Why is Pan in the Underworld?
Finding My Anima Mundi
What happened to the God of Nature, the God of All for Dragons, Faeries and Elementals?
Admittedly, when looking for photos of Pan, I was a bit surprised by all these photos and artist renditions of Pan with horns, upside down pentagrams, and his half goat-like appearance.
I mostly ignored these things. Until one day, I just had to face the truth that there was more to Pan than I realized.
I am new at using Tarot. At first, I had a Rider-Waite version of Tarot and decided they did not like me, so I threw them out. Sometimes, you have to just throw human logic aside and just go with your feelings, right?
I decided to buy a new Tarot deck and see if I liked them better. Typical for my bizarre spiritual path, I decided to plunge more deeply in occult-level wisdom, so I bought Oswald Wirth Tarot cards. There are some differences from the Rider-Waite version of the 22 Major Arcana (which are much more popular), so keep that in mind as I discuss my early experiences using this deck. Oswald Wirth was a Swiss Occultist. One of his influences was occultist and magician, Eliphas Levi.
To better understand the cards, I bought a book called “Tarot of the Magicians” by Oswald Wirth. This edition was published in 2012 by the Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. It was first published in Paris in 1927 under the title “Le Tarot, des Imagiers du Moyen Age” and was first translated into English in 1985. The introduction to my version of the book was written by Mary K Greer, which is an author, teacher, and Grandmother of the American Tarot Association.
In Mary K Greer’s words:
“For both Wirth and Levi incarnation in the material world serves Spirit by forcing Spirit to free itself from the limitations of separateness, both from the Divine and from the others. Nature becomes a kind of school in which we are to see through the illusion of separateness that matter imparts. Wirth follows Levi in seeing the Devil as the force which condenses astral light into a denser animal magnetism-the instinct for physical survival-essential for the life of the body. As a radical force for self-preservation, it sees each entity as a separate and sees Nature and others for its own benefit-in a way selfishly damming or short circuiting the free flow of energy. It is a person’s direction of this force by a pure will that is the secret to using its qualities for good. This is one of the great lessons the Tarot teaches.”
“Ultimately, for Wirth, the Tarot tells us where we came from, what we are, and where we are going (past, present, and future). The purpose is to regain Paradise, but in a Universal Regeneration in which, ultimately, all humans come as close as nature will allow to Divine Perfection. We humans become artists in order to complete a Divine Work that brings order to human chaos.”
From Oswald Wirth:
“We become Free Artists, free Builders, Freemasons, carrying out the plan of the Supreme Architect via the law of life which is that of creative work.”
I know Freemasons and Occultists get a bad rap these days. Just because I am reading and learning about occultism and magic does not mean I know any more than you do. I am just a naturally curious person who likes to explore and learn the truth of things at deep layers.
I feel that buried in the seemingly darkest places are answers to the chaos and darkness in the world and in our own lives. My version of shadow work is rather intense. Just to give you a taste I will share with you that I have dark elves visiting me in my dreams. I climb down dark ladders into dark swamps with monsters in my dreams. Admittedly, the first time, I climbed right back up because I was scared. It was like a reverse Jacob’s ladder.
My life so far has been like one big spiritual initiation in many ways, plunging me into the darkness whether I wanted it or not. Superficial spirituality with all fluffy the love and light talk was not really getting me anywhere but frustrated. Many spiritual people kept telling me to ground more, meditate more and learn about the law of attraction and then everything would be okay. Well, I have done all those things and more, and it did not work. When synchronicity knocked on the door, I answered, so I decided to learn more about occult and magic. I always did enjoy a good puzzle and mystery. Besides Merlin used to show up occasionally in my meditations and automatic writing. Maybe he was encouraging me to learn more about occultism and magic to understand how these practices have impacted our world. Learning about the ancient mysteries tug at my soul like nothing else.
According to Mary K Greer, the Wirth’s 22 Major Arcana only version was never that popular in the West, but it has inspired many people in the world for its artistry at “making the invisible visible.” New versions of it keep showing up. My version has the minor arcana mixed in so you can use it for more purposes.
I gave you a taste for one of the main lessons of Major Arcana 15 The Devil in Wirth’s Tarot in Mary K Greer’s quote above. There are more details relevant to my desire to learn more about Pan and why I feel his presence in my life so deeply.
The Devil Tarot in Wirth’s deck is known as Baphomet of the Templars, the Goat of Mendes, or the Great Pan of the Gnostics. So here it was the truth from which I could no longer run. Here was my “God of Nature” friend who, along with Goddess Venus, taught me how to fly in my dreams, but in Wirth’s Tarot, he is the Devil. What gives? He also looks nothing like the Pan of my dreams in this deck.
I am happy I met the resurrected and enlightened Pan first. It certainly makes my personal journey easier. So, what does it all mean?
From the section on the Devil in “Tarot of Magicians” I started to slowly unpack the mystery. I am still learning and evolving, the same as all of you, so I am sharing what I have learned so far.
