Click here to listen to The Greek Good Pan: Nature and Human Nature in the season 1 archives on buzzsprout
“Tell me Muse, about the dear son of Hermes, the goat-footed, the two-horned, the lover of the din of revel, who haunts the wooded dells with dancing Nymphs …” Homeric Hymn to Pan
Many, if not all of the old gods, are embedded in what we now call the “natural world” in one way or another, so what makes Pan the Greek god of “nature?” How has he been treated by Western culture over the centuries, and what does this tell us about Western fears and prejudices?
In this podcast, we look at 4 of his defining characteristics: the significance of his trickster father Hermes, that he’s half man and half billygoat; his reed pipe; and his home in Arcadia—to find answers to these questions.
Transcript of this podcast
“Tell me Muse, about the dear son of Hermes, the goat-footed, the two-horned, the lover of the din of revel, who haunts the wooded dells with dancing Nymphs…” Those are words from the Homeric Hymn to the Greek God Pan, the subject of today’s podcast.
Pan is simply identified as the Greek “Nature” god. But how meaningful is that when the God Poseidon, for example, an Olympian with far greater stature than Pan, ruled the oceans, the winds, and storms, created earthquakes—certainly key aspects of the natural world—and the goddess Artemis, who may have been the central Greek deity in prehistoric times, who was the figure of wilderness and the “Lady of the Wild Beasts?”
Many if not all of the old gods around the world, are embedded in what we now call the “natural world” in one way or another. So what makes Pan the “nature” god, I wonder?
Well, the image of Pan does convey specific and important ideas and feelings about “nature” in Western culture. Ideas and feelings about nature that I would argue, have much more to do with “human nature” than the natural world itself, and the problems that we have with our natural, that is animal, aspects. I’ve been sitting with Pan for awhile now, and I wonder if we need him as much or more than the popular, mythological image of “mother” nature, to unearth the attitudes, fears, and enculturated prejudices in Western culture that prevent so many of us from the understanding and deeply feeling, the plight of planet earth, which is our plight.
Why don’t we act? Why do we have such a hard time connecting? Why is this something that we have to talk about? Well, I wonder if the conflicts that we have attempted to bury in our use of Pan over millennia, might help us with that.
We could spend a year talking about Pan so for this podcast, let’s look at 4 of his defining characteristics, all mentioned in that brief sentence plucked from the Homeric Hymn: that he is a son of the Greek trickster god, Hermes; that he appears in the form of a hybrid creature, that he is half man and half billy goat; that he plays a reed pipe (of his own invention); and that he lives in Arcadia, a quiet, mountainous area in central Greece that was the sparsely populated home of many nymphs, goats, sheep, and shepherds.
Let’s begin with Pan’s parentage. In the best-known story, Pan is the son of Hermes and the fair-haired mortal daughter of a man named Dryops, which means “tree.” Hermes was near his birthplace, Mt Cyllene, in Arcadia, and he worked awhile as a shepherd once he set his eyes on this young woman, in order to attract her attention and win her confidence. I’ll say a bit more about mom later. For now, let’s stop to consider the significance of having a trickster father and being part of that lineage.
Tricksters are quite attractive although they can be quite dangerous. They are crafty and playful, opportunistic—even blatantly self-serving—and also light-hearted and flexible and fun. They often combine a worldly shrewdness with a perpetual freshness, an innocence or naivete, that is powerfully seductive in its ambiguity.
Tricksters bring valuable gifts to mortals and the gods. Hermes invented the lyre, for example, and made such beautiful music upon it that he melted the anger of his brother Apollo, who took the lyre as a gift and went on to become the god of music and patron of the bards, the myth-singers like Homer, who played the lyre while singing their poems of the exploits of the heroes.
In many cultures, Tricksters are the bringers of stories, poems, and music. They are also thieves and liars. They are the inventors of divination tools and ritual sacrifice, two devices that link the mortal and immortal realms, the humans and the gods, in ways that benefit both.
Tricksters don’t necessarily intend to give these rich gifts. They are not altruistic benefactors. There is always a personal agenda that could spell disaster for someone and yet, a trickster is as happy as anyone else when what they have wrought can be used by others (as long as it doesn’t bring them any personal harm or punishment, of course). And they are very happy to receive rewards, praise, and accolades for what is frequently a happy accident and moment of grace.
The generosity of the trickster springs from the awareness that there is always more, that the cosmic cycle of creation is infinite and varied, that these material forms in this moment are but a brief iteration in a much larger dance.
