The Horned God of the Witches

by Jason Mankey

  From there, the book spends some time with a couple of more modern horned gods: Herne, Elen of the Ways, and the Green Man. I call these aspects of the Horned One “more modern” for reasons that will become apparent later in the text. While these figures are most likely not as ancient as Pan and Cernunnos, they are certainly very real and tangible deities, and are important to me as well. Most of the sections about specific deities include activities designed to help you, the reader, grow closer to them.

  My original outline of this book included a ritual for every god mentioned in these pages. In the course of writing all of those rituals, I realized that many of them felt repetitive, and besides, there are a multitude of ways to grow closer to deity outside of ritual. Divination, altars, and magick, along with ritual, are all great ways to access the Horned God in his many guises. I find history interesting, but the most important thing in Witchcraft is to grow closer to the things you honor, which is why activities are important.

  Over the last two hundred years, the Horned God has been influenced by a variety of literary sources. Most of that literature has focused on the Horned One in one of three aspects: nature deity, death god, and a being somehow associated with the Christian Devil. Most of the book’s middle section focuses on these three aspects, along with a few side journeys into various things that didn’t quite fit anywhere else in these pages.

  That bit about the Horned One being associated with the Christian Devil can be a bit troubling to some, so let me expand upon it a bit. The Horned God of the Witches has never been the Christian Devil, but he has been influenced by how certain people have interpreted the Christian Devil over the centuries. Writings about the Devil have shown up in books about the Horned God and have contributed to our understanding of him, but that does not mean Pan or the Green Man is ruling over an Underworld full of fire and brimstone. I’ll also add that some Witches really like to play up the links between the Horned God and the Devil not because they are especially wicked, but because it’s fun to piss off uptight Christians.

  The last part of the book looks at how the Horned God is viewed and has been reinterpreted over the past few decades in the traditions of Wiccan-

  Witchcraft and Traditional Witchcraft. The book ends with a ritual to the Witchfather, a version of the Horned God in Traditional Witchcraft, and one who is especially appealing to me. In many ways, the book’s first ritual (Ritual to Meet the Horned God) and its last (Ritual to Meet the Witchfather) can be seen as mirror opposites. The first ritual serves as an introduction to the Horned God’s mysteries, while the final ritual is a chance to receive the gifts he willingly gives to his Witches.

  There are many individuals who choose to capitalize pronouns such as his and he when they refer to a specific deity. This is a practice I’ve never truly adopted, so I made the decision not to use it in this book. Some might find that choice disrespectful to the Horned One, but since he has allowed me to write this book, I feel like everything is fine in our relationship.

  A book such as this one cries out for dozens of pictures, and in my travels over the last ten years, I’ve seen many of the things I write about in these pages. However, the copyright law when it comes to pictures is infuriatingly difficult to navigate. Just because you take a picture at a museum does not give you the right to use that picture in a book. However, we are lucky enough to live in an age where most of us have access to the internet, which is home to most everything mentioned in these pages. In other words, with a little work, you should be able to find the images I mention that were not included.

  It’s also truly my hope that no matter how you interpret the power of the Horned One, you will find something worthwhile in these pages. The hooves of the Horned God have been guiding my Witchcraft journey for over twenty years now. If you so choose, may they guide yours as well. Hail the Horned One!

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  1. Gardner, The Meaning of Witchcraft, 176.

  2. The term Summerlands is used by many Witches to indicate the land of the dead. The term comes from the practice of Spiritualism and the Theosophical Society, who use it for that purpose as well.

  Chapter One

  The Nature of Deity

  Perhaps my favorite analogy for describing the Horned God involves Play-Doh. For those of you who have blocked out parts of your childhood, Play-Doh is a soft, easily sculpted (and smooshed) putty-like material made primarily of flour and water. It’s fun because you can build whatever you want out of it, and most of us have played with it at some point in our lives.

