THE THELEMA OF PAN

Presented at Horizon Lodge OTO 10/24/2023

Introduction

I was a 14 year old witch hiking alone in the Adirondacks where Pan and I met. Two years later when I opened Magick in Theory and Practice and immediately read the Hymn to Pan I knew I was home. The Great God Pan is everywhere in the Pagan, Craft and Occult world, and why not? The cult of Pan is fascinating in and of itself beyond his ancient archaic Greek origins. Unlike other Hellenic gods, in myths Pan was often a loner and lived in a cave, though having get-togethers randy Nymphs and Dryads as well as men and women- something one would expect from a wild primal nature deity. Crowley’s attraction to Pan makes sense.

INSERTIMAGE 1 : The book of the Horned One

Pan and I have had ongoing interactions over the last 50 years and I spent decades writing The book of the Horned One. So, as both a devotee and Thelemite I have some skin in the Pan game, as it were. As you all know, Pan is a primal god of wild nature but also the origin of the term ‘Panic’ -for this reason some have warned about invoking Pan as he could bring madness and Death! Bwahaha! Having done endless Pan rituals I have not gone too insane nor died (yet) but, from experience, I do suggest you avoid invoking Pan in your apartment or home, trust me on this-the wilderness is best.

Now let me introduce the wild feral hero of our story and his origins.

WHO IS THE GOD PAN?

Pan (Ancient Greek: Πάν) is the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, often goats and has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, as do the satyrs, his. With his homeland in rustic Arcadia, he is also recognized as the god of fields, groves, wooded glens, and often affiliated with sex; because of this, Pan is very much a god of fertility and wildness.

While Pan has come to be translated as ALL, but in ancient Greek it is derived from the Greek paon meaning ‘god of the Pastures’. Pan is exceedling ancient and anyone as obsessed as I am with this old god can delve deeply and discover more, but we know a few things that are important. He is very ancient, more than most all Hellenic deities and he is native to Arcady which is believed to be the most ancient and earliest inhabited part of Greece.

Pan was very much a beloved folk god in Arcady, and was both protector of livestock and yet also a god of the wild beasts, including wolves. He is one of the few Greek gods to be half beast and half man and yet also a god, not a monster. Pan much later became grudgingly kind-of included as an Olympic gods. Dionysus, another outlier god, brought him to Olympus and he amused and horrified the gods and they always got along and are often shown causing wild mayhem together. Some say Hermes was the father of Pan, but there are other claim, He is prehistoric in nature and Herodatus called him ‘the most ancient of all the gods.’ Pan was pretty much ignored by HellenicGreeks until he saved the Greek army at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC by causing panic amongst the invading Prsians, one of his superpowers. After that he was grudgingly accepted as a lesser feral god and given a small cave- temple on the side of the Parthenon! There are many ancient cave-temples to Pan in the ancient world and historians say that Pan rituals were wildly ecstasy, sexual and intoxicating with a lot of all night dancing and music. So Pan was the god of ancient raves. There is so much to say about Pan and I encourage you to dive deep get to know Pan personally, as I have for the last 50 years.

So: Pan became part of Thelema

As all know, Aliester Crowley was, of course, a huge Pan Fan so Let’s begin with this quote by him from The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Chapter p86….

“… I arranged for it (Magick in Theory and Practice) to contain something like a complete programme of my proposed Operation to initiate, emancipate and relieve mankind.

The first item is a “Hymn to Pan”, which I believe to be the most powerful enchantment ever written. …”

HYMN TO PAN

Thrill with lissome lust of the light,

If you are finishing the poem in your head right now, you are one of us 🙂

Note that there is no explanation about this poem, the frontispiece, nor is it really explained in Magick in Theory & Practice. It is just…there.

Why is the Hymn to Pan so important? It has to do with Pan’s connection with the N.O.X. formula of transcendence under the ‘Night of Pan’ reflecting the importance of Pan to Crowley and thus to Thelema..

To clarify here is quote from Sabazius, head of the OTO in the USA,:

“ The Night of Pan, or N.O.X., is a mystical state that represents the stage of ego-death in the process of spiritual attainment… (Pan) is “a symbol of the Universal, a personification of Nature; both Pangenetor, “all-begetter,” and Panphage, “all-devourer” (Sabazius, 1995).

As will be more deeply discussed towards the end of this presentation. For now let’s note that PAN indicates a key Thelemic focus on the sublime formula NOX.

