MEETING PAN

From our archives to your heart

Meeting Pan
Redbank, New Jersey
April Fools day 1981

I was lying in my steamy bathtub in a small house in the suburbs.  My girlfriend Lolita came and handed me a Tarot card and asked me to study it.  I thought this was ridiculous but ok.  Low and behold, it was the Devil card from the Waite deck which was supposed to be the most authentic ancient Egyptian version of the card with the right Astro colors and so forth.

So I looked at the card and what I saw was beautiful.  I saw a beautiful naked man and a naked woman, had a noose around their necks with a rope that was chained to a concrete-looking block.  The man and woman had tails and at the end of the tails were fire.  The noose was interesting because it was a noose that you could see they could easily take off whenever they want.  And crouching on top of the block was a goat, looking old man, bearded man with horns and behind him was an upside-down star.

At first, I went through all my fears about the devil being the master of lies and so forth then as I looked into the card I realized that it wasn’t the devil, there was something beautiful there.  As I looked at the goat-looking man I realized that old men are actually beautiful people, there’s something beautiful about old men.  And that opened my heart immediately.  Then I saw his horns and I saw the beauty of being horny and earthy without judgment.  After a while, I started breathing into the card.  Then after that, I became the goat-man myself and started making grunting sounds.  All of a sudden my body was taken over.  My body in the tub started undulating.  Now I was no longer Raphael.  I was Pan the immortal god, half-human, half-goat, and proud of it.

My experience of being Pan was that Pan is one of the most beautiful expressions of the light of Christ I’ve ever met.  With Pan, when you get to that place where you love thy neighbor as yourself, there are no rules, you are liberated.  By your very nature, you will not kill.  By your very nature, you will not steal.  And now that there are no more rules you can really have fun, here on earth.  You can be spiritual and earthy at the same time, you can actually have your cake and eat it.

Now I was a complete barbarian.  The noose was on my neck and I could take it off anytime I want because I was a god.  But I loved being Pan and now I was Pan.  Then I starting making grunting sounds.  From then on it didn’t matter what I did or thought, I was in ecstasy.  I was starting to undulate and growl.  Then I stood up from the tub and got out and danced like an old goat and my penis got hard.  Now I felt I was fucking the universe and enjoying it.  I began growling and vast amounts of rage came out but it was a joyful rage, vast amounts of sadness came out but it was laughable sadness, vast amounts of fear came out but it was an adventurous fear.  As I started undulating I felt myself purifying then I started vomiting, literally vomiting.  Bending over, not in the toilet but on the floor and then on the walls, spreading it all over the walls.

Then, oddly enough, I heard a flute playing downstairs.  I knew it was Lolita but I had never heard that piece before.  It was very strange and then the flute music took me over and I was dancing to the unaccompanied flute.  Then I turned on the shower blasting hot and I left the door open and I just wanted the steam to take me over in ecstasy.  I roared again and I roared again and I danced in this bathroom with vomit all over the walls.  I was an animal and proud of it.

After a while, I laid back down in the tub growling again.  Grrrrr, grrrrr, grrrrrr.  Then my awareness took over the whole house and I could feel the whole house.  I heard the doorbell ring but I didn’t care, but I was the whole house I saw who came in.  It was three ladies and I saw their perplexed look because the whole house was filled with steam, like foggy.  Some of you might remember the movie the Exorcist.  That’s the way the house looked only instead of a lot of fear and hatred there was a lot of mature love.

They were people that neither Lolita nor I knew but I could feel their presence and they were helpless.  The three girls, probably in their early twenties, walked up the stairs to my bathroom, slowly, fearfully and then they finally came to the open door of my bathroom and what did they see?  They saw this insane-looking man, that was me, growling and laughing, with vomit on the walls, savage energy.  They were afraid but they were helpless.  I being Pan was laughing, I thought it was so perfect.  Here I am Pan, there was this flute playing and now the three graces come and visit me.

