The Renaissance alchemical writer Clovis Hesteau de Nuysemant described
Orpheus'
invocation of Pan:
The
Dead Pan
Gods of Hellas, gods of Hellas,
Can ye listen in your silence?
Can your mystic voices tell us
Where ye hide? In floating islands,
With a wind that evermore
Keeps you out of sight of shore?
Pan, Pan is dead.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
-----------------------------
D.P. Walker, 'This
legend of the death of Pan would be a good symbol in which to study Christian
attitudes to pagan gods. Its source is Plutarch, De Defectu orac.,
418e." etc
D.P.Walker,
Orpheus the Theologian, p. 113.
The Nymphs are Water Beings, naturally connected to Dionysos.
The Satyrs are shown producing wine - but they point to the HEAT in the
Wine, the Fire in the Water, and to Sexuality and Blood.
But this does not include SILENUS (SILENOI) who is/are often shown at
the Initiation of Dionysos.
"...his archaic companions..." Kerenyi.
They, like the Centaurs with which they share certain features, are
theriomorphic.
In his book, Rouse, W.H.D. Greek Votive Offerings, we read that
the God PAN is offered a CRAB, as a votive offering.Why a Crab to Pan?
-----------------
44. Pan is the son of Mercury; his
head and body form the hieroglyph of the mercury of the philosophers (p.126),
at once solar and lunar. The star on the right is the hieroglyph of the
harmoniac salt, the third component of the Art (which is often called the Art
of Music).
Anon., 14th century, Biblioteca
Mediceo-Laurenziana, Florence, Ms. Ashburn 1166, f.18.
Plate 40, in De Rola, Alchemy.
PAN
"PAN was the god of shepherds, of huntsmen, and all the
inhabitants of the country. He was the son of Mercury, by Dryope, according to
Homer. Some give him Jupiter and Callisto for parents, others Jupiter and Ybis
or Oneis. Lucian, Hyginius, &c. support that he was the son of Mercury and
Penelope, the daughter of Icarius, and that the god gained the affections of
the princess under the form of a goat, as she tended her father's flocks on
mount Taygetus, before her marriage with the king of Ithaca. Some authors
maintain that Penelope became mother of Pan during the abscence of Ulysses in
the Trojan war, and that he was the offspring of all the suitors that
frequented thr palace of Penelope, whence he received the name of Pan,
which signifies all or every thing. Pan was a monster in
appearance, he had two small horns on his head, his complexion was ruddy, his
nose flat, and his legs, thighs, tail, and feet, were those of a goat. The
education of Pan was entrusted to a nymph of Arcadia, called Sinoe, but the
nurse, according to Homer, terrified at the sight of such a monster, fled away
and left him. He was wrapped up in the skin of beasts by his father, and
carried to heaven, where Jupiter and the gods long entertained themselves with
the oddity of his appearance. Bacchus was greatly pleased with him, and gave
him the name of Pan. The god of shepherds chiefly resided in Arcadia, where
the woods and the most rugged mountains were his habitation. He invented the
flute with seven reeds, which he called Syrinx, in honor of a beautiful nymph
of the same name, to whom he attempted to offer violence and who was changed
into a reed. He was continually employed in deceiving the neighbouring nymphs,
and often with success. Though deformed in his shape and features, yet he had
the good fortune to captivate Diana, and of gaining her favor, by transforming
himself into a beautiful white goat. He was also enamoured of a nymph of the
mountain called Echo, by whom he had a son called Lynx. He also paid his
addresses to Omphale, queen of Lydia, and it is well known in what manner he
was received. [Vid. Omphale.] The worship of Pan was well established,
particularly in Arcadia, where he gave oracles on mount Lycæus.. His
festivals, called by the Greeks Lycæa, were brought to Italy by Evander, and
they were well known at Rome by thename of the Lupercalia. [Vid. Lupercalia.]
The worship, and the different functions of Pan, are derived from the
mythology of the ancient Egyptians. This god was one of the eight great gods
of the Egyptians, who ranked before the other 12 gods, whom the Romans called Consentes.
