Nature is filled with arch-types that act as doorways into awareness of how to view God’s creation. Unfortunately many of these arch-types have been manipulated by those in powers over the centuries that have left a western society that views they are separate from Nature. This is a deep wound that is found in our European ancestors. This wound of separation has created a cultural that has used our Natural Resource for power and gain rather than making the choice of preservations and environmental awareness. Pan the Greek God of Nature is one of those ancient arch-types that has been sadly misunderstood, to set the record straight I like to share this experience I had in a church when I lived in Menton, France.
One of the main sanctuaries in the church of Menton in France was built over an older church of the 13th century. This church was dedicated to Saint Michael. I was gazing at the altar, the columns and ornaments of gilded wood and my eyes rested on the statue of Saint Michael. He held his mighty sword and stood victoriously on the back of the devil.
But who was this devil? Who was it that Michael’s Power was squashing? It was the Roman Pagan God of nature, Pan. Pan was not looking so happy in the role he found himself in. He still had his cloven feet and his goat horns poking through his curly hair, but his face was tortured for he had absorbed the evil projections of the founding church fathers. He had become their scapegoat.
Pan once was honored in Greece for his position in the natural scheme of creation. He danced on the Ley-Lines, playing his hollow reed flute. His cloven feet awakened the migration trails for the animals. His sensual, orgasmic pleasure aroused the sexual energies both in man and animal. The musky odor of his own sexuality assured the growth and the increased population of both animals and humans.
The thrilling melody of his pipes awakened the life force of the “Lignes Telluric,” the Ley-Lines, to distribute fertility throughout the area. Pan would have his sexual way with anyone and everything. His Sacred Presence ensured the survival of all species. Yes, sometimes he got carried away with himself, leaving broken hearts behind. His sexual yearning did not always connect with the wisdom eye of knowledge and discernment. But he represented the natural sex drive in its rawest form, wild and unleashed - but not evil!
The Church Fathers had to do something with Pan’s Pagan children who lived with the green ways of the Earth, following the cycles of nature with the rise and fall of the life forces within the land. The celibate priesthood was also forced to control their own sexual needs, so they bound Pan and projected the sins of the world upon him and called him the devil. Man projected upon Pan, rather than looking inside and facing and erasing the true source of evil that lives within human beings. Pan is a nature spirit and only nature Spirits can act as a mirror of man’s thoughts and emotions, for this is how the Creator programmed them.
Saint Michael, an Archangel of the highest order, was also misused by the church fathers to associate nature’s awesome reproducing power to the work of the devil. The fathers of the church wanted the power over the bodies, minds and souls of the population.
When Michael wasn’t stepping on the devil, he was slaying dragons. The dragon represents the Ley-Lines that held the Sacred Initiations of the land that gave the people the power to heal, to have visions of prophesies and look deeper into the mysteries of the soul.
The Church Fathers went as far as stripping the Great Goddess herself off her sexuality, fertility powers and her destructive aspect that brought purification and regeneration to the land through her winter season, the winter being the time the green power retreated deep into the earth. The snake, the dragon, which is symbolic of sexuality, and also the Wouivre system (Ley-Line system) of the land were crushed under the Virgin’s feet. The ancient Goddess adapted herself to the Church’s regulations and snuck in through the backdoor as the Black Madonna.
The male sexuality was bound through binding Pan. The female sexuality was bound through the Virgin and the power of the land was bound through the killing of the dragon. The original blueprint of nature was darkened by the minds of the Church Fathers who wanted complete control. When you succeed in controlling people’s sexuality, you control the population. The God and the Goddess became only a faint memory, whispered in the wind and the wild places of the land.
I walked out of the church and along the coastline there was a great rock ridge before me and I could see the shape of a dragon within the stone. As I focused on the images etched in the stone shaped by the elements, I could see the image of Pan in the weathered rock. Pan still lives in nature for those who have the eyes to see through Mother Nature’s veils. I also found a statue of a happier Pan at one of the fountains near the town’s center.
Maybe it is high time to change the archetypes that once were manipulated. Let us see Saint Michael being a protector of the environment, holding the shield with a dragon protector on it. Let us see Michael protecting the life force of the Earth.
Let us see the dark face of the Madonna who is not afraid of her fertility power, the power of birth, death and purification.
Let us give the Nature God Pan the pearl of wisdom to use his sexual nature with discrimination and with wisdom but not with repression. These are the new archetypes we need to heal ourself with the view of separation from God’s Creation which everything in Nature.
Other Post you may like to visit in this Blog found under lables is "Black Madonna Calls"
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