From Oswald Wirth:
“Seen in its essence which is common to all living things, universal life circulates unceasingly, always identical to itself, flowing indifferently from one recipient into another. If nothing had come to trouble the regularity of this peaceful flow, then life would have remained conforming to one’s ‘ideal” of paradise; but the Snake intervened, and under its influence every living being wanted to hoard the common property in order to condense life around itself for its own individual benefit. Thus, came about the revolt against the universal order of things. Individual whirls were born in the heart of the general swirl, now stirred and troubled by the radical selfishness which the Devil personifies. This Adversary (Satan in Hebrew) is the Prince of the Material World which without him could not exist for he is at the base of all differentiation between one individual and another. It is he who pushes the atom to set itself up at the expense of the substance which is uniformly ethereal. He is the one who differentiates, the enemy of unity. He sets the worlds against the World and living people against each other. Having incited them to wish to be like God, he then indicates the instinct which relates everything to themselves, as if they we were the centre around which everything must gravitate.”
“Like the Greek Sphinx, it draws together within itself the four Elements, of whom the Devil is the principal life-giver.”
I would love to speak to a wise being like King Solomon about Pan to explain the deeper mysteries to me (King Solomon has appeared in a few of my dreams, but my lucid dreaming skills are not so great yet. Hopefully, I can ask him soon). I would love to ask him about how to heal my fractured psyche and enable my body to be a vessel for my higher spiritual energies in a deeper more meaningful way, emptied of my subconscious and unconscious shadow energies. I would love to understand Pan and the vital life force energies and how to integrate them into my life in a healthy way.
I am well aware that darker magicians and occultists try to manipulate and control these astral plane energies. I am also aware of how infiltrated the spiritual and religious communities are, as many people do not understand how deep these shadow energies are and how easy it is to manipulate people who are not empty vessels for the higher light. I have found out the hard way interacting with spiritual people that it does not seem to matter how many spiritual gifts you have if your spiritual ego is too high, and you still need a great deal more shadow clearing. I feel that consciously working to activate my light body is my best protection against these manipulative energies. I am fortunate that my dreams warn me increasingly about these manipulative energies and how they work through people to try to subjugate them.
I do not feel afraid or judgmental. I feel compassion for other people like me, with one foot in the regular world and one foot in this strange world where magic, fairies, dragons, demons, elementals, and angels are real. I admit to spending considerable sums looking for ways to “manifest” through the law of attraction and using different spiritual tools to protect myself from beings with malevolent intent. I found out the hard way over long periods of time how pointless most of this was for me. Lately, I am learning that to heal myself body, mind, and soul, I need to learn to trust my own knowing, intuition and dreams. Simply, I need to learn to trust myself and to slowly, one day at a time, heal my emotional traumas and overly analytical mind. In my case, the world has a been a dark mirror for much of my life until very recently, mirroring back all my subconscious and unconscious wounds, so there was little chance for me to trust anyone outside myself. Real trust has been rare in my life. Slowly, I am starting to see the blessing of my difficult path of spiritual initiation. I have been told by spiritual beings it was “my time” and this kind of life is considered a blessing. When I first heard those words it made no real sense to me. Years went by before I started to get it.
I am starting to understand why I found these cards, how and why they may assist me. If I let the fear of the occult stop me or if I assumed all secret society people were bad, I would not have found the wisdom buried in these pages, wisdom I need for my particular path. Our paths are not all the same and we should not assume we know better what is right for other people. We learn what we need one lesson at a time, often the hard way. We all make our mistakes. Our mistakes lead to wisdom, wisdom impossible to get any other way.
It is more obvious to me what is going on behind the scenes in elite circles after learning a bit more about how the occult energies work. For some, the draw of using the unconscious dark energies for their own gain are just too great, but I do not feel all occultists are like this. It is usually not a great idea to generalize about large categories of people. For my path, I needed to walk through the dark swamp. I could not ignore it and pretend it was not there. Fortunately, along with these darker experiences, I have also had many contacts with higher divine energies in my dreams and meditations such as Quan Yin, the Green Tara and King Solomon. That is just a small sample. It is like going to the movies most nights these days. I am learning to not judge, not to categorize people or experiences into good vs evil, good vs bad. It blocks wisdom and compassion along with seeing things from a higher perspective. My other big lesson is to let my feelings flow, to experience and allow the grief and heart ache inevitable as the truth of the ugliness of what we have done and continue to do to ourselves, each other and the Earth reveals itself. Separation from the Earth and the Divine can lead to some really ugly behavior.
It is interesting to read the following wisdom from Wirth as some may be reluctant to probe deeply into the mind of any occultist (especially with all the visible evil we see in the world today).
“Nature loves to make the ‘poor in spirit’ benefit from her secrets, they who are totally incapable of imagining a knowledgeable theory based on the results they obtain. Far from attributing a personal power to themselves the modest healers consider themselves to be very humble instruments in the services of superior forces.”
