Pan has been manifesting like heat on Georgia asphalt. He has gone away from time to time and that gives my mind a break but he is never far from my thoughts. Pan is not a kind little god that devotional covens worship from far away. His lore is quite clear. He is anti-marriage, anti-chastity, is omnisexual and is not above acts of rape. Pan chases his interested until they tranform into natural things or forces (i.e. trees, reeds, winds) He causes irrational fear 'panic'. He is a rough and tumble god of nature. One of his names is "He that mounts goats." Pan is uncivilized. Modern Americans are over-civilized, homogenized. Is Pan is chasing me in an attempt force me to transform into a natural force? Pan scares me. He is not a far away concept. He is right here.
In speaking to WitchDoctorJoe, I was reminded of my own watch word, balance. Thanks, Joe. Find a goddess to balance out this bad boy. From where, the phone book? Goddess have always been a part of my work but they are etheral like Maat or celestial like a Nuit or a starry Isis. These goddesses are great, wonderful and appeal to my emotional perception of spirituality. Yet they are not the proper counter balance for a very terrestial, very present god.
In the shower tonight, I asked Pan what goddess I should use to counter balance him. I realize that this is like asking hardened criminal how to prevent thefts. He may give you the right advice but how do you know? "She has revealed herself to you constantly."
Me: The goddess of Wicca?
Pan: [Laughter] No.
Me: Aphrodite?
Pan: [Laughter] No. She's revealed herself over and over.
Me: My Gal?
Pan: No.
Me: Isis?
Pan: [Much Laughter] No. [He then used some phrase meaning, you're getting COLD.]
So what do I do? I hop out of the shower and thought of Joe's wife. I don't know if her name has ever been mentioned on-line so I will call her !!0, for no particular reason. I know that !!o came from Christianity, the home of masculinity, to Wicca. That must have been a dramatic as my perspective change now. How did she cope? How did she allow the change to take place? Exactly how could I explain what is going on in my head to her and phrase a question that made sense?
My problem is that I don't know her as well as I know Joe. In our relationship, Joe and My Gal do most of the speaking. !!0 speaks frequently but not as much on magick and religion as the rest of us. My mind works by asking questions but I simply don't know where to start asking her about her processes. I have little to play against. She keeps her beliefs to herself, which is not a bad thing. So, trying to figure out how to approach her was quite the exercise for my limited brain.
However, that exercise bore fruit. The question she asked my imaginiation was something to the effect of, "Why not just pray to THE Goddess?" Excellent. I can pray to the Goddess in general and let Her manifest as She will. This Pan liked. Then he said, "Selene".
Doh! "She reveals herself to you constantly." Selene. The Moon. Doh. Selene first made an appearance when Pan did. I started screaming her name when Pan appeared. When did so, I spontaneously opened my eyes to find a woman standing over me in a dress. The front of her dress fell across my chest. The back to the floor behind my head. I had a great view of 'the moon'.
Selene. Her lore in connection with Pan is that she was only interested in her own reflection. So, Pan covered himself with white sheep skin and she thought it was her reflection. She was quite mad to find herself coupling with the beast Pan.
So let me get this straight. My high falutin' spiritual practices have landed me with a god who cares little about the disasterous affects of his attentions and a goddess so selfish she only loves her own reflection? Would becoming more like her, make me her reflection? Who knows? She has almost no lore to rely on.
I shall not call her by name but maybe work with a generic goddess figure as !!0 suggested in my imagination. Maybe this will lead to something.
7 comments:
Selene has another myth - she fell in love with the mortal prince Endymion. So that she could have him and keep him forever young, she asked Zeus to put him under an eternal sleep, and she made love with him perpetually. (Of course, she must have had to take breaks so that she could give birth to fifty of his children.) So when she's not being narcissistic, she's being possessive, turning her objects of affection into...well, objects. Though in some versions, Endymion assents to this eternal slumber. Make of that what you will!
(Oh, and in Rome, she was called Luna Noctiluca, "Luna who shines by night." :)
Oh, brother. You're using the limits of the available lore as a reason to avoid talking to a spirit, despite the fact this is the one that seems to be who is the one, even through your own indpendent verificiation?
Have you thought of just calling her up and asking her? Offer her some tea or wine or a piece of fruit. It can even be the astral variety and request a sit down for a nice pleasant talk.
Magick is far easier when you treat it as a social act.
Maybe a little Apolo wouldn´t hurt
I told you beforehand that these kind of gods don´t go away quickly
:-P
Pan wants to "connect" with everything. Pan, in a sense is everything. "Pan" is the term we use to denote "all," and that, too, is part of his lore, that he is, in essense, all gods. Selene's characteristic, as you've noted, is self-absorption. She is cool, aloof, maintaining her own cycles of waxing and waning, seemingly independent of her location among the stars. her phases are not, of course independent of the movements of others, but the relationship is complex, and wasn't fully understood by the ancients, even though they learned to predict them.
But --
It's that place between the full engagement, that thoughtless and animal involvement, that force and that aloof, serene, disengaged and cold waxing and waning form that the balance exists.
I think, that's why Selene.
I think I'd recommend a Apollinian influence, as well. You've got the Earth, and The Moon, with all they entail. But the Sun is not represented, and perhaps should be, ruling over the others with intellect while only able to affect them at a distance...
Although, this is not my milieu, so any advice should be taken with a grain of salt.
With respect to my fellow commentators, I would think that Selene's solar counterpart would technically be Helios, rather than Apollo.
I really have more of a question really. I am new to pagan exploration so I apologize for my ignorance in advance. I have a few gods and goddesses that I feel personify and embody energies pertinant to certain areas of my life except one, my sexuality specifically. I am a lesbian and I can not "connect" with any god-energies on this level. Oddly enough, Pan is what keeps moving to the front and center of my spiritual vision. For a while, I could not figure out why...and then something came to me. I will explain it in short. I may be breaking all kinds of traditions in suggesting this but I would like to get some feedback on this if you have time. Ok, according to mythology, Pan is dead. However, I personally do not believe that energy can be destroyed and therefore Pan must still exist somehow. I am a devotee of Cybele and in mythology she has restored other gods in various forms. What if Pan was restored by Cybele with the condition that he take a female form (as was costumary for men to do in devotion to Cybele) but remaining the same god energy within, therefore rendering a Lesbian Goddess (a kind of butchy one ;) ). Does magick allow for continual reincarnation for the sake of change in time, culture and social context?
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