But when the nurse saw his uncouth face and full beard, she was afraid and sprang up and fled and left the child. Then luck-bringing Hermes received him and took him in his arms: very glad in his heart was the god. And he went quickly to the abodes of the deathless gods, carrying the son wrapped in warm skins of mountain hares, and set him down beside Zeus and showed him to the rest of the gods. Then all the immortals were glad in heart and Bacchie Dionysus in especial; and they called the boy Pan because he delighted all their hearts.

Hermes took his son 'wrapped in the warm skins of mountain hares' to the abode of the immortal gods, where they called him Pan, which according to the footnotes to the Hymn is derived from the Greek word 'All' – and the hare has remained a symbol of pagan deity to the present day. It is also incongruous that in a culture that prized physical beauty, this long-haired, shaggy individual retained his popularity and, more importantly, his power, down through the ages. (Although, in the Roman era, Pan was often portrayed as a youth, without the goatish features except for a pair of small horns.) Perhaps because, according to the entry in the occult encyclopaedia Man, Myth & Magic, Pan's haunts are the woodlands glades, mountain peaks and rockyways, and dense thickets with gentle streams where he darts across the landscape as a keen-eyed hunter, he appealed to the common man whose simple lifestyle he mimicked:

The Arcadians themselves were famous as hunters and it was natural for their goat-footed god to represent an occupation that was so familiar to his worshippers. It was also natural for them to describe the herdsman god as playing his pipes in the evening when the sport was over ...

Man, Myth & Magic

On his dark side, Pan was also said to be the cause of that sudden and groundless fear especially felt by travellers in remote and desolate places, known as Panic fear. Herodotus recorded that when Phidippides was sent to Sparta to ask for help prior to the Battle of Marathon, Pan appeared to him and asked why he was no longer worshipped by the Athenians, but still promised to help them by instilling fear into their enemies. As a result of the successful outcome of the battle the god's worship was reintroduced to Athens; a shrine was built in a cave under the Acropolis, where he was honoured yearly with sacrifices and a torch race. Being a rustic god, however, Pan was not worshipped in temples but in natural settings, usually caves and groves, although there is a unique temple dedicated to him next to the river's source in the Neda gorge in the southwestern Peloponnese – the ruins of which survive to this day.

Needless to say, Pan possesses all the conventional abilities of the Olympian gods such as super-human strength and longevity, shape-shifting, stamina and resistance to injury. He also had some mystical powers, especially those associated with music and dance, and its magical potency; not to mention a very wily mind, a raucous sense of humour and a shout or scream that instilled terror in the hearer. Like the shepherd he rested at noon, and disliked having his sleep disturbed, but he could also send visions and dreams in the heat of the noonday sun – i.e. lucid dreaming. It is said that he gave Artemis her hunting dogs and taught the secret of prophecy to Apollo. Ironically, the ancient Greeks also considered Pan to be the god of theatrical criticism.

Yet Pan's image retained its immense power when Greek myth passed into Christian myth, with Pan's cloven-footed appearance providing a perfect concept for the Devil in the eyes of the new, evolving priesthood. In ancient and medieval times the common people were taught by being exposed to holy images, and fear would not have been instilled in them by being shown pictures of the Olympian 'beautiful people'; particularly during the medieval period, when the Devil was conceived as having horns and a goat's hindquarters. Pan's activities are those of a giver of fertility; hence he is represented as vigorous and lustful – the latter being one of the Devil's bestial characteristics and a condition abhorrent to the Christian clergy.

None of these representations, however, appear to be based on biblical writ since the Devil's physical appearance is never described in any religious text, and it doesn't take a leap of the imagination to see that the image is conveniently based on the pagan concept of the horned gods that were common to many pre-Christian religions and cultures. Pan in particular looks very much like the images of the medieval Satan and it has been alleged that the early Christian Church specifically chose his image to discredit the entire, widespread Horned God cultus. A similar image also became the basis for Baphomet, whom the Knights Templar were accused of worshipping, and which was later portrayed in Eliphas Lévi's 1854 Dogme et rituel de la haute magie (Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual).

Nevertheless, once an image has become firmly engrained in the cultural unconsciousness it is extremely difficult to dislodge. Joseph L. Henderson of the Jung Foundation described it as an area of historical memory that lies between the collective unconscious and the manifest culture pattern; having some kind of identity 'arising from the archetypes of the collective unconscious which, on one hand, assists in the formation of myth and ritual, and on the other, promotes the process of development in individual human beings ...' These mythological motifs, or primordial thoughts, lie dormant until some dream, vision or epiphany brings them to the fore – and often with conflicting emotions between faith and instinct.

Likewise spiritually significant paintings created during the Gothic and Renaissance eras were complex, fraught with religious fervour and symbolism. William H. Hunt, an English painter and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, observed: 'When language was not transcendental enough to complete the meaning of a revelation, symbols were relied upon for heavenly teaching, and familiar images, chosen from the known, were made to mirror the unknown spiritual truth.' And a goat-horned, goat-footed 'god' often in his misrepresentation as the Devil was a popular subject with artists of the time.