“Being careful to control himself in a moderate way by repressing his baser desires, the wise man leaves the mastery of the invisible to the witches and the falsely initiated to the pretentious occultists who rig themselves out of in titles which betray their childish vanity.”
“The serious Adept is not ignorant of the fact that the Devil is the great magic agent, thanks to whom miracles are performed unless they are the purely spiritual kind; for as long as the pure spirit acts directly upon spirit, the Devil does not have to intervene. But as soon as the body enters into it, nothing can be done without the Devil. We owe him our material existence, for if the desire to be and the self-preservation instinct which came from him, had not dominated him from birth, then we would not have been able to hang on to life with the exclusive egoism which is characteristic of early childhood.”
Now, I am not a witch, occultist, or magician. I do believe, as they do, in elemental and other astral plane energies. I have had far too many weird dreams and other personal experiences to doubt these things.
According to Oswald Wirth, these are some of the details of the Devil in the Tarot card:
1) Its black legs represent the Earth element (the Gnomes).
2) The monster’s green scales covering the thighs represent the water element (The Undines).
3) The blue wings are related to the air element (The Sylphs).
4) The red head symbolizes the fire element (The Salamanders).
3 X 5=15: These are the three pentagrams in the Wirth Devil Tarot. When you release your traumas from your lower animal self and finally integrate with your higher self, you become an Enlightened man. The pairing to the Devil card with the Lovers Tarot Number 6 helps to better understand how this enlightenment might work, as you clear out all your dark shadow energies in your major chakras from the root to the Crown chakra. When you reach the 6th chakra, the third eye chakra, you activate your pineal gland and connect to your divine Christ self, the Anointed One. This is known as the divine marriage. The White Pentagram is the higher human energy, aligned with higher divine will, not negatively affected by the human ego. Otherwise, unconscious forces can manipulate you and control you as you have poor control over your own life force without access to this higher intelligent will. Darker energies are more than happy to manipulate you whether you are a government official or a false light priest in a church. Unfortunately, most people are so disconnected from nature and from their higher nature, they are easily manipulated including many powerful people that achieve great success, but success that does not come from these higher energy alignments. The darker pentagram faces down, and this is the face of the Goat. When you tame the beast within you align with the divine spark within you, you activate a golden aura, which is the third pentagram.
It seems that the red devil and green devil on each side of Pan represent primary duality, the two poles of male and female duality (animus and anima). The two energy channels along our spine. The Female pole is Ida Nadi (Anima) and the male pole is Pingala Nadi (Animus). As you awaken your spiritual energy known as the Kundalini energy, this energy passes up the middle of the spine known as Sushumna Nadi to reach your pineal gland and then you can heal duality back to unity, which activates your personal higher self, Christ energy.
Obviously in the Devil card this is not what is happening. You can see how we can lose power by keeping our life force locked up, as we hide in our egos, and go along with dominant narratives, culture, and beliefs. The more literally you interpret religious documents and even spiritual paths, the harder it can be to get to the truth. I have found that seeking deeper spiritual symbolism in ancient religious documents helpful. I will speak about this more in future blogs. Some may interpret Wirth’s Devil Card as inferior to the Rider-Waite Devil (which is more clearly a negative anti-Christ energy showing only the dark inverted pentagram). Some may also find it troubling and more than a bit weird as if the Wirth Tarot is glorifying the Devil energy. I am sure some do interpret Wirth’s Devil Tarot this way. However, reading Wirth’s own words tell me something else, as he articulates all the possible dark manipulation and is sharing a path for your own spiritual awakening to move beyond your limitations (some your own, some inherited and some forced on you in society). There is much imbedded symbolism to move through in his work. I have had dreams about some of this symbolism as I worked on this blog. I will share those dreams in future blogs.
Wirth describes the Devil card as “The Soul of the World” as the reservoir of all the vitality of all living beings.” People more commonly see this as the Anima Mundi, the energy that connects all of us to nature and to each other. Now, in the pure Devil form, I do not see this is as accurate. When Christ is a Messiah outside of you, you are trapped in your ego and the Devil is the evil Opposer, I do not feel the Anima Mundi is present. However, when you become spiritually enlightened, free your own inner Christ, get your life force flowing and out of chains, that is a different story entirely. There you find your own Anima Mundi. Your snake is no longer lying slithering around in your lower chakras as you surrender your lower conscious mind’s ego (symbolism here is the ouroboros or the snake biting its own tail). The rising kundalini (rising snake) up your spine is the symbolism of your growing healing, wisdom, and enlightenment.
I feel that if enough people connect with their own Anima Mundi, we heal ourselves and the ecocide of the Earth all around us. I feel that finding your tribe will be easier as well.
When I hear the words Anima Mundi, it makes me feel like dancing around the room. It gives new meaning to the words “The Devil Made Me Do It.”
These are just my current opinions and observations. Please use your discernment and find your own truth.
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