Quando Pã e as Ninfas convertiam os simples mortais

Abstract

Starting on Plato’s Phaedrus and his references to Muses, Nymphs and to the Great God Pan, we take a look at the numerous nympholepts and panolepts of the Greek culture, strictly connected to the rural landscape. Nymph’s power is attached to specific places like gardens (generally the perfect stage to Aphrodite’s dances and full of erotic fellings from her lover dates), caverns and lands full of trees and flowers. From caverns half-hidden in green and misteriours foliage, to secret places on the highest mountains, Nature itself is usually idyllic and rustic, used as a scenery and as inspiration – the true locus amoenus – wich catapults the soul to a divine trance state. Socrates seems to distinguish the divine possession caused by the Muses or by Pan from de possession by Dionysos. The divine possession caused by the Muses and by Pan is associated with the influence of the space and of the divinities related to it, despite not translating as any kind of madness, instead as a hyper lucidity which grants beauty, art and eloquence sensitivity to the soul.