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Pan is the god of woods and fields and of all shepherds and goatherds.
He resembles a goat himself with a tail and shaggy legs, horns, cloven
feet and a pointed beard. He pursued every nymph, naiad and dryad he saw.
He represented the pregnating power of the sun and is the father of all
fauns, satyrs, panes and a horde of rustic deities. He, his children and his wife Aix
were all companions of Dionysus, the god of wine, and they all traveled together, through the woods and fields,
drinking, dancing and singing. It is sometimes said
he is the son of Hermes, but his parentage is mostly uncertain; some stories
say he is actually the oldest god of all (the original nature god), older
even than Zeus. Some stories say that it was he and not Hermes or Apollo,
who invented music. He was chasing a nymph called Syrinx, who fled across
the field and to the river bank, where she chanted herself into a reed.
Among all the other reeds, he could not tell which one was her. Inspired
by the sound of the wind moving among the river reeds, he picked a handful
and cut them into he first Panpipe, upon which he blew enchanting melodies.
It is said that Hermes later stole the pipe from Pan and sold it to Apollo.
Pan was also said to have been the author and director of the sacred dances,
which he instituted to symbolize the circumambulations of the heavenly
bodies. Pan was useful in the fight against Cronus because he had a war
cry which paralyzed whoever heard it. At a critical point in the battle,
he shouted, freezing the Titans with fear and turning it in the Olympians
favor. Because of this, Zeus forgave him much mischief. The fear inspired
by his call is where the word panic came from. It is also said that this
word arose from the sudden fright one experiences when walking through
the woods at night; such fears were attributed to Pan and, like all woodland
gods, he was greatly feared by all whose occupations took through the forest
at such hours. He is the prototype of natural energy and came to symbolize
the universe; the Panpipes symbolize the natural harmony of the spheres
and he is the embodiment of Saturn, enthroned in Capricorn, whose emblem
is the goat. He eventually became known as a representation of all the
gods of paganism itself.
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