He was worshipped with the greatest solemnity over all Egypt. His statues
represented him as a goat, not because he was really such, but this was done
for mysterious reasons. He was the emblem of fecundity, and they looked upon
him as the principle of all things. His horns, as some observe, represented
the rays of the sun, and the brightness of the heavens was expressed by the
vivacity and the ruddiness of his complextion. The star which he wore on his
breast, was the symbol of the firmament, and his hairy legs and feet denoted
the inferior parts of the earth, such as the woods and plants. Some suppose
that he appeared as a goat because when the goats fled into Egypt, in their
war against the giants, Pan transformed himself into a goat, an example which
was immediately followed by all the deities. Pan, according to some, is the
same as Faunus, and he is the chief of all the Satyrs. Plutarch mentions, that
in the reign of Tiberius, an extraordinary voice was heard near the Echinades,
in the Ionian sea, which exclaimed, that the great Pan was dead. This was
readily believed by the Emperor, and the astrologers were consulted; but they
were unable to explain the meaning for so supernatural a voice, which probably
proceeded from the imposition of one of the courtiers who attempted to terrify
Tiberius. In Egypt, in the town of Mendes, which word also signifies a goat,
there was a sacred goat kept with the most ceremonious sanctity. The death of
this animal was always attended with the greatest solemnities, and like that
of another Apis, became the cause of a universal mourning. As Pan usually
terrified the inhabitants of the neighbouring country, that kind of fear which
often seizes men, and which is only ideal and imaginary, has received from him
the name panic fear. This kind of terror has been exemplified not only
in individuals, but in numerous armies, such as that of Brennus, which was
thrown into the greatest consternation at Rome, without any cause or plausable
reason.." Lempriere.
Sources:Ovid.Fast.1,v.396.1.2,v.277.Met.1,v.698.-
Virg.G.1,v,17,Aen.8,v.343.G.3,v.392.-Juv.2,v.142.-Paus.8,c.30.-Ital.13,v.327.-Varro.de.L.L.5,c.-Liv.1,c.5,-Dionys.Hal.1.-Herodot.2,c.46
& 145, &c.-Diod.1.-Orpeheus hymn.10.-Homer.
The Greek God,
PAN
"Golden-horned
Pan, attendant of grim Dionysus, while roaming the wooded mountains, in his
powerfulhand held a staff and with the other siezed the shrill voiced hollow
syrinx, and beguiled the heart of the nymphs. Playing on the syrinx his
shrill song, he brought terror to men, to all the woodcutters, and terror
overcame them when theysaw the frightful body ofthis supernatural
creaturespringing forward in frenzy. And now the finalty of chill deathwould
have siezed them all except thatwild Artemis, who kept dread rancor in her
heart against him, set a limit to his overpowering force. She is the one you
should pray to, so that she may become your helper. "
Eusebius cited by Borgeaud, The cult of Pan...p117
"Panic, especially at night when the citadel darkens and the
heroic ego sleeps, is a direst participation mystique in nature, a
fundamental, even ontological experience of the world as alive and in dread.
Objects become subjects; they move with life while one is oneself paralyzed
with fear. When existance is experienced through instinctual levels of fear,
aggression, hunger, or sexuality, images take on compelling life of their own.
The imaginal is never more vivid than when we are connected with it
instinctually. The world alive is of course animism; that this living world is
divine and imaged by different gods with attributes and characteristics is
polytheistic pantheism. That fear, dread, horror are natural is wisdom. In
Whitehead's term "nature alive" means Pan, and panic flings open a
door into this reality."
Hillman p.33, Pan and the Nightmare
Some relevant
texts:
Pan
and the Nightmare
by Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher and James Hillman (1972; reprint Spring
Publications, Dallas, 1988)
The
Cult of Pan in Ancient Greece
by Philippe Borgeaud (1979, reprint U of Chicago Press, 1988)
Jitterbug
Perfume by Tom Robbins
The
Findhorn Garden Book by The Findhorn Community (Harper and Row, New York 1975)
Hermes
and His Children by Rafael Lopez Pedraza (Daimon Verlag, Switzerland 1989) And
elsewhere:Goat resources on the Web
PANIC - The God
PAN. Gemini
Rising, Mercury Ruler of Chart.
Humpty Dumpty, as
The Fool (Arcanum 1 and 22) about to fall over the precipice. Alchemical Egg.
Humpty Dumpty sat on
the Wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a
great fall.
All the Kings horses
and all the Kings men
Couldn't put Humpty
together again.
4 Elements.
ABRAXAS . (JOKO T.)
PANIC.
The Great God Pan.A form of MIN. Gemini Rising/Mercurius, is the Ruler of my
chart.and therefor there are many aspects of Pan in my life.Campbell, p. 81
compares Pan to Min, in that they are both Ithyphallic, in Egypt and in Greece
- also DIONYSOS and the castratory ecstasies of KYBELE...
ALSO
CALLED BACCHUS.See GOAT.
Lopez-Pedraza.
CHAPTER
IV
A
TALE OF DRYOPS AND THE BIRTH OF PAN
In the Homeric "Hymn to Pan," we find a passage
concerning Hermes in which this god is in the particular situation of being in
servitude to a mortal.
The Homeric Hymn to Pan tells of Hermes coming to
Arcadia:
They
sing of the blessed gods and high Olympus and choose to tell of such a one as
luck-bringing Hermes above the rest, and 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 he brought about the merry marriage.
And in the house she bore Hermes a dear son who nom his birth was marvellous to
look upon, with goat's feet and two horns - a noisy, merrylaughing child. 1
This child was Pan.
