The Horned God is one of the two primary deities found in Wicca and some related forms of Neopaganism . The term Horned God itself predates Wicca, and is an early 20th-century syncretic term for a horned or antlered anthropomorphic god partly based on historical horned deities .
94-489: The Horned God represents the male part of the religion's duotheistic theological system , the consort of the female Triple goddess of the Moon or other Mother goddess . In common Wiccan belief, he is associated with nature, wilderness, sexuality, hunting, and the life cycle. Whilst depictions of the deity vary, he is always shown with either horns or antlers upon his head, often depicted as being theriocephalic (having
188-494: A " Wild Man " be used as a fantasy image or "sub-personality" helpful to men in humanistic psychology , and escaping from "narrow societal images of masculinity" encompassing excessive deference to women and paraphillia . Many horned deities are known to have been worshipped in various cultures throughout history. Evidence for horned gods appear very early in the human record. The so-called Sorcerer dates from perhaps 13,000 BCE. Twenty-one red deer headdresses , made from
282-542: A "race-memory" of psychic Martian grasshoppers, manifested at the climax of the film by a fiery horned god. The 1956 novel The Golden Strangers by Henry Treece features a "Hornman", a priest of the "Children of the Sun" tribe. The Hornman performs numerous human sacrifices while wearing a hood with stag's horns attached to it. According to historian Marion Gibson, Treece based the Hornman character on Murray's conception of
376-411: A God and a Goddess. Ontological dualism is traditionally a sacred gender polarity between the complementary polar opposites of male and female, who are regarded as divine lovers. This kind of dualism is common to various religions; for example, Taoism , where it is represented through yin and yang . Ontological dualism is distinct from moral dualism in that moral dualism posits a supreme force of good and
470-561: A beast's head), in this way emphasizing "the union of the divine and the animal", the latter of which includes humanity . In traditional Wicca ( British Traditional Wicca ), he is generally regarded as a dualistic god of twofold aspects: bright and dark, night and day, summer and winter, the Oak King and the Holly King . In this dualistic view, his two horns symbolize, in part, his dual nature. (The use of horns to symbolize duality
564-431: A case which was said to have taken place in the open day. The Mendisians, according to this last writer, paid reverence to all goats, and more to the males than to the females, and particularly to one he-goat, on the death of which public mourning is observed throughout the whole Mendesian district; they call both Pan and the goat Mendes, and both were worshipped as gods of generation and fecundity. Diodorus ( i. 88 ) compares
658-513: A collective premonition, also described as a memory of the future, of horned aliens which arrive to usher in a new phase of human evolution. The collective subconscious image of the horned aliens is what accounts for mankind's image of the devil or Satan. This theme is also explored in the Doctor Who story The Dæmons in 1971, where the local superstitions around a landmark known as The Devil's Hump prove to be based on reality, as aliens from
752-521: A combination of the shadow and animus. One such example is Heathcliff from Emily Brontë 's Wuthering Heights . Sugg goes on to note that female characters who are paired with this character usually end up socially ostracised, or worse—in an inverted ending to the male hero-story. Following the work of Robert Bly in the Mythopoetic men's movement , John Rowan proposes the Horned God as
846-470: A denomination is primarily concerned with the priestess or priest's relationship to the Goddess and God. The Lady and Lord (as they are often called) are seen as primal cosmic beings, the source of limitless power, yet they are also familiar figures who comfort and nurture their children, and often challenge or even reprimand them. Wiccan theology largely revolves around an ontological dualism consisting of
940-576: A horned figure from English folklore . In the neopagan tradition of Stregheria , founded by Raven Grimassi and loosely inspired by the works of Charles Godfrey Leland , the Horned God goes by several names, including Dianus , Faunus , Cern, and Actaeon . In the Hinduism, the Horned God is referred to Pashupati , See Pashupati seal . Sherry Salman considers the image of the Horned God in Jungian terms, as an archetypal protector and mediator of
1034-681: A lack of comfort with Aradia may be due to an "insecurity" within Neopaganism about the movement's claim to authenticity as a religious revival. Valiente offers another explanation for the negative reaction of some neopagans; that the identification of Lucifer as the god of the witches in Aradia was "too strong meat" for Wiccans who were used to the gentler, romantic paganism of Gerald Gardner and were especially quick to reject any relationship between witchcraft and Satanism . In 1985 Classical historian Georg Luck , in his Arcana Mundi: Magic and
