The Devil

Poor Pan, born with a face only a mother could love.  Oh, wait, come to think of it, even his mother didn’t love him.  In fact, she ran screaming at the sight of his tiny horns and baby beard.  Or maybe it was the goat’s feet and tail that got to her, or possibly the wooly pelt . . .  In any case, her desertion left daddy Hermes in a quandary as to what to do with his new bouncing baby whatever-it-was, which he solved by taking Pan to Olympus and dumping him on Dionysius.

The god of wine, women and song wouldn’t have made much of a babysitter for most infants, but he and Pan got along great, maybe because they were both addicted to the same thing: raising hell.  Eventually, his partying ways got Pan kicked out of the abode of the gods, which doesn’t seem to have bothered him much as he just moved the revelry to Arcadia.  He and a group of disreputable friends spent their time carousing, chasing nymphs and scaring the daylights out of passing humans, leading to the modern term for a sudden fright—panic.

Because they disapproved of drunken orgies in the moonlight and excessive, pleasure-loving habits, early Christians began associating Pan with the devil. In fact, the medieval version of Satan, with horns, tail and cloven hoofs, was taken directly from ancient images of Pan.  But Pan wasn’t evil, he was just a fun-loving guy with a slight nymph obsession.  Likewise, while the Devil card usually stands for temptation, sexual desire and ambition, none of those things is bad in and of itself: it all depends on how far you let them go.  Pan believed in pushing the envelope, but then, he was a god and could get away with it.  For us lesser beings, a little restraint is occasionally in order.

The Devil reversed:

Pan, the Greek god of shepherds, mountains and fertility, is our Devil.  Now, for a fertility god, Pan had a lot of problems with his love life—mainly that he didn’t have much of one.  It wasn’t from a lack of trying; he relentlessly pursued every nymph in sight, but most quickly found somewhere else to be.  The best-known example is Syrinx, who had modeled herself on the virginal Artemis and spurned all lovers—or, at least, that’s what she told Pan.  The whole half-goat thing probably had a little something to do with it.  In any case, Pan was used to nymphs playing—and usually being—hard to get, and chased her doggedly all over Arcadia.

One day, Syrinx decided she’d had enough and asked some water nymphs to change her appearance, to make her less attractive to her unwanted admirer.  They agreed, turning her into a bunch of water reeds–which Pan promptly harvested and made into a flute.  He said its high-pitched whine reminded him of his lost love.

It’s always nice to see a god with a sense of humor.

In fact, Syrinx would have had a lot more fun with Pan and his wild partying friends than as a boring old reed.  But she was too wedded to the idea of upholding certain standards–like not dating anybody who resembled a farm animal–to let herself go.  Likewise, the Devil card reversed warns of being too caught up in a sense of propriety to experience the fun in life.  Pan is telling you that there’s a party invitation somewhere with your name on it.  So grab yourself a drink and a nymph (or satyr) and live a little.