Callimachus recorded the
similar situation of Hermes' brother Apollo, in servitude to a mortal king.
Phoebus and Nomius we call
him, ever since the time when it
I. Hesiod, The Homeric
Hymns and Homerica, op. cit., XIX, "To Pan," p. 445.
p.123
by Amphrysus he tended the
yoke-mares, fired with love of young Admetus.2
Now the difference between
these two styles of male servitude has been observed by Kerenyi, who says of
Hermes:
A story
resembling that of Apollo's servitude to King Admetos in Thessaly was told also
of Hermes... The story concerning Hermes, on the other hand, was set in
Arcadia. Hermes pastured sheep for a mortal master, and whilst so doing, fell
in love with a nymph, the "nymph of Dryops." It is not stated that
Dryops was Hermes' mortal master, but he seems to have been so.3
Of Apollo, Kerenyi says:
In a later
version of the story of Apollo's servitude to Admetos, the two were bound
together by love. There were many love-stories concerning Apollo, the greater
number and the most famous of which ended tragically - whether the object of
the god's love was a boy or a girl. The reason that boys were numbered amongst
the god's reputed lovers was that he himself was the god of just that age at
which boys used to leave their mother's tutelage and live together.
Their younger
year-groups were subordinate to the older ones. They also attached themselves
to individual older men. For boys as well as for girls this was the age of
fugitive bloom. The tales represent Apollo's love, for a person of either sex,
as having been very dangerous.4
If we carry his observations
further, we begin to discern two kinds of man-to-man relationships. The image
of Apollo with Admetus - where the relationship is direct - presents the
2. Callimachus, Hymns and
Epigrams, Loeb Classical Library, trans. A.W.Mair (London: Heinemann,
1912), Hymn II, "To Apollo," p. 53.
3. Kerenyi, The Gods of the
Greeks, op. cit., p. 173.
4. Ibid., p. 139.
p.125
background of adolescent
initiation and, through the resemblance of Hyakinthos to the boy Apollo,5 the
invention of pederasty. The image of Hermes with Dryops gives a different
picture, for the relationship was indirect: the story tells us that
Hermes love was for the "Nymph of Dryops," a movement in and through
fantasy (nymph). The outcome of this indirect relationship is the birth of a
god - the great god Pan, a child of Hermes with the nymph of a mortal king.
These two images of Hermes and
Apollo suggest relationships of importance for psychology. We can leave what
the literature tells us about a god falling in love with a mortal, and turn to
what this suggests psychologically: a relationship between two men ruled by the
archetypal patterns of gods. We have the image of Hermes loving Dryops through
a nymph and, in contrast, the image of Apollo loving Admetus directly. As my
main concem in this chapter is with Hermes and the birth of Pan, I shall keep
Apollo as a contrasting bas-relief to help us learn from these two models
something about men's relationships.
In modern psychology, the
conceptual frame has placed homosexuality within a sterile causalism that tries
to understand it in terms of personal history. Undoubtedly psychology has seen
homosexuality under the pressure imposed by Western culture's repression and
has been unable to see it in relation to man's nature, his biology, expressed
through the possibilities of the different archetypes. Thus an archetypal view
of homoerotica has been missed. Psychology's conceptual coinages are word-facades
taken from 'scientific' fantasies but, in reality, they are a cover for a basic
component in the history of Western culture. Without wishing to value-judge the
scientific causalistic approach, it nevertheless occludes the perspective
toward tracking down other archetypes that, during a lifetime, can take over
men's relationships. Two of these archetypal situations are precisely our
interest.
Recently there has been a
changing attitude to eros among
5. Ibid., p. 139.
p.126
men and there have been
attempts to modify the focus we have inherited. For example, we can read in Time
how the Jesuits have tried to amend their rules and traditions among men of
their Order: "Under the old rule of tactus, Jesuit seminarians were
forbidden even to put an arm on the shoulder of a buddy; now they greet one
another with warm abrazos."6
There is no doubt it is of
historical importance to reflect upon erotica among men. Some of its
historicity has been worked out by D.P. Walker in his introduction to his book,
The Ancient Theology. 7 There we see that the sudden repression of
erotica among men in the early days of Christianity (St. Paul) is very much at
the foundation of Western culture. Walker offers a mode for reflecting this
repression, a repression that has become a seed of constant conflict at the
core of our culture. It is a conflict we psychologists have to be aware of and
deepen our insights into in order to be able to reflect from a deeper
perspective and amend the jargon we have inherited in modern psychology. It is
one thing to view homo-erotica as we have inherited it, and quite another to
view it archetypally. These two views of homo-erotica (the inherited view and
the archetypal view) obviously bring totally different results to
psychotherapy. The psychological jargon applied to men's relationships -
'latent homosexuality,' 'negative mother complex,' 'transferential
homosexuality,' etc. has been too easily accepted, and the gods who we behind
the struggle in which many men are involved remain undetected. The only inadequate
recourse is to try by means of these cliches to 'control' this struggle
introduced by the gods themselves.
