Et in Arcadia Ego
Astarte's horns, representing the new moon - as they did in the iconography of many other lunar goddesses, including Isis and Diana - were important evidence of devilish influence to the later Christians. However, it was a male deity of the ancient world who was to provide the physical model for the medieval Satan - horns, tail, cloven hooves and all the trappings of Hell. This was the once `all-great Pan', the king of Greek satyrs, the ultimate woodland god - perhaps Arcadian - whose limitless libido, once so admired and envied among his devotees, became a source of terror for Christian women. The Goat-God, sometime mate of various forms of goddess such as Selene, Athene and Penelope - and, apparently, all the ferocious Maenads - his furry thighs, curly hair growing luxuriantly around budding horns and lascivious, almond-shaped eyes, was seen as the epitome of lust. Many of his idols were even impressively, and shamelessly, ithyphallic. No fig leaves obscured Pan's proud masculinity, probably because no fig leaves could possibly cover it.
In his essay on the Tarot card `The Devil', Aleister Crowley notes tellingly `... the card represents Pan Pangenetor, the AllBegetter . . . the masculine energy at its most masculine .156 He describes the function of Pan, even in his less-than-acceptable mode: `All things equally exalt him. He represents the finding of ecstasy in every phenomenon, however naturally repugnant; he transcends all limitations; he is Pan; he is All.'57 Undoubtedly the worship of Pan required a strong stomach and a feverish libido, but as challenger to the staid and small-minded he exemplified a true Luciferan spirit, while never being, as so widely believed, the embodiment of Satan. Horns and hooves alone do not the Devil make.
The Greeks believed the Egyptian solar god Amen-Ra to be another version of Pan - the Masculine Principle being almost universally associated with the Sun, just as its opposite and equal Feminine Principle was usually (but not exclusively) personified by the lunar goddesses - calling his sacred city `Panopolis', city of Pan. Its sacred processions became our modern English panoply, meaning `Any imposing array that covers or protects,'"' such as complete armour worn ceremonially. `Panoply' comes from `Pan' and hoplon, meaning weapon. Pan's own name in turn possibly derived from paein, pasture, and also carried the meaning of `bread' (as in the modern French pain) and `all' (as in `Pan American Airlines'). Other `all-fathers' such as Osiris and Tammuz were symbolized by sacred bread, eaten in order to ingest wisdom. In their sacramental meals, the bread also represented the flesh of the god, and wine symbolized their blood. In an ancient legend concerning the dying-and-ri sing poetic divinity Orpheus, finding only water to drink, he turned it magically into wine.
Like those of his brother gods, Pan's holy drama of death and resurrection was celebrated annually, providing 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 May-pole, 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 Ursula, from her Saxon name, Ursel.73
(As Liz Greene remarks in her haunting and important novel about the alleged secrets of the Merovingians in France, The Dreamer of the Vine [ 1980] `... how different these gods were ... What the one demands, the other abhors. Yet though our poor minds cannot comprehend it, I often suspect these gods are the same.' Then she adds sagely: `I think too much of any god can drive one mad.' )74
The shaggy outline of the Goat-God hung over the years of the witch trials: now the Devil incarnate, he had free rein to ensnare the unwary - mainly women - and seize their souls.
