WALKERS FROM THE WILD
We don’t speak much about fauns in this age, but it is clear that we all meet them from time to time, especially when we go to the wild places. Strictly, and in Classical terms, a faun is a being that is half anthropomorphic and half goat, but my experience has been largely in Northern Europe, and we seem to have some other kinds of beings too. These creatures provide us with the half-glimpsed, out of the corner of the eye encounters when we walk in the wild places. Since the advent of horror films, these kinds of fauns have been subject to a lot of cinematic misrepresentation, or sentimentalisation. Like the brownies and house wights that guard human dwellings, fauns are the guardians of the rocks, woods, shores, hills and mountains, and you are not likely to encounter them on the housing estate or in the neat squares of town-houses. They need wildness and untamed land in order to flourish.
A while back, when I was leading an online ritual during the Covid Pandemic wherein each online participant went out into their garden to put blessed earth around the boundaries of our land. (The ritual has been adapted and can be found in my post of 21 June 2024 -Blessing the Boundaries) It was inclined to rain heavily for some participants who did their part speedily, but it was finer here in Oxford, and I used part of my tea-break to extend my deposition of earth my and communion with the land. Since I leave parts of my garden wild and uncultivated, I was not entirely surprised to encounter a faun in what people might regard as ‘the untidy part of the garden.’ I also noticed, as I had my attention field wide for the purposes of the ritual, that this part of my garden is actually the most powerful part of it.
My faun was small and deer-like, rather than goat-like, and it peered out at me shyly. I immediately greeted it, and made a gesture with a little song conveying ‘I mean you no harm.’ I feel it came because I was working on the boundaries, and my garden was once part of the woods of Magdalene College: fauns protect the young new born animals, as well as the boundaries. Because I had to come back inside to teach my on-line class, I couldn’t stay as long as I wished, or I might have said with Horace:
‘Faunus, lover of fugitive Nymphs, may you go gently through my borders and my sunny fields as you go forth past the small new-borns…for you the wild woods scatter their leaves.’
That this silvan faun felt at home enough in my tree-surrounded garden delights me still. I hope it was not frightened away by the gardeners who came the week afterwards, and that it and its kind will always feel welcome here. This is precisely the place in my garden where the occasional muntjac deer rests when, in Spring or Autumn, they come down off Shotover and wander about. Last week it was the haunt of the fox that came with an injured foot, which I was unable to tend, as it hopped away.
I take the faun’s coming as a token of its guardianship of the borders. In return, I am making my offerings there.
When we walk in the wild places, we encounter many beings who mostly watch us without our noticing. It is good to be attentive to their presence, even if you don’t see the totality of them - just something out of the corner of your eye. Our acknowledgement of them in the wild places is part of the earth-walk of our lives. Let them speak well of you, even though you do not see them, for they are in all places that welcome them.
Here is Socrates’ Prayer to Pan, guardian of fauns: it comes from the end of Plato’s Phaedrus:. The word Pan, means ‘All.’ We are used to seeing in the name of Pandora whose name means, ‘All the gifts’ - hinting at a very different mythic purposes. We call on Pan in the wild places, because he is everywhere.
‘O beloved Pan and all ye other gods of this place, grant to me that I be made beautiful in my soul within, and that all external possessions be in harmony with my inner man. May I consider the wise man rich; and may I have such wealth as only the self-restrained man can bear or endure.—Do we need anything more, Phaedrus? For me that prayer is enough.’
That Prayer to Pan is beautiful. Thanks for your lovely post. I've not encountered fauns here in Ireland, but I'll keep a wide eye out for them.
Many years ago there was a rose bush that cropped up in and grew wild in a neighbor's yard. I walk by this yard daily on my way to get my mail. One day I noticed in the trunk of the bush something I had never seen before. It had taken the shape of a fairy king, one of fertility at that. I even asked a child once what she saw in that trunk and she could see the same thing I did. Fearing that some day the bush might be taken down, I took a picture of the fairy trunk, which I have to this day in a little frame. It's a good thing I did as that bush was removed when new owners of the house moved it. I always greeted that king and was respectful of him. I like to think that he made himself known to me (and the child) and continued to do so because I recognized and respected him.