the original Greek tragoidos, or `Goat Song', as he fertilized the land. Pan-inspired sexual revels lasted well into the Christian era, together with elements of worship from the cult of the Maiden, as the May Day festivities where maidens danced around the phallic maypole before coupling - perhaps indiscriminately - with the local lads, much to the Church's impotent disgust.
Cromwell's Puritan Protectorate banned maypoles, along with virtually everything else that made life worth living. To the Puritans, the sexual licence involved in the festivals was bad enough, but in some areas the `Mai', or Maiden who gave her name to the month, was even associated somewhat confusedly with the Popish Virgin Mary! The crude symbolism of the maypole was understood, if not accepted, by Cromwell's co-religionists, such as the writer Philip Stubbes, whose detailed description of the festivities seems a little fevered:
Young men and maids, old men and wives, run gadding overnight to the woods, groves, hills, and mountains, where they spend all night in pleasant pastimes; and in the morning they return, bringing with them birch and branches of trees to deck their assemblies withal. And no marvel, for there is a great Lord present amongst them, Satan, prince of hell. But the chiefest jewel they bring from thence is their Maypole, which they bring home with great veneration . . . two or three hundred men, women and children following it with great devotion. And this being reared up . . . they strew the ground about, bind green boughs about it, set up summer halls, bowers and arbours hard by. And then they fall to dance about it, like as the heathen people did at the dedication of Idols, whereof this is a perfect pattern, or rather the thing itself 59
May Day was so indelibly associated with ancient pagan rites across Europe that in France church bells were rung all that month `to protect the city from flying witches'.60 And although May itself is still regarded by the superstitious as unlucky, it is especially inauspicious to marry on a Friday in May, Fridays traditionally being sacred to goddesses such as the Nordic Freya, who gave her name to the weekday.
The goat-footed one also gave his name to our `panic', 'originally the terrible cry of Pan, who dispersed his enemies with a magic yell that filled them with fear and took away all their strength.'61 True panic is believed to be only experienced in wild woods or the wilderness, a theme that was portrayed in the haunting Australian movie Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975),62 in which schoolgirls and a teacher disappeared mysteriously on a trip to Hanging Rock (a thinly-disguised Ayers Rock) amid a heady atmosphere of repressed sexuality, simmering neurosis and something darkly paranormal lurking subliminally under the plot - something elemental and lusty ...
Pan is also intimately associated with satyrs, originally so timid that their animal totem was the hare, but later widely seen as a rapacious goat-like being, with hooves, hairy legs, bare human chests and horns. That they have assumed archetypal qualities of challenging sexual repression can be seen from the description of the `deep, secret wound' in the mind of Dorothy Hare, the eponymous heroine of George Orwell's A Clergyman's Daughter (1935), who found `that sort of thing' exceptionally distasteful after witnessing `certain dreadful scenes between her father and mother' as a child:
... And then a little later she had been frightened by some old steel engravings of nymphs pursued by satyrs. To her childish mind there was something inexplicably, horribly sinister in those horned, semi-human creatures that lurked in thickets ... ready to come bounding forth in sudden swift pursuit ...The satyr remained with her as a symbol ... [of] that special feeling of dread, of hope less flight from something more than rationally dreadful - the stamp of hooves in the lonely wood, the lean, furry thighs of the satyr. It was not a thing to be altered, not to be argued away.
Orwell adds with a touch of irony - and perhaps vivid memories of personal frustration: `It is, moreover, a thing too common nowadays, among educated women, to occasion any kind of surprise.'
Artemidorus (whose name suggests a link with the cult of the goddess Artemis), the late-second-century dream interpreter, implies strongly that Pan makes regular appearances in the dreams of humankind, and is most often glimpsed at night. The classical poet Horace wrote with pride and gratitude that Pan protected his farm, and occasionally even visited him, although he never saw him properly 63 Occult lore has it that Pan is perceived at `crossover' places and times - the edge of the wood at noon or midnight, for example - and should never be conjured immediately after lunchtime, because he will be enjoying his afternoon nap and, ominously, will be rather cross.
