Pan is the spirit of wild, irrepressible life essence.

He is a Great
God of tremendous power, the Lord of fertility, wild nature,
ecstatic music, wild goats, shepherds, flocks and hunters. He
bestows musical skill.  Pan’s nature of one of paradox.  He was
an uncivilized god in a civilized world. Much like the goat, which
could never truly be domesticated, Pan always retained a bit of
his feral nature. Though he lived wild and free in the mountains
of Arcadia, he also liked the comforts of civilization such as
wine, women, and song. Maybe the reason that Pan was often
referred to as “The God heard, but not seen” is because of His
love for wildness and freedom and his longing for civilization and
its benefits. Pan is most often heard through his pan pipe than
actually seen.

 Pan’s parentage is unclear, he is said to be the son of Hermes

or Dionysus and a Nymph or possibly the son of Penelope, the
wife of Odysseus. The legend is that while Odysseus was away,
Penelope slept 108 suitors, and became pregnant with Pan.  That
idea would certainly explain Pan’s prodigious eroticism.   Pan may
be much older than the Olympians, for He is said to have given
Artemis her hunting dogs and taught Apollo the art of prophecy.

 Worship of Pan began in Arcadia, thought the ancient Greeks

to be a magickal place that existed ”before the Moon”.  In most
of the ancient world, Pan was worshiped in natural settings such
as grottos and caves along with whichever local nymph was
prominent in the area. Grottos and caves were often used by
shepherds for shelter and were hiding places for outcasts.  The
dual nature of Pan (half God, half goat) would have made Him an
outcast in Greek society.  On the Acropolis in Athens He wasn’t
given a temple, it was said he resided in a crack on the side of
the plateau that housed the Acropolis. The only known temple to
Pan was in his native Arcadia, the ruins of which survive to this
day.
 The word panic derives from Pan. When Pan shouts panic
ensues, there is no need for Him to have weapons, his voice is
sufficient.  Most of the time Pan unleashed panic upon people he
was angry at, but he also liked to unleash panic on armies that
dared to enter his domain.  In wartime Pan was known to throw
invading armies into a blind panic and He was said to have helped
the Athenians defeat the Persians at the Battle of Marathon in
exchange for their worship of Him. Pan creates panic by making
so much noise that an army thinks they are being attacked, and
in that moment of terror they end up killing each other without
realizing it. Panic was said to spread like wildfire among armies,
and that it only took a few frightened individuals to throw
everyone else into a panic state.

 Though Pan could help defeat invading armies, He was never a

God of war.  He was a peaceful God who is shown on pottery
with his back turned away from battle scenes.  He may have
punished armies with panic simply because he disliked them.

  At parties, Pan panic was said to descend upon a crowd when
Pan began to lead the dance. The party would get into full swing
and the crowd leap and dance in a more uncivilized way. This
ecstatic dancing within a large group allowed people to commune
with the God Pan while retaining a sense of self.

 One of the famous myths of Pan involves the origin of his pan
flute, fashioned from lengths of hollow reed. Syrinx was a lovely
water-nymph of Arcadia, daughter of Landon, the river-god. As
she was returning from the hunt one day, Pan met her. To
escape from his sexual advances, the fair nymph ran away and
didn't stop to hear his compliments. He pursued her until she
came to her sisters who immediately changed her into a reed.
When the air blew through the reeds, it produced a plaintive
melody. Pan, still infatuated, took some of the reeds, because
he could not identify which reed she became, and cut seven
pieces (or according to some versions, nine), joined them side by
side in gradually decreasing lengths, and formed the musical
instrument bearing the name of his beloved Syrinx. Afterwards,
Pan was seldom seen without it.

 The music of the syrinx was known to make people dance and
lower their inhibitions.  It was said that when Pan played his
syrinx he could drive people mad with its music. The sound of
the syrinx filled people with the lustful nature of Pan, and as a
result, they often lost control.

 Pan is a sexual God.  He is often depicted with an erect phallus

chasing a nymph and is associated with “panic sex” or lustful sex
used solely for physical satisfaction.  Pan is not a God to
petition for love, He is a God of lust.  Pan has as many lovers as
often as possible.  There were never any long-term girlfriends
for Him. Greek Gods were never really monogamous and had
lovers on the side, but they invariably had long term
relationships or marriages.

 Pan’s erotic advances were often met with disdain or outright

terror.  Echo was a nymph who was a great singer and dancer
and scorned the love of any man. This angered Pan, and he
instructed his followers to kill her. Echo was torn to pieces and
spread all over the earth. Gaia, the Goddess of the Earth,
received the pieces of Echo, whose voice remains repeating the
last words of others. Pan also loved a nymph named Pitys, who
was turned into a pine tree to escape him.

 Pan's greatest conquest was that of the Moon Goddess Selene.