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#17327731560001128-518: A little under a half (0.39) degree per day. For observers in either hemisphere not at the poles, the Sun rises and sets more and more to the south during the 3 months following the September equinox. This period is the second half of a 6-month long southerly movement, beginning with the June solstice when the Sun rises and sets at its most northern point. The September equinox marked the first day of
1222-426: A murderous female-led cult worships a horned deity named Behemoth . In the fantasy novel Too Long A Sacrifice by Mildred Downey Broxon (1981), a male character, Tadhg, is an avatar of a benevolent Horned God. God (Wicca) Wiccan views of divinity are generally theistic , and revolve around a Goddess and a Horned God , thereby being generally dualistic . In traditional Wicca, as expressed in
1316-552: A sequel, The God of the Witches , which tries to gather evidence in support of her witch-cult theory. In Chapter 1 "The Horned God". Murray claims that various depictions of humans with horns from European and Indian sources, ranging from the paleolithic French cave painting of " The Sorcerer " to the Indic Pashupati to the modern English Dorset Ooser , are evidence for an unbroken, Europe-wide tradition of worship of
1410-469: A single life. As such, Wicca emphasises the immanence of divinity within Nature, seeing the natural world as comprised both of spiritual substance as well as matter and physical energy. In addition to the pantheistic view of Nature as a divinity in itself expressed as the Goddess, some Wiccans also embrace the idea of the spiritual transcendence of divinity, and see this transcendence as compatible with
1504-547: A singular Horned God. Murray derived this model of a horned god cult from James Frazer and Jules Michelet . In dealing with " The Sorcerer ", the earliest evidence claimed, Murray based her observations on a drawing by Henri Breuil , which some modern scholars such as Ronald Hutton claim is inaccurate. Hutton states that modern photographs show the original cave art lacks horns, a human torso or any other significant detail on its upper half. However, others, such as celebrated prehistorian Jean Clottes , assert that Breuil's sketch
1598-525: A supreme force of evil. There is no supreme force of evil in Wicca. For most Wiccans, the Lord and Lady are seen as complementary polarities: male and female, force and form, comprehending all in their union; the tension and interplay between them is the basis of all creation, and this balance is seen in much of nature. The God and Goddess are sometimes symbolised as the Sun and Moon, and from her lunar associations
1692-509: Is also expressed in the symbology of the magic cauldron as the womb of the Goddess, from which all creation emerges, and in which it is all dissolved before reemerging again, and is very similar to the Hermetic understanding that "God" contains all things, and in truth is all things. For some Wiccans, this idea also involves elements of animism , and plants, rivers, rocks (and, importantly, ritual tools) are seen as spiritual beings, facets of
1786-566: Is also reflected in the phrase "on the horns of a dilemma.") The three aspects of the Goddess and the two aspects of the Horned god are sometimes mapped on to the five points of the Pentagram or Pentacle , although which points correspond to which deity aspects varies. In some other systems, he is represented as a triune god , split into three aspects that reflect those of the Triple goddess:
1880-443: Is associated with the Horned God (the two upper points being his horns), and is a symbol of the second degree initiation rite of traditional Wicca. The inverted pentagram is also used by Satanists; and for this reason, some Wiccans have alternatively been known to associate the inverted pentagram with evil. In geometry , the pentagram is an elegant expression of the golden ratio phi which is popularly connected with ideal beauty and
1974-528: Is commonly the direction given to Fire. Some Wiccan groups also modify the religious calendar (the Wheel of the Year ) to reflect local seasonal changes; for instance, most Southern Hemisphere covens celebrate Samhain on April 30 and Beltane on November 1, reflecting the southern hemisphere's autumn and spring seasons. Autumn equinox (Northern Hemisphere) The September equinox (or southward equinox )
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#17327731560002068-525: Is especially connected to the Moon and stars and the sea, while the Horned God is connected to the Sun and the forests. Gardner explains that these are the tribal gods of the witches, just as the Egyptians had their tribal gods Isis and Osiris and the Jews had Elohim ; he also states that a being higher than any of these tribal gods is recognised by the witches as Prime Mover , but remains unknowable, and
2162-481: Is first recorded in the work of Levi in the fashionable 19th-century Occultist circles of England and France. Levi created his image of Baphomet, published in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1855), by combining symbolism from diverse traditions, including the Diable card of the 16th and 17th century Tarot of Marseille . Lévi called his image "The Goat of Mendes", possibly following Herodotus ' account that
