by Beech, Mark
Anton has reached the lake and his footsteps were lit by the most sensuous dance of moonlight as if he was under the very surface of the lake and as if he was worshipping that which is beyond our comprehension, staring up at the cascading rays of the moon, as they refract into the darkness below. But the evening chill was all about him and he stared back up at the mountains, up into the collapsing memory of those hills beyond, into the rim of mystery and the closing door of the deepest union. For a second in his mind was the remembrance of eyes that stare through his and the random tilt of a head and the suffocating intoxication of all that is forbidden. Fear is replaced by the certainty of some kind of ‘otherness’ as if the moon was witness and what better witness should mere man want to have to call to speak to those who do not believe.
The house was all but invisible, save for the thinnest tinctures of flame through the slits in the shutter, as if the house was alive with rumour and the promise of chaos. The waters at the edge of the lake, gently lapped the perimeter with their beneficent kiss encouraged by the gentlest of breezes and within the house the traveller in the tale was back at the village but no longer the same and feels abashed at explanation. The traveller of the tale has argued long with the Companion and asked him to retire from his company as he is possessed of far-too close an interest in the traveller and the traveller does not wish to go arm in arm through the night with the Companion of the Road or to stop awhile against the imposing shadow of the empty barn. The Moon returns from its modesty behind the clouds and illuminates the traveller of the tale minus his fine hat and tunic and with a sense that the Companion of the Road is watching him from the hedge or perhaps has gone ahead to place something of the night in the traveller’s bed, beside his happy and slumbering wife. The traveller of the tale can sense the presence of livestock against the hedges, their heavy breath and harsh and acrid coughs sending him on his way with haste and gravity and a sense that he is no longer who he was.
And Florian, sitting in Anton’s father’s chair ended his tale by exclaiming cryptically “Well, who really knows who he is or was?” The sense of silence in the room, the human silence of those who had listened to this take gave way to some kind of shock and relief. How had such a tale and such a question emerged from the lips of one still so youthful and full of light and life and where was Anton and who was this standing in the corner of the room? Who was this now lit only by the faint effect of the flame on the edge of the grate as the logs caved in like vanquished soldiers to become steaming charcoal embers and the masonry above the fire took on it sleek and steely properties once more? Who was it?
Anton had entered the house from the rear, paying reverence to the stone head disgorging forth its bounty and had entered the room at the height of the flames, where the crackle and spit of the logs and the presence of the Companion of the Road, in the minds of the listeners had been at its height. Both Karel and Dietrich took up their candles and lit the corner as one, bringing forth the shadow and the presence of Anton into the room as if he were a spirit, conjured by a medium, quickly flooding the ceiling with a dark angular stain, borne of the embers’ glow and the railings of the grate and the figure beyond the candle flame.
And Anton had about him something of his deceased father’s mien; a self-assured expression but now devoid of kindness, which together with the sense of distance in his eyes was something unfamiliar to the Company. The trail of his muddy feet upon the floor were plain for all to see and with it, the imprints of feet somewhat cut and bloodied by the contact with the scree and the furze and the bracken and the flint. He had thought to bathe his feet in the disgorging waters of the stone head but had instead lowered his own head to let his mouth envelope the stone spout, slaking his nocturnal thirst in the utter darkness, letting his lips meet with those of the carving of the ancient head, until they were one. He remembered doing this as a youth as the shepherds from the village looked on as they led their goats through the pathway above, to the pastures beyond the house. The shepherds had called his father who scolded him for his action and also scolded the shepherds who would for sure recount this incident in the hills above and in the safety of their own cottages.
There was something of the past that would not escape from Anton’s mind. When you connect with nature itself there is nothing more that needs to be said, save that you are yourself become some kind of god. Gods reside upon strange and lonely roads; in the whisper on the air and in the hedges and in the sanctity of the daily round. They hide furtive in the echo of the waters that fall into one’s mind from the distant heights, flowing from the distant hills beyond adventure and expedition, where flaming mystery unfolds itself as if newly hatched.
Dietrich impeached Anton to tell them where he had been and what had befallen him, while Florian merely rose from the deceased’s chair and sought to poke the fire into a cloud of choking sparking embers like a cloud of fireflies that spanned and fell into the scorched embrace of the grate and the all-encompassing silence of the house. The teller of the tale had surpassed himself and by the presence of Anton the rhythm of the evening had been disturbed. There was nothing for it but for the Company of the Lake to retire to bed, taking with them their own sombre thoughts and broken dreams and the bitter taste of something that had died upon their shoulders.