If we want to improve our
reading of the archetypes, we can hardly accept a psychotherapy which is biased
toward man-to-man relationships, tending to see them only in terms of illness
to be cured or controlled. This attitude misplaces illness; and more
importantly, it excludes the possibility of seeing through to the gods who,
expressing aspects of nature, are behind these
6. Time, April 23, 1973,
"Cover Story."
7. Walker, The Ancient
Theology, op. cit., p. 8.
p.127
relationships. What appears in
the personal picture as 'messes' are more likely frictions brought about by a
peculiar mixing of archetypes, the expression of a nature trying to hold itself
what we call homosexuality. Seen in this way, psychotherapy could encourage
psychic movement by following the dominant archetype in which erotica among men
appears, and it would accept this dominant as the very vehicle for
psychotherapeutic movement.
We have found two examples
that offer more differentiated models for male relationships: the image of
Hermes with Dryops in contrast with the homosexual pastoral relationship of
Apollo with Admetus. Further archetypal patterns of men's relationships would
appear in other mythological figures, e,g., Zeus and Ganymede.
But psychotherapy, apart from
the conceptual jargon already mentioned, has done very little exploration of
eros among men.
In reading The Freud/Jung
Letters,8 we can hardly overlook the fact that the relationship between
these two pioneers (and the group of men around them) had a strong missionary
component.9 They had found a common cause and, for a certain time, the
relationship depended on the interests of their cause. But now, in this part of
the century, we are aware that we have not inherited enough from these two
geniuses of modern psychology and their man-to-man relationship to help us
understand psychically what we are dealing with here. And this very lack is
also part of the inheritance.
Moreover, if we look at the
first meeting of these two pioneers in Vienna in 1907, in spite of Jung's
hermetic nature, in this scene we have a picture of two men trying to gain
power
8. The Freud/Jung Letters, ed.
William McGuire, trans. R. Manheim and R.F.C. Hull (London: Hogarth and
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974).
9. Thanks to the gods, both
Freud and Jung seem to have exhausted during the first half of life the
appearance of missionarism in psychology. Evidently they needed the missionary component
to 'hold' themselves in the early years of this century. Nowadays when a
psychologist expresses himself at the missionary level, one feels it as a
mockery and that the archetype is worn-out, exhausted.
p.128
over each other. 10 Freud used
his 'scientism' and his discovery of the transference within a patriarchal
fantasy. Jung exercised his power through occult phenomena. Their friendship
shows few traces of having much relationship to each other's psyche.The
relationship was based on building the pillars of modern psychology, through
their common cause, case material, technique, and theory, but power intervened
and ultimately destroyed their friendship.
Their relationship and
conflict, union and separation, are inheritance of their followers, and in the
different analytical societies we can see a continuation of the same
power-game. As the missionary drive has faded, the profession meets behind the
facade of a Secret Society, a facade disguising the lack of psychic
relationship. The internal conflicts have been accepted openly in terms of a
power-game, while something as important as the lack of eros has not been
denounced or even discussed.
The classic image of Hermes
suggests the indirection of falling in love with another man's fantasy:
the fantasy/erotica provided by the nymph. This could be the basis of what has
been called a hermetic relationship between two men. This indirection, through
a nymph, belonging to the archetypal realm of Hermes, is in contrast to
Apollo's direct and idealized conception of love among men. Apollo's archetypal
realm allows us to perceive homosexuality in terms of initiation during
adolescence. We can also see the god behind regressions into this phase of
adolescent initiation with its sometimes proselytizing Apollonic side. By means
of the Apollonic perspective we can see through to the archetypal realm, the
basic ground from which the erotica of the whole personality stems. The tale of
Hermes with Dryops, however, enables us to see that this indirection in a
man-to-man relationship brings its own result. This result is profoundly
important for psychology and psychotherapy: the birth and epiphany of a god -
Pan.
10 Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, op. cit., p. 152; for
Freud's reaction to the incident, see Appendix I, pp. 333-34.
p.129
Pan is a 'dead' god, and,
though we do not worship him he is still present in all of us. His 'death'
marked a change the imagination of Western culture from the moment recorded the
cry of lamentation that resounded when the classical world was shocked by the
news: "Great Pan is dead." This news has often been considered a
turning point in Western history, later leading to the legend of Pan dying in
the moment Jesus Christ was mounted on the cross.
"Great Pan is dead"
would have been a historical, factual death, a death pointing in the direction
we have been implying, had it not been for another cry of lamentation. It is a
cry challenging our sense of historicity, uttered in a time as historically
extreme as the cry in Plutarch's time. It was a Victorian voice, the voice of
an English poetess, that spoke when the fantasies of the theory of evolution
were at their peak. By one of those historical curiosities she lived in
London's Harley Street before it was taken over by the first wave of twentieth-century
psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.