As David Freedberg remarks in The Power of Images, people are emotionally aroused by pictures and sculpture: 'They give thanks by means of them, expect to be elevated by them, and are moved to the highest levels of empathy and fear. They have always responded in these ways; they still do ...' for there are advantages and benefits to be gained from such images. 'The Christian apologist is likely to distort – or even to invent – information about responses to pagan idols [imagery], in order to clarify Christian attitudes to [Christian] images and to prove their superiority.' For anyone who has always been pagan at heart, however, those roots are anchored deep within the earth of national culture and folklore to provide an unbroken link with the ancient past.

Because behind every myth, fairy tale and legend – hidden within the art, song and structures of those ancient times – is an encoded layer of wisdom, science and truth passed down through countless generations. In Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion (1910), John Cuthbert Lawson recorded the beliefs of the Greek people that have been passed down from ancient times, certainly into the early part of the 20 century.

I assume only, without much fear of contradiction, that many of the popular superstitions and customs and magical practices still prevalent in the world date from a period far more remote than an age on which Greek history or archaeology can throw even a glimmering of light. If then I can show that among the Greek folk of today there still survive in full vigour such examples of primeval superstition as the belief in 'the evil eye' and the practice of magic, I shall have established at least an antecedent probably that there may exist also vestiges of the religious beliefs and practices of the historical era.

Lawson's entry for Pan (Panos) in the section 'The Survival of Pagan Deities' reveals a relatively modern folk-tale of a magic pipe given by Pan with the purpose of ridding the world of some of its evil men and concludes:

But perchance Pan is not dead yet, or if dead not forgotten. And if this solitary modern story, if it be genuine, testifies to a long-lived remembrance of his better qualities, so in the demonology of the middle ages a sterner aspect of his ancient character still secured him men's awe.

We also learn that Theocritus, the creator of pastoral poetry, gave voice to a well-known Pan-related superstition when he made a goat-herd say: 'Nay, shepherd, it may not be; in the noontide we may not pipe; 'tis Pan that we fear' because of the god's rage if woken from his slumber. According to Lawson, it was this superstition that influenced the translators of the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Old Testament) when they rendered the phrase, 'which in our Bible version of the Psalms appears as 'the destruction that wasteth at noonday'.' By this phrase, Lawson explains, 'the memory of Pan was undoubtedly perpetuated; for in certain forms of prayer from the 17 century, among the perils from which divine deliverance is sought, is mentioned more than once this 'midday demon'; and a corresponding daemon meridianus found a place of equal dignity among the ghostly enemies of Roman Catholics.'

In Viral Mythology the authors examine certain 'archoenigmas' – common themes and elements in ancient myth, stories, and art, architecture, iconography and symbolism – in much the same way as David Freedberg in The Power of Images examined religious art; and Erik Hornung (The Secret Lore of Egypt) and James Stevens Curl (The Egyptian Revival) traced the ongoing impact of ancient Egypt on the modern West. They also make the observation that the problems with symbols and art is that they cannot always be properly interpreted since they are open to misconstruction and misunderstanding. That is unless the reader (or listener) has the key ... or in the case of those with an esoteric mind-set who possess both lock and key, all that is needed is a drop of magical WD40 to unlock the riddle!

But it is Kenneth Grant's comment in Hecate's Fountain that explains why it is necessary to turn to the wisdom of the past if we wish to reconnect with the ancient power of a deity such as Pan in the present: ' ... this cosmic power [Pan] is popularly conceived of in a goatish or goat-footed form, the goat being symbolic of the lonely leaper in high places, i.e. the aspiration and consequent exaltation of the soul to high and holy places ... another reason for its association in the uninitiated mind with terror and the Great Unknown.' Grant continues:

It may be asked, why then do we not abandon the ancient symbols in favour of the formulae of nuclear physics and quantum mechanics? The answer is that the occultist understands that contact with these energies may be established more completely through symbols so ancient that they have had time to bury themselves in the vast storehouse of the racial subconsciousness ... The intellectual formulæ and symbols of mathematics have been evolved too recently to serve as direct conduits. For the Old Ones, such lines of communication are dead. The magician, therefore, uses the more direct paths which long ages have mapped out in the shadow lands of the subconsciousness.

And we do make contact with these different levels of consciousness or planes of thought. The idea for this book came through at 3am one morning and over the next few days, Pan manifested in all sorts of divergent ways, and the channels of communication were opened. Books not looked at for years suddenly caught the eye; vague memories from the past came to the fore; relevant information suddenly materialised and Pan: Dark Lord of the Forest and Horned God of the Witches was reborn. Or, giving the last word to John Cuthbert Lawson: 'Perhaps even yet in the pastoral uplands of Greece some traveller will hear news of Pan.'

Magical Exercise

In Socrates' prayer from Plato's Phaedrus (c.348/347BC) there are echoes of a genuine appeal to Pan for safe conduct when going upon a journey in Classical Greece, which can still be used today as a protective charm ...

Socrates: Is it not well to pray to the deities here before we go?

Phaedrus: Of course.

Socrates: O beloved Pan and all you other gods who haunt this place, grant to me that I be made beautiful in my soul within, and that all external possessions be in harmony with my inner man. May I consider the wise man rich; and may I have such wealth as only the self-restrained man can bear or endure. Do we need anything more, Phaedrus? For me that prayer is enough.