Pagan Portals - Pan: Dark Lord of the Forest and Horned God of the Witches
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About this ebook
Melusine Draco
Mélusine Draco is an Initiate of traditional British Old Craft and originally trained in the magical arts of traditional British Old Craft with Bob and Mériém Clay-Egerton. She has been a magical and spiritual instructor for over 20 years with Arcanum and the Temple of Khem, and has had almost thirty books published. She now lives in Ireland near the Galtee Mountains.
Read more from Melusine Draco
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Reviews for Pagan Portals - Pan
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- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5*This book was reviewed via Netgalley*Draco’s Pagan Portals- Pan is a succinct look at the most ancient and venerable of deities. Tracing Pan's mythologic lineage from Arcadia to the present day, Draco shows us the links between Pan and other Horned Gods, such as Cernunnos, and the Christian depictions of the Devil. This book covers Pan’s various demesne, such as god of the deep forest, and god of shepherds and flocks. We learn about the origin of the panflute, Pan’s re-emergence as the god of witches, and his appearances in various forms of media. I am a bit sad Pan's Labyrinth was not mentioned, though. That's an awesome movie and a marvellous rendering of Pan.I enjoyed the attention paid to historical detail, with the various reference in the back. I plan to add some we do not have to the occult section of our home library. Nice thing about a large family that appreciates books! Every square inch of the available walls pace in the house has towering bookshelves. Various magickal rituals are discussed, from evocations, to purification. They are first discussed from the historical context, then suggestions for modern practitioners are given. ???? recommended for any interested in learning more about the most interesting and enduring of deities.
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Pagan Portals - Pan - Melusine Draco
Hymns)
Chapter One
The Power of Images
In Coven of the Scales schooling, Meriem Clay-Egerton always saw Pan as the Horned God…and the Horned God as Pan. This was a traditional British Old Craft coven that honoured Aegocerus the ‘goat-horned’ – an epithet of the Greek Pan – not Cernunnos, the stag-horned deity the Celts had brought with them from northern Europe. It should also be understood that although Coven of the Scales held firmly to the philosophy and opinion that all faiths were One and all Paths led to the same Goal, it did not advocate what is now referred to as ‘eclectic paganism’. So how on earth could this ancient, pre-Olympian Greek deity find his way into the beliefs of traditional witchcraft in Britain?
What CoS did teach was the desire for knowledge and experience, regardless of source. Each new experience was, however, studied within the confines of that particular religion, path or tradition, but each new discipline was kept completely separate from the other. Only when the student had a thorough understanding of the tenets of each discipline were they encouraged to formulate them into their own individual system. So why, despite the fact that no other foreign deities were ever added to the mix of traditional British Old Craft, was Pan accepted as a facet of the Horned God so far from his native shores?
In Greek religion and mythology, Pan (ancient Greek: Πᾶν, Pān) was the god of the wilderness and rocky mountain slopes, of shepherds and flocks, woodland glades and forests, hunting and rustic music, and companion of the nymphs. Yet even the Greeks were often hard-pressed to know how to categorise this most ancient of deities who had been revered in his native Arcadia long before his name and cult spread to other parts of Greece.
Pan has no part in the traditional Olympian pantheon because, like other archaic nature spirits, he appears to be much older than the squabbling, fornicating, incestuous tribe that resided atop Mount Olympus. In the Homeric Hymn to Pan, however, where he commences his ‘literary’ career, he is identified as the son of Hermes (also a pastoral god of Arcadia) who fell in love with Dryope:
Homeric Hymn XIX to Pan
[1] Muse, tell me about Pan, the dear son of Hermes, with his goat’s feet and two horns – a lover of merry noise. Through wooded glades he wanders with dancing nymphs who foot it on some sheer cliff’s edge, calling upon Pan, the shepherd-god, long-haired, unkempt. He has every snowy crest and the mountain peaks and rocky crests for his domain; hither and thither he goes through the close thickets, now lured by soft streams, and now he presses on amongst towering crags and climbs up to the highest peak that overlooks the flocks. Often he courses through the glistening high mountains, and often on the shouldered hills he speeds along slaying wild beasts, this keen-eyed god. Only at evening, as he returns from the chase, he sounds his note, playing sweet and low on his pipes of reed: not even she could excel him in melody – that bird who in flower-laden spring pouring forth her lament utters honey-voiced song amid the leaves. At that hour the clear-voiced nymphs are with him and move with nimble feet, singing by some spring of dark water, while Echo wails about the mountain-top, and the god on this side or on that of the choirs, or at times sidling into the midst, plies it nimbly with his feet. On his back he wears a spotted lynx-pelt, and he delights in high-pitched songs in a soft meadow where crocuses and sweet-smelling hyacinths bloom at random in the grass.
