Episode Details

The devilish appearance of the Greek god Pan has fascinated artists, occultists, and others straying from the path for centuries.  This episode begins with some tales of Pan in his natural habitat of Arcadia, how the Greeks, and later Romans, saw him, and some of his central myths — what tragedy resulted in the creation of panpipes and what did that naughty “happy to see me” phallus signify?  And his much publicized death during the reign of Tiberius Caesar; what did that mean to the evolving Christian world?

Like Mark Twain, said of his own demise, reports of Pan’s death seem greatly exaggerated.

The Romantics embraced Pan as a symbol of a lost but harmonious pastoral past, while figures in the 19th-century Occult Revival began to celebrate him in a different way, one based, on similarities between Pan and the iconography of the Christian Devil.   Tracing the figure of Satan directly back to Pan, however, presents difficulties — including technical difficulties in this episode.  We apologize for any disruptions and are working to ensure that our production process in future offers more robust resistance to demonic influence.

The culture of the Victorian and Edwardian era was particularly obsessed with Pan.  A particularly sinister example of this would be found in Aleister Crowley, who declared his “Hymn to Pan” the  “most powerful enchantment ever written.”  We learn its dark origins, a scandal it caused at the Great Beast’s funeral, and even have a listen to a snippet — a rare and dramatic recording made in 1987  during aThelemic ceremony in which Pan is invoked using Crowley’s text.

Also discussed is Pan’s role in Wicca and his relationship/rivalry with Cernunnos and Herne the Hunter, as well as the influence individuals like the writer Margaret Murray and Wicca’s grandaddy Gerald Gardner exercised on this.

We lighten up a bit with the story of the eccentric  “Priest of Pan” from the town of Millinocket, Maine, and how he made the news in 2016.