Paul Robichaud
@PaulJRobichaud
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‘Pan: the Great God's Modern Return’ (Reaktion, 2021). Writes on cultural history, myth, and modern literature. Poet. Teaches English. Canadian in Connecticut.
New Haven, CT from Toronto, ON
Joined August 2021
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Pinned Tweet
Pleased to announce that my next book is now under contract with Reaktion Books! STORIES OF THE STONES will explore how we've found meaning in the prehistoric landscape through narrative and the arts across the ages. Really looking forward to working on this!
#stonecircles
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In Acadian folklore, a man who missed Easter Mass for seven consecutive years was in danger of becoming a ‘loup garou,’ or werewolf.
#FolkloreSunday
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Pan giving the pipes a rest for a midsummer celebration.
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Just arrived — some more reading for my stones book! Looks fascinating.
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‘The Magician’ (1926), dir. Rex Ingram, is based on a novel by Somerset Maugham. It features an occultist named Oliver Haddo (based upon Aleister Crowley) who seduces a young woman. She experiences a terrifying vision of Pan, played by dancer Hubert Stowitts.
#Pan
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Professor writing book on stories of the ancient stones arrives at rural inn in Wiltshire. What could possibly go wrong?
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Just arrived — I missed the first edition but this newly published revised and expanded edition is an incredibly beautiful art book.
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Australian artist and witch Rosaleen Norton (1917-1979) was devoted to the god Pan, whom she believed ‘is the spirit whose body — or such of it as can be seen in these four dimensions (the fourth being time) — is the planet Earth.’
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‘I call upon Pan, the pastoral god,
I call upon the universe,
upon the sky, the sea, and the land,
queen of all,
I also call upon immortal fire;
all of these are Pan’s realm.’
— ‘Orphic Hymn 10 (To Pan)’ (trans. Athanassakis & Wolkow)
🎨Athanasius Kircher, 1652
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‘“The worship of Pan never has died out,' said Mortimer. 'Other newer gods have drawn aside his votaries from time to time, but he is the Nature-God to whom all must come back at last.”’
— Saki, ‘The Music on the Hill’ (1911)
#Pan
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Highly recommend this beautiful book — itself a work of art — by
@odavies9
. Magic as artistic practice/art as magical practice.
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The original cover of Kenneth Grahame’s ‘Wind in the Willows’ (1908), designed by W. Graham Robertson. Robertson knew Oscar Wilde and John Singer Sargent, who painted his portrait twice. Peter Hunt’s research suggests Robertson shared a house with Kenneth Grahame at the time.
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Choose 20 books that greatly influenced you. One book per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews. Just covers. 11/20
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Arthur Rackham’s haunting image of the Piper at the Gates of Dawn was first published posthumously in a 1940 edition of ‘The Wind and the Willows’ by Kenneth Grahame.
#FolkloreSunday
#Pan
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One of my student essays describes a 41 year-old writer as ‘entering his last phase of life.’
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‘The Magician’ (1926), dir. Rex Ingram, is based on a novel by Somerset Maugham. It features an occultist named Oliver Haddo (based upon Aleister Crowley) who seduces a young woman. She experiences a terrifying vision of Pan, played by dancer Hubert Stowitts.
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“‘The worship of Pan never has died out,’ said Mortimer. ‘Other newer gods have drawn aside his votaries from time to time, but he is the Nature-God to whom all must come back at last.’” — Saki, ‘The Music on the Hill’ (1911)
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‘Pan is not dead ... in every wood, if you go with a spirit properly prepared, you shall hear the note of his pipe.’ — Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘Pan’s Pipes’ (1881)
🎨Sydney Long, ‘Pan’ (detail), 1898.
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Recently purchased this lovely set of Yeats’s esoteric writings from Black Letter Press.
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In his poem ‘Endymion’ (1818), John Keats praises the god Pan as ‘Dread opener of the mysterious doors / Leading to universal knowledge.’
🎨 Keith Hutchings
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Choose 20 books that greatly influenced you. One book per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews. Just covers. 1/20
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Arthur Rackham’s haunting image of the Piper at the Gates of Dawn was first published posthumously in a 1940 edition of ‘The Wind and the Willows’ by Kenneth Grahame.