2256-581: Is given precedence over the Goddess. Some Wiccans are polytheists , believing in many different deities taken from various Pagan pantheons, while others would believe that, in the words of Dion Fortune , "all the Goddesses are one Goddess, and all the Gods one God". Some Wiccans are both duotheistic and polytheistic, (and sometimes a combination of duotheism, polytheism, and pantheism), in that they honor diverse pagan deities while reserving their worship for
2350-493: Is indeed accurate. Clottes stated that "I have seen it myself perhaps 20 times over the years". Breuil considered his drawing to represent a shaman or magician—an interpretation which gives the image its name. Murray having seen the drawing called Breuil's image "the first depiction of a deity", an idea which Breuil and others later adopted. Murray also used an inaccurate drawing of a mesolithic rock-painting at Cogul in northeast Spain as evidence of group religious ceremony of
2444-652: Is not a personal god, but rather an impersonal divinity similar to the Tao of Taoism.) Whilst the Horned God is the most common depiction of masculine divinity in Wicca, he is not the only representation. Other examples include the Green Man and the Sun God . In traditional Wicca, however, these other representations of the Wiccan god are subsumed or amalgamated into the Horned God, as aspects or expressions of him. Sometimes this
2538-500: Is of little concern to them. The Goddess is often seen as having a triple aspect ; that of the maiden, mother and crone. The God is traditionally seen as being the Horned God of the woods. A key belief in Wicca is that the gods are able to manifest in personal form, either through dreams, as physical manifestations, or through the bodies of Priestesses and Priests. Both deities are connected to all religion. Gardnerian Wicca as
2632-453: Is particularly revered at the sabbat of Lughnasadh . Many Wiccans see these many facets, such as the sun god, horned god , sacrificial god, as all aspects of the same God, but a minority view them as separate polytheistic deities. The most exhaustive work on Wiccan ideas of the God is the book The Witches' God by Janet and Stewart Farrar . Traditionally in Wicca, the Goddess is seen as
2726-459: Is shown by adding horns or antlers to the iconography. The Green Man, for example, may be shown with branches resembling antlers; and the Sun God may be depicted with a crown or halo of solar rays, that may resemble horns. These other conceptions of the Wiccan god should not be regarded as displacing the Horned God, but rather as elaborating on various facets of his nature. Doreen Valiente has called
2820-576: Is the moment when the Sun appears to cross the celestial equator , heading southward. Because of differences between the calendar year and the tropical year , the September equinox may occur from September 21 to 24. At the equinox, the Sun as viewed from the equator rises due east and sets due west. Before the Southward equinox, the Sun rises and sets more northerly, and afterwards, it rises and sets more southerly. The equinox may be taken to mark
2914-619: The Gnostic Mass . Georg Luck, repeats part of Murray's theory, stating that the Horned God may have appeared in late antiquity, stemming from the merging of Cernunnos , an antlered god of the Continental Celts, with the Greco-Roman Pan / Faunus , a combination of gods which he posits created a new deity, around which the remaining pagans, those refusing to convert to Christianity, rallied and that this deity provided
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3008-516: The Golden Dawn , which in turn were influenced by the Hindu system of tattvas . There is no consensus as to the exact nature of these elements. One popular system is the ancient Greek conception , where the elements correspond to matter (earth) and energy (fire), with the mediating elements (water, air) relating to the phases of matter (fire/earth mixtures). A more modern conception correlates
3102-632: The Mesopotamian myth of Inanna 's descent into the underworld , though this has not been confirmed. Doreen Valiente , a former High Priestess of the Gardnerian tradition , claimed that Gerald Gardner's Bricket Wood coven referred to the god as Cernunnos , or Kernunno , which is a Latin word, discovered on a stone carving found in France , meaning "the Horned One". Valiente claimed that
3196-715: The Sun God , the Sacrificed God and the Vegetation God, although the Horned God is the most popular representation. The pioneers of the various Wiccan or Witchcraft traditions, such as Gerald Gardner , Doreen Valiente and Robert Cochrane , all claimed that their religion was a continuation of the pagan religion of the Witch-Cult following historians who had purported the Witch-Cult's existence, such as Jules Michelet and Margaret Murray . For Wiccans,
3290-600: The Triple Goddess , meaning that she is the maiden, the mother and the crone. The mother aspect, the Mother Goddess , is perhaps the most important of these, and it was her that Gerald Gardner and Margaret Murray claimed was the ancient Goddess of the witches. Certain Wiccan traditions are Goddess-centric; this view differs from most traditions in that most others focus on a duality of goddess and god. Gardner's explanation aside, individual interpretations of