What we see overall is that there are two different aspects of Pan at play within the Thelemic context:

The first is the Pan as the wild Pagan deity, the Great Nature God of joy, sexuality, wilderness and pure exuberant Nature incarnate, one of the oldest gods from Arcady the oldest part of Greece.

Yet on an esoteric ‘occult’ level, as inferred by Crowley, Pan is a crucial key to Magick and as such is more than a nature god. He represents the experience of a transcendent illumination, union with ALL. One could say Samadhi.

As I’ll continue to reference, the ancient Pagan and later Thelemic aspects of Pan are powerful and both entwine within the Magick of Thelema.

During the time Crowly became transfixed by Pan in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, it was accepted that Pan referenced ‘All Nature’ in the common vernacular in the widest cultural and artistic sense while the Renaissance and later occult vision was the ‘ALL’ of Pan representing the entire cosmos and the highest mystical and spiritual attainment. Later in Thelema this is referenced as the Night of Pan or NOX confronted by the adept above the Abyss. More on this later.

A key to all this is how the once ignored nature god influenced Crowley but also many others, including writers and artists and freethinkers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras in Europe and especially in England. To grasp how the importance of PAN unfolded in many esoteric circles grew during this era it is important to see the importance of Pan within the wider social context of the time. So let me show how the great horned and hoofed god emerged in this era in society, art, literature and within occultism, including the evolving Magick of Crowley as a truly impactful and transcendent influence.

INSERT IMAGE 2 alchemical pan image

Part 2- Crowley’s Milieu and the Revival of the Pan Archetype

1908 a young Crowley returned to Cambridge to present poetry to the Pan Society founded by his magickal apprentice Victor Neuberg with whom he did some notorious sex magick rites invoking Pan years later.

Crowley’s attitude and the college’s dislike of him collided and he was unable to present his poems but made an impression.

At this time both the infamous ’Pan is dead’ myth (noted by Plutarch) and the widespread social movement to revive the ‘bucolic’ desire of a simpler, more natural life was all the rage in the UK and Europe – Part of a reaction against the industrial revolution and all it’s horrors and problems. This omnipresent movement influences many artists, authors and of course poets and mystics like those in the Golden Dawn and of course, Crowley.

Part of this bohemian cultural movement centered on Pan a the symbol of a return to nature and his presence pervaded the artistic culture of the times everywhere.

PAN IN LITERATURE

The literary world in England caught the ‘Pan craze’ and this too influenced Crowley’s preoccupation with Pan, and why not? Pan offered escape, wildness, unrepressed sexuality and a Dionysian view of life as opposed to the Apollonian veer towards science, rules, logic, sexual repression and rampant and abusive capitalism.

Here are a few of the authors who channeled Pan in their writings:

Arthus Machen:

“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. It was, indeed, an exquisite symbol beneath which men long ago veiled their knowledge of the most awful, most secret forces which lie at the heart of all things; forces before which the souls of men must wither and die and blacken, as their bodies blacken under the electric current. Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken, cannot be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to the most of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a foolish tale. But you and I, at all events, have known something of the terror that may dwell in the secret place of life, manifested under human flesh; that which is without form taking to itself a form.”

― Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan

As Neuman states in ‘Aleister Crowley and the Cult of Pan’ – a focus on art and literature of the time:

“Pan was the plain-spoken deity of natural living who would stoutly oppose the destruction of his woodland habitat. He was the symbol of a withering of a once-green world, an Arcady that was dying but might be revived were people to abandon their false ways.””Equally, importantly, Pan hinted at a nubile jubilant sexuality that had not been crippled…by body shame”

This Pan-ethos runs throughout Crowley’s work in so many ways embodied in his constant exhortations ‘do what thou wilt’ and ‘love is the law’ as well as a lifestyle of open sexuality, artistic Bohemian lifestyle and wild rituals to cast off the chains of the stifling culture. How could Crowley not idolize, imitate and invoke this wonderful Great Beast of a god??

And he was not alone- he was part of and influenced by tsunami of Pan literature that erupted at this time. Some of the well-know authors who brought Pan to the literary fore are the following:

Harold Monro and his book OVERHEARD IN A SALT MARSH

E M Forester and his book THE STORY OF PANIC

James Stephens and his still classic book CROCK OF GOLD.

And Kenneth Grahme with his delightful book, still one of my favorites, the Wind in the Willows where Pan makes a delightful appearance.

Pan incited books were written by many other famous authors such as Saki, Algernon Blackwood and more.