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‘You may think this all strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan.’ —Arthur Machen, ‘The Great God Pan’ (1894)
#Pan
🎨Aubrey Beardsley, frontispiece for ‘The Great God Pan’ (1894)
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French occultist Éliphas Lévi created this image of ‘Baphomet’ in the 1850s, a complex allegorical symbol ‘of the god Pan’ and ‘the god of the Alexandrian theurgic school.’ It combines dualities like light/dark and male/female in an alchemical union of opposites.
#WyrdWednesday
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‘The rule of Pan came to an end on the day when a fanatic preached that kindly, joyous, savage Pan was in truth the embodiment of original sin!’ — Stephen MacKenna, ‘The Oldest God’ (1926)
🎨Stella Langdale
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Australian witch and artist Rosaleen Norton was devoted to the god Pan, whom she believed ‘is the spirit whose body — or such of it as can be seen in these four dimensions (the fourth being time) — is the planet Earth.’
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Dion Fortune’s novel ‘The Goat-Foot God’ (1936) culminates in an invocation of Pan, during which a young woman named Mona has a vision of ‘Pan with his pipes’ appearing ‘shaggy and wild and kind.’
#BookWormSat
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On Mount Cyllene, the god Hermes fell in love with Penelopeia, disguising himself as a shepherd to win her hand. He brought their first child, shaggy with goat's feet, to Olympus, where the gods named him ‘Pan’ (‘all’) for he made them all laugh.
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In the tale of ‘Cupid and Psyche,’ Pan gives hope to a despairing Psyche after she attempts to drown herself. Though often portrayed as a lustful chaser of nymphs, Pan could also be a compassionate helper, especially to lovers.
#BookWormSat
🎨Gustav Klimt, ‘Pan and Psyche’
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In Rex Ingram’s film ‘The Magician’ (1926), based on Somerset Maugham's 1908 novel, Oliver Haddo hypnotizes a young sculptor into believing she is at an orgy in Hell, presided over by Pan himself! Haddo was modelled on real-life magician Aleister Crowley.
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‘He is a great being, the god of the whole elemental kingdom as well as of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. People may feel uneasy in his presence, but there ought to be no fear.’ — Robert Ogilvie Crombie (ROC), ‘The Gentleman and the Faun.’
🎨Johfra Bosschart
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‘We know what happened to those who chanced to meet the Great God Pan, and those who are wise know that all symbols are symbols of something, not of nothing.’ — Arthur Machen, ‘The Great God Pan’ (1894)
#LegendaryWednesday
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Franz Stuck, cover of ‘Pan’ magazine (1895). ‘Pan’ was a German magazine that initially ran from 1895-1900, publishing avant-garde writers and artists.
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In the tale of Cupid and Psyche, Pan consoles a despairing Psyche after she attempts to drown herself. Though often portrayed as a lustful chaser of nymphs, Pan could also be a compassionate helper, especially to lovers.
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‘He is a great being, the god of the whole elemental kingdom as well as of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. People may feel uneasy in his presence, but there ought to be no fear.’ — ROC, ‘The Gentleman and the Faun’ (Findhorn, 2009), p. 21.
#Pan
🎨Johfra Bosschart
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This is essential reading if you’re interested in the cultural origins of the fairies as portrayed in British folklore.
@DrFrancisYoung
makes a persuasive and original argument with fascinating examples, and I found myself provoked into writing a lot of comments in the margins!
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Whether you celebrate with Pan, Aphrodite, or Eros, may you have a Happy Valentine’s Day!
🎨Parian marble, Greek, c. 100 BCE
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Arthur Rackham’s haunting image of the Piper at the Gates of Dawn was first published posthumously in a 1940 edition of ‘The Wind and the Willows’ by Kenneth Grahame.
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Australian witch and artist Rosaleen Norton was devoted to the god Pan, whom she believed ‘is the spirit whose body — or such of it as can be seen in these four dimensions (the fourth being time) — is the planet Earth.’
#Pan
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This curious image of ‘Robin Good-Fellow’ (1639), a mischievous British sprite, portrays him in the form of Pan or a satyr. By the 17th century, Pan was often considered another supernatural being or demon, along with fairies, satyrs, nymphs, and fauns.
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Pan fights Cupid with one hand tied behind his back! Their contest symbolized the struggle between Love and Lust.
There was also a hidden pun: Pan’s name sounded like the Greek word for ‘all,’ so Cupid’s defeat of Pan meant ‘Love Conquers All.’
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Pan is not depicted in art until his worship spread from Arcadia in the early 5th century BCE. In this image from an Attic drinking vessel, Pan appears with the head and hindquarters of a goat, playing a double-reed (aulos) rather than the more familiar Pan-pipes (syrinx).