3384-553: The Youth ( Warrior ), the Father , and the Sage . The Horned God has been explored within several psychological theories and has become a recurrent theme in fantasy literature. In traditional and mainstream Wicca, the Horned God is viewed as the divine male principality, being both equal and opposite to the Goddess. The Wiccan god himself can be represented in many forms, including as
3478-741: The "father of Wicca", the witches' God and Goddess are the ancient gods of the British Isles : a Horned God of hunting, death and magic who rules over an after-world paradise (often referred to as the Summerland ), and a goddess, the Great Mother (who is simultaneously the Eternal Virgin and the Primordial Enchantress), who gives regeneration and rebirth to souls of the dead and love to the living. The Goddess
3572-663: The God, commonly described as the Horned God or the Divine Child , is the spark of life and inspiration within her, simultaneously her lover and her child. This is reflected in the traditional structure of the coven, wherein "the High Priestess is the leader, with the High Priest as her partner; he acknowledges her primacy and supports and complements her leadership with the qualities of his own polarity." In some traditions, notably Feminist branches of Dianic Wicca ,
3666-657: The Goddess alone). Others hold the various gods and goddesses to be separate and distinct. Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone have observed that Wicca is becoming more polytheistic as it matures, and embracing a more traditional pagan worldview. Many groups and individuals are drawn to particular deities from a variety of pantheons (often Celtic , Greek , or from elsewhere in Europe), whom they honour specifically. Some examples are Cernunnos and Brigit from Celtic mythology , Hecate , Lugh , and Diana . Still others do not believe in
3760-456: The Goddess and the God, as equal.) This impersonal ultimate divinity may also be regarded as the underlying order or organising principle within the world, similar to religious ideas such as the Tao and Brahman . While not all Wiccans subscribe to this monistic idea of an impersonal, ultimate divinity, many do; and there are various philosophical constructions of how this ultimate divinity relates to
3854-427: The Goddess and the Horned God are mirrored by Wiccans in seasonal rituals. There is some variation between Wiccan groups as to which sabbat corresponds to which part of the cycle. Some Wiccans regard the Horned God as dying at Lammas, August 1; also known as Lughnasadh, which is the first harvest sabbat. Others may see him dying at Mabon, the autumn equinox , or the second harvest festival. Still other Wiccans conceive of
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3948-405: The Goddess becomes a Triple Goddess with aspects of "Maiden", "Mother" and "Crone" corresponding to the Moon's waxing, full and waning phases. A key belief in Wicca is that the gods are able to manifest in personal form, either through dreams, as physical manifestations, or through the bodies of Priestesses and Priests. The latter kind of manifestation is the purpose of the ritual of Drawing down
4042-509: The Goddess is seen as complete unto herself, and the God is not worshipped at all. Since the Goddess is said to conceive and contain all life within her, all beings are held to be divine. The traditional Charge of the Goddess—the most widely shared piece of liturgy within the religion refers to the Goddess as "the Soul of Nature" from whom all things come, and to which all things return. This theme
4136-593: The Goddess weaves is very common within Wicca; an idea often connected with the Triple Goddess as personified by the Three Fates who weave the Web of Wyrd .) This combination of transcendence and immanence allows for the intermingling and the interaction of the unmanifest spiritual nature of the universe with the manifest physical universe; the physical reflects the spiritual, and vice versa. (An idea expressed in
4230-532: The Greek god Pan was removed from its classical context in the writings of the Romantics of the 18th century and connected with their ideals of a pastoral England. This, along with the general public's increasing lack of familiarity of Greek mythology at the time led to the figure of Pan becoming generalised as a 'horned god', and applying connotations to the character, such as benevolence that were not evident in
4324-463: The Horned God "the eldest of gods" in both The Witches Creed and also in her Invocation To The Horned God. Wiccans believe that The Horned God, as Lord of Death, is their "comforter and consoler" after death and before reincarnation; and that he rules the Underworld or Summerland where the souls of the dead reside as they await rebirth. Some, such as Joanne Pearson, believe that this is based on
4418-464: The Horned God and the Goddess are seen as equal and opposite in gender polarity. However, in some of the newer traditions of Wicca, and especially those influenced by feminist ideology, there is more emphasis on the Goddess, and consequently the symbolism of the Horned God is less developed than that of the Goddess . In Wicca the cycle of the seasons is celebrated during eight sabbats called The Wheel of
