He’s the wolf screaming lonely in the night;
He’s the blood stain on the stage.
He’s the tear in your eye being tempted by his lies,
He’s the knife in your back; he’s rage!
You want to experience the Horned God right now? Go and grab a copy of Mötley Crüe’s Shout at the Devil and put it on the record player. Turn it up. Listen to it. Feel it. Get into it. There he is—lurking under the surface of the music, ready to burst out at any minute with a raging hard-on and an urge to do violence. This is the music your parents were afraid you would listen to, and for good reason. This is Pan’s music, and Pan is everything they were afraid of.
Rock music has a long tradition of flirting with the Devil, but with a few notable exceptions, these musicians don’t worship the actual Devil of Christianity. The Devil of rock and roll is not really anything like the Satan found in the Bible or in modern Christian theology. Some Christians might be bothered both by the content and the imagery of rock and metal, but not actually because they accurately represent the Christian Satan in a theological sense. The Christian Satan is a fallen angel who is miserable because he is separated from God, and as a result, he wants to make humanity as miserable as he is by tempting them to sin against God and thereby separate themselves as he is separated. That same motivation is often ascribed to the Devil of rock and roll, but it is falsely ascribed. It is a reaction, a fear-motivated impulse that rock and roll deliberately provokes because it pushes people’s boundaries and forces them to confront everything that rock and roll and its Devil stand for. But under the surface, it has nothing to do with Christianity’s Satan.
The Devil of rock and roll is a different Devil: he is instead the Devil of the occultists, the magicians, and the romantic poets. And whether the Christian Devil was in fact deliberately distorted in the Middle Ages to look and act like a pagan horned god or whether that idea is a modern conceit, the romantic occult Devil, who came much later, was most definitely and intentionally modeled on the pagan Horned God. This intoxicating devil inspired the poets and magicians who inspired the musicians of the twentieth century. It’s no accident that the first real heavy metal album, Black Sabbath’s self-titled record, is completely and totally immersed in the imagery of Satan. This Devil was a god of libido, of power, of freedom, a god of fear and lust, a god of the revel, of nature, of the night, a god of secrets and rage, a god who stands as a guardian of or even a living embodiment of the inexhaustible wellspring of the universe’s raw, primal, and sublime essence. His worship ran counter to the Church and its theology, but not because he was a part of the Church or its theology. He was a Devil, but he was not Christianity’s Devil: he was in fact Pan. Pan, the horned god of the Greek shepherds, whose music inspired fear and panic and sexual lust, Pan the god of the wild places and the lonely, magic, dangerous corners of the earth, the Great God Pan. When the romantics and occultists looked to the gods of the ancient pagans, Pan stood out from all of them because he represented a direct, divine connection to that raw stuff of the universe that the Church of the Middle Ages did its best to monopolize, control, and intermediate. Pan stood out and invited the occultists to come and feel his power directly, through ritual but most importantly through the revel. And heavy metal gives us both, in spades. Heavy metal gives us the real Devil, the Devil that human beings hunger and thirst for.
He’ll be the love in your eyes, he’ll be the blood between your thighs
And then have you cry for more!
He’ll put strength to the test, he’ll put the thrill back in bed,
Sure you’ve heard it all before.
He’ll be the risk in the kiss, might be anger on your lips,
Might run scared for the door…
People fear Pan because Pan cannot be controlled. Pan is wild; Pan is free. Pan is unpredictable and the unpredictable makes us uncomfortable. It doesn’t fit in our neat categories; it doesn’t follow our made-up rules.
By invoking his imagery and creating music that is a perfect channel for his divinity, heavy metal has served him and worshipped him more purely than perhaps any other modern human endeavor. Heavy metal stands as a dangerous and powerful testament that despite Plutarch’s report and the wishful thinking of Milton and Browning, Pan is not dead at all. Like nature itself, and like his sometime father Dionysus, Pan can never die. Pan returns and demands that we deal with him. Pan has a hold on all of us, whether we like it or not: we are all dark and dangerous, we all have the urge to create and destroy, we are all animals playing at being human. And when we hear a song like “Shout At The Devil” we can’t help but feel who we really are.
But in the seasons of wither we’ll stand and deliver—
Be strong and laugh and
Shout! Shout! Shout!
Shout at the Devil!
Feel the swagger, the sexuality, the aggression in the music. Feel it in your body, as your body answers. That is Pan. Pan’s music is rough and savage, but no less powerful and intricate than Apollo’s hymns. Apollo calms us, but Pan arouses us. Pan shows us a side of humanity that is frightening but real, and even essential. It’s not evil—it’s who we are. Modern pagans shy away from talking about the Devil because they are afraid of being misunderstood or maligned. And maybe that’s fair, but I think it’s a mistake. Pan is the Devil, and that’s a good thing. He is the Devil in the best way possible, and I say embrace that. Put the record on. Turn it up. Throw up his sign. You know how it’s done.