Perhaps it had been on the breeze for some time, caressing their ears with hidden voices as if there were a secret message from years ago and from another place. Perhaps this was the year when the echo and memory of the laughter of youth would be released forever from its pearly cage into the heights.
The bitterest truth sometimes comes down through the strata of the soul, filtering out its minerals and its elements until there is nothing left but the distillation of experience. When you grow old overnight and you marry your distrust and sire its offspring into the cold light of day, there is nothing left but an eternity of the end of summer. The end of summer has a special malevolence all its own, composing empty symphonies of the soul with the music of despair. You can feel in your heart the collapse of the edifice of hope, and you can detect in your soul and in your mind, the first emergent tones of the studied music of strange pipes from afar that lead you back through the harsh and fearful woods back into who you are and who you were, where summer exists only as abandonment. The dream is broken and lies shattered like a maiden’s mirror upon the floor, awaiting the certainty of your bare feet to caress with its shard-filled kiss.
The seasons of the mind and of experience are manifold and with them the sky above becomes a vast cloud of eternal night.
Imagine a painting where the ground is depicted as a series of vast bonfires and above, in the sky, well, there is a strange and all-consuming congruence of birds. In fact, upon close study, the painting is almost a study in black, save for the well-wrought wisps of flame depicted by the artist. You have died and in your death, the end of summer is upon us as it was with the Company of the Lake.
But the end of summer brings with it the impulse to savour one last time that intangible thing, that sensation, that special thought or deed that has been the guiding strength of that season. For mere men are fools if they think that Death does not stare at them through the eyes of the old gods, forever and a day. And those old gods have an especial play for gentlemen who have a long-hungered conceit and who have both the joy of life and the understanding of death. Anton was no longer Anton and yet he was so. He seemed to radiate something that was piquant and not easy to understand and his soul was illuminated by the secret breath of transgression; the kiss upon the lips and upon his secret at the height of the day and in the folds of the mountains, where his fate was reflected in the fleeing clouds and milky sun.
And so it was that he would venture again beside the lake and up into those hills as Karel and Dietrich stayed below, with their telescopes focussed upon the diminishing figure in the distance that was soon to be joined by another, more sprightly and more focused perhaps and as they turned to exclaim to Florian, they knew it was h
e that they spied ahead of them on the hill. The two figures stopped stock still for what seemed like an eternity and it was clear that the breeze across the lake was rising with the ebb of the season as it faltered from the certainty of sunlight into the capriciousness of cloud. Both figures became scarred with shadows as the clouds ran their phantom course across the hillsides. The figure ahead was seen to move steadily forward, soon followed by the newly arrived figure of Florian, making good headway in the footsteps of the wandering of the night before.
And soon these figures became impressions on the lens and then nothing more, save for the surface of the glass that framed their disappearance into the folds of the summit, where the breezes became stronger and where the ancient and ragged gorse cut into the ankles and against the hooves of those that were ahead. Florian had forgotten his hat and had on his back his finest tunic, most unsuited to the path ahead and the time that would follow, so far away from the lake and the house.
And at the top, where the path dips away into a massive and ancient dewpond surrounded by furze, there was Anton setting to with his fate and in his eyes there was the ‘otherness’ as he stared back to Florian. His eyes engaged with Florian in the way that the eyes are bound to be brought together, but there was no congruence with the gaze, merely an acknowledgement that there was something there in the landscape. And as Anton stared at Florian and as he went about his fate, so the delicious ribbon of saliva that fell from his aching mouth was caught upon the strengthening breeze with the shudder and convulsion of his fate, now truly sealed and panting and at one with the ancient steps that lingered upon the flints, upon the stones, upon the verdant green and through the furze below the chaos of the sky above.
And there is Florian!
Karel and Dietrich could spy his figure tumbling out of the rim of this hill, cascading himself into the late afternoon milky sunlight, that would soon be twilight, before he reached the bottom. If only they could have heard his babble and seen the excuse for whimpering drool that fell from his lips in his madness as the Companion of the Road fell upon him from within his mind. His hat had gone already, left at the house, and now his fine gentleman’s tunic was all torn and tattered and in the collapsing embers of his mind, he caught the last flickers of the day as he reached the lake, the tranquillity of the lake and the peace of its embrace beneath the steely sheen of its surface; the peace of ancient springs caressing ones features forever.
And in the pale and agonising bitterness of the morning, the shepherds will find Anton and the rumours will abound as they will carry him down the hillside in the brilliance of the day after burying his fate in the deepest recesses of the hill beyond its rim; and in their cottages they will fall silent into their victuals, for there is nothing to say that can be said.