4512-527: The Horned God dying on October 31, which Wiccans call Samhain , the ritual of which is focused on death. He is then reborn on Winter Solstice, December 21. Other important dates for the Horned God include Imbolc when, according to Valiente, he leads a wild hunt . In Gardnerian Wicca, the Dryghten prayer recited at the end of every ritual meeting contains the lines referring to the Horned God: In
4606-432: The Horned God is "the personification of the life force energy in animals and the wild" and is associated with the wilderness , virility and the hunt. Doreen Valiente writes that the Horned God also carries the souls of the dead to the underworld . Wiccans generally, as well as some other neopagans, tend to conceive of the universe as polarized into gender opposites of male and female energies . In traditional Wicca,
4700-548: The Horned God. In some of Rosemary Sutcliff's novels, including the medieval-set novel Knight's Fee (1960) and the Arthurian novel Sword at Sunset (1963), several of the heroes worship a stag-antlered deity called the Horned One. The depiction of this deity is similar to that given in Murray's writings. Murray's theories have been seen to have had influence on the horror film The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), where
4794-478: The Hunter , Greek Pan , Roman Faunus and Indian Pashupati . This was the God whom Gerald Gardner presented as the old God of the ancient Witches, and who was supported by Margaret Murray 's theory of the pan-European witch religion, which has largely been discredited. Horns are traditionally a sacred symbol of male virility, and male gods with horns or antlers were common in pagan religious iconography throughout
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#17327731560004888-718: The Moon (or Drawing down the Sun), whereby the Goddess is called to descend into the body of the Priestess (or the God into the Priest) to effect divine possession . According to current Gardnerian Wiccans , the exact names of the Goddess and God of traditional Wicca remain an initiatory secret, and they are not given in Gardner's books about witchcraft. However, the collection of Toronto Papers of Gardner's writings has been investigated by American scholars such as Aidan Kelly , leading to
4982-626: The Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds , theorised that the origins of the Witch-cult may have appeared in late antiquity as a faith primarily designed to worship the Horned God, stemming from the merging of Cernunnos , a horned god of the Celts, with the Greco-Roman Pan / Faunus , a combination of gods which he posits created a new deity, around which the remaining pagans , those refusing to convert to Christianity, rallied and that this deity provided
5076-537: The Wiccan Goddess and Horned God, whom they regard as the supreme deities. (This approach is not dissimilar to ancient pagan pantheons where one divine couple, a god and goddess, were seen as the supreme deities of an entire pantheon.) Some see divinity as having a real, external existence; others see the Goddesses and Gods as archetypes or thoughtforms within the collective consciousness. According to several 20th century witches, most notably Gerald Gardner ,
5170-409: The Witches , a source that likely influenced Alex Sanders . Prudence Jones has suggested that the name may instead derive from Karneios , a Spartan deity conflated with Apollo as a subordinate consort to Diana . In the writings of Charles Cardell and Raymond Howard , the god was referred to as Atho . Howard had a wooden statue of Atho's head which he claimed was 2200 years old, but the statue
5264-485: The Year . The seasonal cycle is imagined to follow the relationship between the Horned God and the Goddess. The Horned God is born in winter, impregnates the Goddess and then dies during the autumn and winter months and is then reborn by the Goddess at Yule. The different relationships throughout the year are sometimes distinguished by splitting the god into aspects, the Oak King and the Holly King. The relationships between
5358-470: The ancient world. In Wicca, the Green Man is also often associated with the Horned God, though he does not always have horns. At different times of the Wiccan year the God is seen as different personalities. He is sometimes seen as the Oak King and the Holly King , who each rule for half of the year each. Oak and Holly are two European trees. Another view of the God is that of the sun god , who
5452-611: The coven also referred to the god as Janicot , which she theorised was of Basque origin, and Gardner also used this name in his novel High Magic's Aid . Stewart Farrar , a High Priest of the Alexandrian tradition referred to the Horned God as Karnayna , which he believed was a corruption of Cernunnos . The historian Ronald Hutton suggests the term derived instead from the Arabic Dhul-Qarnayn meaning "Horned One", as Murray offered in her 1931 book The God of
5546-606: The cult of the goat of Mendes with that of Priapus, and groups the god with the Pans and the Satyrs. The goat referred to by all these writers is the famous Mendean Ram, or Ram of Mendes, the cult of which was, according to Manetho, established by Kakau, the king of the IInd dynasty. Historically, the deity that was venerated at Egyptian Mendes was a ram deity Banebdjedet (literally Ba of the lord of djed, and titled "the Lord of Mendes"), who
