skyclad-arts

My latest article published in the May edition of H&E Naturist:

the rebirth of Pan

Last fall, when Vancouver was blessed with an Indian Summer, fellow pagan and photographer Gilles Champagne and I went off to an untamed part of Vancouver, British Columbia to photograph the male nude in nature.

Our aim was to show both the strength and vulnerability of the naked male body in harmony with the four Sacred Elements of pagan belief: Air, Earth (represented by sand, stone and trees), Water and Fire (represented by the sun).

We shot the photos at the almost appropriately named Acadia Beach (for a long time Pan was simply a local god of the Arcadians), a well known but little used nudist beach, adjacent to the more famous and heavily populated Wreck Beach.

There were plenty of opportunities for me to drape my naked body over large, smooth rocks and fallen trees, as well as entwine myself around the living trees which at high tide grow right by the edge of the waves.

For most pagans, nudity or going skyclad is a preferable state in which to invoke the deities of nature and many Wiccans also believe that casting off your everyday clothes and opening your body to the elements is a more powerful and effective way of raising the energy needed for their rituals and ceremonies. Ritual nudity may also be used for its symbolic value: spiritual as well as physical nudity before the Goddess and the God symbolize the Wiccan’s honesty and openness. Ritual nudity was practiced in many ancient religions and can be found today in remote areas of the world, so this isn’t a new concept, except to the repressed Christianised Westerners, whose forefathers went out and clothed the naked Pagans and Heathens who worshipped false Gods and Goddesses, thus bringing them civilization as well as disease and death.

We feel that the photographs we have chosen truly represent the combining of the energies of the earth and the nude male.

The most common representation of male earth energy for many pagans is probably Pan, theoriginal Horned God of the Pagans (the horns were the symbols of the life force and animal vitality, for the God represented untamed sexuality that was seen as a sacred, connecting power) yet his image was deliberately perverted by the medieval Church into the image of the Christian Devil.

The spread of Pan’s worship beyond Arcadia was said to have arisen from the Battle of Marathon, before which he appeared before an Athenian runner on his way to Sparta. Pan asked why the Athenians neglected him and promised victory over the Persians if they would worship him. At Marathon the Persians were routed and fled in ‘panic’, so the Athenians built a temple in honour of Pan on the Acropolis, and his worship soon spread to the whole of Greece.

So, in honour of Pan and the next great pagan festival, Beltane, we would like to share these images with you.

Blessed Be