If you want a deeper dive, I do recommend ‘Aleister Crowley and the Cult of Pan’.

PAN IN ART

During this era many famous painters painted Pan as many famous authors wrote about him. All were influenced by the loss of an idealized PAN as Nature personified who was wild and beautiful! So many in fact that I offer here only a small selection the many of Pan-loving artists from the late Victorian through Edwardian times-

IMAGES 3- 6- (PAN PAINTINGS)

-Edward Burne-Jones

-Norman Wills-Price

-Paul Bransom – Wind in the Willows

-Arnold Bocklin

-Crowley – painted 1929 -Four monks carrying a goat across the snow to nowhere- (Reference to NOX??)

PAN-LOVING BOHEMIAN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

The Pan fixation manifested in a number of Bohemian and alternative hippie-like cults during Crowley’s era as well. One that was very popular was The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift. Founded by John Hargrave, it was a hard-core nature loving organization that revived hand-made crafts with a wildly open sexuality. Focusing on natural health, exercise, nature loving it had dozens of popular centers with thousands of members. This Pan based ethos spread to other social cults across Europe as people rejected the machine era.

The Pan vibe wasn’t just pervasive in social clubs and cults: In Germany the philosopher Heidegger developed a radical Pantheism around the same time. Often the spirit of Pan was cited in the push back against the destruction of nature and the crushing oppression of the hyper capitalistic industrial revolution that despoiled nature as it still does today.

Part 3 The Great God Pan in Thelemic Texts

QUOTES FROM THE HOLY BOOKS OF THELEMA ET AL:

LIBER B VEL MAGI

Now the grade of a Magister teacheth the Mystery of Sorrow, and the grade of a Magus the Mystery of Change, and the grade of Ipsissimus the Mystery of Selflessness, which is called also the Mystery of Pan.

These clear words harken back to Crowley’s reference to the HYMN TO PAN and point to the importance of Pan in Magick.

LIBER V vel REGULI

Let him give the sign called Vir, the feet being together. The hands, with clenched finger and thumbs thrust out forwards, are held to the temples; the head is then bowed and pushed out, as if to symbolize the butting of an horned beast (attitude of Pan, Bacchus, etc.).

Comment: Throughout the visionary evocation of Crowley’s amazing class A work we find some terms swirling together, with Pan. The sign of VIR is referenced as a sign of Pan.

LIBERLAPIS LAZULI vel Lapis Lazuli -Sub Figura VII

Being the Voluntary Emancipation of a certain Exempt Adept from his Adeptship. These are the Birth-Words of a Master of the Temple.

PROLOGUE OF THE UNBORN

Into my loneliness comes –
The sound of a flute in dim groves that haunt the uttermost hills.
Even from the brave river they reach to the edge of the wilderness.
And I behold Pan.
The snows are eternal above, above –
And their perfume smokes upward into the nostrils of the stars.
But what have I to do with these?
To me only the distant flute, the abiding vision of Pan.
On all sides Pan to the eye, to the ear;
The perfume of Pan pervading, the taste of him utterly filling my mouth, so that the tongue breaks forth into a weird and monstrous speech.
The embrace of him intense on every centre of pain and pleasure.
The sixth interior sense aflame with the inmost self of Him,
Myself flung down the precipice of being
Even to the abyss, annihilation.
An end to loneliness, as to all.
Pan! Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan!

>>>>>>>>>

My God, how I love Thee!

With the vehement appetite of a beast I hunt Thee through the Universe.

Thou art standing as it were upon a pinnacle at the edge of some fortified city. I am a white bird, and perch upon Thee.

Thou art My Lover: I see Thee as a nymph with her white limbs stretched by the spring.

She lies upon the moss; there is none other but she:

Art Thou not Pan?

I am He. Speak not, O my God! Let the work be accomplished in silence.

Let my cry of pain be crystallized into a little white fawn to run away into the forest!

Thou art a centaur, O my God, from the violet-blossoms that crown Thee to the hoofs of the horse.

>>>>.

My God! but I love Thee!

Why hast Thou whispered so ambiguous things? Wast Thou afraid, O goat-hoofed One, O horned One, O pillar of lightning?

From the lightning fall pearls; from the pearls black specks of nothing.

I based all on one, one on naught.

Afloat in the aether, O my God, my God!

O ever-weeping One!

Not Isis my mother, nor Osiris my self; but the incestuous Horus given over to Typhon, so may I be!