In her poem, "The Dead
Pan," Elizabeth Barrett Browning
wrote:
Gods of
Hellas, gods of Hellas,
Can ye listen
in your silence?
Can your
mystic voices tell us
Where ye
hide? In floating islands,
With a wind
that evermore
Keeps you out
of sight of shore?
Pan, Pan is
dead.
Her lamentation 12 does not
tell of a missing link in the fog of evolution, but one missing in the history
of Western culture: Pan as the missing link to the physical body. And more: it
would be
11 Plutarch, Moralia, 419 A-E.
12. I simply want to present
the lamentation as it is and not try to 'analyze' the contents of the verse
psychologically, e.g., "floating islands," "wind," and
"out of sight of shore," as data from which Pan can be insighted as
an autonomous complex.
p.130
useless for psychology to hear
in this verse an echo of the lament recorded by Plutarch, were it not for
Jung's exploration and work on the collective unconscious that led him to tell
the world and students of psychology that the ancient gods are not dead. On the
contrary, they are very much alive in our unconscious, though, because of
historical repression, they tend to appear at the core of our complexes,
sometimes autonomously in neuroses and psychoses, and in physical illnesses. 13
In her lamentation, the English poetess expresses a dim awareness of the god
Pan as an autonomous complex in a historical and geographical context seemingly
far removed from the one in which the classical pagan gods manifested themselves.
These elements surrounding Pan
- the cry recorded by Plutarch to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's lamentation -
are part of the cultural legacy of Western man and can be included in our
studies of psychology. This is possible as we have inherited Jung's theory of
the unconscious, based on the historicity of the complexes and their pathology.
However, at this point in the century we have more nourishing food which, as
long as we bear in mind the pathological side of the gods, brings a reflection
from another angle by showing the continuity of these so-called dead gods
throughout the history of Western culture. Jean Seznec writes:
In the
preceding chapters we have studied in a general way the factors which
determined the survival of the gods in the Middle Ages. The pagan divinities
served as a vehicle for ideas so profound and so tenacious that it would have
been impossible for them to perish.
That being so,
why do men too often speak of the "death of the gods" with the
decline of the ancient world, and their "resurrection" in the dawn of
the Italian Renaissance? We must remember that it was merely the content of the
images of the gods which survived. The garment of the classical
Jung, CW 13, para. 54.
p.131
form had disappeared,
having gradually been shed in favor of the wearers. And, in consequence, until
our own day, history has failed to recognize them.14
But we psychotherapists cannot
afford to fail to recognize them. The results in psychotherapy would be disastrous,
knowing as we do that these gods carry complexes which appear in symptoms and
illnesses. We should be indebted to the modern Scholars, in particular to those
connected with the Warburg Institute in London (Seznec, Yates, Wind, Panofsky,
Saxl, Gombrich, Walker, etc.). Their work, with its emphasis on the
Renaissance, offers new psychological food, stimulation and reflection. They
offer us a scholarly research that has a more direct approach to the archetypes
through their interest in images (the history of Western culture and its art).
The reflections that this
scholarship transmits to us revitalize the spirit and feed the fantasy so that
what might be going on in psychotherapy today, historically speaking, could be
seen in terms of a new renascence (Renaissance), perhaps psychotherapy's
greatest chance. These scholars are concerned solely with the roots of Western
culture, with the North/South conflict, a conflict in every Western soul. They
are not occupied with the East as were many scholars in the early part of the
century, an interest that led to studies on comparative symbolism and
comparative religion. That scholarship had an immense influence on Jung's
generation and still serves - to the neglect of Western cultural imagery - as
the basic curriculum for learning the amplificatory method used in Jungian
psychology.
Furthermore, the work of the
modern scholars gives us the feeling that the archetypes of the collective
unconscious are not so remote. If the archetypes are considered from the ego
point of view and the insights are symbolical, then, of course, the result is a
sense of remoteness. But modern scholarship has shrunk
14. Seznec, The
Survival of the Pagan Gods, trans. B.F. Sessions, op. cit., p.149.
p.132
this distance by
retraining the psyche to read the image. We are offered a new hermeneutic which
can refresh the study of psychology, enabling us to remain within the
complexities and constancies of Western culture when approaching archetypal
images as they appear in psychotherapy.
The school in Zurich has its
own approach to the appearance in the psyche of this strange god, Pan.