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‘Breathless and transfixed, the Mole stopped rowing as the liquid run of that glad piping broke on him like a wave, caught him up, and possessed him utterly. He saw the tears on his comrade's cheeks, and bowed his head and understood.’ — Kenneth Grahame
🎨W. Graham Robertson
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‘The most wide-ranging and up-to-date exploration of Pan on the Western imagination yet written.’ — Ronald Hutton
Available now in paperback and as an ebook from your favourite bookseller. Published by Reaktion Books.
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‘I call upon Pan, the pastoral god,
I call upon the universe,
upon the sky, the sea, and the land,
queen of all,
I also call upon immortal fire;
all of these are Pan’s realm.’
— ‘Orphic Hymn 10 (To Pan)’
(trans. Athanassakis & Wolkow)
🎨Athanasius Kircher, 1652
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‘The cancrous cities spread over the grass, they clatter in their lairs continually, they glitter about us blemishing the night. The woods are gone, O Pan, the woods, the woods. And thou art far, O Pan, and far away.’
— Lord Dunsany, ‘The Prayer of the Flowers’ (1915)
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Pan was a working god. One of the earliest surviving images of Pan, this bronze statuette (5th century BCE) depicts the god shielding his eyes from the sun while he watches over flocks of sheep and goats.
#MythologyMonday
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‘There was an instant’s subtle panic, but it was the panic of reverent awe that preludes a descent of deity ... Above it there rose the shrill, faint piping of a little reed.’ — Algernon Blackwood, ‘A Touch of Pan’ (1917)
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For psychologist James Hillman, the feeling of panic we experience in Pan’s presence ‘will also be seen to be the right response to the numinous,’ a term describing the presence of divinity.
🎨 Arnold Böcklin, ‘Pan Amid Columns,’ 1875
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In 2015, a haunting bronze mask of Pan was discovered at the Cave of Pan at Banias, north of the Golan Heights. Who knows what strange rites were celebrated there in Pan’s name?
#WyrdWednesday
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‘The Magician’ (1926), dir. Rex Ingram, is based on a novel by Somerset Maugham. It features an occultist named Oliver Haddo (based upon Aleister Crowley) who seduces a young woman. She experiences a terrifying vision of Pan, played by dancer Hubert Stowitts.
#BookWormSat
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Two years ago today was the North American release date for ‘Pan: the Great God’s Modern Return’!
Available in ebook or paperback in Canada from Indigo and Amazon, and in the US from B&N and Amazon. Better yet, why not order from your favorite independent bookseller? 📚
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Outside of Arcadia, Pan was worshipped in wild places, especially caves and grottos. Below, Pan emerges from a cave (perhaps to meet his friend Dionysus) in this sarcophagus carving from the 1st-3rd century CE.
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‘Pan was always friendly to Man. That’s you and me you know. We may have changed a lot these last two thousand years; but that’s you and me still. Why, I’d let him come nosing in.’ — Lord Dunsany, ‘The Blessing of Pan’ (1926)
🎨S.H. Sime
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A book I checked out yesterday from the library still has my page of notes from 2002 folded inside!
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"'The worship of Pan never has died out,' said Mortimer. 'Other newer gods have drawn aside his votaries from time to time, but he is the Nature-God to whom all must come back at last.'" -- Saki, "The Music on the Hill" (1911)
#GodPan
#FolkHorror
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‘The cancrous cities spread over the grass, they clatter in their lairs continually, they glitter about us blemishing the night. The woods are gone, O Pan, the woods, the woods. And thou art far, O Pan, and far away.’
— Lord Dunsany, ‘The Prayer of the Flowers’ (1915)
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Currently reading. Fascinating material, and a model of how to write well about folklore.
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‘Some say the Gods are just a myth
But guess who I've been dancing with —
The great god Pan is alive!’
— The Waterboys, ‘The Return of Pan’ (1993)
🎨Matt Mahurin, cover art for the single (detail)
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The god Pan depicted on the cover of a Greek bronze box mirror, 3rd century BCE. Though portrayed with a fully human face, Pan’s wildness is suggested by the pointed ear and unkempt hair.
#MythologyMonday
📷Metropolitan Museum of Art
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In Dion Fortune’s ‘Rite of Pan,’ the god Pan is hailed as ‘a hidden god of elemental power: this we name the Pan within.’ The Fraternity of the Inner Light may have performed the Rite of Pan at their Belgravia temple in the late 1930s, according to Gareth Knight.