Pan, son of Hermes, is all of these things, albeit earthbound and so lacking the profundity of his father who is the divine traveler between the realms. Hermes went to the underworld, for example, and Pan does not do that. Pan is playful, physically strong and agile, both innocent and cunning, bursting with sexual energy and desire. Some say that Pan invented masturbation when he couldn’t find a suitable partner: a nymph, maiden, shepherd, or she-goat, on one long horny afternoon. Pan loved the cool streams and the shady glades. His quest for pleasure and mutual delight is simple, earthy, organic, natural, and sometimes crude, bestial, and violent. He is lusty and lecherous; so you see, the figure of Pan offers us the opportunity to consider these qualities, how they are bound up with each other, and their subjectivity, the value judgments that we might bring to them in a given situation, the distinctions that one draws. We’ll come back to this point.
Pan’s mother was a gentle and lovely mortal woman as far as we know. She was shocked at his birth and frightened by his ugliness. He was ugly or at the least, strange looking, for he was born with two horns on his head, a lined face, and sharp, bearded chin—and he was quite hairy, with the legs of a goat and cloven hooves. Pan was half man and half billygoat. Mother’s reaction may sound cruel and another woman may have responded differently, but let’s admit that when you make love with a beautiful god this isn’t what you expect!
Hermes on the other hand, was delighted with his son. He tenderly wrapped him in the thick, soft skins of a mountain hare and carried him up to Mount Olympus to meet grandfather Zeus and the other Olympians. Grandpa and the other immortals delighted in the child. They delighted in Pan’s liveliness and quick laughter, his love of music and jokes, his physical agility, and his unbridled, unabashed appreciation of beauty, nature, and sexual release of all kinds. Pan brought the Olympians happiness and they named him “Pan,” which is the Greek word for “all,” because he made them all happy and he delighted in everything.
Dionysus especially loved Pan. The god Dionysus was also a reveler and a god who wandered the mountains and forests. He conducted his rites out of doors, often under the moon. The satyrs, another race of hybrids, sometimes part man and horse and at other times depicted as part man and goat, were the constant companions of Dionysus. Some say that the young god was raised by the satyr Silenus, a fat old drunk who may have been a son of Pan’s.
But Pan’s pleasures, however delightful, were relatively mundane, pleasures of the flesh in a given moment unlike the rituals of Dionysus, in which the body was a portal to the sublime, and a vehicle for mystical experience. Beneath his seemingly light-hearted, even frivolous pursuits, Dionysus was a quite serious divinity, which may be why he needed to spend so much time traveling in the company of drunkards, and fools and jokers.
Dionysus and Pan both enjoyed dancing and making music in the moonlight, and one of Pan’s successful love affairs was with the Greek moon goddess Selene. I talked about Selene in a podcast earlier this year. You can find that if you’d like to learn more about her. She favored Pan because he gave her a gift of white oxen, a very thoughtful gift for a goddess who traveled the night sky in a cart drawn by a pair of white animals.
Pan also fell in love with the nymph Echo, who had a lovely voice. He thought they would make beautiful music together but Echo spurned him and fell tragically, fatally, in love with a beautiful and cold-hearted mortal youth named Narcissus.
A similarly luckless pursuit is behind Pan’s invention of the reed pipe. According to Ovid, who tells the story in Book 1 of the Metamorphoses, there once was a very charming young woman who lived in Arcadia, Pan’s country. She had a lovely, bird-like voice. She was always twittering and singing like a bird, so her sisters called her Syrinx. This young woman as also nimble as a little bird. She was very difficult to trap and managed to get away from the most ardent of suitors and most agile of satyrs. She was a very fast runner and although many of them pursued her across fields and through the forest, she managed to hold on to her virginity.
Syrinx emulated the virgin goddess Artemis, whom you may recall, was chaste. Artemis who was known to the Romans as Diana. Syrinx copied the goddess Artemis in her form of dress, in her manner, and in her practice of celibacy. She had everything except she wasn’t a hunter, like Artemis. In fact, she was so dedicated to Artemis that some of those who chased her thought that they were after the goddess herself.
One day, she was walking through the forest and Pan, who was all dressed up in his skins and pine needles, saw her. He was quite taken with her. He stopped her with a smile and a glint in his eye but before he could even say a word she turned and ran. She was very fast, so although he was quite agile himself, she managed to stay out in front of him until she got to the edge of the river Ladon.
This was very lazy, slow-moving river with beaches and vegetation but when she got to the river she stopped short, turned around and saw pan coming, and cried out the sisters of the stream, that is the nymphs of that body of water, to” please, please, please change me into something, anything, with a shape that this hairy god is going to find less attractive!”
