The Curious Case of Pan and Cernunnos: What Two Ancient Gods Can Teach Us About Being Human

I have often though that we humans have developed an oddly warped relationship with Nature and wildness. People devote entire paychecks to gym memberships so they can replicate—in climate-controlled sterility—the physical exertion our ancestors enjoyed free of charge while hauling logs, digging for roots, or running for their lives from things that wanted to eat them.

We pay extra for “organic” vegetables, which are—if you stop to think about it—just ordinary vegetables grown without toxic chemicals.

And then, for a vacation, we spend a small fortune trekking off to retreats where we are promised the opportunity to “reconnect with Nature.” This is often done in places our great-great-grandparents would have called “the swamp,” “the forest,” or simply “somewhere you don’t want to sleep unless you like snakes.”

All of which brings me to two rather remarkable beings from antiquity, who never felt the need to book a retreat in Nature because they are Nature. I’m speaking, of course, of:

• Pan, the Greek goat-legged god of wildness
• Cernunnos, the antlered Celtic deity whose image appears on the famous Gundestrup Cauldron, gazing at us with the enigmatic calm of someone who knows exactly how many ways we’re missing the plot

These two deities—separated by geography and culture but united in fur, horn, and general earthiness—still have a lot to teach us, provided we can stop doomscrolling long enough to listen.

Pan: The Goat-Legged Wild Card

If you’ve ever had a panic attack (yes, the word comes from his name), you’ve already encountered Pan’s energy. The ancients believed he could startle wanderers in lonely places into fits of unreasoning terror—something most of us now only experience when Netflix freezes.

Half-goat, half-man, and full-time enthusiast of music, drinking, and sex, Pan embodied everything civilized Greeks both longed for and feared about the natural world.

He was fertility and chaos, laughter and wildness. To the Greeks, he represented the realization that civilization was not a fortress but a fragile crust laid over a much older, much hairier reality.

The Romans, being the magpies of antiquity, plucked Pan up and added him to their pantheon. But then came Christianity, which—with admirable bureaucratic efficiency—pronounced him deceased. Plutarch dutifully recorded a voice calling out across the waters: “The great god Pan is dead!”

Whether Pan was actually consulted in this matter remains unclear, but one suspects he was too busy chasing nymphs to notice. Meanwhile, his goat horns and cloven hooves were borrowed to represent the Christian devil, making Pan all the more inaccessible to “good” people.

Cernunnos: The Antlered Guardian of Abundance

In the misty forests farther north, the Celts revered Cernunnos. Unlike Pan’s manic goatishness, Cernunnos exudes a kind of solemn, antlered gravitas. He is the Lord of the Animals, the Green Man before the Green Man was cool.

His face on the Gundestrup Cauldron suggests someone who knows the cycles of the earth so intimately that he can predict the arrival of spring without consulting an app.

Cernunnos is not about sudden frights or lusty pursuits in the underbrush; he is about abundance, fertility, endurance. If Pan is the raucous festival, Cernunnos is the patient forest.

Gods of Boundaries and Thresholds—Where Human & Animal Blend

What’s truly fascinating is how both gods deal with boundaries. Pan lurks at the edges of villages and the borders of fields—places where order gives way to wilderness. He delights in startling you precisely when you think you’re safe.

Cernunnos, too, stands at thresholds: between life and death, tame and wild, human and animal.

Both deities preside over liminal spaces—those in-between places where categories blur and transformation is possible. They embody both human and animal wisdom. And if you think about it, much of what it means to be human happens in precisely those in-between spaces.

Lessons for the Modern World

By now, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with us—modern creatures whose wildest challenge is surviving a power outage. The truth is, we’ve become experts at erasing boundaries altogether.

We can eat strawberries in January, hold conversations with people on the other side of the planet, and keep ourselves awake at all hours with the glowing light of screens and LED bulbs. Distance, darkness, scarcity—all the things that once made life precarious—we’ve largely banished.

And yet, for all our comforts, we may feel oddly bereft. Anxiety, depression, and loneliness are rampant—they creep in despite our global pantry of abundance and connectivity. Which suggests that while we’ve eliminated much of the chaos from our lives, we’ve also eliminated something essential: wildness.

How to Reclaim Wildness (Without Moving Into a Cave)

This is where Pan and Cernunnos still have a lot of wisdom to offer. They remind us that we humans need unpredictability.

Our ancestors didn’t have to seek it—it was part of daily life. But we, in our heated and air conditioned homes, must go looking for it.

Here are some simple ways to invite wildness back into your life:

• Walk without headphones. Let silence and birdsong fill the gaps—the wilder the environment, the better.
• Grow something edible. Even one tomato plant can change how you relate to food.
• Talk to people who disagree with you. Not to win, but to listen. It’s okay to feel uncomfortable once in awhile.
• Choose inefficiency sometimes. Bake your own bread, take the long way home, or read a real book.
• Spend time outdoors without a plan. Wander, get lost, be surprised.

Pan whispers: laugh loudly, sweat profusely, get scared silly in the woods, but try not to get lost for too long.

Cernunnos counsels: be still, listen to the slow growth of trees, remember you belong to the same cycles as deer and grass. The abundance of Nature is part of you.

Together they remind us that life happens at the intersection of order and chaos.

Why Pan and Cernunnos Still Matter

We don’t need to resurrect the old gods as objects of worship. But we can invite their living archetypal energies back into our lives—as reminders. A little chaos makes order meaningful, just as a little darkness makes the light precious.

And in a world where our wilderness areas come neatly mapped and labeled, maybe what we all need is a touch more panic—the good kind, the Pan kind—the sort that wakes you up, gets your heart thumping, and reminds you that you’re alive.

Cernunnos would nod gravely at that idea, antlers gleaming, while Pan would probably blow on his pipes and laugh until you joined him in a wild dance through the woods.

It’s All About You!

Remember how I said Pan and Cernunnos are Nature? Well, so are you! There is really no separation. That’s just pretend.

Pan and Cernunnos are living invitations to tap into your wild spirit and feel the web of life that connects all of Nature as it threads through you and everything you do.

Want to Meet Pan and Cernunnos in the Otherworlds?

Here at Faehallows School of Magic, we’ll be taking guided shamanic journeys to meet these guys in their own realms—on Zoom, so you can join us from anywhere in the world!

It’s happening on September 21st at 9:30 AM PDT in honor of the Autumn Equinox here in the Northern Hemisphere (AKA Mabon).

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