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.
|