Even the gentle `sylvans and fauns' of lost Arcadia were believed - by the Inquisition and even their much later co-religionists, not the least the Catholic zealot the Reverend Montague Summers (who died in 1948), of whom much more later - to be `commonly called incubi', or sexual demons.75 In this as in much else, Summers is toeing the long-established party line: in fact, satyrs, fauns and the Gaulish nature spirits called dusii (from deus, `god') were listed in the Inquisition's official handbook as incubi:
who had intercourse with witches in front of witnesses . . . Women seem unaccountably willing to copulate with their demons under the eyes of `bystanders'; the latter reported that, while the demon remained invisible, `it has been apparent from the disposition of those limbs and members which pertain to the venereal act and orgasm, [that] ... they have been copulating with Incubus devils.'76
Summers demonstrates his quirky contrariness when discussing the Devil as represented on the medieval stage: `He is, in fact, the Satyr of the old Dionysiac processions, a nature-spirit, the essence of joyous freedom and unrestrained delight, shameless if you will, for the old Greek knew not shame.' Strangely, Summers appears grudgingly to admire the `joyous freedom' of the Satyr, and even goes on: `... in a word he was Paganism incarnate, and Paganism was the Christian's deadliest foe; so they took him, the Bacchic reveller, they smutted him from horn to hoof, and he remained the Christian's deadliest foe, the Devil.' The Rev. Summers seems to be oblivious of the fact that a good proportion of his book is devoted to describing the horned and cloven-hooved Devil as a reality. In any case, he notes that in Euripedes' classic play Medea dating back to the fifth century BCE, there is the passage: `She seemed, I wot, to be one frenzied, inspired with madness by Pan or some other of the gods',77 adding `Madness was sometimes thought to be sent by Pan for any neglect of his worship'.78
Although to certain groups of country folk, Pan never really died, it was with the rise of the Romantic Movement in the early nineteenth century that saw him enjoy a comeback, although again, perhaps a little diluted in character. The grounds of countless country resi dences became littered with follies in the form of temples or even classical tombs, and statuary evocative of Pan - satyrs, nymphs and the god himself. Ideas about a long-lost Arcadia, a gently wooded Golden Age, permeated society as a whole.
Perhaps the poet Shelley had the Romantics' more sentimental and vivid images in mind when he wrote to his friend Thomas J. Hogg: `I am glad to hear that you do not neglect the rites of the true religion. Your letter awoke my sleeping devotion, and the same evening I ascended alone the high mountain behind my house, and suspended a garland, and raised a small turf-altar to the mountainwalking Pan'.79 Shelley's reverence for the supremely pagan Pan seems to have filled the gap left by his rejection of Christianity. In a recently discovered letter from the poet to Ralph Wedgwood - dating from around 1811 when Shelley was expelled from Oxford University for publishing a tract entitled `The Necessity of Atheism' - he wrote: `Christ never existed ... the fall of man, the whole fabric indeed of superstition which it supports can no longer obtain the credit of Philosophers.' 80 It is interesting that Shelley felt more comfortable with the ultimate archetype of the pagan god than with the Christian deity. The high priest of decadence, Lord Byron - who had an intimate relationship with his own sister among countless other dalliances - wrote regretfully:
Oscar Wilde, perhaps genuinely, or simply ever mindful of his reputation for excess and perversity - after all, he did insist on playing Salome in his p
lay of the same name on its first, and only, night - lamented: `O goat-foot god of Arcady! This modern world hath need of thee! 181
Less predictably, Pan appears anonymously in the great children's classic, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows (1908) when Rat whispers, awed, `as if in a trance': `This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me ... Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we will find Him!'
Lucifer and all her tribe
We have seen how Plato called Lucifer `Aster', simply meaning `star', after his identification with the bright Morning Star. But Plato and countless others in the ancient world knew that the Morning Star had another incarnation - moving round in the heavens as the Evening Star, or Venus. In his classic The Golden Bough (1922), J.G. Frazer wrote:
Sirius was the star of Isis, just as the Babylonians deemed the planet Venus the star of Astarte. To both peoples apparently the brilliant luminary in the morning sky seemed the goddess of life and love come to mourn her departed lover or spouse and wake him from the dead.82
Like the lesser-known Astraea or `Starry One',83 the Libyan Goddess of Law who dispensed the fates of man, the beauty and truth of the deity Venus was believed to be visible in the Evening Star, the opposite and equal to the Morning Star, Lucifer. However, this distinction was too subtle for the pagans' new Christian enemies, and a great blurring between the Feminine Principle and the Evil One rapidly took place, eased in its passage by the tendency of the Romans to refer to Venus as `Lucifera', the enlightener. Venus, the archetypal goddess of the arts of love and women's secrets, an unashamedly sexual deity, gave her name not only to `venereal disease' and `venery', but perhaps, some claim, also more courteously to Venice, the city of her element as `Stella Maris' (`Star of the Sea', a title she shared with Isis, and much later, the Virgin Mary). Originally, like Diana, Venus was a huntress, a `Lady of Animals', whose horned consort was Adonis - `both the hunter and sacrificial stag - became venison, which meant "Venus's son".'" Once again the line becomes blurred between homed gods and their consorts. And once again the goddess is associated with animality, sexual secrets, lust - and Lucifer. Barbara Walker describes a predictable reaction:
The Secret History of Lucifer: And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code Page 7