[27] They sing of the blessed gods and high Olympus and choose to tell of such a one as luck-bringing Hermes above the rest, how he is the swift messenger of all the gods, and how he came to Arcadia, the land of many springs and mother of flocks, there where his sacred place is as god of Cyllene. For there, though a god, he used to tend curly-fleeced sheep in the service of a mortal man, because there fell on him and waxed strong melting desire to wed the rich-tressed daughter of Dryops, and there be brought about the merry marriage. And in the house she bare Hermes a dear son who from his birth was marvellous to look upon, with goat’s feet and two horns – a noisy, merry-laughing child. But when the nurse saw his uncouth face and full beard, she was afraid and sprang up and fled and left the child. Then luck-bringing Hermes received him and took him in his arms: very glad in his heart was the god. And he went quickly to the abodes of the deathless gods, carrying the son wrapped in warm skins of mountain hares, and set him down beside Zeus and showed him to the rest of the gods. Then all the immortals were glad in heart and Bacchie Dionysus in especial; and they called the boy Pan because he delighted all their hearts.
Hermes took his son ‘wrapped in the warm skins of mountain hares’ to the abode of the immortal gods, where they called him Pan, which according to the footnotes to the Hymn is derived from the Greek word ‘All’ – and the hare has remained a symbol of pagan deity to the present day. It is also incongruous that in a culture that prized physical beauty, this long-haired, shaggy individual retained his popularity and, more importantly, his power, down through the ages. (Although, in the Roman era, Pan was often portrayed as a youth, without the goatish features except for a pair of small horns.) Perhaps because, according to the entry in the occult encyclopaedia Man, Myth & Magic, Pan’s haunts are the woodlands glades, mountain peaks and rocky ways, and dense thickets with gentle streams where he darts across the landscape as a keen-eyed hunter, he appealed to the common man whose simple lifestyle he mimicked:
The Arcadians themselves were famous as hunters and it was natural for their goat-footed god to represent an occupation that was so familiar to his worshippers. It was also natural for them to describe the herdsman god as playing his pipes in the evening when the sport was over…
Man, Myth & Magic
On his dark side, Pan was also said to be the cause of that sudden and groundless fear especially felt by travellers in remote and desolate places, known as Panic fear. Herodotus recorded that when Phidippides was sent to Sparta to ask for help prior to the Battle of Marathon, Pan appeared to him and asked why he was no longer worshipped by the Athenians, but still promised to help them by instilling fear into their enemies. As a result of the successful outcome of the battle the god’s worship was re-introduced to Athens; a shrine was built in a cave under the Acropolis, where he was honoured yearly with sacrifices and a torch race. Being a rustic god, however, Pan was not worshipped in temples but in natural settings, usually caves and groves, although there is a unique temple dedicated to him next to the river’s source in the Neda gorge in the south-western Peloponnese – the ruins of which survive to this day.
Needless to say, Pan possesses all the conventional abilities of the Olympian gods such as super-human strength and longevity, shape-shifting, stamina and resistance to injury. He also had some mystical powers, especially those associated with music and dance, and its magical potency; not to mention a very wily mind, a raucous sense of humour and a shout or scream that instilled terror in the hearer. Like the shepherd he rested at noon, and disliked having his sleep disturbed, but he could