There thought; and thought is evil.

Pan! Pan! Io Pan! it is enough.

>>>>>>

Ascend in the flame of the pyre, O my soul! Thy God is like the cold emptiness of the utmost heaven, into which thou radiatest thy little light.

When Thou shall know me, O empty God, my flame shall utterly expire in Thy great N. O. X.

What shalt Thou be, my God, when I have ceased to love Thee?

A worm, a nothing, a niddering knave!

But Oh! I love Thee.

>>>>>>

I am a boy before Thee, O Thou satyr God.

Thou wilt inflict the punishment of pleasure – Now! Now! Now!

Io Pan! Io Pan! I love Thee. I love Thee.

O my God, spare me!

Now! It is done! Death.

I cried aloud the word – and it was a mighty spell to bind the Invisible, an enchantment to unbind the bound; yea, to unbind the bound.

>>>>>>>>

Think, O God, how I am happy in Thy love.
O marble Pan! O false leering face! I love Thy dark kisses, bloody and stinking! O marble Pan! Thy kisses are like sunlight on the blue Aegean; their blood is the blood of the sunset over Athens; their stink is like a garden of Roses of Macedonia.
I dreamt of sunset and roses and vines; Thou wast there, O my God, Thou didst habit Thyself as an Athenian courtesan, and I loved Thee.
Thou art no dream, O Thou too beautiful alike for sleep and waking!

LIBER XV O. T. O. Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica Canon Miss Ã

(Some comments and translations from: https://sabazius.oto-usa.org/gnostic-mass/ )

…The PRIEST parts the veil with his lance.

The PRIEST:

IO IO IO IAO SABAO
KURIE ABRASAX KURIE MEITHRAS KURIE PHALLE.
IO PAN, IO PAN PAN IO ISXURON, IO ATHANATON IO ABROTON IO IAO. XAIRE PHALLE KAIRE PANPHAGE KAIRE PANGENETOR.
HAGIOS, HAGIOS, HAGIOS IAO.

Cf. CHAOS. (!)

IÔ PAN, IÔ PAN PAN

Comment: “Pan was the Arcadian god of flocks and shepherds, of trees, forests and wildlife, of the hot noonday stillness, and of freedom and fertility. The Pan invoked here also encompasses the Orphic conception of Pan, where Πάν is interpreted as the Greek word for “All.” Pan is thus a symbol of the Universal, and a personification of Nature, equivalent to BAPHOMET.”

IÔ ISCHUROS, IÔ ATHANATOS, IÔ ABROTOS

Greek, meaning “Oh! Mighty One, Oh! Deathless One, Oh! Invincible One.”

KHAIRE PHALLE KHAIRE PAMPHAGE KHAIRE PANGENETÔR

Greek, meaning “Hail, Phallus, hail, All-Devourer, hail, All-Begetter.”

(Common terms of Pan) – Note: Later- Pan is listed amongst the Saints

LIBER XXV THE STAR RUBY

Facing East, in the centre, draw deep deep deep thy breath closing thy mouth with thy right forefinger prest against thy lower lip.

………..

Go round to the North and repeat; but say NUIT.

Go round to the West and repeat; but whisper BABALON.

Go round to the South and repeat; but bellow HADIT.

Completing the circle widdershins, retire to the centre and raise thy voice in the Paian, with these words IÔ PAN, (and) with the signs of N.O.X.

Note: Pan is places in the center of the 4 elements it seems, thus manifesting the 5th element, the center: AETHYR= ALL

THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING – BOOK I

The foundations of the Temple of SOLOMON THE KING

“ARCADIA, night, a cloud, Pan, and the moon.” …”Bruised to the breast of Pan” — let us flee church, and chapel, and meeting-room; let us abandon this mantle of order, and leap back to the heaths, and the marshes, and the hills; back to the woods, and the glades of night! back to the old gods, and the ruddy lips of Pan!

>>>>>>>>

O mystery of mysteries!… thus Nature squanders the gold and silver of our understanding, till in panic frenzy we … shout forth, “Io … Io … Io … Evoe! Io … Io!” till the glades thrill as with the music of syrinx and sistrum, and our souls are rent asunder on the flaming horns of Pan.

>>>>>>

Come, let us shatter the vault of Circumstance and the walls of the dungeon of Convention, and back to Pan — back to the white flocks

Back to the mysteries of the shadowy oaks, to the revolt of imagination, to the insurrection of souls, to the moonlit festivals of love: back where the werewolf lurks, …. back to the great God Pan!

