Cernunnos-The Horned God

Cernunnos-The Horned God

Cernunnos was worshipped by the iron age Celts all across Europe as late as the first century AD, and his worship must have begun centuries before that.

The Celts had no written language of their own, and although their druids could write in Latin and Greek they were forbidden to write down any of their knowledge. The classical writers themselves never mentioned this particular Celtic divinity, and so we have nothing in writing about him at all. Everything we know about him can only be guessed at from the iconography: the images of him created by the Celts themselves.

The Celts made numerous models, or icons, of their various gods, and there are over 60 depicting Cernunnos, from all over Europe. We only know his name because it is carved on a single one of these, made by sailors from the Gallic Parisii tribe (from whom Paris got its name) in the first century AD, by which time Gaul (modern France) had become a Roman province. The earliest image of him that has been found was carved on rock in Northern Italy in the 4th century BC. We do not know how widespread the use of this exact name was: it is possible that this was the name for this antlered god to no-one but the Parisii themselves, but the structure of the name suggests otherwise.

Cornu in modern French means "horned, because modern French has grown from the Latin language imposed upon them by the Romans. The Latin for horn is also cornu. The Romans had a habit of changing local names to fit the Roman pattern: most Roman names end in us. So Cernunnos is a Roman name meaning Horned One. It was probably the new Romanised name given by the Gauls to all their very old horned gods, in which case its use may have been widespread through out Gaul after it became a Roman province.

The images of him are unusually consistent. His main attribute are his horns, those of a stag. He is usually portrayed as a mature man with long hair and a beard. He wears a torc: this was an ornate neck-ring worn by the Celts to denote nobility. He often carries other torcs in his hands or hanging from his horns.

He is usually portrayed seated and cross-legged, in the meditative or shamanic position.

Cernunnos is nearly always portrayed with animals, in particular the stag. He is also frequently associated with a unique beast that seems to belong only to him: a serpent with the horns of a ram. Less often he is associated with other beasts, including bulls, dogs and rats.

The ram-horned serpent is particularly interesting. The serpent occurs in myths all across the world, and is nearly always associated with knowledge. Usually these associations are purely pagan, but remember that it was a serpent that tempted Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge. It is also commonly associated with death and the otherworld, and is hence described as cthonic. Cernunnos carries it in his left hand, and in his right he carries a torc, the Celtic symbol of nobility, the symbol of having been initiated into that special state.

Was Cernunnos the Celtic god of initiation ?

The Song of Amergin
I am a stag of seven tines,
I am a wide flood on a plain,
I am a wind on the deep waters,
I am a shining tear of the sun,
I am a hawk on a cliff,
I am fair among flowers,
I am a god who sets the head afire with smoke.
I am a battle waging spear,
I am a salmon in the pool,
I am a hill of poetry,
I am a ruthless boar,
I am a threatening noise of the sea,
I am a wave of the sea,
Who but I knows the secrets of the unhewn dolmen ?

Origin obscure but certainly Celtic

Because of his frequent association with beasts he is often referred to as The Lord of the Animals. Because of his association with stags in particular (a particularly hunted beast) he is also known as The Lord of the Hunt.

The Stag Lord, The Horned God of the Hunt, The Lord of the Forest...of all the Celtic divinities (with the exception of Danu) none has caught the imagination of modern pagans so much as Old Horny himself

The most detailed, clear and famous of all images of Cernunnos comes from a unique and marvellous piece of Celtic work: The Gundestrup Cauldron.

Cauldrons had magical significance for the Celts, and this is the most ornate ever found. It was beaten out of 10 kg of silver, probably in the second century BC, constructed from 13 heavily decorated rectangular panels and a plain bowl containing a 14th circular one (possibly a late addition). The entire assembly is 70 cm in diameter.

Sometime around the birth of Christ it was taken to pieces and apparently just left on the ground in a bog near what is now the hamlet of Gundestrup in Northern Jutland, where it gradually became overgrown and covered with peat. It remained there until its discovery by peat cutters in 1891.

