The Mythology Of Pan

When I look up the traits of my star sign, this is the first thing that comes up:

“The 5 Top Reasons to Love Being a Capricorn

1. Your bank account balance is enviable. You do not get overly tempted by purchases and have a gift for investing and saving.

2. Your mind is like a steel trap. You never forget anything or anyone and can recall conversations from years ago.

3. Your home looks like it belongs on HGTV. Whether it’s a rental or you own it, you have an exacting eye for design, and know the exact touches to make anywhere—even a hotel room—seem like a home.

4. You never lose anything, and always have the important files, passwords, and papers close at hand. Your organization saves your time and sanity.

5. You are polished. You never don’t know what to say and seem to avoid awkward situations as you are an expert at small talk, and also really good at knowing exactly what to say to make other people feel good.”

I sat back in my chair and laughed at this, for you see:

1. My current bank account balance is $43.22. My last few purchases being fast food, an axe that was on sale (how could I pass that up), and a contribution to a Norwegian start up company that makes socks that function as a hiking shoe. My investments and savings being an abysmal zero.

2. I was recently diagnosed with severe ADHD. Which makes sense, seeing as there is a Christmas gift that has been sitting on my shelf since early December that I keep meaning to give to one of my friends. I see this friend multiple times a week. Once in the parking lot before work…at the job I quit a few months ago (my muscle memory is apparently much better than my actual memory).

3. I live in a van and it certainly wouldn’t qualify as one of those chic, Pinterest project vans you see all over Instagram. Although, despite that, it does feel very homey to me so perhaps, in that sense, it does apply.

4. I use one password for everything and for some reason still struggle with it. Is it a capital? Is there a number? Was it this site that needed an exclamation point at the end? No idea. I also lost a canoe once. Paddled it out to an island, went exploring and the canoe must have floated off because I did not see it, or even recall that I had brought it. I swam the whole way back without a second thought.

5. “Polished,” has never been a word I have heard used to describe me. “Scruffy,” sure. “Gruff, swarthy, blunt,” but polished? Polished would not even be within the realm of possibilities. I am never at a loss for words, that much is true, and I do sincerely try to make people feel good when I speak to them. I once reassured a dear female friend of mine not to worry because she was, “like a man to me,” and therefore, I would never develop an attraction to her. I do not think she is man-ish at all, I was simply trying to be encouraging. It has been fifteen years and she will still remind me of this incident (which I had forgotten about, pretty much instantly).

So, you could say, I had all but written off this whole star-sign credibility thing, but then I read this:

“Smart, hardworking, and fully in control of their destiny, Capricorn signs will always get what they set their mind to.”

Now realistically, this can be true to anybody. Everyone is smart in their own ways and works for the things they care about. It did remind me however, that twelve years ago, I was fresh out of high school. No math, one science class and no idea what I wanted out of life. But after recklessly challenging exams and impulse buying books to classes I had never taken, I am now a med student.

I also looked at the representatives of Capricorn – the goatfish or in Greek mythology, the god Pan. Some quick contexts about Pan, he is the god of nature, and is a shepherd by trade. (I once spent an entire summer tracking down a school in the Andalusian mountains of Spain that trained shepherds; despite not speaking Spanish). He is also notoriously a rather horny individual (both literally and figuratively) and was said to spend his time chasing forest nymphs who would flee from him, due to his appearance. This resonated with me and put quite the smile on my face, for you see from the waist down Pan is a goat and from the waist up, Pan is a man. And I happen to be a trans-man. Even the goatfish has some strong implications to my own unique physiology. Goats, the mountain dwellers. Thriving in an environment of almost pure air and rock and sun. Living at altitudes so high, that they do not sustain much else. Fish, the creatures of the deep. Swimming through their dark, aquatic world at depths we can only dream of. Seems ludacris to combine these two animals into one. And yet there it stands, the embodiment of stubbornness and determination. The two qualities that allowed me to defy biology in order to, “fully control my destiny.”

I never did resonate with my Capricorn depictions. The surface level horoscopes seemed to describe the astounding opposite of who I am. But much like myself, if you dig a little deeper into what a Capricorn is, you will come across an unlikely combination of fantastical traits.