... Lo! in the groves of Pan the dance catches us up, and whirls us onward! O how we dash aside the goblets and the wine-skins, and how the tangled hair of our heads is blown amongst the purple clusters of the vine ….

LIBER CORDIS CINCTI SERPENTE

Vs 56. -65. !

-O Lord God! let the haven be cast down by the fury of the storm! Let the foam of the grape tincture my soul with Thy light!

-Bacchus grew old, and was Silenus; Pan was ever Pan for ever and ever more throughout the Ãions.

-Intoxicate the inmost, O my lover, not the outermost!

-Then the bird desired exceedingly this bliss, and laying down its wings became a faun of the forest.

-The harper also laid down his Pan-pipe, and with the human voice sang his infinite tunes.

-Then the faun was enraptured, and followed far; at last the harper was silent, and the faun became Pan in the midst of the primal forest of Eternity.

LIBER CVI – CONCERNING DEATH II

…. Thrill with the joy of life and death! …Thou hast but to make one sharp thrust, and thou hast won. The Virgin of Eternity lies supine at thy mercy, and thou art Pan! Thy death shall be the seal of the promise of our agelong love. Hast thou not striven to the inmost in thee? Death is the crown of all. Harden! Hold up thyself! Lift thine head! breathe not so deep–die!

LIBER ALEPH VEL CXI WISDOM OR FOLLY

Thereat, perceiving yet again the Jest Universal of Our Lord Pan, was I swallowed up (like unto Jonah of the Old Fable) in the Belly of the Whale called Laughter, and it seemeth to me at this present Writing that I am like to abide therein for The Time that remaineth to me in this Body.

DE COMEDIA, QUAE PAN DICTUR.

Subtler than the Serpent of Hermes, o my Son, is this Way of Restraint of Art, and thou shalt meet therein with the God Pan, and have him to thy Playmate.

DE APHORISMO UBI DICO: OMNIA SUNT.

My son, long did I await thee, yearning, and with Price and Great Gladness did I bid thee Welcome to my City of the Pyramids, under the Night of Pan. ……: All Things Exist.

_______________________

LIBER ASTARTE

24 the Mantram or Continuous Prayer. Let the Philosophus weave the Name of the Particular Deity into a sentence short and rhythmical, …. for Pan, chi-alpha-iota-rho-epsilon Sigma-omega-tau-eta-rho kappa-omicron-sigma-mu-omicron-upsilon, Iota-omega Pi-alpha-nu, Iota-omega Pi-alpha-nu; ….

COMMENT: chi-alpha-iota-rho-epsilon Sigma-omega-tau-eta-rho kappa-omicron-sigma-mu-omicron-upsilon, Iota-omega Pi-alpha-nu,

Xaire soter kosmou io pan

World Savior Pan

THE HIGH HISTORY OF GOOD SIR PALAMEDES

xxxix. In a green valley he obtaineth the vision of Pan. Thereby he

regaineth all that he had expended of strength and youth; is gladdened thereat, for he now devoteth again his life to the quest;

LIBER AHA

MARSYAS

Ah, could I tell thee of

These infinite things of Light and Love!

There is the Peacock; in his fan

Innumerable plumes of Pan!

Oh! every plume hath countless eyes;

–Crown of created mysteries!—

…

BOOK OF LIES

{Kappa-Epsilon-Phi-Alpha-Lambda Alpha}

THE SABBATH OF THE GOAT

O! the heart of N.O.X. the Night of Pan.

{Pi-Alpha-Nu}: Duality: Energy: Death.

Death: Begetting: the supporters of O!

To beget is to die; to die is to beget.

Cast the Seed into the Field of Night.

Life and Death are two names of A.

Kill thyself.

Neither of these alone is enough.

NOTE: THE PAINTING NOTED BY CROWLEY OF THE MONKS CARRYING THE GOAT…

The shape of the figure I suggests the Phallus; this

chapter is therefore called the Sabbath of the Goat, the

Witches’ Sabbath, in which the Phallus is adored.

The chapter begins with a repetition of O! referred

to in the previous chapter. It is explained that this triad

lives in Night, the Night of Pan, which is mystically

called N.O.X., and this O is identified with the O in

this word. N is the Tarot symbol, Death; and the X

or Cross is the sign of the Phallus. For a fuller com-

mentary on Nox, see Liber VII, Chapter I.