Discussion and interpretation of him in dreams and paintings are part of
Jungian studies. Although no archetype can be thought of in terms of a standard
work, a basic interpretative text, this is most evident in the case of Pan. The
relation to this god depends particularly upon each analyst's complexes,
history, and attitude, and how the pathology (complexes and history) of the
patient expresses Pan's appearance in psychotherapy. Pan is the god of panic,
and it is in this manifestation of his pathology that Pan can panic both
analyst and patient. Panic in the analytical situation can either be of value
within the spectrum of a healing epiphany of this god, or can become
uncontrollable, bringing misunderstanding, and at worst, catastrophic results.
Pan creates most panic when
his image is presented under the historical disguise of the devil. With this
sort of appearance in psychotherapy, there is only a very slight possibility of
reverting to the image of the "God of Hellas" as seen by the English
poetess. In the longing expressed through the imagery of her poem, she may have
been able to hold her madness by reviving the image of Pan as a true god, and
not merely as one side of the split between god and the devil. 15 (We have to
remember that throughout Manichean Christianity Pan alone has carried the
'shadow of God.')
15. A different view of the
compensatory function of Pan is offered by Edgar Wind:
In the
ever-changing balance des dieux the gods reveal their Protean nature:
but the very fact that each god contains his opposite in himself, and can
change into it when occasion demands, makes him shadow forth the nature of Pan
in whom all opposites are one.
Pagan Mysteries in the
Renaissance, Chapter
XIII, "Pan and Proteus" (Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1967), p. 199.
p.133
Pan is the god of
nightmare and epilepsy, and the discovery masturbation 16 was attributed to
him. When reacting to a patient's nightmare, there is a difference between
trying to analyze it and accepting it as the epiphany of a god under one of his
surnames, Ephialtes, 17 Pan's connection to epilepsy points to the
possibilities of research into a psychotherapy of this 'mal,' of opening the
continent of the physical body for an exploration which aims to improve the
equilibrium in this illness; or, to put it mythologically - to make a more
favorable connection to the god who was conceived as being at the origin of the
illness.
As the discoverer of
masturbation, Pan gives a frame of reference for the whole gamut of
masturbatory fantasies, from the most extreme obsessive-compulsive ones to
those that bring a relationship to the body; from Pan's destructive appearance
as an autonomous complex - as the 'Devil' history has taught us to reject - to
the possibility of connecting imaginatively to the different gods and
goddesses. (In masturbation itself, all the possibilities are there for
connecting to the archetypes. ) Here I would like to go further and suggest that,
through masturbatory fantasies, the repeated sexual image - reflecting the part
of man's nature which does not change18 - can either be accepted, thereby
bringing a deeper insight into the personality, or can continue
16. Hillman, "An
Essay on Pan" in Pan and the Nightmare (New York and Zurich: Spring
Publications, 1972), p, xxxii. For his fuller reflections upon masturbation see
"Toward the Archetypal Model of the Masturbation Inhibition" (1966)
in Loose Ends, op. cit.
17. W.H. Roscher, "Ephialtes:
A Pathological-Mythological Treatise on the Nightmare in Classical
Antiquity," in Pan and the Nightmare (New York and Zurich: Spring
Publications, 1972).
18. The idea of human nature
having two parts - a part that does not change and a part that moves - is
valuable for psychotherapy. My thoughts regarding this idea were stimulated
first by the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado in his book, Juan de Mairena.
Later I found similar ideas in Hermetica, trans. Walter Scott (London:
Dawson, 1968), Libellus II, p. 135f., in thc discussion between Hermes
Trismegistus and Asclepius. Although in another chapter of this book I discuss
these two parts in an easicr fashion, let me put in a nutshell my thoughts in
this respect. It is of obvious practical value in psychotherapy to have an
awareness of these two elements, so that we can detect what in human nature
does not change, so as to localize our psychotherapeutic aims in that part
which moves.
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obsessively with no insight.
Moreover, masturbation is the field where new sexual imagery first occurs.
Within the struggle with masturbation, the appearance of these new images - the
part of man's nature which moves - enables the self-detection of new psychic
movers. But this is not all. Though it may seem an awkward way, masturbation
offers the possibility of making a self-diagnosis of one's psychological state
and illness by becoming more precise about what fantasies are at work in one's
actual psychological movement. Masturbation has been seen mostly from
perspectives far removed nom the archetypal sphere of Pan. In any case, there
is no denying that masturbation is the sexuality attributed to this son of
Hermes, and that Pan rules the physical body of our psyche. Masturbation is the
basic sexuality and one of nature's wonders, for it at once connects man's
sexual images and his physical and emotional body. When there is masturbation
in a dream, it is an epiphany of Pan, expressing the psychic need to recognize
and accept what has been most repressed by Christianity: basic sexuality and
the emotional body. One has to recognize masturbation from within this
complexity. After two millennia of repression, masturbation, which had its
place in the great mythologies of ancient times, has reappeared in this
century's literature: James Joyce brought masturbation and masturbatory
fantasies and imagery into Ulysses.
This can be seen as an example
of the revival of a pagan god in the psyche of a twentieth-century man.
