Starting on Plato’s Phaedrus and his references to Muses, Nymphs and to the Great God
Pan, we take a look at the numerous nympholepts and panolepts of the Greek culture, strictly
connected to the rural landscape. Nymph’s power is attached to specific places like gardens
(generally the perfect stage to Aphrodite’s dances and full of erotic fellings from her lover dates),
caverns and lands full of trees and flowers.
From caverns half-hidden in green and misteriours foliage, to secret places on the highest
mountains, Nature itself is usually idyllic and rustic, used as a scenery and as inspiration – the
true locus amoenus – wich catapults the soul to a divine trance state.
Socrates seems to distinguish the divine possession caused by the Muses or by Pan from
de possession by Dionysos. The divine possession caused by the Muses and by Pan is associated
with the influence of the space and of the divinities related to it, despite not translating as any
kind of madness, instead as a hyper lucidity which grants beauty, art and eloquence sensitivity
to the soul.