Feature Writer: A collection by XP

Feature Title: Pan and Masturbation

Link: Various

Pan and Masturbation

A short collection of articles about Pan as the God of Masturbation that I have collected over the years—so of these are from books, so the quotes aren’t so accessible anymore. But I love the notion that it was Satan that brought us the pleasure of masturbation—to practice on our own or with others. In some ways, maybe sad to think, but I prefer masturbation to sex as it is centered around what “My will be done” instead of “Thy will be done.”—like self-love and the delicious sin of ‘pride’—I remember as a young boy, how much I loved to masturbate in the mirror. This is a theme that I intent to explore in a new story entitled “Through the Looking Glass” inspired by a porn movie by the same name made in the mid-seventies. I love these old porn movies, from a time when satanism, sexuality and perversion all sprang from the same divine well.

If yet, if yet,
Pan’s orgies you will further fit,
See where the silver-footed fayes doe sit,
The Nymphes of wood and water;
Each trees, and fountaines daughter,
Goe take them forth, it will be good,
To see them wave it like a wood.

Hymn from ‘Pan’s Anniversarie’ by Ben Johnson (1620)

Pan, the God of All

It’s almost impossible to separate Pan and sex, or sex and Pan. The two subjects go together like cake and ice cream. Pan was associated with sex from the very beginning. While nudity among the gods of ancient Greece was common, gods with throbbing members were not. The fact that Pan was generally depicted with an erection speaks to the fact that he was a sexual god, but not sex in the way we always view it in the modern world. Pan was the patron of what has come to be known as “panic sex,” sex for the sake of lust and physical satisfaction.

Pan was not the god of love, and he was not the guy you petitioned if you were looking to fall in love. Pan was the god of lust, or of sex in its grunting, groaning, moaning, dirtiest form. Pan was anti-monogamy, and his myth is full of conquests and dalliances, but is void of long-time girlfriends and partners. Pan was said to bring more than lust to people, he brought uncontrollable longing, almost animal like desire.

While I personally don’t mind feeling this way from time to time, it can have very negative consequences. Pan’s myth is full of instances where the god basically rapes the object of affection, behavior that is reprehensible in modern Paganism. When calling on Pan to give you that lustiness, it’s best to do with a partner who shares your desires. I do like to think that Pan grew up a little bit as he matured as a god. We all get hit with those urges of uncontrollable lust now and again, and oftentimes there’s no one around to share that passion with. It must have been ever harder for a shepherd god; maybe that’s why Pan is said to have invented masturbation.

 

The Rite of Pan

Pan has always been seen as a god of fertility and was famed for his sexual prowess.  In ancient Greece, he was often depicted as having a large erect phallus.  Pan’s conquests were legendary, and he bragged about having seduced all of the Maenads, the wild female followers of Dionysus, in frenzied orgies.  The word ‘orgy’ is derived from an Greek word, orgion, which means ‘secret rite’ and the ancient Greek religious orgies were celebrated with drunkenness, dancing and singing, but were not necessarily sexual.

In order to seduce Selene, the Moon Goddess, Pan disguised himself with a white sheepskin to hide his hairy goat form and gave her a herd of white oxen. Pan did not just lust after maidens and nymphs.  He also fell in love with the shepherd Daphnis, who was the inventor of pastoral poetry, and taught him to play the pan pipes.

The Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope once told how Hermes took pity on Pan, who was pining for Echo, and taught him masturbation.  Pan then passed on this habit to his shepherd followers.  Diogenes commented that he wished it were so easy to relieve hunger by rubbing an empty stomach.

Leo Vinci, in his book ‘Pan: Great God of Nature’ writes: “Sex, as the great fertilizing power in nature, is one prime aspect of Pan: it is a perfectly normal, healthy appetite and should simply be regarded as such.  If you are thirsty, you drink, you make little fuss about it and that is how it should be with Pan, for he is just as natural.”