I looked with fire in my eyes and then motioned with my finger, come here.  They were helpless, they had to come.  The three girls came and then Lolita came behind and watched them.  Usually, she was the jealous type but she knew what was happening.  In a way, it looked as though I had total control over these women.  I could have had them take their clothes off and do things to me but I knew, in the end, they would be in pain.  So I reached over and kissed them each on the forehead and licked their cheeks like an animal and just motioned them to sit down.  They just sat and watched me for about twenty minutes as I laid there and undulated with my big hard-on.  Then I saw Lolita looking ready so I sort of told the girls telepathically that it was time to leave and I got out of the bathtub and I kissed them each on the cheeks and they walked out.  Lolita asked them to shut the door as they left.

Then in my growly voice, I asked Lolita, my blonde, frail, young girl, who actually looked like a young Lolita, although she was twenty-five.  “Who are those ladies?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, “I’ve never seen them before in my life”

Needless to say, having this blonde Lolita in my room, I’ll leave what happened after that to your own imagination but it went on for hours.

This took place in the early afternoon.  By sunset, I was back to being my usual Raphael self, moping around the house.  I asked her, Lolita, “What was that flute piece you were playing this afternoon?”  She showed me the music.  It was a piece by Debussy called Syrinx.  It was beautiful, about how the whole day had been, very beautiful.

Well, about a month or so later I picked up this music again.  I was talking to a friend on the phone and told him about this piece and he said, “Oh yeah, Syrnx that’s the unaccompanied flute piece by Debussy.”

“Who is Syrinx?” I asked.

“Well, the Greek legend goes that Syrinx was this woman in the forest that the god Pan was chasing.  She got away and Pan got very sad so he picked up a reed and began playing it like a flute and that’s how the flute was born.  He played this long sad, horny piece of music wanting to mate.  And the music was so beautiful that Syrnx came back and they made love.”

“Well,” I said, “Isn’t that interesting.”  Gulp.   As I thought back, so much for the coincidence that had happened.

A few weeks later I picked up a book on Debussy, and looked up in the index Syrinx.  It showed a letter from Claude Debussy and in the letter, he said that piece of music he did not compose, that Pan came to him and gave him that piece of music.  So just by coincidence when I was being Pan, Lolita picked up the music and started playing it, and just by coincidence the three graces came.  Gulp.

Note:  Many cultures have had Shamanic ways of calling forth energies.  Certainly, the American Indians or the ancient Hawaiian traditions when they sing songs they aren’t just signing they’re calling forth energies.  That’s why those ways are to be respected, if you don’t respect those energies you can get sick and have a car wreck, or something.  In Ancient Greece it was down to an art, the way of calling forth energies was not only through music but with theater.  For example, if someone wanted to call Zeus he would sit behind the theater and stare at a mask of Zeus for about half an hour.  Then come out, and by god he was Zeus.

I remember years ago, must have been around 1977, I was with some people and we actually did call upon the god Zeus.  We took a position and held it, a posture in the body and held it, we were imitating Zeus and holding fire bolts.  Then that night at Esalen institute where we were in Big Sur there was a giant thunderstorm and all the electricity in Big Sur went out.  Once again, we learned then about calling forth energies.

This is a very natural thing to do.  I remember as a kid with other kids we’d put  towel around our neck and pretend we were Superman or Batman and it empowered us.  My wife for example is a queen so when she wants a parking spot right in front of Costco, she’ll get it.  What I do when driving around is pretend I’m her and there will be a parking place.

You can see the archetypes, for example Zeus became Jupiter, and Jupiter became Superman.  Chronos became Saturn, and Saturn became Batman.  Hermes became Mercury and Mercury became Flash.  Neptune became Neptune and then Aquaman.  These are powers that can Shamanically be called.  They are very ascetic and very powerful.  The trick is not to turn them into golden calves.  But to remember, you are a god.

What you resonate you attract.