The Goat Foot God

The Goat Food God.... The Lord of the Hunt... Swift footed, keen eyed... To be approached with laughter and song... God of madness, dreams and healing... Sending armies mad and persuading young women to go on living... Beloved of all the gods, yet never resident on Olympus... Pan presents the modern reader with a series of, if not contradictions, then puzzles. Who was this deity - and who was he thought to be? What were the people who honoured him like, and why did they seek him out? In The Goat Foot God, Diotima takes a scholarly yet idiosyncratic look at Pan, as is only befitting the subject. Using the Homeric Hymn as a base, and moving beyond it, she examines what the ancients knew and thought about Pan. She moves on to the present day and finds no less puzzlement, asking how Pan might fit in with the modern feminist consciousness. There are more questions than answers herein, but that is entirely in keeping with the eponymous subject....

Diotima is the author of many articles, short stories and poems. Her work has been widely read and published, in magazines, online and in collections (The Best of Konton, He Epistole). Her previous books, Refuge: Tales of Myths and Magicks, And Banish with Laughter: Essays of Myths and Magicks and Dancing God: Poetry of Myths and Magicks, have explored topics as diverse as the building of community, the construction of ethics, eclectic belief structures, the history of mythology, to fiction set from the earliest days of the gods through to the present day.