Nox adds to 210, which symbolises the reduction of

duality to unity, and thence to negativity, and is thus

a hieroglyph of the Great Work.

The word Pan is then explained, {Pi}, the letter of

Mars, is a hieroglyph of two pillars, and therefore

suggest duality; A, by its shape, is the pentagram,

energy, and N, by its Tarot attribution, is death.

Nox is then further explained, and it is shown that

the ultimate Trinity, O!, is supported, or fed, by the

process of death and begetting, which are the laws of

the universe…….

PEACHES

Soft and hollow, how thou dost overcome the hard

and full!

It dies, it gives itself; to Thee is the fruit!

Be thou the Bride; thou shalt be the Mother here-

after.

To all impressions thus. Let them not overcome thee;

yet let them breed within thee. The least of the

impressions, come to its perfection, is Pan.

Receive a thousand lovers; thou shalt bear but One

Child.

This child shall be the heir of Fate the Father.

THE DINOSAURS

None are They whose number is Six:(5) else were they

six indeed.

Seven(6) are these Six that live not in the City of the

Pyramids, under the Night of Pan.

There was Lao-tzu.

There was Siddartha.

There was Krishna.

There was Tahuti.

There was Mosheh.

There was Dionysus.(7)

There was Mahmud.

But the Seventh men called PERDURABO; for

enduring unto The End, at The End was Naught

to endure. (8)

Amen.

THE GLOW-WORM

Concerning the Holy Three-in-Naught.

Nuit, Hadit, Ra-Hoor-Khuit, are only to be under-

stood by the Master of the Temple.

They are above The Abyss, and contain all con-

tradiction in themselves.

Below them is a seeming duality of Chaos and

Babalon; these are called Father and Mother, but

it is not so. They are called Brother and Sister,

but it is not so. They are called Husband and

Wife, but it is not so.

The reflection of All is Pan: the Night of Pan is the

Annihilation of the All.

Cast down through The Abyss is the Light, the Rosy

Cross, the rapture of Union that destroys, that is

The Way. The Rosy Cross is the Ambassador of Pan.

How infinite is the distance form This to That! Yet

All is Here and Now. Nor is there any there or Then;

for all that is, what is it but a manifestation, that is,

a part, that is, a falsehood, of THAT which is not?

Yet THAT which is not neither is nor is not That

which is!

Identity is perfect; therefore the w of Identity is

but a lie. For there is no subject, and there is no

predicate; nor is there the contradictory of either

of these things.

Holy, Holy, Holy are these Truths that I utter,

knowing them to be but falsehoods, broken mirrors,

troubled waters; hide me, O our Lady, in Thy

Womb! for I may not endure the rapture.

In this utterance of falsehood upon falsehood, whose

contradictories are also false, it seems as if That

which I uttered not were true.

Blessed, unutterably blessed, is this last of the

illusions; let me play the man, and thrust it from

me! Amen.

[32]

COMMENTARY

……….

Pan is a generic name, including this whole system

of its manifested side. Those which are above the Abyss

are therefore said to live in the Night of Pan; they are

only reached by the annihilation of the All.

Thus, the Master of the Temple lives in the Night of

Pan. Now, below the Abyss, the manifested part of the

Master of the temple, also reaches Samadhi, as the

way of Annihilation.

{Kappa-Epsilon-Phi-Alpha-Lambda-Eta Kappa-Theta}

THE SOUTHERN CROSS

Love, I love you! Night, night, cover us! Thou art

night, O my love; and there are no stars but thine

eyes.

Dark night, sweet night, so warm and yet so fresh,

so scented yet so holy, cover me, cover me!

Let me be no more! Let me be Thine; let me be

Thou; let me be neither Thou nor I; let there be

love in night and night in love.

N.O.X. the night of Pan; and Laylah, the night

before His threshold!

COMMENTARY ({Kappa-Theta})

Chapter 29 continues Chapter 28.

Note that the word Laylah is the Arabic for “Night”.

The author begins to identify the Beloved with the

N.O.X. previously spoken of…….

THE SMOKING DOG(18)

Each act of man is the twist and double of an hare.

Love and death are the greyhounds that course him.

God bred the hounds and taketh His pleasure in the

sport.

This is the Comedy of Pan, that man should think

he hunteth, while those hounds hunt him.

………

Thus shall His laughter be thrilled through with

Ecstasy.

