Pan and Psyche: A Love Story

Myths are true but not literal, they are rather “perspectives toward events which shift the experience of events; but they are not themselves events... They give an account of the archetypal story in the case history, the myth in the mess” (Hillman, 1975, p. 101). The myth in the mess of humanity, the visual aid for the archetypal patterns that arise in the human psyche as part of the human condition, myths are an image to guide, illuminate, and expand our understandings of our own imagination. Rather than being “created” and having a point of origin, myths are the “phenomenological dramatization of our encounter with depths” (Hollis, 2000, p. 17). They show us ourselves from our primordial creation. Each can be read as an archetypal image of the psyche and the greater cosmos of the human soul. Each figure within the mythical story identifies and expounds certain psychological and imaginal (meaning soul-full) truths.

As an archetypal image, Pan, god of undomesticated wilderness, invites us to view his character symbolically as aspects of our own psyches found in the potential for certain patterns and complexes. By looking deeply into the image of Pan and Psyche, we can begin to see the relationship between instinct, consciousness, and love and how to utilize each on our individuation journey. 

Born with a brute face and heavy beard that caused his mother to run from him in panic, Pan, God loved by all immortals, may not be one’s first choice for sacred mentor and guide through life’s initiatory moments (Boer, 1970, p. 67). His insatiable lust, violent chase, crude animal appearance, and tendency to stir madness and chaos would be enough to throw us off the scent of this archetypal figure’s dynamic aspects, keeping us from the other side of the spectrum that offers a deeper glance into the caring, nurturing, encouraging wisdom of Pan.

We can imagine ourselves standing on the river bank. She-goats dance nimbly, grazing, frolicking, while Pan reclines in the tall grass, caressing his beloved Echo and teaching her to sing. Interrupting this idyllic scene, Psyche, the beautiful mortal who has captured the heart of Eros and the jealousy of Aphrodite, washes ashore, pale, weak, frightened, suffering from loss of love. She has tried to commit suicide by throwing herself in the river, but the river has refused her, knowing her importance, and washed her ashore. Pan, seeing her heartache and desperation, speaks gentle words of affirmation and support. Psyche, her butterfly wings torn and tattered, her eyes red with tears, nods and turns away, on to face her destiny, to complete the labors of Aphrodite and reunite with her beloved.

Each piece, each color, fragrance, movement, word, and evocation of this moment mirrors processes within the soul. But before we dive into this mythic image, let us glance into the history of Pan to better understand the dynamic interaction with Psyche that lends itself to soul-making. 

As the Homeric Hymn to Pan tells us, Hermes married a nymph who gave birth to Pan, but as soon as she saw him her motherly instincts faltered (Boer, 1970, p. 67). Overcome with panic at his half-god, half-goat appearance, she fled, abandoning her child. Hermes, however, was overjoyed, wrapped the babe in rabbit fur, and whisked him away to Mount Olympus where Pan’s laughter delighted all the gods, especially Dionysus, hence his name “Pan” meaning “all” (p. 68).

These instances at his birth offer insight into who Pan shows up as in the human psyche. 

The very first glance at him induced his own mother to flee. Throughout his life Pan would repeat this pattern: chasing women only to be abandoned yet again, each beloved either transformed into natural voiceless object or killed, by him or others. His lust unsatiated, his love unrequited, it is his half-animal appearance and instinctual nature that cause frenzy in those he pursues. He is simply too wild, too uncultivated for civilization. Pan is the god of nature, of animal-ness, which means he is the god of our inner nature, those urges and knowings located deep within the psyche, the dark place where we also encounter panic and desire (Hillman, 1972b, p. 17). Thus Pan’s landscape is our own “inscape” where we find our own goat-self, the unruly nature within. He represents that which is enwrapped in humanity as an impersonal Other, the spontaneous amoral instinctual response that just does because that is what it does. He holds the tension of immortal soul and human/animal body. 

Pan’s birth incites fear, but it also inspires delight. His father wraps him in rabbit fur, a pelt known for its sacred associations with Aphrodite, Eros, Dionysus, and the moon (Selene), indicating that before he is brought to the gods he is already accepted, embraced, as part of those structures of consciousness (Hillman, 1972b, p. 18). Instincts as Pan are embraced by the beauty of Aphrodite, the love of Eros, the chaos of Dionysus, and the reflection of Selene.