And in the garden behind the house, the stone head will disgorge its spumy bounty forth from its spout losing itself in the ecstasy of dreams of far-away coasts and the loving hands of the masons as they once caressed his contours and folds and blew the final masonry dust from its eyeless sockets, unveiling it into the light, into the presence of men and into the element of water and air.
The stone beard of this effigy is two-pronged and aged and pitted with the minerals that it has spat forth for ever more and upon its head are two wondrous pointed tumps that give its face an aged and wise disposition that it does not merit. Behind the sculpted sockets there is darkness and layer upon layer of residue from the detritus of snails and slugs that give it a strange and obscure femininity as if its daubings and allure are besmirched by this eternal spring as it splashes out across its lines and as if somehow the androgyny that transcends all had been given solid being in this stone. And even in the deepest droughts of the endless past summers, the flow will never be quite dried up, but alive, dribbling across the cruelty of its lips and the insidious allure of its stone teeth and down its two-pronged beard like impassioned spittle from a wild animal in the throes of abandonment or agony, or perhaps both.
And so summer ends; it was thus so with Anton and Florian. Their bodies recovered from the water and the earth, lying together in the room beneath the portrait of Anton’s father. The shutters are tight against the declining day, closing out the brittle mirror surface of the lake and the barely perceptible calls from the hills that carry down on the upland breezes to the ground below. The scudding half-memory of imaginary bells fragments itself now with the trudge of shepherds and the departing wheels of a coach. There is no fire in the grate, no colour in the portrait above the mantel and no spirits in the darkness of the corner, hiding from the Companion of the Road.
Summer is ended and the constancy of the autumn rain washes over the aged and wise disposition of the effigy until its deceptive features and beguiling lines merit no further study, becoming but a natural abstraction beyond the artist’s skill.
Its sculpted sockets and stone lips and teeth are noisy with its secrets and the bewitching and fecund gush of its fountain spout now abandons itself into the descending, ancient conquering glories of the rain.
Hesse poem quote translated reads:
“My farthest valley you are
Bewitched and vanished.”
from Childhood verse one.
The Role of Pan in Ritual,
Magic & Poetry
Diane Champigny
Growing up as an only child my world was at once smaller and larger than most. I needed to create my own pastimes and search out companions in lone places, seeking supernatural creatures that exist secretly alongside unsuspecting humans since time immemorial. I grew up on the lip of an inlet of the Boston Harbor. There was many a ‘playmate’ to be had there. I was lucky enough to also have access to a wooded park within walking distance of my home where yet another world opened up for me. There I would sing with the birds and talk to the trees. I found myself being drawn to the place more and more. I felt a sense of heightened awareness whenever I sat amongst the sounds of nature in quiet contemplation. It was as if the very life force of the Universe reached out to touch me. There was a particular spirit present that it took years for me to align with and know intimately. Far off into the future I would equate that energy with Pan.
Pan, Greek god of music, fertility and the wilderness, whose name literally means ‘All’. This name was originally derived from the word ‘paein’ meaning ‘pasture’ and he was the god of shepherds, fields and wild places. He is considered the Lord of Nature and all forms of wildlife. Pan was feared and loved by many throughout the lands of ancient Greece.
I have always been fascinated by the creation myth of Pan’s flute. Pan was tending his flocks when he gazed upon the nymph, Syrinx. She spumed his advances and fled in horror. Pan pursued her relentlessly. Syrinx called upon her sister nymphs to aid her, finally casting herself into the river Ladon and changed her form into a bed of marsh reeds to Pan’s deep and utter sadness. Pan was transfixed by the sound the wind made while swaying the reeds. He cut the reeds into pieces and bound them together to make the first Panpipes, also known as the Syrinx.
This converse, at least, shall I have with you.
– Ovid, Metamorphosis
Telling us how fair, trembling Syrinx fled
Arcadian Pan, with such a fearful dread.
Poor Nymph—poor Pan—how did he weep to find
Nought but a lovely sighing of the wind
Along the reedy stream; a half heard strain,
Full of sweet desolation—balmy pain.
– John Keats, 1817
It is no great surprise that by the late 19th Century, against a background of strict social conformity, Pan had begun to emerge as inspiration for practitioners of the occult arts.
I intend this essay to serve as an introduction to some of the more prominent names for whom Pan has provided both inspiration and magick.
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley was born on October 12, 1875 as Edward Alexander Crowley to an upper middle class Plymouth Brethren family. Crowley was an influent
ial member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret occult society that spanned the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
