A Propos The Satan Pit

[poliphilo]

Things with horns don't scare me.

Comes of being a pagan, I think.

The freaking out at horns is a  Christian thing; a bit parochial.

Before Christianity came along horns were  a symbol of divinity. Osiris has horns, so does Isis, so does Hermes, so does Diana, so does Pan and so on and on and on....

Horns of beasts, horns of the moon.

I guess the Christians gave the devil horns (a) because they associated him with the old gods and (b) because they were iffy about Nature.

So Satan- he's just Pan with a  makeover- and Pan is cool.

Just saying...

Comments

[aellia.livejournal.com]

And Santa's reindeer have very fine horns.
Do you know the song "The Pan Within" by the Waterboys?
It's good

[frsimon.livejournal.com]

'The freaking out at horns is a local Christian thing; a bit parochial.'

- although the good guys have horns too. In the book of Revelation the 'Lamb' has seven horns. Strangely enough this imagery hasn't made it through to the cuddly iconography of contemporary churches.

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

i saw a woman on the street yesterday wearing a bicycle helmet with horns.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I think Pan is cool, too.

[hardrada.livejournal.com]

In early modern Europe, Satan's horns would have been a sign that his missus was doing the dirty on him.

I wonder how the cuckold imagery came to overlap with the Devil imagery -- I think the latter is a fairly recent development, though as a good Jungian, I am bound to say it sprang somehow from a much older archetype.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Jon Pertwee's Doctor makes this very point in The Daemons, my and his favourite Who story ever. (Horns are associated with power because of a race of horned aliens who come and poke their noses in our affairs every so often.)