Feature Writer: Anthony Roe
Feature Title: The Great God Pan / Published at Beltane 1999
Link: The Great God Pan
XP’s Notes: This is just some short extracts from the article, still available online (if you feel so inclined — though, these, to me, are the more interesting parts highlighted)
The Great God Pan
As a schoolboy looking through the pages of Picture Post, I remember being curious about the reproductions of paintings from the walls of Aleister Crowley’s Abbey in Sicily, uncovered by the underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who produced the Crowley inspired Pleasure Dome.
There was one picture taken in the Chamber of Nightmares, with the sexologist Kinsey strategically posed in the foreground. The picture of a goat was evident. In my youth I did not recognize Pan, the son of Hermes, the Arcadian god of lust and magic who seduces men and women with his pipes and wantonness, the symbol of the libido in its sexual aspect, vagrant male sexuality, the personification of undisciplined procreation in nature, But the image remained with me, and I subsequently learnt that the herdsmen of ancient Greece adored Pan, and discovered the magick in connection with him.
It was Margaret Murray who said that the gods of the old religion become the devils of the new. Jesus ended his life on earth in the southern part of Judea in Jerusalem. The death of Christ heralded the birth of a new religion which would bear his name. As this new religion grew and spread, all, or almost all, it came into contact with became its enemy. The common people, content in their style of worship were suddenly heathens, sinners and enemies of the one true God. The pair of opposites was now Paganism and Christianity. As Christ represents Christianity, Pan represents Paganism. Pan was soon to become the Christian Devil, Satan incarnate. But before this Christian conception took hold, Pan was a god.
What was there about this frolicking god of the glen that made him so odious to the new Christians? Wherein was he Satanic? Perhaps in his sexual exploits. He is known to have seduced several nymphs. He also boasted that he had coupled with all Dionysus’ drunken maenads.The episode related above wherein Pan seduces the Moon points to the Christian belief that Satan is able to disguise himself and seduce chaste women. The similarity between the Church Father Origen’s description of Satan and the features of Pan is very obvious.