5640-477: The cult, although the central male figure is not horned. The illustration she used of the Cogul painting leaves out a number of figures, human and animal, and the original is more likely a sequence of superimposed but unrelated illustrations, rather than a depiction of a single scene. Despite widespread criticism of Murray's scholarship some minor aspects of her work continued to have supporters. The popular image of
5734-565: The end of astronomical summer and the beginning of astronomical autumn (autumnal equinox) in the Northern Hemisphere , while marking the end of astronomical winter and the start of astronomical spring (vernal equinox) in the Southern Hemisphere . The September equinox is one point in time commonly used to determine the length of the tropical year . The dates and times of the September equinoxes that occur from
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#17327731560005828-419: The equinox, the Sun rises directly in the east and sets directly in the west. However, because of refraction it will usually appear slightly above the horizon at the moment when its "true" middle is rising or setting. For viewers at the north or south poles, it moves virtually horizontally on or above the horizon, not obviously rising or setting apart from the movement in "declination" (and hence altitude) of
5922-461: The exact natures of the gods differ significantly, since priests and priestesses develop their own relationships with the gods through intense personal work and revelation . Many have a duotheistic conception of deity as a Goddess (of Moon, Earth and sea) and a God (of forest, hunting and the animal realm). This concept is often extended into a kind of polytheism by the belief that the gods and goddesses of all cultures are aspects of this pair (or of
6016-403: The five points of the frequently worn pentagram symbolize, among other things, the four elements with spirit presiding at the top. The pentagram is the symbol most commonly associated with Wicca in modern times. It is often circumscribed — depicted within a circle — and is usually (though not exclusively) shown with a single point upward. The inverse pentagram, with two points up,
6110-481: The four elements to the four states of matter known to science: Solid (earth); Liquid (water); Gas (air); and Plasma (fire); with the akasha element corresponding to pure Energy . The Aristotelian system proposes a fifth or quintessential element, spirit ( aether , akasha ). The preferred version is a matter of ongoing dispute in the Wiccan community. There are other non- scientific conceptions , but they are not widely used among Wiccans. To some Wiccans,
6204-514: The god of Mendes—the Greek name for Djedet, Egypt—was depicted with a goat's face and legs. Herodotus relates how all male goats were held in great reverence by the Mendesians, and how in his time a woman publicly copulated with a goat . E. A. Wallis Budge writes, At several places in the Delta, e.g. Hermopolis, Lycopolis, and Mendes, the god Pan and a goat were worshipped; Strabo, quoting (xvii. 1, 19) Pindar, says that in these places goats had intercourse with women, and Herodotus (ii. 46) instances
6298-527: The gods as real personalities, yet attempt to have a relationship with them as personifications of universal principles or as Jungian archetypes . Some Wiccans conceive deities as akin to thoughtforms . In addition to the two main deities worshiped within Wicca—the God and Goddess—there are also several possible theological conceptions of an ultimate (impersonal) pantheistic or monistic divinity, known variously as Dryghtyn or "the One" or "The All." This ultimate divinity or pantheist god can also be seen under
6392-442: The idea of immanence. In such a view, divinity and dimensions of spiritual existence (sometimes called "the astral planes") can exist outside the physical world, as well as extending into the material, and/or rising out of the material, intimately interwoven into the fabric of material existence in such a way that the spiritual affects the physical, and vice versa. (The conception of Nature as a vast, interconnected web of existence that
6486-407: The male an ego "in possession of its own destructiveness" and for the female psyche gives an effective animus relating to both the physical body and the psyche. In considering the Horned God as a symbol recurring in women's literature, Richard Sugg suggests the Horned God represents the 'natural Eros', a masculine lover subjugating the social-conformist nature of the female shadow, thus encompassing
6580-402: The name of Cybele , the mother goddess viewed as both feminine and masculine. This impersonal ultimate divinity is generally regarded as unknowable, and is acknowledged but not worshiped. This monistic idea of an ultimate impersonal divinity is not to be confused with the monotheistic idea of a single supreme personal deity. (Especially since Wicca traditionally honors its two supreme deities,
6674-403: The name of the Lady of the Moon, and the Horned Lord of Death and Resurrection According to Sabina Magliocco , Gerald Gardner says (in 1959's The Meaning of Witchcraft ) that The Horned God is an Under-god, a mediator between an unknowable supreme deity and the people. (In Wiccan liturgy in the Book of Shadows, this conception of an unknowable supreme deity is referred to as "Dryghtyn." It
