The gate of the year

Figure above:

Red-figure painting on a bell crater, dating to about 470 B.C., now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA. The scene shows the god Pan, with a goat’s head, pursuing, gripped by erotic desire, a young shepherd. Pan was an ithyphallic god, dominated by sexual desire (erotikós), frequently represented in pursue of the Nymphs, with whom he had intercourse into caves. Sometimes he pursues the young shepherds or has intercourse with the goats, thus showing that he incarnates the sexual energy in all its aspects. Pan was represented not only in the shape of a goat, but it was believed that his father, Hermes, had intercourse with Penelope in the shape of a he-goat, an animal which the Greeks regarded as particularly inclined to pleasure, lewd (katopherés).
In the image, Hermes appears on the right in the shape of an ithyphallic herm, that is a pillar with human head and erected phallus. Pan’s depiction as a human with a goat’s head reveals the coexistence of human and animal features and manifests his “double nature, in the upper half without hair, in the lower half bristly, with a goat’s aspect” (Plato, Cratylus, 408 d). This duality reminds of Pan’s linkage with the regions on the margin of the cultivated fields, where the human spaces come into contact with the wilderness. Pan, furthermore, oscillates between the condition of a real god (theós), worshiped in various sanctuaries, and that of a demigod (hemítheos) (Georgoudi, 1981).

[Source: http://library.artstor.org/library/]

Figure below:

Black-figure painting on an Attic pottery (520 B.C.), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The scene describes an ithyphallic Silenus facing a goat. Satyrs and Sileni were two categories of mythical beings often difficult to distinguish from one another. They were regarded as personifications of the powers and vital forces of nature and were frequently represented as human beings with theriomorphic attributes. The Satyrs had generally sharp ears, two small horns on the forehead, curly hair and flat nose, while the typical attribute of the Sileni was a long horse tail. Both were deemed as sons of Hermes and of the Nymphs, but were regarded as mortals. Legendary creatures, they took part with the Nymphs and the Maenads to the Dionysian processions, dancing and playing the flute, partaking of the sensual pleasures and of the intoxication produced by wine. Though Satyrs and Sileni are generally regarded as collective categories, this does not prevent them to play some important function, so much so that one of them, Papposilenus, was considered as the teacher and instructor of Dionysus, whereas the intoxication enabled them to take on some prophetic functions. According to Kerényi’s interpretation, these characters could be in origin masked and ithyphallic dancers, men wearing goatskins or horse tails, forming unbridled and orgiastic parades which celebrated and personified the vital and fertilizing power of nature (Kerényi, 1951, p.167-168).

[Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Satyr_goat_Met_L.2008.51.jpg]




Human-Animal Transformation

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Figure above: Red-figure painting on a bell crater, dating to about 470 B.C., now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA. The scene shows the god Pan, with a goat’s head, pursuing, gripped by erotic desire, a young shepherd. Pan was an ithyphallic god, dominated by sexual desire (erotikós), frequently represented in pursue of the Nymphs, with whom he had intercourse into caves. Sometimes he pursues the young shepherds or has intercourse with the goats, thus showing that he incarnates the sexual energy in all its aspects. Pan was represented not only in the shape of a goat, but it was believed that his father, Hermes, had intercourse with Penelope in the shape of a he-goat, an animal which the Greeks regarded as particularly inclined to pleasure, lewd (katopherés). In the image, Hermes appears on the right in the shape of an ithyphallic herm, that is a pillar with human head and erected phallus. Pan’s depiction as a human with a goat’s head reveals the coexistence of human and animal features and manifests his “double nature, in the upper half without hair, in the lower half bristly, with a goat’s aspect” (Plato, Cratylus, 408 d). This duality reminds of Pan’s linkage with the regions on the margin of the cultivated fields, where the human spaces come into contact with the wilderness. Pan, furthermore, oscillates between the condition of a real god (theós), worshiped in various sanctuaries, and that of a demigod (hemítheos) (Georgoudi, 1981). [Source: http://library.artstor.org/library/] Figure below: Black-figure painting on an Attic pottery (520 B.C.), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The scene describes an ithyphallic Silenus facing a goat. Satyrs and Sileni were two categories of mythical beings often difficult to distinguish from one another. They were regarded as personifications of the powers and vital forces of nature and were frequently represented as human beings with theriomorphic attributes. The Satyrs had generally sharp ears, two small horns on the forehead, curly hair and flat nose, while the typical attribute of the Sileni was a long horse tail. Both were deemed as sons of Hermes and of the Nymphs, but were regarded as mortals. Legendary creatures, they took part with the Nymphs and the Maenads to the Dionysian processions, dancing and playing the flute, partaking of the sensual pleasures and of the intoxication produced by wine. Though Satyrs and Sileni are generally regarded as collective categories, this does not prevent them to play some important function, so much so that one of them, Papposilenus, was considered as the teacher and instructor of Dionysus, whereas the intoxication enabled them to take on some prophetic functions. According to Kerényi’s interpretation, these characters could be in origin masked and ithyphallic dancers, men wearing goatskins or horse tails, forming unbridled and orgiastic parades which celebrated and personified the vital and fertilizing power of nature (Kerényi, 1951, p.167-168). [Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Satyr_goat_Met_L.2008.51.jpg]