Pan is a demigod, a satyr. A satyr is a god who is half human, half goat and is a cheerful naughty forest creature in Greek mythology. Pan is the most famous, but cheerful and naughty? Pan looks more like a devil with his horns, goat's tail, hooves and goat's hair on his legs. Since the Middle Ages he has been a model of the devil. He has yellow eyes, like a nocturnal animal. The god Bacchus is his friend. Bacchus is the god of wine, the ecstasy in the dark forest. Saters are keen on anarchy, not in order.
Pan grows up in the forest nymphs, after his mother, the nymph Penelope, abandons him at birth. She can't handle that much ugliness. His father is Hermes, the god of thieves and messenger of the gods of Mount Olympus, the dynasty of father and chief god Zeus. Hermes, like Pan, is a phallic god and one who protects the herds. In short, a background good for disasters and catastrophes. Not for nothing is the term pandemic named after this unfortunate demigod.
This satyr grows up in Arcadia, a utopian land full of flowers, forests, clear springs, chirping of many birds and where it is always sunny. Pan regularly sits behind the nymphs, who try to raise him, and one in particular is known that she was not served by it. Syrinx is determined to remain a virgin and begs the goddess Gaia to help her when Pan is on her heels again. Gaia turns Syrinx into a forest of reeds. The wind blows the beautiful tones over the adjacent lake and the rest is known. Pan cuts off the reed and the pan flute is born. The ancient Greeks called the pan flute Syrinx.
As I said, Pan is a phallic god and also the naming agent I think of the oblong gland, which to see still has the most resemblance to an erection. It is a gland with two secretion functions, the endocrine and the exocrine, for the purposes of digestion, so that fats, proteins and carbohydrates can be absorbed into the intestines. Furthermore, the prefix "pan" usually means "al" or "all" or ubiquitous. I am thinking of pantheism, pan-European, pandemonium, pantheist and pantomic to name a few. In parallel, these words mean: faith in polytheism, as in ancient Greece, concerning the whole of Europe, a chaotic state with a hellish noise and crowd, someone who assumes that everyone is divine and a stage gesture to the extreme.
For medieval use Pan's appearance to use for the image of the devil I have found no reasons, but that the myth of pan's shadow throws forward our time may have become clear. In the end, this blog has become a bit of a panegyric.
