Madness, Wildness, and Pan’s Return

It’s been roughly 2 millennia since the death of the great god Pan – the only god in the Greek pantheon to die. Pan’s death heralded the demise of a polytheistic consciousness rooted in the anima mundi and marked the ascension of a monotheistic, patriarchal order that considered the earth as separate from the sacred. The implications of this shift are coming into alarming focus as we reach global tipping points in the life-sustaining balance of the earth’s ecological systems. In this time of great uncertainty, our individual and collective psyches are under immense pressure, resulting in pervasive anxiety and sometimes panic – areas that fall within Pan’s domain. Through exploring the themes of madness and wildness within Pan’s mythology, we discern deeply embedded self-regulatory patterns emergent in constellated experiences of fear and desire. Pan, god of the periphery and a symbol for untamed wilderness, can help us understand our responses to existential threats and integrate a different consciousness that moves us toward a greater relatedness to each other, our own nature, and the earth.