Masturbation 101 by Sandra Block

Despite millennia of anti-masturbation mania, there does exist some positive folklore on the natural wonders of whacking off. According to the ancient Greeks, masturbation was a divine gift. Hermes revealed it to Pan, whose love for a nymph was unrequited, demonstrating how stroking off could be a superb rape prevention technique. (Stop Sex Crime! Masturbate!) Pan then taught the shepherds (for which the sheep must have been grateful), The Greek philosopher Diogenes praised the extraordinary physical efficiency of masturbation, “Would to heaven that it were enough to rub one’s stomach in order to allay one’s hunger.”

The plural psyche by Andrew Samuels

Hermes is often depicted as chasing and/or raping some nymph or other – he is sexually rampant. Two of his offspring express this graphically. Priaps, who is sometimes stated to be Hermes’ father as well as his son, his highly promiscuous, doubly phallic, front and rear, grotesque, obscene, pornographic, transsexual, transvestite, horrendous. The other son, Pan is inter alia, the god of masturbation and of nightmares. Herms and his sons Priapus and Pan bring together rape, sado-masochism, posterior intercourse, and all manner of obscenities – Hermes does have intercourse with his nymphs, But remembering our search for the god of the primal scene, consider the following. Frued saw paternal aggression, sado-masochism and posterior intercourse as the main grotesque fantasies occasioned bt the primal scene. Pan is the god of masturbation and masturbation fantasies and hence closely connected with the signs and symbols of infantile sexuality. He is also the god of nightmares from which we awake or are awoken sweating and frightened.

The child in question by Diana Gittins

It is interesting to note that in Hellenic culture there was a god of masturbation – Pan: Masturbation is governed by the goat-god of nature, who invented it and is an expression of him. The mythological statement says that masturbation is an instinctual, natural activity invested by the goat for the Shepard. Pan is also the god of nightmares, epilepsy, panic and rape: when Pan is alive then nature is too, and it is filled with Gods … when Pan is dead, then nature can be controlled by the will of the new God… as the human loses personal connection with personified nature and personified instinct, the image of Pan and the image of the Devil merge … Pan never died … he was repressed.

Pan, the Goat-God of Nature by Soul Spelunker

This is the wild, natural, instinct that belongs to all of us as humans. Pan is, pardon the pun, a very horny character. He spent much of his time chasing after nymphs. Most of the time, he is portrayed with an erection. So, sex plays a large role in the wild nature of Pan, and in our souls, as well. We know the consequences of the repressed sexual instinct. Much harm has been wrought over the centuries because of sexual repression. At one time in Western history, the nature of Pan had, for the most part, been nullified and acquiesced by the Church and its teachings. The past one hundred years or so have seen a resurgence of interest in Pan and what he means for nature and human consciousness. The psychological ramifications of viewing Pan as Satan, or as evil in general, seem to be harmful to the soul. Certainly, Pan must be connected to the Shadow archetype in some way, for some characteristics of Pan certainly represent shadow material, indeed. 

Pan and the Nightmare by James Hillman

Masturbation may be understood in its own right and from within its own archetypal pattern, condemned neither as substitute behavior for prisoners and shepherds, as regressive behavior for adolescents, as recurrence of Oedipal fixations, nor as a senseless compulsion of physiology to be inhibited by the opposite prohibitions of personal relations, religion and society. As masturbation connects us with Pan as goat, it also connects us with his other half, the partie superieure of the instinctual function: self-consciousness. Because it is the only sexual activity performed alone, we may not judge it solely in terms of its service to the species or to society. Rather than focusing upon its useless role in external civilisation and procreation, we may reflect upon its usefulness for internal culture and creativity. By intensifying interiority with joy — and with conflict and shame, and by vivifying fantasy, masturbation, which has no purpose for species or society, yet brings genital pleasure, fantasy and guilt to the individual as psychic subject. It sexualizes fantasy, brings body to mind, intensies the experience of conscience and confirms the powerful reality of the introverted psyche — was it not invented for the solitary shepherd piping through the empty places of our inscapes and who re-appears when we are thrown into solitude. By constellating Pan, masturbation brings nature and its complexity back into the opus contra naturam of soul-making.