____________________

LIBER A’ASH vel CAPRICORNI PNEUMATICI sub figura CCCLXX

While the name PAN is not explicitly noted, there is much here that references the power and importance of PAN and is worth studying in this regards.

VISION AND THE VOICE

COMMENT 22ND AETHYR

This “Angel” is in fact PAN. See the 9th Aire “unto All hath she born him.”

COMMENT 17TH AETHYR

A profound truth of universal application. The master-key to any man’s character is his appreciation of the universe. To one, Pan means terror and madness, to another, the All-God.

15 TH AETHYR

Above the altar is a veiled Figure, whose name is Pan. Those in the outer tier adore him as a Man; and in the next tier they adore him as a Goat; and in the next tier they adore him as a Ram; and in the next tier they adore him as a Crab; and in the next tier they adore him as an Ibis; and in the next tier they adore him as a Golden Hawk; and in the next tier they adore him not7.

……

14TH AETHYR COMMENT

There was also an instruction to build a Temple of stone with altar and circle. There was a public sacrifice offered to the God Pan by the Rite of XI degree O.T.O. See Equinox I, No. X, pp. 114-115.

12TH AETHYR

And this is the comedy of Pan, that is played at night in the thick forest. And this is the mystery of Dionysus Zagreus, that is celebrated upon the holy mountain of Kithairon. And this is the secret of the brothers of the Rosy Cross; and this is the heart of the ritual that is accomplished in the Vault of the Adepts that is hidden in the Mountain of the Caverns, even the Holy Mountain Abiegnus9.

7TH AETHYR

QUOTE & COMMENT

and there is a word of seven letters which it concealeth3, and that again concealeth the holy word that is the key of the abyss4.

This word is N.O.X. = , Babalon conceals this word because She is the Lady of the City of the Pyramids beneath the Night of Pan. These words are probably BABALON, ChAOS, TARO.

4TH AETHYR

……

Beneath his feet is the kingdom, and upon his head the crown. He is spirit and matter; he is peace and power; in him is Chaos and Night and Pan, and upon BABALON his concubine, that hath made him drunk upon the blood of the saints that she hath gathered in her golden cup, hath he begotten the virgin that now he doth deflower.

2ND AETHYR

O ye heavens which dwell in the first Aire, and are mighty in the parts of the earth, and execute therein the judgment of the highest, to you it is said: Behold the face of your God, the beginning of comfort, whose eyes are the brightness of the heavens which provided you for the government of the earth, and her unspeakable variety, furnishing you with a power of understanding, that ye might dispose all things according to the foresight of Him that sitteth on the Holy Throne, and rose up in the beginning, saying, The earth, let her be governed by her parts (this is the prostitution of BABALON to Pan),

Many are they who have loved the nymphs of the woods, and of the wells, and of the fountains, and of the hills. And of these some were nympholept. For it was not a nymph, but I myself that walked upon the earth taking my pleasure. So also there were many images of Pan, and men adored them, and as a beautiful god he made their olives bear double and their vines increase; but some were slain by the god, for it was I that had woven the garlands about him

COMMENT- From this it would appear that BABALON (who is speaking through one of Her ministers) is the Feminine (or Androgyne) equivalent and not merely complement — of Pan. This is shewn in many of Her images.

LIBER SAMEKH- COMMENT

Let then the Adept extend his Will beyond the Circle in this imagined Shape and let it radiate with the Light proper to the element invoked, and let each Word issue along the Shaft with passionate impulse, as if its voice gave command thereto that it should thrust itself leapingly forward. Let also each Word accumulate authority, so that the Head of the Shaft may plunge twice as far for the Second Word as for the First, and Four Times for the Third as the Second, and thus to the end. Moreover, let the Adept fling forth his whole consciousness thither. Then at the final Word, let him bring rushing back his Will within himself, steadily streaming, and let him offer himself to its point, as Artemis to PAN, that this perfectly pure concentration of the Element purge him thoroughly, and possess him with its passion. In this Sacrament being wholly at one with that Element, let the Adept utter the Charge “Hear me, and make”, etc. with strong sense that this unity with that quarter of the Universe confers upon him the fullest freedom and privilege appurtenant thereto.

Section J.

Hermes to hear, Dionysus to touch, Pan to behold.

THE NIGHT OF PAN (N.O.X.) & The City of the Pyramids

-Crowley – painted 1929 -Four monks carrying a goat across the snow to nowhere- (Reference to NOX??)

Within the system of Thelema, the Night of Pan, or N.O.X., is a mystical state that represents the stage of ego-death in the process of spiritual attainment.