And they did. Just as Pan reached out and put his arms around her, they changed her into a sheaf of reeds. Pan found that he was holding an armful of reeds. “Oh no,” he sighed, and when he sighed that breath across the reeds, they made that echoing, musical sound. You’ve probably heard it. It was such a delicate, tender bit of music that Pan rather liked it. he said to Syrinx in absentia, “Lady, this meeting of ours is one that won’t be soon forgotten.” he cut down the reeds and he made his pipe.
You may have seen the pipe. He’s often depicted with it. It’s a series of reeds in different lengths. Pan played the pipe every day, all of the time, managing to take pleasure from even that encounter.
Now, you might say that Pan’s idea of seduction and his approach to sex generally was that there’s no such thing as bad sex. One is tempted to agree with that, in a repressed and prudish and controlling society. The ancient Greeks and Romans often scorned young men and women both, who shied away from hetero and homosexual encounters. To refuse an invitation to have sex from someone who is delighting in you- so we’re not talking about rape here- that was seen as a waste of beauty and act of ingratitude, because sex is one of the great pleasures of the body and the body is mortal and life is short. So get it while you can.
You could be criticized for being a little bit too precious, skittish, or choosy and there is a lot of freedom in this “take it where you can get it, where you want it” viewpoint. And yet we also know that is an invitation to predation and violence on the of the more powerful. Being selective is an expression of sexuality isn’t it, as well as a right? All to say, that the question of who should do what, with whom, is more complicated and nuanced than is often presented.
Interesting, that our word “panic,” to be possessed by an unexpected, overwhelming, uncontrollable fear and sense of doom, comes from the Greek and is associated with the god Pan. When you have a panic attack, you abandon reason. It’s the fight or flight instinct, the body takes over. The Greeks believed that the sudden presence of a god was one cause of panic attacks. In other words, it’s an invasion of some sort. Where panic comes from, whether or not it is necessary, who knows. Yet another ambiguous situation, associated with this god.
Then there is the image of the goat and the feelings that elicits. The reference to the goat is not random. When the ancient Greeks said pan was part man and part billygoat, that suggested something specific. Here is a bit of information about that. When the ancient Greeks made a sacrifice to express reverence and gratitude, they chose a ram. They sacrificed a ram, a male sheep, because this was a noble animal. When they wanted to appease the wrath of a god, when they wanted to send a message with their sacrifice that said “Here I am, a lowly and unworthy human being,” and humble themselves, then they sacrificed a goat, that is a “scapegoat.”
Let’s pause to think about goats versus sheep for a moment. When I think of sheep, I think of the gentle and peaceful, vulnerability and staying together in flock for safety, and I don’t think sheep are especially crafty. Goats on the other hand, are much more rambunctious and curious. They’re individuals. They’re also very adaptable. They are much like human beings in the wide range of environments in which they can survive. In this discussion of Pan, we need to especially consider the difference between male goats versus male sheep, the billygoat and the ram.
I’m going to draw on the work of Paul Shepherd here, and his fascinating ideas about human co-evolution with animals. In his book, “The Others: How Animals Made Us Human,” Shephard offers a brief examination Western attitudes about goats, attitudes which he says, reflect patriarchal values, misogyny, sexual roles, and control. According to Shephard, the ram is “honorable” and good because he doesn’t let rivals mate with his harem and keeps an eye on his females to insure their fidelity.
The billygoat is not concerned with fidelity. He is, in Shephard’s words, “both betrayer and betrayed.” Male and female goats get it on when they feel like it, with whoever is around. Maybe you know the old phrase for a man with an unfaithful wife, the “cuckhold?” To be cuckolded, this means to get horns, and these are the horns of a billygoat.
Which brings us to the horned one, the lascivious tempter, cavorting in the moonlight with witches and other wantons. What am I talking about? Why the Christian devil of course, and this is where Pan has ended up.
How do we deal with the problem of evil? This is one of the perennial questions that human beings address through mythology. The solution, in the mythological system of Christianity, is to posit a perfect and perfectly “good” and pure God, and pair him up with his opposite, an adversary who is pure evil, all bad, “the Devil.” Monotheisms like Christianity are part of dualistic consciousness. They shape and encourage this way of seeing the world, and they are a product of it. When I talk about dualisms, I’m talking about these pairs of supposed opposites, like good and bad, light and dark, clean and dirty, spirit and flesh, male and female, and so on.
These oppositions seem to explain so much! They can be useful as long as you remember that they are ideas, and that the dualistic structure itself is an idea, and therefore limited. Human nature and human experience are far more complex. Pan and his trickster father Hermes warn us away from overly simple explanations and absolute “truths.” There’s nothing wrong with having principles and values, with morality— these are essential to community and self-knowledge—and at the same time, stay light on your feet my friends. Complexity. This is where we’re at.