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Arthur Rackham’s haunting image of the Piper at the Gates of Dawn was first published posthumously in a 1940 edition of ‘The Wind and the Willows’ by Kenneth Grahame.
#Pan
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The ancient contest between Cupid and Pan was understood allegorically as representing Love versus Lust. There was also a concealed pun: Pan’s name was confused with the Greek word for all, so Cupid’s defeat of Pan also meant ‘Love Conquers All.’
🎨Gallo-Roman Mosaic (3rd cent.)
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Leonora Carrington, ‘The Fool,’ from the series of Tarot cards she made in the 1950s.
#AprilFoolsDay
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‘Pan is the son of Mercury; His head and body form the sign of mercury of the Philosophers, at once solar and lunar. The star on the right is the hieroglyph for harmoniac salt, the third component of the Art (which is often called the Art of Music).’ — Anon, 14th century
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Just to be absolutely clear,
#AdamWest
is the best Batman and
#BurgessMeredith
the best Penguin. There is no real competition.
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In this story from ‘Tales to Astonish’
#6
(1959), by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, a man-about-town suffers unexpected consequences for failing to honour the Great God Pan!
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🎨Reinhold Begas, ‘Pan Comforting Psyche’ (1857–1858). Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
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This ‘hieroglyph’ by Athanasius Kircher (1602-80) shows correspondences between parts of Pan’s (or Jupiter’s) body and aspects of the cosmos. The ruddiness of Pan’s face symbolizes cosmic heat, and his pipes correspond to the harmony of the planets.
🎨 ‘Obeliscus Pamphilius’
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In his poem ‘Endymion’ (1818), John Keats praises the god Pan as ‘Dread opener of the mysterious doors / Leading to universal knowledge.’
🎨 Keith Hutchings
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‘Simply the most wide-ranging and up-to-date exploration of the impact of Pan on the Western imagination yet written.’ — Ronald Hutton
In paperback 1st February in the UK and 1st March in North America. Available for pre-order now through your favourite bookseller!
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In his poem ‘Endymion’ (1818), John Keats praises the god Pan as ‘Dread opener of the mysterious doors / Leading to universal knowledge.’
🎨 Keith Hutchings
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In her ‘Rite of Pan,’ Dion Fortune summons the god Pan as ‘a hidden god of elemental power: this we name the Pan within.’ According to Gareth Knight, the rite may have been performed by Fortune’s magical order, The Fraternity of the Inner Light, in the late 1930s.
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‘Pan is not dead ... in every wood, if you go with a spirit properly prepared, you shall hear the note of his pipe.’ — Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘Pan’s Pipes’ (1881)
🎨British postcard, 1908-9
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Choose 20 books that greatly influenced you. One book per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews. Just covers. 5/20
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In his poem ‘Endymion’ (1818), John Keats praises the god Pan as ‘Dread opener of the mysterious doors / Leading to universal knowledge.’
#WyrdWednesday
🎨John Buckland Wright, ‘Hymn to Pan’
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‘“The worship of Pan never has died out,’ said Mortimer. ‘Other newer gods have drawn aside his votaries from time to time, but he is the Nature-God to whom all must come back at last.”’
— Saki, ‘The Music on the Hill’ (1911)
4
60
226
‘He is a great being, the god of the whole elemental kingdom as well as of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. People may feel uneasy in his presence, but there ought to be no fear.’ — ROC, ‘The Gentleman and the Faun’ (Findhorn, 2009), p. 21.
🎨Johfra Bosschart
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33
224
The original frontispiece to Wind in the Willows (1908) by W. Graham Robertson, an illustrator who who knew both Oscar Wilde and John Singer Sargent, who painted his portrait twice. Peter Hunt's research suggests Robertson shared a house with Kenneth Grahame at the time.
#Pan
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‘Come, Great Pan, and bless us all;
Bless the corn and honey-bee.
Bless the vine and bless the kine,
Bless the vales of Arcady:
Bless the nymphs that laugh and flee,
God of all fertility.’
— Dion Fortune, ‘The Goat-Foot God’ (1936)
🎨Gustave Moreau, 1894
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Australian witch and artist Rosaleen Norton was devoted to the god Pan, whom she believed ‘is the spirit whose body — or such of it as can be seen in these four dimensions (the fourth being time) — is the planet Earth.’