“All the immortal gods were delighted in their hearts” by baby Pan, especially Dionysus (Boer, 1970, p. 68). If you have ever watched a video of baby goats frolicking in the fields, you have probably also been delighted in your heart by a Pan figure. His animal half, instead of shocking the gods, brings them joy. Divinity approves of his instincts, his wild playfulness, and embraces him. As Jean Lang (2007) aptly describes this acceptance, “Pan is Nature, and Nature is not the ugly thing that the Calvinists would once have had us believe it to be. Nature is capable of being made the garment of God” (np). It is when Pan is exclaimed dead (in Plutarch’s De defectu oraculorum, "The Obsolescence of Oracles") with the burgeoning Christ figure’s appearance that nature becomes an obstacle to the human soul. In order to have power over nature, Christianity integrated the image of Pan with that of the Devil, identifying psyche’s natural instincts and base, animal impulses as evil, requiring transcendence for the soul’s salvation. Pan is then repressed in the psyche, split off as an evil “other” projected onto the figure of Satan, incapable of being acknowledged and integrated. But as we will see in the image of Pan and Psyche, the instinctual nature of All will approach in the midst of panic to, as a good shepherd would, set right that which has been led astray. Pan’s spontaneous and surprising presence with Psyche on the riverbank is his natural way of being with the psyche in emotional turmoil. 

Before being gently pushed to the edges of the bank by the river, Psyche has attempted to commit suicide after betraying her beloved and watching him flee from her. She has been abandoned. He has been betrayed. Death follows Psyche from the funeral procession used as her wedding party, to her many attempted suicides, and finally to her descent to Persephone where she peers into the box of darkness which covers her in the sleep of death. Psyche, as mortal, is in a dark night of the soul, as James Hillman (1972a) says, “(the burnt wings of the night moth), that mortificatio in which it feels the paradoxical agony of a pregnant potential within itself and a sense of guilty, cut-off separateness” (p. 94).This sense of separateness, abandonment, and desperation is what leads Psyche to attempt suicide. But Pan knows something about separation and abandonment, about betrayal and loss. He sees it on her face, sees himself reflected in her despair. He acknowledges at her sight, 

“Fair maiden, I am but a rude rustic shepherd, but long old age and ripe experience have taught me much. If I guess rightly (though men that are wise call it no guess, but rather divination), your weak and tottering steps, your body’s exceeding pallor, your unceasing sighs, and still more your mournful eyes, tell me that you are faint from excess of love.” (Neumann, 1956, p. 28).

He sees her. Psych reflects nature.

It is no coincidence that Echo is with Pan when Psyche stumbles upon the shore.  According to Ptolemy Hephaestion, Aphrodite, irritated with Pan, cursed him to fall in love with Echo who would never return his love. Echo, cursed by Hera to only repeat what has last been spoken to her, fell in love with Narcissus who when he heard himself repeated in the voice of Echo fell in love with himself. Echo pined for Narcissus but was rejected. Narcissus consumed by his own image, wasted away by the reflecting pool while Echo nearby faded until all that was left was her echoing voice. Echo’s presence with Pan invokes Narcissus and the narcissism of nature: “The world wants to see itself,” says Bachelard (19710, p. 77). Nature reflects and evokes reflection, contemplation and contemplated. This is what Echo’s presence tells us. As one god cannot be known in solitude but only in relationship to others, so Pan in this image cannot be known fully without Echo. She holds knowledge of him, of nature, crucial to our understanding. Pan needs Echo. Nature needs the ability to reflect and cause reflection, to create pause.

Reflection is shown in Pan’s romantic relationships. The nymph Syrinx escapes his lusty grasp by turning herself into a reed, which Pan immediately cuts down to make his famously depicted pipes. Pitys suffered a similar fate, running from Pan and turning into a Pine tree. Both nymphs become a part of nature of which Pan is. In their transformation they show nature its own self. Pan also seduces the moon goddess, Selene, by covering his hairy, black goat legs with white sheep wool, thus reflecting her color. He is connected to her by becoming like her, thus winning her favor (Hillman, 1972b, p. 60). Reflection is instinctual to Pan, part of his nature: “The other whom Pan chases so compulsively is none other than his own nature, his own soul, reflected, transposed to another key” (p. 62). It is through this chase that “Pan tells us that the strongest longing of nature ‘in here’ (and maybe ‘out there’ as well) is towards union with soul in awareness” (p. 62). He longs to be united. Our inner instinctual selves long to be united with soul, in love. 