The playful and lecherous Pan is the Greek god of nature, lust, and the masculine generative power. The Greek word Pan also translates as All, and so he is “a symbol of the Universal, a personification of Nature; both Pangenetor, “all-begetter,” and Panphage, “all-devourer” (Sabazius, 1995).

Therefore, Pan is both the giver and the taker of life, and his Night is that time of symbolic death where the adept experiences unification with the All through the ecstatic destruction of the ego-self. In a more general sense, it is the state where one transcends all limitations and experiences oneness with the universe.

Aleister Crowley also described this in the mystical text Liber VII:

Ascend in the flame of the pyre, O my soul! Thy God is like the cold emptiness of the utmost heaven, into which thou radiatest thy little light. When Thou shall know me, O empty God, my flame shall utterly expire in Thy great N. O. X.^[4]

Finally, Crowley writes of the Night of Pan Book of Lies,

“Sabbath of the Goat”:

O! the heart of N.O.X. the Night of Pan.
PAN: Duality: Energy: Death.
Death: Begetting: the supporters of O!
To beget is to die; to die is to beget.
Cast the Seed into the Field of Night.
Life and Death are two names of A.
Kill thyself.
Neither of these alone is enough.^[5]

In his commentary on this writing, Crowley explains:

It is explained that this triad lives in Night, the Night of Pan, which is mystically called N.O.X., and the O is identified with the O in the word NOX. N is the Tarot symbol, Death; and the X or Cross is the sign of the Phallus. NOX adds to 210, which symbolizes the reduction of duality to unity, and thence to negativity, and is thus a hieroglyph of the Great Work.

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EXTRAS:) if time

THE BOOK OF BABALON

Jack Parsons

And she shall wander in the witchwood under the Night of Pan, and know the mysteries of the Goat and the Serpent, and of the children that are hidden away.

MARCH 1946

RITE OF BABALON

That evening the Scribe and I resumed our work. In a short time the dictation began:

“In the presence of our Lord PAN, at the feet of Our Lady BABA- LON, at the feet of Her servants we declare unto thee this message consecrated, dedicated, never to be defiled containing the rituals of the second and third days, of the welcome and preparation in the Name of Our Lady of the Night most gracious, to pure lewd and whore- some Lady BABALON.

Belarion 8 = 3 (PARSONS)

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^CODA:

HYMN TO PAN

Thrill with lissome lust of the light,

O man! My man!
Come careering out of the night
Of Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan! Come over the sea
From Sicily and from Arcady!
Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards
And nymphs and satyrs for thy guards,
On a milk-white ass, come over the sea
To me, to me…..
Come with Apollo in bridal dress
(Shepherdess and pythoness)
Come with Artemis, silken shod,
And wash thy white thigh, beautiful God,
In the moon of the woods, on the marble mount,
The dimpled dawn of the amber fount!
Dip the purple of passionate prayer
In the crimson shrine, the scarlet snare,
The soul that startles in eyes of blue
To watch thy wantonness weeping through
The tangled grove, the gnarled bole
Of the living tree that is spirit and soul
And body and brain — come over the sea,
(Io Pan! Io Pan!)
Devil or god, to me, to me,
My man! my man!
Come with trumpets sounding shrill
Over the hill!
Come with drums low muttering
From the spring!
Come with flute and come with pipe!
Am I not ripe?

I, who wait and writhe and wrestle
With air that hath no boughs to nestle
My body, weary of empty clasp ,Strong as a lion and sharp as an asp —
Come, O come!
I am numb
With the lonely lust of devildom.
Thrust the sword through the galling fetter,
All-devourer, all-begetter;
Give me the sign of the Open Eye,
And the token erect of thorny thigh,
And the word of madness and mystery,
O Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan Pan! Pan,
I am a man:
Do as thou wilt, as a great god can,
O Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! I am awake
In the grip of the snake.
The eagle slashes with beak and claw;
The gods withdraw:
The great beasts come, Io Pan! I am borne
To death on the horn
Of the Unicorn.
I am Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan!
I am thy mate, I am thy man,
Goat of thy flock, I am gold, I am god,
Flesh to thy bone, flower to thy rod.
With hoofs of steel I race on the rocks
Through solstice stubborn to equinox.
And I rave; and I rape and I rip and I rend
Everlasting, world without end,
Mannikin, maiden, Maenad, man,
In the might of Pan.Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan!

Io Pan!