To go on with our theme of Pan
and pathology, we see that he is able to carry the lunatic, as shown by the
image of Pan carrying Selene,19 This image suggests that the answer of Pan's
psychology to the lunatic aspect of the psyche is simply to carry it.
Needless to say the implication
is that it is Pan in us who carries our lunacy. Among his nymph-fantasies, Echo
was the most beloved, who, in having no physical existence, seems to provide
the most intimate element in Pan: and it is in Echo that Pan reflects the
instinctual essence of his godhead. Pan and Echo are
19. Virgil, Georgica,
3.391.
p.135
complemantary. Pan's
echoes have a repercussion in the soul, the soul at Pan's body level.
The association of Pan and
Echo leads into another myth, that of Narcissus, who, in fleeing from Pan's
Echo (and therefore rejecting Pan), began an infatuation with his own image and
became what is called today 'an acute or chronic psychotic case.' In another
tale, that of Eros and Psyche recorded by Apuleius, Pan and Echo were nearby on
the riverbank when Psyche wanted to kill herself. This tale, in a very subtle
way, tells us that they rescued her from this suicidal attempt. So the
classical myths remind us of two sides of Pan's Echo: that of making Narcissus
mad, and that of helping to rescue Psyche. These two sides of Echo, one showing
pathology and the other a psychotherapy, have reappeared in this century in
what we could call the 'echo conditions' of the psyche.
Eugen Bleuler 20 described
echolalia and echopraxia as secondary symptoms of schizophrenia. The genius of
an American psychotherapist, Carl Rogers, introduced Echo, the nymph of Pan,
son of Hermes, as a method into his psychotherapeutic practice. Here we have
two pictures belonging to this century's psychology: a psychiatrist who diagnosed
a condition; and a psychotherapist who, without diagnosing, therapeutically
approached the psyche - through a personal hunch and probably unaware of its
archetypal background - with the very instrument diagnosed by the psychiatrist
as a secondary symptom. These pictures are worth keeping in mind as they so
clearly present two aspects of psychotherapy, two different approaches to
illness.
On the one hand, there is
always the psychiatric-diagnostic approach and, on the other, there is the
therapeutic approach through Pan. Together they have provided me with a
historical reference to frame my own experience and insights into a
psychotherapy constellated by Pan.21
20. Eugen Bleuler, Lehrbuch
der Psychiairie, 9 Aufl. (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1955), p. 92.
21. My own therapeutic
experience of Echo happened more through Bleuler's small reference than Rogers'
about whom, at the time, I knew nothing.
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The 'happening' of Pan's
echo in psychotherapy can constellate a true epiphany of Pan, which is one of
the most vivid expressions of the psychotherapeutic relationship. Like cures
like, Similis similibus curantur.22 This is where the real symmetry happens,
where the dance is, where the psychotherapy of Pan is. It is the expression of
two bodies dancing in unison, a psychotherapy of the body. When this happens we
can be sure are in the realm where Pan appears in a psychotherapy through body
movements, within a sort of dance, constellating the transference which belongs
to him.23
The analyst is challenged when
the patient's imagery involves archetypes that are outside the archetypal
realms with which he or she is familiar. This presents a difficulty in finding
an attitude akin to the patient's archetypal background. The work of modern
scholars on rhetoric, 24 the different styles of rhetoric as a way to connect
to the different archetypes, could be of great help in this direction. We need
to know more about archetypal rhetoric and to train ourselves in this. In my
discussion of a Pan psychotherapy, it seems to me I have been referring to the
'rhetoric of Pan': Echo, who connects us to the constellation of Pan in
psychotherapy.
Jungian analysis has yet to
explore a psychotherapy based on the archetypal constellation brought by the
patient, and to be acquainted with the classical conception of rhetoric,
talismanic
22. I had a patient who
confessed that at last her madness had a companion. We discussed the difference
between madness accompanied and madness in solitude. Most of the therapy had
been based on echo reflection.
23. I appreciate that, in the
first edition, this passage stimulated Joan Chodorow, a dance therapist, in her
practice; see her paper "Dance/Movement and Body Experience in
Analysis" in Jungian Analysis, ed. Murray Stein (Open Court: La
Salle, 1982). Actually, I wrote this passage as a result of my experience at
the dancing parties I led at the Zurichberg Clinic when I worked there.
24. Yates, The Art of
Memory, op. cit.; for the rediscovery of Hermogenes see her Giordano
Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964).