6768-500: The occult maxim "As Above, So Below" which is also used within Wicca.) Dryghten , an Old English term for The Lord , is the term used by Patricia Crowther to refer to the universal pantheistic deity in Wicca. Gerald Gardner had initially called it, according to the cosmological argument , the Prime Mover , a term borrowed from Aristotle , but he claimed that the witches did not worship it, and considered it unknowable. It
6862-446: The original Greek myths which in turn gave rise to the popular acceptance of Murray's hypothetical horned god of the witches. The reception of Aradia amongst Neopagans has not been entirely positive. Clifton suggests that modern claims of revealing an Italian pagan witchcraft tradition, for example those of Leo Martello and Raven Grimassi , must be "match[ed] against", and compared with the claims in Aradia . He further suggests that
6956-518: The outside world to the objective psyche. In her theory the male psyche's 'Horned God' frequently compensates for inadequate fathering. When first encountered, the figure is a dangerous, 'hairy chthonic wildman' possessed of kindness and intelligence. If repressed , later in life The Horned God appears as the lord of the Otherworld, or Hades . If split off entirely, he leads to violence, substance abuse and sexual perversion. When integrated he gives
7050-493: The personal faith, cosmological belief, and philosophy of the individual Wiccan. While they are not regarded as deities, the classical elements are a featured key of the Wiccan world-view. Every manifest force or form is seen to express one of the four archetypal elements — Earth , Air , Fire and Water — or several in combination. This scheme is fundamentally identical with that employed in other Western Esoteric and Hermetic traditions, such as Theosophy and
7144-408: The physical world of Nature. Some Wiccans hold the Goddess to be pre-eminent, since she contains and conceives all ( Gaea or Mother Earth is one of her more commonly revered aspects). The name Star Goddess is used by certain feminist Wiccans such as Starhawk to describe this universal, pantheistic creator deity. They regard Her as a knowable Deity that can and should be worshipped. Contrary to
7238-536: The planet Dæmos have been affecting man's progress over the millennia and the Hump actually contains a spacecraft. The only Dæmon to appear is a classic interpretation of a horned satyr-like being with hooves. In the 1950s TV series created by Nigel Kneale , Quatermass and the Pit , depictions of supernatural horned entities, with specific reference to prehistoric cave-art and shamanistic horned head-dress are revealed to be
7332-606: The popular notion that the term "Star Goddess" comes from the Charge of the Goddess , a text sacred to many Wiccans, it actually originates from the Anderson Feri Tradition of (non-Wiccan) Witchcraft- of which Starhawk was an initiate. Within the Feri tradition the "Star Goddess" is the androgynous point of all creation - from which all things (including the dual God and Goddess) emanate. In this Goddess-centric view,
7426-764: The prototype for later Christian conceptions of the devil , and his worshippers were cast by the Church as witches. In 1908's The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame , in Chapter 7, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn", Ratty and Mole meet a mystical horned being, powerful, fearsome and kind. Grahame's work was a significant part of the cultural milieu which stripped the Greek god Pan of his cultural identity in favor of an unnamed, generic horned deity which led to Murray's thesis of historical origins. Outside of works that predate
7520-555: The prototype for later Christian conceptions of the Devil , and his worshippers were cast by the Church as witches. Eliphas Levi's image of " Baphomet " serves as an example of the transformation of the Devil into a benevolent fertility deity and provided the prototype for Murray's horned god. Murray's central thesis that images of the Devil were actually of deities and that Christianity had demonised these worshippers as following Satan ,
7614-520: The publication of Murray's thesis, horned god motifs and characters appear in fantasy literature that draws upon her work and that of her followers. The 1947 short story "Cwm Garon" by L. T. C. Rolt (published in Rolt's collection Sleep No More ) describes a traveller encountering a remote Welsh village, where the inhabitants worship a demonic entity that appears as a horned god. In the novel Childhood's End (1953) by Arthur C. Clarke , all humans have
7708-785: The religion from fragments, incorporating elements from Freemasonry , the Occult , and Theosophy , which came together in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn , where Gardner met Aleister Crowley . Gerald Gardner was initiated into the O.T.O. by Aleister Crowley and subsequently went on to found the Neopagan religion of Wicca. Various scholars on early Wiccan history, such as Ronald Hutton , Philip Heselton , and Leo Ruickbie concur that witchcraft's early rituals, as devised by Gardner, contained much from Crowley's writings such as
