The Horned God

In Paleolithic times the principle male deity was a god of hunting. Man needed success in the hunt in order to survive. The hunt provided skins for clothing, food, and bones for making tools and weapons. In ancient cave art, this god is depicted wearing horns similar to those found on the animals the men were hunting. That horned image can possibly be considered a model for what ultimately became known as the god of the witches. Over time he developed into a universal god of nature, but he is still often represented with horns or antlers in depiction used by contemporary Wiccans.

The Romans called the Horned God Cernunnos, literally meaning "The Horned One." This name was taken on in many areas, often shortened to Cerne (and changed to Herne in some locations).

By the Bronze Age, horns had become a symbol of divinity, and horned gods were fairly common in such regions as Mesopotamia. The number of horns came to indicate the importance of the god, with seven horns representing the acme of divinity-hence the seven horns of the Divine Lamb in the Bible's Book of Revelations. Interestingly, in the Bible, Satan is never described as having horns, even though the Church attempted to associate him with the god of the witches due to the presence of those appendages.

In Wicca, the Horned God is considered the Lord of the Underworld and of Death and all that comes after, as well as of Life and of Nature. His symbol is the Sun, as the Goddess's symbol is the Moon. He reigns over the "dark half of the year"-the winter months-whereas the Goddess reigns over the summer months. During certain Wiccan rituals, the High Priest plays the role of the God by wearing a Horned Helmet. Different witchcraft traditions have different names for this deity. Some use Pan, the horned woodland deity of Arcadia; some use Herne, the hunter of England; and others use Cernunnos. As with the Goddess, there are many names by which he is known.

The Horned God is very much a god of fertility and, from the earliest cave paintings, is often depicted as an ithyphallic figure. In Stone Age society, the fertility of the animals was important. And, with the coming of agriculture, fertility of the crops became vital as a source of food. These are the main reasons that both the god and the goddess are fertility deities.

When the altar at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was being repaired near the end of the eighteenth century, a much older altar was discovered beneath it. On it was carved a representation of the Horned God, clearly a pagan deity. At the request of the Pope Gregory the Great, in a letter to Abbot Mellitos in 601 CE, all "well built" pagan temples were to be cleansed, consecrated and converted to Christian Churches. Open sites where pagans were customarily gathered to worship were supposed to serve as the site of the new Christian churches.

Bibliography:
Buckland, Raymond: Witchcraft from the Inside.1995
Valiente, Doreen: An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present. 1973