Fauns and Satyrs and the Rites of Spring

Pan is the god most associated with the flocks and the fields and so often with the approach of spring. Pan, as well as fauns and stayrs, are often associated with a natural sexual freedom. Pan is siad to have learned masturbation from his farther, Hermes, and then taught it to the other sheperds. The half-man, half-beast characteristics of these mythological figures include a natural bisexuality as well as a coercive nature. Satyrs and fauns are often depicted in a sexual pursuit or a seduction that includes opposite sex partners, same sex partners, and animals. 

Art by Todd Yeager.

A Faun Teased by Children is a marble sculpture by Italian artists Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his father Pietro Bernini. It was executed in 1616 and 1617, when Gian Lorenzo was not yet twenty years old.

Anybody home? Anybody horny?

Art by Todd Yeager.

A satyr masturbating. Detail of side B of a Greek column krater showing two satyrs and a maenad in a Dionysiac scene in the National Archaeological Museum of Spain.

Marble, Roman copy after an Hellenistic original. Pan's and Daphnis's heads and Daphnis's right arm are restorations. National Museum of Rome, Palazzo Altemps.

The ballet ended with a scene of explicit sexuality and scandalized the Parisian audience. It also created the bisexual Nijinsky's legend as one of the greatest ballet dancers of all time.

Austin Osman Spare (1886 – 1956) was an English artist and occultist. Influenced by symbolism and art nouveau, his art was known for its clear use of line, and its depiction of monstrous and sexual imagery.

Leaving little doubt to the sexuality of fauns and satyrs.

Olympus, a son of Meon, from Mysia. Plutarch attributes to him the composition of several hymns in honor of the gods.

Art by Todd Yeager.

Fauns persist in contemporary times.

See more work by Marwane Pallas here.

Detailed charcoal drawing of Pan, patterned after the Hellenistic Greek Marble statue in the Naples National Archaeological Museum, in Naples, Italy. 

 Charles A. Keller. Century Magazine, c.1910-20. “He stands by a tree looking down at the world. He looks as if he knows he is the last of his kind.”