  Now, the Horned God is most certainly not Play-Doh, but how we use that substance often reminds me of how various individuals see and interpret him. There are some people who like to build very precise sculptures with Play-Doh, and in our analogy, perhaps they build models of Pan and Cernunnos, with each figure being a solid color. During that play, they are very careful not to let the two gods come into contact with each other, because the different colors of Play-Doh can’t really be separated after that happens. When they are done playing, they put the different colors of Play-Doh back in their own specific containers so the colors don’t bleed together.

  Then there are those people who like to use various colors of Play-Doh in the same sculpture, with the end result usually being streaks of blue or green running through a mostly red sculpture. This is how I used to create things when I was a kid. I didn’t mind mixing my colors a little bit here and there, but I tried to keep them mostly separate. That was hard to do, and when I realized that there would be some mixing no matter what I did, I learned to live with it. When I was done playing, I’d try to put things away as neatly as I could, but my red Play-Doh sometimes ended up with a slight purple tint or perhaps a vein of yellow running through it.

  Finally, there are always some people who are completely fine with letting all of their colors of Play-Doh mix together. The end result is usually a brown lump, with perhaps a few colored streaks running through it. For some people, having all the colors mix together is upsetting, but four cans of brown Play-Doh are still fun. You can still build whatever you want out of it and you don’t have to worry about keeping the different colors of dough apart. Not having to worry about messing anything up often makes play more fun! Besides, if you want a specific color later, you can buy (or make) a new jar of it.

  The Horned God is a lot like Play-Doh. There are some people who prefer to work only with individual models, and when they are done, everything goes back to where it started. Then there are some who are okay with a little bleed-through here and there but mostly keep things separate. And finally, there are those who let everything mix together. The Horned God has worshippers who honor only specific deities, others who see those individual gods as somewhat mergeable, and those who see all of the horned gods in history as part of one big Horned God, with very little separation.

  There are many different ways to interpret deity, and no right or wrong way. I believe deity reveals itself to us in whatever way makes the most sense to our personal sensibilities. The various ways humans perceive deity is useful to go over in a book like this, but ultimately our interpretations are ours alone. Some of us put the Play-Doh back into separate cans, and some of us don’t mind ending up with one big brown lump.

  Many Ideas About Deity

  Witchcraft does not require a belief in gods, nor does it subscribe to any absolutes when it comes to religious or spiritual practice. For those of us who do believe in deity, there are a variety of cosmologies and explanations for that deity. Because the term Horned God means so many things to various Witches, it’s worth spending some time contemplating the many ideas held by today’s Witches when it comes to matters of deity.

  Polytheism

  There are many Witches today who are strict polytheists, which means they believe that individual deities are just that: individuals, and not a part of a greater whole. In other words, every de
ity who has ever been worshipped is unique unto themselves. Perhaps certain deities are related in some way, but they are related like you and I are related to our parents.

  Polytheist Witches who use the term Horned God do so generally as a title, or as a way to describe certain specific gods. I have friends who use Horned God as a title, so when they call to “the Horned God,” they are actually calling to specific deities such as Pan or Cernunnos but not using the names of those gods. Many polytheist Witches also use the term horned god (lowercase) as a way to categorize deities who are connected in some way to the natural world.

  Soft Polytheism

  Soft polytheism is a term reserved for those who look at deities as separate entities but still believe they might be related in some way. For example, we know that the gods Odin (Norse) and Woden (German) have a common ancestor, but a hard polytheist would say they are two different beings. A soft polytheist would argue the two are most likely the same god, just worshipped by two different names.

  As a soft polytheist, I think gods like Pan and Cernunnos are distinct beings who don’t have much in common, but I also believe they might be related in some abstract way. The end result is a “bigger” deity who shares attributes with several other gods. This all sounds rather confusing, but I have to assume that deity is more powerful than we are, and very different too! I think our modern Horned God is a combination of several figures that have come together so that we might better understand them. In my own practice, I honor those figures by their individual names, and sometimes collectively as the Horned God.

