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In Greek mythology, Pan is a god of pastures and wild nature. His half-man, half-goat form reflects his deep nature and his role as protector of shepherds and their flocks. He's often pictured flute in hand, sitting among rocks and trees, like some nonchalant lord over the land of beasts and peasants.

His name carries two stories at once. It first comes from the Greek paein, meaning "to pasture": Pan is, above all, a simple shepherd god. But very early on, the Greeks themselves reinterpreted the name as coming from pan, "the All": myth has it that he delighted all the gods of Olympus at his birth, at once a modest, pastoral god and a cosmic figure, standing for earth and sky, the All. Since antiquity, these two faces of Pan have travelled through time side by side.

It's also from him that we get the word "panic": his mere presence, or his cry, was enough to send shepherds and lost travellers fleeing through the woods. The nymph Syrinx knew that same fright. Chased by Pan, she chose to turn into a reed rather than be caught. It was from that reed that Pan fashioned his instrument, naming it in her memory: the syrinx, the famous pan pipe.

Since the end of antiquity, Pan has withdrawn into an underground world, beneath Mount Pelion in Greece. Far from human affairs, he carries on living, drinking and singing with his retinue of satyrs, as though time and the changing world held no power over him.

In our own time, he's become the head of a "joyful cult," as the media dubbed his new community. With real enthusiasm, he's gathered followers steeped in ancient philosophy, simple pleasures and new age practices.

While the Horned God wallows, Pan dances and plays his music. Irreducibly alive, he keeps enjoying the world as it is, and making the most of whatever it brings.

Pan and the Horned God share an old kinship. Both are horned deities of wild nature, whom humans eventually confused with one another, then with the devil, over the centuries. In "Chronicles of the Forgotten God," that kinship becomes literal: Pan and the Horned God are both fragments of one primordial divine essence, a reflection of the sacred masculine and raw force. Just like Aria, Pan will push his old friend to carry on his quest rather than retreat into wine and oblivion.

Aria belongs to the family of sylphs, elemental spirits first theorised in the sixteenth century by the physician and philosopher Paracelsus, drawing on Gaulish, Germanic and even Arabic folklore. In this view, each element has its own symbolic creature: gnomes for earth, undines for water, salamanders for fire, and sylphs for air. Sylphs, diaphanous and drifting, are said to be everywhere around us, yet forever out of reach.

Her name alone tells you who she is. In Latin as in Italian, aria means both air and melody: a breath and a song at once. Which may explain her character: a free thinker, elusive as the wind, gentle as a cooling breeze, but every bit as fierce as a storm when crossed.

Don't be fooled by her infectious laugh or her impish little face: an angry sylph can summon storms, even bring a tornado down on your house.

Lively, mischievous, stubborn to the point of exasperation: Aria has never accepted that the Horned God should simply resign himself to fading away. She's the one who comes to shake him awake, quite literally (a single breath is enough for her to knock people off their feet), pushing him to set out in search of himself. God or not, he's the one who ends up giving in: he knows perfectly well she'll never let it go.

But her role goes far beyond that of a simple companion. Aria is also the fragile bridge between the forgotten gods and humankind: she watches their world, tries to make contact, and takes it upon herself to remind the old divinities how “mere mortals” live and get by down here. Her curiosity about the human world shows just how much she loves them, despite their ignorance of the invisible folk... And when she draws close to make contact, more than a few of us may well have mistaken her for a ghost ;)