The Great God Pan is Alive

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'Pan is dead, the Great God Pan is dead,' is a phrase that was picked up and used by poets and playwrights, and it is probably true that the classical world, of which Pan was so much a part, may be lost. In the museums, parks, and gardens of Europe, you can see the graven images of all these forgotten gods and heroes, old Pan and Procreus, Artemis and Titan and Neptune, but half the tourists you encounter don’t know who is chasing whom and who got turned into a tree by whom, having been chased by which god. I include myself in this group, even though I grew up with these stories.

But is Pan dead? His image lives on. You can still find him everywhere in the modern world, even if he has to take the image of the devil himself. As for the real Pan, the spirit of the wild has never been so alive. Thoreau knew all about him and his fellow gods. On his first expedition to Mount Katahdin in Maine, Thoreau stopped short of the summit because he heard the Olympian gods thundering, 'Why came you here before your time?' Emerson and Hawthorne knew about Pan, and so did all the 19th century American landscape painters. The spirit of Pan was effectively reborn in the wilds of America, these wilderness 'temples,' as John Muir called them.

Pan is still with us if you know how to look. And you don’t have to go west to find him. Just go out to a nearby woodland on a moonless night, bushwhack 30 yards into the thickets without a flashlight, and stand still for a few minutes and wait. He’ll be there.

From Orion (Winter 2001). Subscriptions: $30/yr. (4 issues, plus 4 issues of Orion Afield) from The Orion Society, 195 Main St., Great Barrington, MA 01230.

Discuss Pan at the Spirit conference in Cafe Utne: cafe.utne.com

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