Musings

[Zephonith Serpent Woman]

"The idea that there is something very special about horns derives from a very distant past, the time before man discovered agriculture.

When our remote ancestors , the primitive hunters, roamed the land in search of the herds of wild game on which they depended on food, they must have admired the mighty stag, or the splendid bison, with his imposing horns, his beauty, his power, his strength and his virility.

He was the incarnation of maleness, the sire of the herds.

They painted his likeness upon the walls of their caves; and their Priest-Magicians wore his horns and his skin in their magickal rites.

...

The magician who was en rapport with the great beasts, is one very probable origin of the Horned God, but the Horned God himself is more than that.

He is the masculine, active side of Nature,

as the Moon Goddess represents the feminine side, in the Witches' thealogy.

The Horned God is the opener of the Gates of Life and Death; because that which is born through the gates of life must return through the Gate of Death, when the time comes to leave this world again.

Hence the Horned God is the power of returning vitality in the spring; but he is also the Old God of the Underworld, that Dis from whom, according to Caesar, the Gauls came to be decended.

Every year we see re-enacted the Fall of Lucifer, the Light-Bearer; 

when the sun, the source of vitality for this planet, attains the height of his power at midsummer, and then falls from that height to hide himself in the realms below.

Osiris, the Egyptian Sun God, was also ruler over the realms of the dead;

and his consort Isis, the moon goddess, was mistress of magic.

The heart of Paganism is a philosophy based on Nature, and veiled in symbol and myth."

Doreen Valiente; 

The ABC of Witchcraft - Past and Present, pp182-183; ISBN 0 7090 5350 9

Blessed Be )O(

[1yrns4vean19o]

Great post Zep! Enjoyed it very much. 

[Zephonith Serpent Woman]

[Zephonith Serpent Woman]

[Ogma Silvertongue]

horns/antlers act not merely as instruments of combat and defence but also as antennae, just like hair.