He accomplished this by wrapping himself in a sheepskin to hide
his hairy black goat form.  He drew her down from the sky into
the forest where he seduced her.
 Pan challenged Apollo, the God of the lyre, to a trial of musical
skill. Tmolus was chosen to umpire. Pan blew on his pipes and his
rustic melody was extremely pleasing to himself and to his
faithful follower, Midas, who happened to be present. Then
Apollo struck the strings of his lyre. Tmolus at once awarded
the victory to Apollo, and all but Midas agreed with the
judgment. Midas dissented and questioned the justice of the
award. Apollo would not suffer such a depraved pair of ears any
longer and turned Midas' ears into those of a donkey.

 In another version of the myth, the first round of the contest
was a tie, so the competitors were forced to hold a second
round. In this round, Apollo demanded that they play their
instruments upside-down. Apollo, playing the lyre, was
unaffected. However, Pan's pipe could not be played while
upside down, so Apollo won the contest.

 Ancient Greek hunters offered Pan trophies of their success

but if their hunting trips were unsuccessful they would scourge
Pan’s image demanding better luck next time.

 Pan did not have set feast dates so people worshipped him
whenever the need arose.  Pan worship was usually done in
groups and was an exercise in endurance beginning at mid-
afternoon and ending at sunrise the next day.  Groups
approached Pan’s sacred places making as much noise as possible
so that they didn’t startle Pan.  An offering was given, and if it
was to be a sacrifice then a male goat would be killed, boiled and
eaten by the worshippers. Then taunting and teasing between
the sexes would begin, becoming more and more sexual in
nature.  An all night vigil would be held to await the appearance
of Pan, ending when a sign of Pan’s presence was confirmed. 
Once Pan was at the party, then the serious eating, drinking and
coupling would begin.  The whole rite, from beginning to end was
accompanied by the playing of pan pipes.  At the climax of the
ritual the women would make a sound called a “krauge” a loud
frightening noise that could cause fear and panic.  At this time
worshippers are often visited with visions of the God or He
would descend into their bodies.  The revelry went on until past
dawn.  It was considered an insult to Pan not to party
throughout the night. 

 According to the Greek historian Pan is the only Greek god

(other than Asclepius) who actually dies. During the reign of
Tiberius (A.D. 14–37), the news of Pan's death came to a sailor
named Thamus.  A divine voice said, "Thamus, are you there?
When you reach Palodes take care to proclaim that the great
god Pan is dead." Which Thamus did, and the news was greeted
from shore with groans and laments. The news of Pans death
was repeated so often by Christians, that by the 18 th century it
was considered a historical fact.  The cry "Great Pan is dead"
has appealed to poets, such as John Milton,

 In the 18th Century, when the modern world believed that Pan
was dead, interest in Pan revived.  In the English town of
Painswick in Gloucestershire, a group of 18th century gentry
organised an annual procession dedicated to Pan, during which a
statue of the deity was held aloft. John Keats’s poem depicts a
scene where shepherds gather around an Altar and pray to Pan.

 By the 19th Century Pan began to appear often in literature and
art.  Pan can be found in poetry, novels and children’s books. 
Peter Pan is His namesake and in The Wind in the Willows Pan is
disguised as a powerful but secretive nature-god, protector of
animals, who casts a spell of forgetfulness on all those he helps.
He makes a brief appearance to help the Rat and Mole recover
the Otter's lost son Portly.
 In 1933 Margaret Murray wrote of Pan in her book The God of
the Witches in which she theorized that Pan was one form of
the ancient Horned God who was worshipped by the Witch Cult
throughout Europe.  Her book influenced the Neopagan notion
of the Horned God, as an archetype of male virility and
sexuality. In Wicca, the archetype of the Horned God is highly
important, as represented by such deities as the Celtic
Cernunnos, and the Great God Pan.

FAVORED PEOPLE:  Shepherds, hunters, free spirits.

 WORSHIP:  Approach Pan with a lot of noise, pipes, clapping,

singing, chanting, He doesn’t like to be startled. 

 OFFERINGS:  Wine for Pan, honey cakes for his nymphs

 MANIFESTATION:  Pan has a man’s head and upper torso and

shaggy goat’s horns, legs, and hindquarters

 ICONOGRAPHY: Images of Pan served as the prototype for

the Christian devil.

 ATTRIBUTE:  Pan pipes

 SPIRIT ALLIES:  Hermes, Dionysus, Nymphs

 ANIMAL:  Goats

 SEASON:  Spring

 COLORS:  Purple, brown, green

 PLACE:  Fields, groves, caves, and forested mountains

 TIME:   Pan may visit your dreams at nap time and bring
blessings, good fortune and healing. Twilight or the evening
hours are also the best times to contact Him

 DATE:  October’s Full Moon is called Pan’s Moon and is the

night when one’s true love is revealed in dreams

 SACRED SITE:  Pan had an Altar beside Demeter and

Despoena’s Arcadian Shrine.