In those spaces in-between, when the hero’s call has been answered, just as the archetypal Seeker steps toward the unknown, a dark figure stirs. The air thickens. The heart pounds.
As a person who embraces the path of ‘The Seeker’, I have found myself standing on this threshold many times. The proverbial answering of the call, crossing into the abyss and encountering some of the darker parts of Self down there. The pull to the unknown is enticing but the archetypal energies we meet may not always be pleasant, if not slightly perhaps, misunderstood?
Are you afraid of the Dark? I often ask myself that question. As a child I was terrified of the moon. I thought it was following me home. This strange beam of light in the sky, and yet, now I have such a connection with the moon in all her phases and stages. Fear of the ‘Dark’ comes in many forms. There is an external darkness that precedes time, an internal darkness which can hold ancient fears and all there is, and all the darkness in between. Jung would call this an encounter with the unconscious, a force beyond our control that demands surrender, not resistance. What we fear most is often what we must confront in order to move forward. This was my experience with the moon. What I once feared as an enemy became my greatest ally. In some ways I now prefer to play in the dark. The light of the moon seems less harsh than the brightness of the sun. The abyss can be inviting. What moves there can have an intoxicating call.
This is where Pan resides.
In Greek mythology, Pan is the god of wild places, liminal spaces, and sudden fear—the raw, unexplainable terror that stops us in our tracks. His name is the root of the word panic. But Pan is more than a trickster of the wilderness. He is the Guardian of the Threshold. His test is not intellectual, it is embodied. The body clenches. The mind races. The instinct to turn back is overwhelming.
I learned this firsthand. In 2019, Pan began appearing in my dreams, haunting me, provoking me. He would meet me at the crossroads, sometimes in goat form and in some dreams he would shape-shift. Pan’s call felt so incessant that I became obsessed with the pursuit of knowledge about him. I studied James Hillman’s Pan and the Nightmare, explored mythology, and experimented with embodiment practices to conjure up a metaphorical meeting in the desert. I was equally afraid and enthralled.
“What do you want?” I implored.
Then, in 2020, the global Pan-demic arrived with its many waves of fear, uncertainty, and collective paralysis. Suddenly, Pan wasn’t just personal anymore. He was everywhere. He had infiltrated the collective and was inviting us to face our fears. At the time I was a Drama and English teacher in the Middle East. I felt the hold of Pan and knew I had two choices. Fall into the trap of fear or come to meet Pan in his world and understand his message. The Pan-Demic was a call to action in the polarity of a sacred pause. Pan was asking us to look at our world and reimagine another way. At that moment I knew Pan was misunderstood. He didn’t want to scare us; he wanted us to wake up.
The truth is, we all meet a Threshold Guardian at some point. Fear and panic manifest in many ways—inner critics, limiting beliefs, ancestral wounds, cultural conditioning and collective panic.
Pan wears many guises.
Yet Pan’s presence is not a warning to turn back.
It is an invitation to go deeper.
It is a call to Wake Up
Pan invites us to face our fears
Those who do not run will find that Pan is not a monster, he never was. He is the keeper of initiation, the wild force of nature that reminds us of our forgotten rites of passage.
He does not demand retreat.
He asks us to breathe—to move through the panic, and step forward anyway.
He reminds us that we are the guardians of our own threshold.
Have you ever encountered Pan? A moment where fear nearly stopped you, but you chose to move forward? What did you learn from facing your fears?
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