21

Chapter XXI

  1. O. Weinreich (“Zum Tode des Grossen Pan,” ARW 13 [1910] pp. 467-73) has collected the evidence for such strange notions, first found in 1549 (Guillaume Bigot), then three years later in Rabelais’ Pantagruel, and ridiculed in later times, e.g., by Fontenelle, in the beginning of the 18th century: “Ce grand Pan qui meurt sous Tibere, aussi bien que Jésus-Christ, est le Maistre des Demons, dont l’Empire est ruiné par cette mort d’un Dieu si salutaire à l’Univers; ou si cette explication ne vous plaist pas, car enfin on peut sans impieté donner des sens contraires à une mesme chose, quoy qu’elle regarde la Religion; ce grand Pan est Jesus-Christ luy-mesme, dont la mort cause une douleur et une consternation genéralé parmy leg Demons, qui ne peuvent plus exercer leur tirannie sur les hommes. C’est ainsi qu’on a trouvé moyen de donner à ce grand Pan deux faces bien differentes” (Weinreich, PP.472-73).

  2. See F. Liebrecht, Des Gervasius von Tilbury Otia Imperialia (1856) pp. 179-80; J. G. Frazer, The Dying God (Golden Bough 3), pp. 7f.

  3. Tertius Jove tertio natus et Maia, ex quo et Penelopa Pana natum ferunt. cf. also Herodotus 2.145.

  4. As concerns the version according to which Pan was the son of Penelope and all the suitors, Preller remarks (Griechische Mythologie [1964], vol. 1, p. 745): “the repulsive myth.”

  5. J. Grimm, TM, pp. 453n., 1413f.; cf. pp. 989, 1011-12 (“The Devil’s dead, and anyone can get to heaven unhindered”); W. Mannhardt, Wald-und Feldkulte, vol. 1 (1875), pp. 89-93; vol. 2 (1877), pp. 148ff.

  6. Generally, however, they are claimed to show rather revolting habits, such as eating children or disposing of them in another peculiar manner, as, for instance, pulverizing them into snuff. Thus, of one Fangga it is said: “Wenn sie kleine Buben zu fassen bekam, so schnupfte sie dieselben, wie Schnupftabak in ihre Nase, oder rieb sie an alten durren Bäumen, die von stechenden Aesten starrten, his sie zu Staub geraspelt waren.” It seems to be a very deep-seated desire of “higher powers” to change divine or human beings into powder and dust.

  7. “No is Pippe Kong dod” (Schleswig); otherwise “König Knoblauch” (King Garlic), “King Urban”; “Hipelpipel is dead” (Lausitz); “Mutter Pumpe is tot” (Hessen). Cf. Grimm, p. 453; K. Simrock, Handbuch der Deutschen Mythologie (1869), § 125, pp. 416f.; F. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde (1879), p. 257n., who gives additional references. See also P. Herrmann, Deutsche Mythologie (1898), pp. 89f.

  8. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 257n.

  9. Pindar frg. 100 (68); Rhea had borne Zeus there also (Paus. 8.38.2f.), and on top of the mountain was atemenos of Zeus, where nothing and nobody cast a shadow.

  10. See O. Hofler, “Cangrande van Verona und das Hundesymbol der Langobarden,” in Festschrift Fehrle (1940), pp. 107-37.

  11. “Pelops und die Haselhexe,” Laos 1 (1951), pp. 67-78.

  12. Paus. 5.7.10. It is not from mere “religious” motifs that “in the hippodrome the pillar which marked the starting point had beside it an altar of the Heavenly Twins” (Pind. Olympian Odes 3.36; Paus. 5.15); cf. F. M. Cornford in Harrison (Themis [1962], p. 228); see also above, pp. 206f. n. 5, for the Circus Maximus in Rome.

  13. There is not only “moskhou omon chryseion,” the golden shoulder of the ox in the hands of Mithras (Egyptian Maskheti, the Bull’s Thigh, Ursa Major), and Humeri, an antiquated Latin name of Orion, as we know from Varro; the highest god, Amma, of the West Sudanese Dogon (or the Clarias senegalensis, the shadfish, an avatar of the Dogon’s “Moniteur Faro,” whose emblem is the very same as that of ithyphallic Min, the Egyptian Pan) carries in his humeri the first “eight grains,” and these 8 sorts of grain (stereotypically including beans) play their cosmogonic role from the Dogon to China (cf. for another striking similarity of West Sudan and China, the chapter on the “shamanistic” drums, but there are many more). There is also the tale from modern Greece (see J. G. von Hahn, Griechische und Albanische Märchen [1918], vol. 1, pp. 181-84) of the “Son of the shoulder-blade,” one of those “Strong Boys” who, after adventures in spirit land, grinds his mother to porridge on a hand mill. How these and other traditions are connected with the shoulder blade oracle, if they are connected at all, cannot be made out yet.

  14. See P. F. Gassmann, Planetarium Babylonicum (1950), 281; J. Schaumberger, in Kugler’s 3.Ergänzungsheft (1935), p. 325, and n. 2 (one version: the “yoke of Ea”); P. Jensen, Die Kosmologie der Babylonier (1890), pp. 16ff., 25; F. Boll — C. Bezold, Farbige Sterne (1916), p.121.

  15. Actually, he (and others) claimed that the book was written by three (or even more) authors, namely Ssagrît, Janbûshâd, and Qutâmâ. The first living in the seventh thousand of the 7,000 years of Saturn — which he ruled together with the Moon — the second at the end of the same millennium, the third appeared after 4,000 years of the 7,000-year cycle of the Sun had passed; so that between the beginning and the end of the book 18,000 solar years have passed (according to Maqrîzî). See D. Chwolson, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus (1856), vol. 1, pp. 705f. (cf. p. 822 for the special alphabet used by Janbûshâd). So we are up to another “Tris-megistos,” three times great, not just “thrice.” Time is involved. Hermes is repeated three times historically.

