Pan & Labyrinth - meaning

Pan (mythology)

Pan (Greek Πάν, genitive Πανός) is the Greek god of nature who watches over shepherds and their flocks: paein means to pasture. He has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same manner as a faun or satyr.

Origins
The parentage of Pan is unclear; in some myths he is the son of Zeus, though generally he is the son of Hermes, with whom his mother is said to be a nymph, sometimes Dryope or, in Nonnus, Dioysiaca (14.92), a Penelope of Mantineia in Arcadia.[1] His nature and name are alluring, particularly since often his name is mistakenly thought to be identical to the Greek word pan, meaning "all", when in fact the name of the god is derived from the word pa-on, which means "herdsman" and shares its prefix with the modern English word "pasture". In many ways he seems to be identical to Protogonus/Phanes.
Probably the beginning of the linguistic misunderstanding is the Homeric Hymn to Pan, which describes him as delighting all the gods, and thus getting his name. The Roman counterpart to Pan is Faunus, another version of his name, which is at least Indo-European. But accounts of Pan's genealogy are so varied that it must lie buried deep in mythic time. Like other nature spirits, Pan appears to be older than the Olympians, if it's true that he gave Artemis her hunting dogs and taught the secret of prophecy to Apollo. Pan might be multiplied as the Panes (Burkert 1985, III.3.2; Ruck and Staples 1994 p 132[2]) or the Paniskoi. Kerenyi (1951 p 174) notes from scholia that Aeschylus in Rhesus distinguished between two Pans, one the son of Zeus and twin of Arkas, and one a son of Cronos. "In the retinue of Dionysos, or in depictions of wild landscapes, there appeared not only a great Pan, but also little Pans, Paniskoi, who played the same part as the Satyrs".

Labyrinth
In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth (Gk. λαβύρινθος labyrinthos) was an elaborate structure constructed for King Minos of Crete and designed by the legendary artificer Daedalus to hold the Minotaur, a creature that was half man and half bull and which was eventually killed by the Athenian hero Theseus. Daedalus had made the Labyrinth so cunningly that he himself could barely escape it after he built it.[1] Theseus was aided by Ariadne, who provided him with a fateful thread to wind his way back again.
The term labyrinth is often used interchangeably with maze, but modern scholars of the subject use a stricter definition. For them, a maze is a tour puzzle in the form of a complex branching passage, with choices of path and direction, while a single-path ("unicursal") labyrinth has only a single, Eulerian path to the centre. A labyrinth has an unambiguous through-route to the centre and back and is not designed to be difficult to navigate.
This unicursal design was wide-spread in artistic depictions of the Minotaur's Labyrinth, even though both logic and literary descriptions of it make it clear that the Minotaur was trapped in a multicursal maze.[2]
A labyrinth anyway can be represented both symbolically and/or physically. Symbolically it is represented in art or designs, on pottery, as body art, etched on walls of caves, etc. Physical representations are common throughout the world, and are generally constructed on the ground so they may be walked along, from entry point to center and back again. They have historically been used in both group ritual and for private meditation.

Medieval labyrinth

Classical labyrinth

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