Listen to it! Listen, and shout at the Devil!
(Article originally published in Hoofprints in the Wildwood: A Devotional Anthology for the Horned Lord; song lyrics from Mötley Crüe’s song, “Shout at the Devil” written by Nikki Sixx)
Sailing to Byzantium 
\m/
If rock stars are priests of Pan, this could help explain the behavior of groupies.
Shout at the Devil is a great fucking album all the way through.
I love the Devil and have experienced him myself as well. Yet, and here I ask that you forgive me, but I am not sure your “Christian Devil” and “Christianity’s Devil” are so very accurate… it seems a bit of a generalization, does it not? It would be like saying, “Paganism’s Moon Goddess”… not all Pagans believe in the same Moon Goddess, and sometimes it is a God. Many Christians believe literally in a fairy tale that exploded after Milton and that is caricatured excellently by South Park, but every Christian that I hang out with would not only not believe the Bible to be literally true, much less Milton, but also would certainly not think that Devil to be true either. At least, not ONLY that Devil, literally so. There is something to be said for poetry, you see. And there is more to Satan than Milton- one must read between the lines and also consider his whole character. To be fair, most of my Christian friends are Catholic “occultists” who do Tarot and invoke/evoke with me. I do not know that my priest is an occultist, but he does not believe in this “Christianity’s Devil” of whom you have spoken here either. So, just know that it is not omnipresent in Christianity. Many of us are completely aware of how intertwined our Abrahamic tradition is with that of Pagan tradition. The Christians you speak of believe in a false thing; the Christians I know would only want to believe what is True. Your Devil does not run counter to “our” theology, only the theology of insane persons who believe that fairy tales and John’s hallucinations are literal and that that’s all there is to the story. I am also of the opinion that the Devil of Metal has quite a lot to do with our Satan.
Perhaps I will explain a little the view of Christians like myself: I do, of course, “believe” in Ha Satan (if one can believe in anyone whom one has experienced and met; believe is a weird word in any case). I have experienced great unity and ecstasy with him. For one example- my priest would say that Satan is in all of us, and that the Devil is the Ego Self. That is an interesting way of looking at it, I think, though it also perhaps does not entirely encompass the Devil. Now, yes, Satan is a Son of God, and we are Sons of God, and I like to think that we are all fallen angels who have experienced separation from God, insofar as we live in the material world of form and, having learned words like “I”, feel somehow separate. (You may disagree on this last sentence if you don’t like Judeo-Christian vocabulary such as angel and God and so forth.) The Ego is that separate “I” self, and the Ego does feed on that separation and encourages it by encouraging pain- pain feeds on more pain. This is a natural behavior in the Ego, however, this is the untamed Ego ONLY. The Ego is also a useful tool. When mastered, it serves us far better. The direction in which the Devil’s pentagram points may mean whatever you want it to mean. The Devil’s energy permeates us all, and we may do with it what we will, for we have free will. We may use the Ego Self for good or for ill. When used for good, the Ego can do all those things you say are in the realm of Pan. I say it is the realm of both, but, that’s me.
So, I guess I’m saying that the Devil is not entirely benevolent, nor would I make the mistake of thinking him to be entirely malignant as would an ex of mine, who remains convinced that Satan only performs evil. But that is only the untamed ego. It’s like a hammer- you can use it productively or bash someone’s brains in with it. The Devil is both, and he is varied… he works with us however we would have him do so. As for metal… I think it is inspired by the part of the Devil which caused separation and pain… the Devil who dragged us into the extremes of the material, separated world with his chains a la his Tarot card… but metal is a most holy art. Metal unites us once more with God. You are right in that it does not worship the separation… not any more than, say, acknowledging that necessary dissonance has been for the greater good now that we have conquered our egos and become better persons for the pain and life we have experienced =) The metal I enjoy features artists who have been through Hell with the dark side of Satan and have been transformed into the better, so that they might enjoy life with him. So I agree that metal celebrates Pan, and life, but I do not think Pan that much different from Satan. (But I suppose that is a matter of opinionated syncretism; if you feel these two names must be separate then that’s your deal.) I think they are both all parts of the Devil and that all parts of the Devil are necessary to create metal. In metal we triumph and celebrate the Devil, once our enemy, now our friend. Hail Satan, my horned friend and brother (but not my evil master). And as for you, enjoy your metal =)
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