In 1970/71 a seminar on the Picatrix was held at Spring Publications. The vivid
happenings during this seminar gave a training and insight into the emotions
and expressions of the different planets (archetypes), their imagery,
talismans, etc.
p.137
medicine, the different
ways of connecting to the different gods -the constellations of the different
archetypes. These are very old ideas but they are still waiting to be developed
by modern psychotherapy. And, in spite of rite fact that Jungian psychology has
opened many new doors for psychotherapy, analytical work is mainly conducted
through discussion of dreams, paintings, and active imagination, mostly by way
of amplifying symbols. So if Pan appears in a dream or painting, bringing with
his image an expression of the patient's unconscious demand, the discussion
continues with more or less the same attitude. Because Pan has not been allowed
to appear with his own rhetoric or style, the interpretation of 'Pan material'
is invariably based on the 'devilish' aspect of this god and so the patient is
'warned' of the dangers inherent in Pan. As yet no psychotherapy exists which
pays attention to the essential reality that each god (or goddess) needs a
different ritual, a different cult, and a living rhetoric.
__________________________
Let us return to the image of
Pan's birth as told in the Homeric Hymn to Pan, keeping to and
reflecting from that image. I have suggested that Pan was born of a
relationship between two men through their fantasy (nymph). The indirection of
this nymphic third can turn a relationship into a threesome situation.
The possible repercussions of
such a threesome in a man's soul can scarcely be understood conceptually. But
as hermetic relationships they bring their own possibilities for psychotherapy.
Moreover, they bring a
different model for therapy itself, i.e., a man-to-man relationship through a
nymph resulting in Pan, a god, on whose ground healing can happen. Because the
appearance of Pan/Echo in psychotherapy is in itself a repercussion, our
understanding here must be determined by the very constellation we are trying
to understand. For I do not want to pretend that we can grasp what is going on
from a perspective outside the Pan constellation.
Because psychological
interpretations about Pan have fol-
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lowed the Christian tradition
and strongly painted him with colors of the devil, these interpretations tend
to fall into discussions about evil, so here I would like to discuss Pan in
terms of the psychodynamic of compensation. The compensatory function of the
psyche, discovered by Jung in 1907 and which established the modern
psychodynamic view of the psyche, is important our discussion of Pan. In one of
his passages on compensation, Jung writes:
The psyche is
a self-regulating system that maintains its equilibrium just as the body does.
Every process that goes too far immediately and inevitably calls forth
compensations, and without these there would be neither a normal metabolism nor
a normal psyche. In this sense we can take the theory of compensation as a
basic law of psychic behavior. Too little on one side results in too much on
the other. Similarly, the relation between conscious and unconscious is
compensatory.25
Pan was at the center of the
repression of the pagan gods, just as he was at the center of the longing for
compensation expressed in the poem of the English poetess. It seems that Pan,
in terms of the function of compensation, represents an extreme possibility for
the psyche to find either a natural self-regulation or enter into madness. But
here I would like to stress that it is one thing to have enough awareness to
keep an eye on the compensatory function of the psyche with its natural
'self-regulation,' and quite another to accept into psychotherapy the image
of Pan. I do not want to say explicitly that modern psychotherapy's theoretical
compensatory/complementary approach to Pan tends to constellate the panic side
of him, though there is no doubt that, historically, psychic compensation has
its validity in the psyche.
Nevertheless, as I have worked
out, Pan's appearance in psy-
25. Jung, Modern Man in
Search of a Soul, trans. W.S. Dell & C.F. Baynes (London: Kegan, Paul,
1933), op. cit., para. 20.
p.139
chotherapy calls for a quite
different response: a response coming from Pan in the analyst, a consciousness
that includes Pan's healing function, his rhetoric, Echo, and the symmetric
dance.
For those who prefer to live a
psychotherapy more on the lines of the epiphany of the gods and the archetypes,
a basic knowledge of, and feeling for Who's Who in mythology is needed. In the
case of Pan, owing to the particular pathologies attributed to him, a
historical perspective is essential: that in Christianity, through repression,
Pan and the complexes around him became equated with evil and the imagery of
the devil. (It is interesting to note that a later Greek tradition tells us
that in Hellas there were devils too, 'evildoers' 26 - but these were Titans
with souls made of iron and steel.) In Greek classical times neither Pan, nor
the chthonic gods of his kind, ever carried a projection even remotely akiin to
the Christian one. Though, needless to say, all the gods and goddesses each
have their own style of destruction.
The aim of this chapter has
been to introduce the imagery of Pan's birth and epiphany into psychotherapy
and to discuss his image from the viewpoint of a psychology of the archetypes.
I particularly wished to stress the fact that Pan's birth was made possible by
two men loving each other through a nymph. The insight that Pan is concerned
with the psychotherapy of the body can open a door for a psychotherapeutic
approach to the pathologies attributed to him. It can offer, also, a
psychotherapeutic approach to the analytical situation in which the patient's
homosexuality appears center-stage. Instead of a homosexuality with no
psychological body, this approach could provide that same homosexuality with the
body psychology of Pan, son of Hermes.
26. Kerenyi, Gods of the
Greeks, op. cit., p. 208.