Pan also represents “a consciousness moving warily in the wisdom of fear through the empty places of our inscapes, where we do not know which way to take, no trail, our judging only by means of the senses” (Hillman, 1972b, p. 63). This is how Psyche finds Pan, sitting, reflecting with Echo. By encountering this contemplative scene in a moment when she has lost her own way, Psyche is invited into her own reflection, perhaps making “the first movement of nature that will yield a new insight into nature” (p. 19). Still in her despair and perhaps even panicked state, the instinctual knowing of nature calls to her. Pan longs for his beloved Echo who will never return his love, whereas Psyche longs for Eros and is on the verge of giving up the chase. This is when her instincts must be honed, when she must trust herself to persevere in the face of challenges in order to be united with Love. She must learn to trust her bodily knowing if she is to survive, for “what more could we wish from prophecy than this immediate body awareness of how, when, and what to do” (p. 63). Pan’s presence with Psyche symbolizes the bolstering of instinctual understandings, gut-feelings, urges, and “the awareness identical with the physical signals of nature ‘in here’” (p. 63). 

Pan entreats her,

“Wherefore give ear to me and seek no more to slay yourself by casting yourself headlong down, nor by any manner of self-slaughter. Cease from your grief and lay aside your sorrow, and rather address Amor, the mightiest of gods, with fervent prayer and win him by tender submission, for he is an amorous and soft-hearted youth.” (Neumann, 1956, p. 29). 

Psyche is overcome by compulsion in her lovesickness, attempting in vain to end her life. Pan’s words of wisdom encourage her to push through the compulsion to submit to the greatest, the “mightiest” god. Pan needs Psyche to unite with Eros. The name Psyche derives from the Greek root meaning “soul” and “butterfly.” As such, Psyche is part of nature, an intricate part of Pan, their futures intertwined. As inner and outer nature, Pan “is the bridging configuration who keeps reflections from falling into disconnected halves where they become the dilemma of a nature without soul and a soul without nature, objective matter out there and subjective mental processes in here” (Hillman, 1972b, p. 79). Pan allows for fluidity, synchronicity, the meshing of inner and outer. He needs soul as much as soul needs love, the three becoming like the triple Godhead. As part of nature herself, Psyche is a critical aspect of the Pan-nature within; intrinsic within that nature is libido and “erotica luxuria,” a lust and drive toward eros (p. 18). 

Pan’s own relation to Eros is an interesting one, as pointed out by James Hillman (1972a)  in Myth of Analysis: “Eros is born of Chaos, implying that out of every chaotic moment...creativity...can be born” (p. 98). As god of unruly and undomesticated nature, Pan is associated with chaos, confusion, and disorder. In this way, Pan and Eros are brothers, both having fallen under the wrath of Aphrodite. Hillman (1972b) argues that the world is made by Eros, held together by Love and “charged with the libidinal desire that is Pan” (p. 33). Both play a crucial part in the creation and movement of the cosmos. As a representation of panic, anxiety, and fear, Pan goes hand in hand with eros. Fear accompanies the love experience. We love to love, yet we also fear the end of love, the destruction and death of love, thus Pan and Eros work together in our psyches, holding the tension of life and death (Hillman, 1972a, p. 81). It is Eros’ arrows that point out these wounds, these dark gaps, when love is unrequited. These places of darkness are the places of vulnerability, feelings of powerlessness, weakness, the places where panic reigns (p. 100). Love makes space for the dark instincts, as dark instincts engender a desire for Love.