The eight external panels (of which one is missing) each feature what appears to be the single face of a different god or goddess, surrounded by much smaller humanoids or beasts. The five interior panels each depict many characters, men, women, gods and beasts, in what may be a story.

One of these panels depicts Cernunnos.

He is seated cross-legged. He has antlers with seven tines (or points per horn), and is, unusually, depicted clean-shaven. He wears a torque and carries a second one in his right hand. He wears a tunic and bracae (Celtic trousers) which cover him from the wrist to above the knee, and a patterned belt. He wears sandals on his feet. His hair appears to be brushed straight back.

In his left hand he holds the ram-horned serpent. This serpent also appears on another two of the five interior panels.

Surrounding him are many beasts. The nearest, on the left, almost touching horns with him, is a stag, itself of seven tines, indicating his special affinity with this beast. Close to him on the right is a dog. There are also two horned animals that may be ibexes, three long-tailed animals that could be lions, and a boy on a fish. The space between the beasts is decorated with a simple pattern of vegetation.

The five internal panels are complex, and feature many characters who may be gods, goddesses or heroes. All of these characters seem to appear also on one of the eight external panels, with the exception of Cernunnos, who clearly does not. Did his image appear on the lost eighth external panel ?

"The Gods of the Celts" by Miranda Green (Alan Sutton Publishing ISBN 0-86299-292-3)

"Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend" by Miranda Green (Thames and Hudson, ISBN 0-500-01516-3)

"Animals in Celtic Life and Myth" by Miranda Green (Routledge, ISBN 0-415-05030-8

"The Horned God" by John Rowan (Routledge and Kegan Paul).

Current Moon

CURRENT MOON

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Aspects of The Gods

Aspects of The Gods

A God is a Divine male being of supernatural powers or attributes, believed in and worshiped by people and is often believed to be the source of life and being and worshiped as the principal deity in various religions.

The following essays discuss in more detail some of the aspects and the divine nature of the Gods. This is not a complete list, but covers some of the more well known, and some not so widely known Gods from civilisations around the world.

Thoth - Lord of the Holy Words.

Thoth - Lord of the Holy Words.

Thoth [E=Tahuti]

The most popular and enduring of all the gods, Thoth has been responsible for keeping Egyptian magic in the forefront of learning since the collapse of the empire. Although in the later Dynastic period he was merely labelled the 'scribe of the gods'.

The magician's magician since he is endowed with complete knowledge and wisdom. He invented all the arts and sciences, astronomy, soothsaying, magic, medicine, surgery and most important of all - writing. As inventor of hieroglyphs, he was titled 'Lord of the Holy Words'; he was the first of magicians and compiled books of magic which contained 'formulas which commanded all the forces of nature and subdued the very gods themselves'. He appears to be long-suffering and is usually called upon to sort out the chaos created by the rest of the pantheon.

It was this power that earned him the name Tahuti - three times very, very great - which the Greeks translated as Hermes Trismegistus. He is identified as a lunar deity [E=Aah-tehuti] and his sacred animals are the ibis and the baboon. His chief festival was celebrated on the 'nineteenth of the month of Thoth', a few days after the full moon at the beginning of the Egyptian New Year. He was later identified with Mercury but should never be under-estimated, especially his role within the Primitive Path. He is associated with Hod on the Tree of Life and The Magus in the Tarot, his colour being amethyst the symbol of mystical power.

Day 19 of Dhwty in the season of Aket (Inundation)
(6th August, depending on how calendar is calculated)

Feast of Thoth.
A happy day in heaven in front of Re, the Great Ennead is in great festivity. Burn incense on the fire. It is the day of receiving. It is the day of going forth of Thoth.

Prayer or divinatory time: dawn.

Prayer or Invocation

Such was all-knowing Tahuti [Thoth], who saw all things,
and seeing understood,
and understanding has the power to disclose
and to give explanation.
For what he knew, he graved on stone;
Yet though he graved them onto stone he hid them mostly...
The sacred symbols of the cosmic elements
he hid away hard by the secrets of Osms
... keeping sure silence,
that every younger age of cosmic time might seek for them.

