Horned God

The Horned God is the main god worshipped in Wicca, alongside his counterpoint the Triple Goddess. "Horned God" is a modern syncretic term used amongst Wiccan-influenced Neopagans, which unites numerous male nature gods out of such widely-dispersed mythologies as the Celtic Cernunnos, the English Herne the Hunter, the Egyptian Osiris, the Hindu Pashupati, the Greek Pan and the Roman Faunus. All of these male deities are seen as having horns and an association with nature.

A number of figures from British folklore, though normally depicted without horns, are nonetheless considered related: Puck, Robin Goodfellow and the Green Man.

According to the historical Horned God theory, as purported by Margaret Murray, all these historical horned god figures were possibly related and worshipped by a pan-European witchcraft religion. When Christianisation occurred, the Horned God image was associated with Satan.

Development of an idea

Francisco de Goya's Sabbat (1789).

Eliphas Levi's illustration of Baphomet, in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, 1855, accompanied the first suggestion of an ancient horned god driven underground by the spread of Christianity.

Throughout history, many different pagan gods and folkloric figures were depicted as having horns and animalistic, goat or stag-like features. An ancient cave painting called The Sorceror was found in France depicting a half man, half stag figure, though it may depict a shaman performing a ritual.

The Celtic god known as Cernunnos by the Gallo-Romans had the horns of a stag and was associated with fertility. The horned character in English folklore known as Herne the Hunter may have originated with Cernunnos. In ancient Greece, the goat legged god Pan was worshipped, and he became Faunus of the Roman pantheon. In India, a horned god called Pashupati was seen as an epithet for the god Shiva.

The idea that all such horned images were of deities and that they represented manifestations of a single Horned God, and that Christianity had attempted to suppress his worship by associating him with Satan, originally developed in the fashionable 19th-century Occultist circles of England and France. Eliphas Levi's famous illustration of Baphomet, in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1855) (based on Goya's Witches Sabbath painting, 1789) accompanied the first suggestions to this effect. Levi's image of "Baphomet" is reflected in most depictions of the Devil made since. Symbolism is drawn from the Diable card of the 17th and 18th century Tarot of Marseille: the bat-winged, horned and hoofed figure with female breasts, perched upon a globe; Levi added the caduceus of Mercury at his groin, moved the flaming torch to crown his head and had him gesture towards lunar crescents above and below.

This was not an evil figure, Levi contended, but a god of the old world, driven underground and condemned as a figure of witchcraft by hostile Christianity. Margaret Murray took up this suggestion and blended it with an adaptation of the cultural anthropologies of James Frazer to define a pan-European fertility god. Where Frazer saw modern folklore and folk customs as the echoes of forgotten agricultural rituals, authors such as Murray and her contemporaries at the Folklore Society saw it as evidence of the survival of an esoteric fertility cult, a secret tradition driven underground and suppressed by Christianity.

Margaret Murray selected and heavily edited sources in order to forward the position that witches meeting in the woods with Satan were actually representatives of a pan-European fertility cult worshiping a Horned God . These themes shaped both the popular image of the Devil and the modern concept of the Horned God revered by some neopagan groups (such as Wicca) today. Murray's theories have subsequently been discredited due to her selection of evidence yet her influence, in part by having authored her theories in the Encyclopedia Britannica, persists.

Associations

Margaret Murray associated the Horned God with woods, wild animals, and hunting. He has also been associated with male virility and sexuality, mainly heterosexuality but also homosexuality.

Association with Satan

The image of Satan as a horned and hoofed goat-like monster is common throughout depictions of Witches Sabbaths from the Middle Ages (see illustration) to the 17th century (e.g., in the illustrated Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges et demons by Pierre de Lancre of 1612), alongside other more varied depictions of the Devil where he was often described as a man dressed in black, a dog or sinister goat. When depicted as a composite animal/human figure, the Devil often had bat's wings, the talons of a bird of prey, and so on.. The addition of the trident which often accompanies modern images of the Devil did not become popular until the 19th century.

According to Murray, after the reign of Henry VIII it was a common accusation against political enemies that they were in league with "the foul fiend" who appeared to them in human form horned like a bull or a stag.

Representation of Sabbath gatherings from the chronicles of Johann Jakob Wick (1560–1587).

Wicca

In the religion of Wicca, first publicised in 1954, the Horned God is revered as the partner and/or child of the Goddess (commonly described as the Great Mother or the Triple Goddess). According to Gerald Gardner Wicca is a modern survival of an ancient pan-European pagan religion that was driven underground during the witch trials. As such the Goddess and Horned God (the "Lady" and "Lord") of Wicca are the supposed ancient tribal gods of this faith. However, there is little evidence to support claims that the religion originates earlier than the mid-20th century, and Gardner himself states that he had reconstructed the rites from fragments, incorporating elements from English folklore such as Murray (see above) and contemporary influences such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

In Wicca, "The Horned God" may refer individually to any of a multitude of localized gods of different cultures (such as Cernunnos or Pan), or to the universal archetype many Wiccans believe such gods represent. In the latter context, he is sometimes referred to as the "Great God" or the "Great Father", who impregnates the Goddess and then dies during the autumn and winter months and is reborn in spring.

Some Wiccans have attempted to reconcile the lack of historical precedence of their beliefs, as scholar and Medieval history professor, Jenny Gibbons states:

We Neopagans now face a crisis. As new data appeared, historians altered their theories to account for it. We have not. Therefore an enormous gap has opened between the academic and the "average" Pagan view of witchcraft. We continue to use of out-dated and poor writers, like Margaret Murray, Montague Summers, Gerald Gardner, and Jules Michelet. We avoid the somewhat dull academic texts that present solid research, preferring sensational writers who play to our emotions ...

References in popular culture

• 1988: The song "Horned is the Hunter" by thrash metal band Sabbat on the album A History of A Time to Come describes an un-named Horned God of Hunting.
• 1989: The comic book series 2000AD featured Sláine by Pat Mills and Simon Bisley features the Horned God in a major story-arc.
• 2002: the Irish folk-metal band Cruachan feature a song called The Horned God on their album Folk Lore.
• S.J. Tucker released a song called "Hymn to Herne" on her 2007 album Blessings.

See also

• Horned helmet
• Gundestrup cauldron
• Triple Goddess

References

• Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion 1977 (1985) Cambridge:Harvard University Press.
• Frazer, James, The Golden Bough
• Murray, Margaret, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe 1921.
• Murray, Margaret, God of the Witches 1933.
• Juliette Wood, "The Celtic Tarot and the Secret Traditions: A Study in Modern Legend Making": Folklore, Vol. 109, 1998