The image of a “horned god” brings another figure to mind who is worthy of mention here, the “Green Man.” The Green Man, refers to stone carvings of a human face wreathed in leaves and vines. He’s part tree or vegetable, or some combination thereof, and these carvings are common on old churches and buildings in England. There is no known mythology about this figure and the name “Green Man” was coined by Lady Raglan, an amateur folklorist in the mid-19thcentury. And yet the “Green Man” is often talked about and used today as a pagan deity and icon. All of this is a fairly recent, the mythologies and stories. And yet these carvings do reflect the fact of our bodily existence as animals in nature, and the modern longing to dissolve the cultural barriers that have been erected.
Now, why do I bring this up? Well, the “Green Man’ is one of these good, wholesome, vigorous, lusty, regenerative nature “gods” like Pan, and I mentioned that Pan lived in Arcadia. You may not have known where Arcadia is located and yet be familiar with the term “arcadian.” Over time Arcadia, this rugged and isolated land of shepherds, has become the image of the pastoral, the peaceful and harmonious, untouched by the degradation of the outside world, a place of idyllic innocence, that is, an idealized place. That is, a place that is seen one-sidedly, as all good and amazing, the lost paradise…
After all that he’s been through over the centuries, Pan might be pleased to know that there are some people who see the woods as a refuge and would like to picnic beside a cool creek with him on a lazy afternoon. And yet when we go into the romantic, and I put the Green Man in this category, —we have two horned figures–one is absolutely bad and the other is absolutely good, and whenever we have something is uniformly all good or bad, we are still in denial. We’ve merely relocated the shadow. We haven’t addressed it. We haven’t addressed the challenges. We haven’t addressed the nuances, the subtleties, and the complexities.
The material world, the body, and our animal nature are a bundle of complexities. To stay with this demands that we stay on the edge of certainties, that we court ambiguity. That we know what we “know” and at the same time recognize, there is much more that we don’t know. That we make room. Remember, the name “Pan” is the Greek word for “all,” the totality, after all.
That’s what I have for you today on the subject of the Greek god Pan. Let me know what interest you or share your questions. This is very rich territory and I want to say a big “thank you” to Myth Matters community member Kayleigh Frater, who asked for a program about Pan and launched us all into this fertile exploration.
The possibility of hiring me as your personal mythologist, to create a podcast on the mythological figure, story, or topic that interest you is one of the benefits you receive when you join the Myth Matters community of patrons and pledge $5/month or more to support the creation of this podcast. I say “patron” because I’m in the process of moving the community on bandcamp to patreon, a crowdfunding platform with greater flexibility that will make it way easier for me to share special content with my patrons. I’ll keep you posted about this but if you go to the mythic mojo website now, you’ll see a button that will take you to the new patreon site if you are able and interested in providing some financial support.
Now, in addition to Kayleigh, I have to give special thanks this week to long time community members, Fred Burke and Cheryl Cox, and to new member Jorge Davies! Welcome Jorge. Thank you to all of you who are giving me ongoing, monthly contributions to keep Myth Matters happening.
Women who are listening – Psyche’s Quest, a workshop for women on the path to self-fulfillment is taking place in Joshua Tree, CA the weekend of September 13-15th? Are you ready to find new meaning and opportunity in your life story, and re-imagine the heroine’s journey for our time?? If so, then I hope that you’ll join me. There are a couple of spaces left in the workshop. Registration closes September 10th. All of the details are available at mythicmojo.com or search FB events for Psyche’s Quest.
Before I sign off today I have a couple of brief messages from other high desert podcasters with programs that may interest you, Desert Lady Diaries and Simultaneous Times. Hang on until the end here and instead of our theme music you’ll hear two little 20-second promos for those podcasts.
And after all of those announcements, that’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Thank you for sharing this podcast with others and spreading the word about what we’re doing here at Myth Matters, and thank you so much for listening! Please tune in next time, and until then, happy myth making and keep the mystery in your life alive.
If you’re curious about Ovid and the :”Metamorphoses,” here’s a link to the full text on line: https://archive.org/stream/OvidHersiodVirgil22/Ovid__Horace_Gregory_The_Metamorphoses_djvu.txt
There are many different translations of this classic work. This one by Allen Mandelbaum is one that I use: https://www.amazon.com/Metamorphoses-Ovid/dp/0156001268/ref=sr_1_6?crid=38RU781RUQIM3&keywords=metamorphosis+ovid&qid=1567742149&s=gateway&sprefix=Metamorpho%2Caps%2C302&sr=8-6
