Let's refine a bit further, shall we? My kin feels have been heavy lately, which makes me want to keep exploring this stuff.
Before I do, though, I want to note that it seems like my positive kin feels over the past couple of days stemmed from me recognizing the eromenos theory in the last post. As I said, I usually don't talk about that part, but I felt really good after doing so. That does lend some credence to the theory itself. And it also suggests that at the very least, my relationship with Pan in my past life was a positive one. So that's a plus.
Here's something else that came up on Discord. As I've previously discussed, communication with Pan is difficult. He doesn't seem interested in talking to me. I recognize that gods talk to different people in different ways, and that he probably has a good reason for his choices. How the hell would I know anyway? I can’t even be sure he exists, so I definitely can't know what he's thinking. Maybe that is the problem; maybe I don't have enough faith. But this is more faith than I've ever given anything in my life. I've put a lot of time and energy into learning about and trying to communicate with Pan, which is not usually the case for things that can't be proven.
What I'm saying is, I have about as much faith in Pan as my personality allows; maybe even more. So it would be really nice if he'd talk to me. Faith is one possible reason he wouldn't, as is him simply not being able to, or not existing at all. It could also be that he's jerking me around, making things hard on purpose. I don't know. I just hope that there's more communication soon, whatever that looks like.
Anyway, on to theories. It's probably not the case that all fauns were/are Pan's fauns; there were probably some that had nothing to do with him, even if they did initially come from him. I have to imagine the creation of fauns ties back to Pan, but from there, who knows. Similarly, I doubt all were originally humans. But I do see promise in the idea that Pan had a large group of fauns he created to represent him, and possibly serve him. Some may have been born and recruited, some might have been transformed humans, and some may have been created by Pan himself. I'm not sure. I have to wonder if fauns reproduce at all, and if so, is it with humans?
Regardless, this theory suggests that for the most part, fauns basically function as mortal mini-Pans, representing him in dealing with mortals and just generally being part of his crew. Fauns like to have fun, so a group like that makes sense. There is some support for this idea in the mythology, too; some stories attribute certain things not to Pan himself, but to “Pans,” his sons if I remember correctly. In other words, Pan-like creatures representing the big guy and spreading his ways. It doesn't seem like too big a stretch to believe that these fauns, as they were made by Pan one way or another, had some small shard of Pan in them.
So here's the updated theory of what happened in my past life. I was born as a human, possibly having one parent who was some sort of immortal being. I caught Pan's attention, maybe because of that lineage, and he decided he wanted me to join his crew of faun representatives. He transformed me into a faun, and at least briefly took me on as a student to teach me how to faun; one imagines he may have taught all of them the same way. At the same time though, he also took me on as...the other thing, presumably while I was learning from him. From there, the possibilities split as I described last time.
It's a good best guess, and it does seem to make sense. It is basically the same as the old apprentice theory, except the idea is that there were many fauns out there representing Pan, not just a few. That makes it much easier to swallow. The idea that these fauns may also have been Pan's servants adds in that connection to forced transformations to use somebody.
That's the best guess, which is a step below my working theory, which is as close to sure as I get about these things. The working theory holds that I'm a faun, that I was transformed into one in my past life, and that I was Pan's eromenos and possibly student in that life. The eromenos part wasn't part of the working theory before, and it might not last long. But for now, the feelings from it suggest it belongs here.
That's all for now.