I've just finished reading Paul Robichaud's excellent work, Pan: The Great God’s Modern Return, and it's left me with a great many impressions. Not least: I would dearly love to read an autobiographical account of the pastoral protector; something along the lines of “I, Pan: The true story of a much-misunderstood, maligned, and neglected elder god” (or daemon).
On a more serious note, however:
I gather that the Arcadians, from the Peloponnese region of Greece, were an ancient and simple rustic people; indeed, according to the concept of proselenos, they were said to be older than the Moon, Selene, herself. Hence, by implication, pre-dating the Olympian gods of the Greek classical era.
In his address “On Pan’s Iconography and the Cult in the Sanctuary of Pan on the Slopes of Mount Lykaion”, in which Ulrich Hübinger reports on archaeological discoveries in Arcadia, he asks (given that the first written mentions of the god Pan only begin to appear in the fifth century BCE):
“Does Pan’s strange goatish appearance on Attic vases from Late Archaic and Early Classical times reflect earlier iconographical traditions from Arcadia? Did the ancients picture him in the beginning simply as a goat, which revealed its divine status by walking on its hind legs like a human being? Are connections even to be suspected with animal worship in the Mycenaean age?”
This was the very question I had been asking myself (albeit with scant knowledge or reading of the field, and quite without evidence).
Perhaps following Pan's alleged support in the battle of Marathon, in which he induced panic terror in the enemies' ranks, the cult of Pan spread through the Greek lands.
So, when we read about Pan and we see images of him as half-goat, half-man or horned god (equated by many since the 19th century with Satan), and we read about some of his rather unsavoury or even demonic characteristics (connected with “animal instinct” and sexuality or even bestiality) ... how much of that is true to his more humble and less sophisticated origins in Arcadia (or even before that time, if he is, as some suggest, equivalent to the Vedic or Proto-Indo-European pastoral god, Pūshān (or *Péh₂usōn)?
It's been said that the gods of one culture become the demons of the next, as we can clearly see from the early days of Christianity, and also in other transitional times such as the Enlightenment; we see the demise and eventual death of older beliefs and ways of being. Earlier than that, though: did the Athenian and Attic people take his image and mould it to their own ends, perhaps to promote the classical Greek civilisation and demote the simple, rustic, “noble savagery” of the Arcadian wild[er]ness?
So, how much of what we are told about Pan is true?
Though I am more than willing to accept the existence of Shadow elements (not least in my own psyche), to use a term from Jungian depth psychology, I'm wondering if virtually all we know about Pan has come to us through mythological and psychological denigration, embellishment and propaganda; that Pan has been misunderstood, misrepresented, scapegoated, demonised, neglected, and most recently ridiculed along with so much else that is sacred.
Given a lack of written evidence prior to the classical Greek era, let us hope that modern Peloponnesian archaeology (and even, dare I say it, direct knowledge) can shine a light on these issues and give us a better understanding.
Image
Image: The venture annual of art and literature - The Death of Pan / Louise Glazier / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