7802-536: The religion originates earlier than the mid-20th century. Modern scholarship has disproved Margaret Murray's theory. However, various horned gods and mother goddesses were indeed worshipped in the British Isles during the ancient and early Medieval periods. The "father of Wicca", Gerald Gardner , who adopted Margaret Murray's thesis, claimed Wicca was a modern survival of an ancient pan-European pagan religion. Gardner states that he had reconstructed elements of
7896-574: The skulls of the red deer and likely fitted with leather laces, have been uncovered at the Mesolithic site of Star Carr . They are thought to date from roughly 9,000 BCE. Several theories have been created to establish historical roots for modern Neopagan worship of a Horned God. Following the writings of suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage and others, Margaret Murray , in her 1921 book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe , proposed
7990-459: The south, Water in the west and Earth in the north. There may be variations between groups though, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere , since these attributions are symbolic of (amongst other things) the path of the sun through the daytime sky. For example, in southern latitudes the sun reaches its hottest point in the northern part of the sky, and north is the direction of the Tropics, so this
8084-477: The suggestion that their names are Cernunnos and Aradia . These are the names used in the prototype Book of Shadows known as Ye Bok of Ye Arte Magical . In Wicca, the God is seen as the masculine form of divinity, and the polar opposite, and equal, to the Goddess. The God is traditionally seen as the Horned God , an archetypal deity with links to the Celtic Cernunnos , English folkloric Herne
8178-494: The theory that the witches of the early-modern period were remnants of a pagan cult and that the Christian Church had declared the god of the witches was in fact the Devil . Without recourse to any specific representation of this deity, Murray speculates that the head coverings common in inquisition -derived descriptions of the devil "may throw light on one of the possible origins of the cult." In 1931 Murray published
8272-535: The traditional Horned God and the Moon Goddess of Wicca, a large number of divine "aspects" of the Wiccan God and Goddess, a large pantheon of individual pagan Gods, one specific pagan God and one specific pagan Goddess, or any combination of those perspectives. Accordingly, the religion of Wicca can be understood as duotheistic , henotheistic , pantheistic , polytheistic , or panentheistic depending upon
8366-408: The writings of Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente , the emphasis is on the theme of divine gender polarity, and the God and Goddess are regarded as equal and opposite divine cosmic forces. In some newer forms of Wicca, such as feminist or Dianic Wicca , the Goddess is given primacy or even exclusivity. In some forms of traditional witchcraft that share a similar duotheistic theology, the Horned God
8460-531: The year 2018 to 2028 (UTC) are listed as follows: The point where the Sun crosses the celestial equator southwards is called the First Point of Libra . However, because of the precession of the equinoxes , this point is no longer in the constellation Libra , but rather in Virgo . The solar point of the September equinox passed from Libra and into Virgo in −729 (730 BCE) and will enter Leo in 2439. At
8554-467: Was considered by the Pythagoreans to express truths about the hidden nature of existence. The five points of the pentagram have also been seen to correspond to the three aspects of the Goddess and the two aspects of the Horned God. In the casting of a magic circle , the four cardinal elements are visualised as contributing their influence from the four cardinal directions: Air in the east, Fire in
8648-613: Was referred to by Scott Cunningham by the term used in Neo-Platonism , " The One "; Many Wiccans whose practice involves study of the Kabbalah also regard the Gods and Goddesses they worship as being aspects or expressions of the ineffable supreme One. Given the usual interpretation of Wicca as a pantheistic and duotheistic/polytheistic religion, the monotheistic belief in a single "supreme deity" does not generally apply. An individual Wiccan's personal devotion may be centered on
8742-602: Was stolen in April 1967. Howard's son later admitted that his father had carved the statue himself. In Cochrane's Craft , which was founded by Robert Cochrane , the Horned God was often referred to by a Biblical name; Tubal-cain , who, according to the Bible was the first blacksmith. In this neopagan concept, the god is also referred to as Brân , a Welsh mythological figure, Wayland , the smith in Germanic mythology, and Herne ,
8836-542: Was the soul of Osiris . Lévi combined the images of the Tarot of Marseilles Devil card and refigured the ram Banebdjed as a he-goat, further imagined by him as "copulator in Anep and inseminator in the district of Mendes". Margaret Murray 's theory of the historical origins of the Horned God has been used by Wiccans to create a myth of historical origins for their religion. There is no verifiable evidence to support claims that
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