Thread by @serbiaireland

Thread: #FolkloreThursday Pan is a great example of what happens when mythology based on a local climate gets exported to the place where climate is different...

The story of Pan starts on the Island of Crete, where the local climate is characterised by hot, dry summers and mild, rainy winters. The rainy season starts in October and lasts till March or even April.

The beginning of the Cretan rain season coincides with the beginning of the mating season of the Cretan Ibex.

Which is why in Minoan Crete Ibex was venerated as the goat which brought rain...And life... Which is why Ibexes are depicted on this Minoan fresco from Knossos flanking "the tree of life"...

By the way, the "tree of life" is olive. And olives are harvested from late October, early November, at the beginning of the rain season...The flowers depicted all around are crocuses, which also bloom from Late October, early November, at the beginning of the rain season...

So this fresco depicts the beginning of the rain season, when ibexes fight and mate, crocuses bloom and olives are ripe...

The cult of ibex was then brought from Crete to the mainland Greece by the Mycenaeans. In Mycenae, Ibex was still celebrated as "the bringer of life". And again it was depicted with the tree of life, like on this Mycenaean lentoid gem...

Except that because the climate on the Greek mainland was different from the climate on Crete, and because there was no obvious link between the behaviour of goats and the flourishing of nature, everyone eventually forgot why they started worshiping the goat in the first place...

Which is how and why, eventually, the sacred Ibex goat of the Minoans, whose mad mating brought rain, which caused nature to flourish, flowers to flower, trees to bud, rivers to flow....became Πάν (Pan), "The old god of vegetation obsessed with water nymphs"...

An excerpt, from my article about goats and and rain gods in European mythology oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/02/goat-r…