(Kore Kosmu -G SR Meade translation]

I have just been reading The Wisdom of Ancient Egypt by Joseph Kaster (originally published in 1968), anyway the chapter I was making some notes on concerned the Pyramid Texts and the story of Osiris (I should add that it was a compilation of spells or groups of spells rearranged to tell the story). There was a section that dealt with the assigning of Osiris in his place in the genealogy of the Gods, and Thoth was listed as one of the brothers of Osiris. In a footnote it said that it was one of the few references to Thoth as a brother of Osiris and an accomplice of Set.

[Thoth aids Set against Osiris]
Behold what Set and Thoth have done, your two brothers, who knew not how to weep for you!
Set, this your brother is this one here, Osiris, who is made to endure and to live, that he may punish you!

Thoth, this your brother is this one here, Osiris, who is made to endure and to live, that he may punish you!

Goddesses linked with Thoth

There are several Goddesses linked with Thoth, most notably Isis, with the help of Thoth she is able to resurrect Osiris long enough for her to oncieve Horus (the Yonger). Later when she is hiding in the Delta papyrus swamps, one of the seven scorpion helpers of Isis, either through malice or clumsiness stings Horus, in her grief she causes the sky barque of the sun god to stop, and refuses to let it go again until her son is cured. Once again Thoth comes to the rescue. It was Thoth who brought Tefnut, who left Egypt for Nubia in a sulk after an argument with her father, back to heaven to be reuinted with Ra.

There is also Seshat (Sashet, Sesheta), meaning 'female scribe', was seen as the goddess of writing, historical records, accounting and mathematics, measurement and architecture to the ancient Egyptians. She was depicted as a woman wearing a panther-skin dress (the garb of the funerary stm priests) and a headdress that was also her hieroglyph, which may represent either a stylized flower or seven pointed star on a standard that is beneath a set of down-turned horns. (The horns may have originally been a crescent, linking Seshat to the moon and hence to her spouse, the moon god of writing and knowledge, Thoth.)

He was associated by the Egyptians with speech, literature, arts, learning. He, too, was a measurer and recorder of time, as was Seshat. Believed to be the author of the spells in the Book of the Dead, he was a helper (and punisher) of the deceased as they try to enter the underworld. In this role, his wife was Ma'at, the personification of order, who was weighed against the heart of the dead to see if they followed ma'at during their life.

He could also be equated as the Logos (Word) of God in similiar role that Jesus would later come to represent. He is also associated with magic and Heka, the magical powers of Thoth were so great, that the Egyptians had tales of a 'Book of Thoth', which would allow a person who read the sacred book to become the most powerful magician in the world. The Book which "the god of wisdom wrote with his own hand" was, though, a deadly book that brought nothing but pain and tragedy to those that read it, despite finding out about the "secrets of the gods themselves" and "all that is hidden in the stars". The book of Thoth is supposed to be hidden in the Hall of Records which Edgar Cayce thought was beneath the Sphinx.

Thoth as Creator

Thoth's centre of worshiped was at Khmunu (Hermopolis) in Upper Egypt, where he was the creator god, in Ibis form, who laid the World Egg. The sound of his song was thought to have created four frog gods and snake goddesses who continued Thoth's song, helping the sun journey across the sky.

Titles of Thoth

He was the 'One who Made Calculations Concerning the Heavens, the Stars and the Earth', the 'Reckoner of Times and of Seasons', the one who 'Measured out the Heavens and Planned the Earth'. He was 'He who Balances', the 'God of the Equilibrium' and 'Master of the Balance'. 'The Lord of the Divine Body', 'Scribe of the Company of the Gods', the 'Voice of Ra', the 'Author of Every Work on Every Branch of Knowledge, Both Human and Divine', he who understood 'all that is hidden under the heavenly vault'. Thoth was not just a scribe and friend to the gods, but central to order - ma'at - both in Egypt and in the Duat. He was 'He who Reckons the Heavens, the Counter of the Stars and the Measurer of the Earth'.
http://www.thewhitegoddess.co.uk/the_gods/thoth_-_lord_of_the_holy_words.asp

Anubis - Jackal Headed God of Egypt

Anubis - Jackal Headed God of Egypt

Anubis is the God of Cemeteries and Embalming. Anubis is normally seem as a jackal or dog or in jackal-headed human form. He is normally depicted in black, and the colour is symbolic, it represents the colour of the body after the mummification process. Black is also associated with the fertile Nile silt deposited on the land, called the 'Black Land' and hence rebirth in the afterlife.