In his Pan: Great God of Nature (1993), the occult scholar `Leo Vinci' notes that `In the Authorized Version of Isaiah the word 'satyr' is used to render the Hebrew se'rim ('hairy ones') a demon or supernatural being ... that lives in uninhabited places.'64 He cites Isaiah: `But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall lie there, and satyrs shall dance there.'65 Again, Isaiah repeats the satyr/desolation leitmotif. `The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow.'66 Vinci points out that the allusion to `devils' in the following passage from Leviticus refers to satyrs: `And they shall no more offer their sacrifice unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring .161
As in the annual mysteries of Tammuz, Pan's mourners would lament `Great Pan is dead!', but soon that ritual phrase was taken to mark not simply the end of another year, but the final chapter in a whole religious era, the death of the supremacy of Pan - and, by extension, all the great pagan deities - with the advent of Christianity. As Stephen McKenna has his mysterious `Mr Stranger' say in his little-known book, The Oldest God (1926):
The world ... is too timid ... for paganism; and so mankind remains suspended in mid-air, higher than the beasts and lower than the angels, miserable in the void between animal satisfaction and celestial bliss ... The rule of Pan came to an end on the day when a fanatic preached that the kindly, joyous, savage Pan was in truth the embodiment of original sin!'
When the stranger leaves, `the baffling animal-scent had departed' 68
The profound and unsettling concept of a great being who was simultaneously `kindly' and `savage' usually proves too strong for modem folk, often even New Agers who follow their own form of neo-paganism. (Pan becomes a sort of bar-room decadent, while the old uncompromising destroyers such as Sekhmet transmogrify into solicitous friendly figures, almost furry pets. While few would want their home town to be laid waste by a ferocious lioness- headed Egyptian goddess breathing fire, the cuddly modem version is so inauthentic it would be unrecognizable to her ancient devotees.)
Yet with the collapse of the Roman Empire - which in any case was increasingly sceptical and atheistic - few of the old gods remained popular. However, metamorphosed into the horned Devil in his dark form as the Goat of Mendes, and all his attendant satyrs transformed into demons from the pit, ironically Pan remained foremost in Christian minds. As Geoffrey Ashe notes in his classic, The Virgin (1976): `During Rome's long decline, almost the last thinking believers in the old gods were their Christian enemies. A pagan might laugh at Apollo as a fable. A Christian would shudder at him as a malignant spirit.''
Far from his Arcadian woodlands, Pan became the Devil, and - as we shall see - his European adherents of the Middle Ages were accused of worshipping him in the depths of the countryside. And in Europe, the homed god of the West, Cernunnos, lord of fertility and the underworld - similar in appearance and characteristics to Pan - was also assimilated to the Devil, while the Norse Thor, dressed all in devilish red, drives a cart pulled by goats - very suggestive to the Christians. Saint Paul had no doubt that all pagan deities were actually demonic, writing to the Corinthians:
Do I mean ... that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons, too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord's table and the table of demons 70
Tellingly, Paul adds, a little nervously: `Are we trying to arouse the Lord's jealousy? Are we stronger than he?'7' Perhaps Paul knew to be particularly wary of Pan, for he ruled over the countryside, the paganus, which gave its name to the hated pagans. And his association with lusty, assertive goddesses could only blacken Pan further in Paul's eyes, if that were possible.
Apart from the Maenads, one of Pan's more distinguished female associates was Artemis, `uninjured, healing, vigorous', who `grants health and strength to others' .72 She was also known to her worshippers at Ephesus, in Turkey, under her Latin name of Diana - `Goddess-Anna' - where her monumental golden statue was covered in breasts, to symbolize her succour for all. Yet she also had a dark and terrible aspect, being known in Sparta as Artamis, `the Butcher', a Kali-like destroyer whose wrath was akin to Yahweh's. One of her many animal incarnations was as a she-bear, called by the Celtic people `Art', the mate of the great Arthur, whose totem animal was the bear. The medieval King of the Witches was known as `Robin, Son of Art'. With their usual mixture of fear, superstition and reluctant reverence, the Christians both denounced Artemis as a demon and canonized her as Saint
