Pan

I came across this beautiful description of the divine masculine, in the form of the Horned God Pan, written by Zsuzsanna Budapest, it’s from her 1981 book The Aquarian Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries.

WHO IS THE GENTLE GOD PAN? Why is he endowed with hoofs? Why does he wear horns? Why is he naked? Why?

In a society where the male is totally socialized, made antiseptic with clothes, deodorants, designer hairdos, cosmetics, and designer smells, it’s hard to visualize the Male Principle of the Universe.

What does manhood mean without violence or competition? We pondered these heady questions, and more, in my workshops from the Midwest to Alaska to the Bay Area. There was a time when the great god Pan was pronounced dead.

In the Mediterranean countries, where worshipping him was at its most vigorous, the last of his altar’s fires went out. However, today I think he is being reborn again, returning to a more understanding world that’s missed his presence. Pan (meaning all that is male in the universe) wore many names:

Bacchus, Dionysus, Zagreus, Jove, Dios, Satyr, to list a few. He is the essence of manhood; he is wild, he has a glint in his eye. Today we would label him crazy. He is utterly free. He is not, however, dangerous to women. He is not a rapist, not a violent male. He likes to party, he enjoys sex, and is ever ready for it. He is not possessive (his women are free, too). He wears horns not because he is cuckholded, which is silly, but because he represents the animal kingdom as well, hoofs, hairiness, nakedness, and all. Pan loves solitude, too. I talked to modern men who have seen him around lakes, in the Rocky Mountains, in the deserts. The great god Pan is here.

Pan appears to groups who call him. His power, a sexual love of life, permeates us all when we feel good. Women contain him; he is within us just as he is within men. Pan is a dancer, a magician, a healer, a priest. He is the son of the Earth Mother. He has total communication with all that is natural. As Dionysus, he could make water spring from rocks. As Pan, he could dance wildly for five days and nights without stopping to rest. As Jove, he initiated young men into men’s mysteries, wielded thunder, became the fire god.

Pan is bisexual or pan-sexual. Shame had to be invented in order to get rid of all this freedom he bestowed on his followers. Guilt had to be invented and his people threatened with eternal fires to make them give up their wildness, their freedoms. Pan, finally, is the divine artist, Bacchus, who attends festivals and plays the Pan pipes, which makes all who hear glad.

Christians took one look at him and decided this was going to be the bad guy, their devil, to offset their good guy, Jesus, in his long white nightgown. Jesus only related to his mother, Mary, and to Mary Magdalene. The Virgin and the whore, because of Jesus, became archetypes for women to emulate. Women still suffer from this stifling, unnatural demand.

Pan, on the other hand, related to women as women. As full, complete, sexual human beings, in all walks of life, including the priestesshoods. Chastity didn’t have any particular merit with Pan since he didn’t seek to control women’s sexuality. He paid a high price for his feminism. His image was stolen and made into that of the devil incarnate.