The nature of Anubis is probably best revealed through the epithets used:

Khenty-Imentiu - meaning 'Foremost of the Westerners' (the west was were the entrance to the underworld was located) indicating his leadership of those buried in the cemeteries.

Khenty-sek-Netjer - 'presiding over God's pavillion' The gods pavillion was the place were the ritual of embalming took place and the burial chamber. It emphasis is role as of guardian, protecter and guide for the dead.

Tepy-Dju-ef - 'Anubis who is upon is mountain' again another image of Anubis as a protector of cemeteries.

Neb-ta-Djeser - 'Lord of the sacred land' which again refers to the desert where the necropoleis and cemeteries lay. He is sometime also called 'Jackal ruler of the bows' which is another aspect of Anubis as a necropolis guardian.

Imy-ut - 'he who is in the place of embalming' and stresses the role in the mummification process. Anubis was the god the provided the iron for the magical adze used in the 'Opening of the Mouth' ritual.

He can also be found in the Book of the Dead, in the weighing of the heart ceremony and is described as 'he who counts the hearts'. In the Pyramind Texts he is sometimes called 'claimer of hearts' who purpose is to the free the King from restrictions on earth in order for him to join the gods in the sky. Anubis guides the deceased who have passed the tests and whose hearts have been vindicated as honest towards the throne of Osiris.

Invocation/Prayer to Anubis

The earth speaks: The doors of the earth-god are opened for you, the doors of Geb are thrown open for you, you come forth at the voice of Anubis, he makes a spirit of you like Thoth, you judge the gods, you set the bounds to the celestial expanses between the Two Wands in this your spiritualised state which Anubis commanded.

[From The Pyramid Texts: 796-798]

Although Anubis is depicted in the vignettes frequently, he seems to miss out in the actual text of the incantations of the Book of The Dead, and there is not one invocation to him that I've found. Thoth, Hathor, and (unsurprisingly) Osiris feature largely as the objects of praise and dedication, but Anubis seems to be happy with doing a lot of the work and getting precious little mention, other than respectful passages and mentions as introductions to some of the spells It is worth noting that as the Cult of Osiris grew, Osiris was associated with almost every major deity at some point; in the case of Anubis, Osiris, took over roles once played by Anubis. In the Pyramid Texts, Anubis assumes greater roles, as judge and guide to the dead. The cult of Anubis as the god of death and the underworld pre-dates that of Osiris, and he was relegated somewhat as the Cult of Osiris become more popular.

http://www.thewhitegoddess.co.uk/the_gods/anubis_-_jackal_headed_god_of_egypt.asp

Eggnog Recipe (alcoholic)

Alcoholic Eggnog Ingredients

6 eggs
2 extra egg yolks
4 cups whole milk
3/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup plus 2 Tablespoons of sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 cup bourbon
Alcoholic Eggnog Directions

Start by whisking the eggs, egg yolks, sugar, and salt in a large pan until well-blended. Keep on whisking while you slowly pour in the milk until it is completely mixed-in. Next, set the pan on your stove's burner and turn it to the lowest possible setting. Continuously whisk ingredients for 25-30 minutes or until the mixture reaches 160°F and will coat the underside of a spoon.

Next, remove the mixture from heat and strain it into a large-sized bowl, making sure to get out any pieces of cooked egg. Now stir in the bourbon, vanilla, and nutmeg, and transfer your mixture to a covered dish. Refrigerate the mix for at least 4 hours before proceeding.

Finally, when you're ready to serve your eggnog with alcohol, grab the heavy cream and whip it well. Now just fold in the chilled mix, pour, serve and enjoy!

Makes 14 servings.