Thus Pan encourages Psyche to submit to Eros, to let go the self-victimizing and endangering fears and compulsions, and allow herself to lay at the feet of Love. With “long old age and ripe experience” as a “rude rustic shepherd,” Pan embodies the archetype of the Wise Old Man, a “true mentor” to Psyche in her grief (Neumann, 1956, p. 98). Perhaps it is because he himself has lost the loves he chases, or because he and Psyche have both found themselves at the mercy of Aphrodite’s anger, pricked by Cupid’s arrow. Or perhaps, as Hillman (1972b) has already told us, “the strongest longing of nature ‘in here’...is towards union with soul in awareness” and therefore Pan as our instinctual wild nature is drawn to Psyche in order to be united with her, our wild-self and soul-self learning from and nurturing one another (p. 62). By comforting her and encouraging her on toward Eros, Pan shows the feminine soul in chaos that the “masculine is not always deadly,” that encounters with pure wild nature are not always lethal, that submitting to and receiving from Love after she has completed her tasks is what will get her what she wants (Neumann, 1956, p. 100). She must go through an initiation, as our psyches must, in order to shift from archetypal maiden to archetypal mother, developing herself through her relation to the masculine tasks, instinctual nature, and feminine receptivity. Perhaps Pan also has a stake in the anticipated union of Psyche and Eros, the divine child, Pleasure, born of the soul in love. Pleasure resulting from sensual excitement is Pan’s world. As the inventor of masturbation, he revels in the fulfillment of bodily pleasure. In Pan and the Nightmare, James Hillman (1972b) argues that masturbation conjures Pan by “intensifying interiority” with joy, pleasure, conflict and shame, which is useful for inner creativity (p. 43). Thus Pan’s role in encouraging Psyche to submit to Eros may be for the purpose of Pleasure. If this is a reflection of psychological processes, then the inner instinctual nature urges our soul to unite with love, perhaps, for the purpose of sensate pleasure. 

Psyche needs Pan in order to continue on her journey. What would Psyche have done without the consoling words of Pan? Her life feels meaningless without Love, craving death rather than continue living without her beloved. Pan reminds Psyche of Love, and by doing so opens her eyes to “the meaning hidden in Aphrodite's seemingly arbitrary labors” and “the events take on a direction, namely a direction toward Eros” (Neumann, 1956, p. 98). The labors then become her path, her way through the dark night and into the arms of Love. Through her labors she relies on the natural instincts she cultivates from her interaction with Pan. Her first labor is to sort a multitude of grains in a short time, an impossible task if not for the ants that come to her aid, sorting the pile for her. Task number two, after her second suicide attempt, is to retrieve a golden fleece, which she does with the help of a water reed, a Pan-like vegetation that speaks to her from the depths of the watery unconscious. Her third labor is to fill a vessel with water from a dangerous waterfall, from which she again tries to kill herself but is saved by an Eagle who swoops in and retrieves the water for her. Ant, reed, and Eagle, all part of Pan’s natural pan-theon that assist Psyche in reaching Eros to consummate the marriage of soul and love. Without his assistance, Psyche seems doomed to fail, feeling “unequal to the struggle with the archetypal world. It is only with increasing integration, with the advancing development of the self, that the human Psyche can resist this assault” (Neumann, 1956, p. 100). 

In our own psychological lostness, in the feelings of despair and depression, we can know there is an inner Pan waiting by the riverbank, full of wisdom and instinctual knowing that can aid us on our journey. It is in those moments of fear and wishing for endings that a new way can emerge. Like Psyche, our divine tasks can be arduous and daunting, full of seeming dead-ends that can never be overcome. Yet, in order to unite with Love, we, and our psyches, must rely on our Pan instincts, collaborating with divine nature. The result is well worth it, for in the end we will surely give birth to Pleasure.

Written by Tarrin McDonald

References

Bachelard, G. (1971). On poetic imagination and reverie. Woodstock, CT: Spring Publications. 

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Hillman, J. (1972a). The myth of analysis. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers. 

Hillman, J. (1972b). Pan and the nightmare. Putnam, CT: Spring Publications, Inc.

Hillman, J. (1975). Re-visioning psychology. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Hollis, J. (2000). The archetypal imagination. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press.

Lang, J. (2007). A book of myths. Retrieved from

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22693/22693-h/22693-h.htm 

Neumann, E. (1956). Amor and Psyche: The psychic development of the feminine. New York,

NY: Bollingen Foundation Inc.