  16. Chwolson, vol. 2, pp. 27f., 207, 209.

  17. Zur Volkskunde, pp. 2Sd.

  18. Let us note that the planets are not given in the astronomical order of their periods, but in the order given by the heptagram, which describes the days of the week.

  19. See Liebrecht, p. 251n: “The Babylonian Izdubar (= Gilgamesh) is called by Ibn Wa’shijja’s Book on the Nabataean Agriculture ‘Janla-Shad’ (Janbûshâd) , i.e. Jamshid . . . Thus Rawlinson in Athenaeum December 7, 1872.”

  20. Cf. the report by Plutarch (Isis and Osiris 363E) on Egypt: There is also a religious lament sung over Cronus. The lament is for him that is born in the regions of the left, and suffers dissolution in the regions on the right; for the Egyptians believe that the eastern regions are the face of the world, the northern the right, and the southern to the left. The Nile, therefore, which runs from the south and is swallowed up by the sea in the north, is naturally said to have its birth on the left and its dissolution on the right." Kronos having been the ruler of “galactical times” (Geb “inside” Nṻt), this makes more sense than meets the eye. See also chapter XIII, “Of Time and the Rivers.”

  21. “Adonis et Sirius,” Extrait des Mélanges Glotz, vol. 1 (1932), pp. 257-64. But see for the different dates of the Adonia, F. K. Movers, Die Phönizier (1841), vol. 1, pp. 195-218, esp. p. 205.

  22. See Liebrecht, Gervasius von Tilbury, pp. 180-82; Zur Volkskunde, pp. 253ff.; W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites (1957), p. 412 (lamentations over “the king of the Djinns,” and over “Uncûd, Son of the grape cluster”).

  23. It was Felix Liebrecht who first felt reminded of John Barleycorn.

  24. See Nonnos 41.208ff. on Aphrodite: “Being a prophet, she knew, that in the shape of a wild boar, Ares with jagged tusk and spitting deadly poison was destined to weave fate for Adonis in jealous madness.” Cf. for the other sources, Movers, vol. 1, pp. 222ff.

  25. To give tiniest minima only: Tammuz = Saturn (Jeremias in Roscher s.v. Sterne, col. 1443); Tammuz = Mars (W. G. Baudissin, Adonis und Esmun [1911], p. 117, quoting the Chronicle of Barhebraeus). For the unheard-of number of names given to “Tammuz” in Mesopotamia, see M. Witzel, Tammuz-Liturgien (1935). For his name “Dragon of the Sky” (Uŝungal-an-na) = Sin (the Moon) see K. Tallqvist, Akkadische Götterepitheta (1938), p. 482; see also p. 464, where Tammuz = “Mutterschafbild” (“mothersheep-image”).

  26. It is worth noticing that the death of Osiris, in his turn, was announced by “the Pans and Satyrs who lived in the region around Chemmis (=Panopolis), and so, even to this day, the sudden confusion and consternation of a crowd is called a panic” (Plutarch: Isis and Osiris, c. 14, 356D).

  27. All the gods of the North came together, in best “Nabataean” fashion, to weep over Balder’s death.

  28. We leave aside, though, the cases Linos, Maneros, Memnon, Bormos, etc. See Movers, vol.1, p.244.

  29. Symbolik und Mythologie der Alten Völker (1842), vol. 4, pp. 65ff.

  30. See also Plato’s Cratylus 408B: ton Pana tou Hermou einai hyon diphyē echei to eikos.

  31. Creuzer takes Pan-Sirius for Eshmun/Shmun, “the eighth,” great god of Chemmis

  32. Cf. the Orphic Hymn to Pan (no. 11; see also Hymn 34.25): Pana kala krateron, nomion, kosmoio to sympan/ ouranon ēde thalassan ide chthona pam basileian/ kai pyr athanaton . . . Echous phile . . . pantophyēs, genetōr pantōn, polyōnyme daimon/ kosmokratōr . . . As concerns his love for Echo, Macrobius (Sat. 1.22.7) explains it as harmony of the spheres: quod significat harmoniam caeli, quae soli arnica est, quasi sphaerarum omnium de quibus nascitur moderatori, nec tamen potest nostris umquam sensibus deprehendi. But then, Macrobius was the first among the “sun-struck” mythologists, harmlessly claiming Saturn and Jupiter and everybody else, including Pan, to be the Sun. It is not the echo itself which is the harmony of the spheres but the syrinx — Pan makes it out of the reeds into which his beloved Echo had changed — and the seven reeds of Pan’s pipe are indeed the seven planets, the shortest representing the Moon, the longest Saturn. (It is worth consideration that in China the echo was understood as the acoustical pendant to the shadow, so that under the pillar or tree, in the very center of the world, the kien-mu, there is no echo and no shadow.)

  33. “Die Legende vom Tode des Grossen Pan,” in Fleckeisens Jahrbücher für klassische Philologie (1892), pp. 465-77. Referring to the “Panic” element in Mannhardt’s stories about the Fanggen, Roscher declares it “an accidentally similar motif.”

  34. Archaiotatos kai tōn oktōn tōn prōtōn legoumenōn theōn.

  35. Cf. A. Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch(1890), pp. 515-18.

  36. See J. Marsham, Canon chronicus Aegypticus, Ebraicus, Graecus (1672), p. 9: “Immensa Aegyptiorum chronologia astronomica est, neque res gestas sed motus coelestes designat!” See also Ideler (Beobachtungen, 1806), p. 93, Apart from the sensible 17th century, at the beginning of the 19th century still, the progressive delusion was remarkably underdeveloped.