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226
For psychologist James Hillman, the feeling of panic we experience in Pan’s presence ‘will also be seen to be the right response to the numinous,’ a term describing the awareness of divinity and the feeling of awe that accompanies it.
#Pan
6
30
219
‘Pan was always friendly to Man. That’s you and me you know. We may have changed a lot these last two thousand years; but that’s you and me still. Why, I’d let him come nosing in.’ — Lord Dunsany, ‘The Blessing of Pan’ (1926)
🎨S.H. Sime
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‘In the daytime you see the thing. But if your third eye is open, which sees only the things that can’t be seen, you may see Pan within the thing, hidden: you may see with your third eye, which is darkness.’ — D.H. Lawrence, ‘St Mawr’ (1925)
#Pan
🎨Eric Taylor
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For the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the god Pan represented ‘intelligence blended with a darker power, deeper, mightier, and more universal than the conscious intellect of man; than intelligence’ itself. (‘Biographia Literaria,’ ch. XXI [1817])
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The original cover of Kenneth Grahame’s ‘Wind in the Willows’ (1908), designed by W. Graham Robertson. Robertson knew Oscar Wilde and John Singer Sargent, who painted his portrait twice. Peter Hunt’s research suggests Robertson shared a house with Kenneth Grahame at the time.
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‘I think the God Pan is the spirit whose body — or such of it as can be seen in these four dimensions (the fourth being time) — is the planet Earth, and who, therefore, in a very real sense, is the ruler and god of this world.’ — Rosaleen Norton, 1957.
#Pan
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‘You may think all this strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan.’ — Arthur Machen, ‘The Great God Pan’ (1894)
🎨Aubrey Beardsley, frontispiece, ‘The Great God Pan’
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Orphic Hymn 10 attributes the beginning of the world to Pan: ‘Goat-footed, horned, Bacchanalian Pan, fanatic pow’r, from whom the world began, / Whose various parts by thee inspir’d, combine in endless dance and melody divine’ (trans. Thomas Taylor).
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‘I call upon Pan, the pastoral god,
I call upon the universe,
upon the sky, the sea, and the land,
queen of all,
I also call upon immortal fire;
all of these are Pan’s realm.’
— ‘Orphic Hymn 10’ (trans. Athanassakis & Wolkow)
#Pan
🎨Athanasius Kircher (1652)
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‘“...Pan was always friendly to Man. That’s you and me you know. We may have changed a lot these last two thousand years; but that’s you and me still. Why, I’d let him come nosing in.”’
— Lord Dunsany, ‘The Blessing of Pan’ (1926)
#Pan
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Robert Ogilvie Crombie (1899-1975) had several encounters with Pan. ROC described Pan’s presence as accompanied by ‘a wonderful scent of pine woods, of damp leaves, of newly turned earth and woodland flowers.’ He worked closely with the Findhorn community.
🎨Johfra Bosschart
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For the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the god Pan represented ‘intelligence blended with a darker power, deeper, mightier, and more universal than the conscious intellect of man; than intelligence’ itself. ‘Biographia Literaria,’ ch. XXI (1817).
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The original frontispiece to Wind in the Willows (1908) by W. Graham Robertson, an illustrator who who knew both Oscar Wilde and John Singer Sargent, who painted his portrait twice. Peter Hunt's research suggests Robertson shared a house with Kenneth Grahame at the time.
#Pan
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For
#MythologyMonday
: my favourite painting of Pan is Arnold Böcklin’s ‘Idyll (Pan Amidst Columns)’ (1875). You can feel the mischievous wisdom in Pan’s eyes and almost hear the haunting call of his pipes — an ancient power enduring as our civilizations rise and fall.
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‘Muse, tell me about Pan, the dear son of Hermes, with his goat's feet and two horns — a lover of merry noise. Through wooded glades he wanders with dancing nymphs who foot it on some sheer cliff's edge, calling upon Pan, the shepherd-god, long-haired, unkempt.’ — Homeric Hymn
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The Homeric ‘Hymn to Pan’ relates that when Pan was born, his nurse fled at the sight of him. His father Hermes brought him to Olympus, where he was especially beloved of Dionysus, ‘and they called the boy Pan [‘All’] because he delighted all their hearts.’
#mythologymonday
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For me, this painting captures a sense of Pan's uncanny strangeness, and the way he endures as civilizations rise and fall. Arnold Böcklin, 'Idyll' ('Pan Amidst Columns'), 1875.
#WyrdWednesday
#GodPan
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