Why Does Celtic Shamanism Ignore the Horned God, Yet He Is Mentioned in Druidry.

The Horned God, Misunderstood and Ignored

In writing this piece, I do so from an intuitive spiritual point of view. I am not intending to infer any scientific archaeological explanations.

Celtic Shamanism is a Middle-Class, largely white practice New-Age tub thumping cult which involves minimal contact with nature and overdosing on hopium in the belief that climate change is transcendable by switching timelines, energy work and directed intention. In other words, psychotic magical thinking dressed up as radical feminism because of Boudica, QUEEN Boudica no less. Just because Boudica led a rebellion against Rome, it doesn't make her revolutionary. There is nothing radical about rebellions against colonisation led by the bourgeoisie.

The antlered god of ancient Celtic tradition has no Roman equivalent. Yet here is a conceptual deity which appears only in Celtic iconography, relaxed in nature, Torc in one hand (symbol of power & wealth) and grasped in the other a curly horned goat-headed serpent. Cernunos may be his name, but what he represents is far more complex, for he is depicted among opposites: Predator and prey; fighting males; humans and nature, and yet he is a horned (antlered) human. This perhaps is the most powerful symbol, part man (hunter), part nature (hunted): This is primarily a male initiation deity inviting the observed to become immersed in nature. 

Public Domain

Cernunnos, depicted on the Gundestrup cauldron c. 200 B.C.E. to 300 C.E.

From a contemplative perspective, the horned god appears not so much for appeasement and worship but to be emulated. Part man, part wild, grasping the symbol of life and death (goat-headed serpent), does he represent the transitions between life, death and regeneration? The torc is a symbol of wealth, magical power and divine protection. Is the horned god's wealth his connection to nature? Does the torc represent spiritual power while the purse open on his belt represents material wealth? Perhaps this wealth is the knowledge of nature, given generously by the spirit teachers of the wilderness.

Boudica was a mortal, a rebel, but not a deity. New-Age Celtic Shamanism ignores the Horned God because he is too close to nature, he is too raw and powerful, too complicated, requiring contemplation in his domain, which is nature. Whatever he is named, he is both nature and male, human and horned. He is between states of life and death. He has been humbled by nature. This is the difference between Shamanic Practitioners and those people who spend long periods in nature. Boudica is easily accessible, but she is only mortal. The antlered deity is like the mystery of the dodecahedron; it is not Roman, and nothing is written about it by the Romans. It is a mystery.

What was so dangerous about the Antlered Man-God deity that the Romans didn't even acknowledge his existence, wrote nothing about him, and yet he is depicted on expensive "ritual" artefacts and a pillar of the boatmen under Notre Dame Cathedral? But what do these motifs mean?

The Wild Hunt

The wild hunt, a common motif across Medieval Europe. A belief existed in folklore that a group of spectral riders went forth at night on the hunt. The Wild Hunt was believed to be a portent of catastrophe and could bring death to those unlucky enough to witness it.

“Many men both saw and heard a great number of huntsmen hunting. The huntsmen were black, huge, and hideous, and rode on black horses and on black he-goats, and their hounds were jet black, with eyes like saucers.”

Anglo-Saxon Chronicles [Laud], 1127

The wild hunt was something people feared, from the realms of the Faerie and other spectral magical beings. The wild hunt was believed not to be hunting prey, but rather a brawl between spectral entities and mortals caught up in it rarely survived these encounters.

The Wild Hunt in Britain began to absorb Christian values with hell hounds and black dogs hunting down sinners and the unbaptised.

It is likely that superstition about the night and darkness, violent storms, thunder and lightning and other natural phenomena contributed to the belief that spectral entities were brawling abroad. Violent storms are dangerous, and so being safe indoors was far better than being caught in the violence of the weather. The wild hunt, however, seems more like a distraction from what Cernunnos represents. 

I am troubled by the assumptions around Cernounosn. We are told he is passively seated among the animals, yet he could also be dancing? 

Passively seated eated or animately dancing in harmony with nature?

The deity is surrounded by animals, animate, even the serpent grasped in his hand is animated with a coil in the tail.

Ganesh dancing, look at the leg and foot positions

 Shiva Dancing, again, look at the leg positions

However, more interesting than whether he is dancing or not is this 4,000-year-old seal depicting the Pashupati described in the Veda as the guardian of cattle. These animals have been domesticated, while the Pashupati seal from Harappa depicts a man or woman surrounded by wild animals, including a tiger and a rhino.

This image is remarkably similar to the Gundestrup cauldron image of the horned god seated among the animals. A similar image of the Buddha seated in the wilderness, under the bow tree. But the horns do not look like that of the cow or deer. The Water Buffalo however is native to South Asia, and semi wild. While these powerful animals are domesticateable, they like the Hippopotamus are as comfortable on land as they are in water, they are powerful symbols of the wilderness and much like the deer in Europe held that majesty it seems fitting that there is a Vedic deity for the wilderness. 

Assumptions of Primitiveness and Isolation In Pre Metals & Writing Cultures and What That Means For Today

The Sone-Age, is a series of assumptions, based on little evidence. Nomadic, ragged, unwashed, roamers, subsisting one whatever was avialable. Wandering from place to place, etc, etc.

Lets for a moment view Europe, Africa & Aisa as one continuous unnamed continent visible and accessible by boat and beast of burden. With a constantly changinging coastline as the sea levels fluctuated across a million years.

The 1st assumption is isolation Which doesn't explain how obsidian tools are found in the Middle East, or among English prehistoric remains. In fact the entire descriptive language of the pre- metal, pre-writing world is dissmissive and weighted with assumption, prejudice and Victorian superiority values which served the interests of colonialism and plunder.

Isolation is a myth: trade using rivers and pack animals like domesticated Yaks, goats, camels and other demesticateable wild animals. We need to lose the linearity assumption about history, especially if we are to understand how compex pre metals societies lived, and apreciate what we might learn about our selves and our capacity to find closeness with nature, each other and the land.

The assumption that the horned deity on the Gundestrup cauldron is sitting is not based on anything written. It is another assumption. The Celts were a stratified culture, they wrote nothing down, but they had a complex culture and were trading and working metal for money. They too had arrived from Europe during the Bronze Age collapse.

Almost everything we know about them is based on the writing of the conquerors and the assumptions of early "archeologists" and antiquarians who connected Stonehenge with the Celts and blood rites.

"There will be no post collaspe plucky humans". With attitudes and assumptions like that no, most people wont see that we are already living through collapse. Most people cant see that we are already in a climate driven food crisis. Most people aren't able to afford a smallholding or horses, let alone land to grow their own food.

When the food crisis really bites they will denude nature of all edible plants and some people will make fatal mistakes. The woods will be full of dead people like the Vance familly. 

An Invitation To Know Nature

The horned god is an invitation to sit and dance with nature, but the dance is not that of lutes, whistles and drums; it is that of knowledge and the wisdom of wilderness. Not an invitation to be some kind of plucky survivor or dystopian survivalist: To know nature is to know oneself and the limitations of humans. Nature humbles us in ways only the skilled outdoor practitioner can know. If your closest encounter with nature is to only passively sit under trees or to lie in a hole in the ground, then the horned god is not for you, and dismissing survival skills is a mistake you only make once in a crisis.

A true shamanic practioner knows nature intimately and would embrace the skills to be there. 

The dance of the horned deity on the Gundestrup cauldron is the expression of divine ecstasy in nature, "come and join the dance."