  The Billionity, or All Gods Are One God

  There are many who believe that all the deities that have ever been worshipped are related in some way. At the very beginning was an unknowable power that started by dividing itself into various ways of being: female, male, and all that lies between those two polarities. From there, those powers divided into more knowable forms, deities we know by generic names, such as Maiden, Mother, Crone, Horned God, Sun God, and so on.

  In this sort of cosmology, all of the various horned (and antlered) gods that have ever been worshipped are aspects of one greater Horned God, who has chosen to reveal himself in various guises throughout the world. In India, he was Shiva; in Gaul, Cernunnos; in Rome, Faunus; and in Greece, Pan. The gods in this sort of construct are still somewhat distinct but can be traced back to an original source. When I was working with a college student group back in the early 2000s, someone described this theory as the Billionity, as opposed to the Christian trinity.

  Duotheism

  Many Wiccan-Witches are often accused of being duotheists. The idea is similar to the one above, the only difference being that there is one “Goddess” and one “God” who are each responsible for the various manifestations of male and female found throughout the world today. Much of the liturgy in Wicca sounds like duotheism, but I have yet to meet a Wiccan who actively self-identifies this way. It also limits sexuality to strict constructs of male and female, an idea no longer supported by science or the reality we live in.

  Energies

  There are some Witches who believe that deities are more akin to “energies” than to beings with a consciousness. When they invoke the Horned God, for example, they are invoking the wild energies of the earth for use in their magick or rituals. Gods as energies don’t “think” like you or I do, but they can still affect our reality. For those who subscribe to this interpretation of deity, earth energies are natural things that exist around us, and to better understand them, we give them names and titles like the Horned God.

  Though I’m not a believer in this theory, I do know that the energy of deities can transform us. When we call out to the Horned God and he chooses to show up, his energy has an impact on how we behave and act. Horned God energy might result, for example, in someone becoming sexually excited or feeling closer to the natural world.

  The Gods Are Manifestations of Something Inside of Ourselves

  I know several Witches who see figures like the Horned God as something from inside of ourselves. To them, the Horned God represents our relationship with the natural world, Witchcraft, and sex. He’s a focus for rituals and rites, but his power comes from inside of us. According to this line of thinking, gods and goddesses are human constructs created to give us a sense of direction and purpose.

  The Gods Are Not Real and Are Not Energies

  There are very devout atheist Witches and Pagans in the world today. They don’t believe in deities and don’t even interpret those deities as the natural energies of the earth, yet they will often use terms such as the Horned God. In such instances, they are generally putting a poetic spin on references to the world’s wild spaces and the mysteries of nature. To them, the Horned God is a term that represents the wonder of the natural world and the mysteries of love, lust, and union.

  The Witch world is wide and diverse, and there are as many interpretations of just what deity is as there are Witches. When it comes to issues of theology, there are no absolutes. You might have found yourself nodding along with some of the ideas presented here, or perhaps your own beliefs are best represented by a combination of these ideas. There is no right or wrong, but just what works for you!

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  Chapter Two

  Myth and Ancient History

  The 1990s were one of the most formative decades in the history of Modern Witchcraft. It was a decade that began with letter writing and print magazines and ended with email and blogs. It was a boom period for Witchcraft books written by actual Witches, and those books could be found just about everywhere. It was the era of the book superstore, which featured shelves overflowing with magickal and occult topics.

  Despite all of those books (and the explosion in Witchcraft’s popularity during the period), there wasn’t much out there about the history of the Craft and figures like the Horned God, and the material that was available on those topics often wasn’t very reliable. The history written about during this period was just as much hearsay as it was documented fact, and that hearsay was repeated online, in books, and around campfires at large Pagan gatherings.

  The lack of quality information wasn’t really anyone’s fault; it simply didn’t exist at the time. Scholars had yet to begin taking Modern Witchcraft and its deities seriously as an academic discipline, and the studies that were available were generally in difficult-to-access scholarly journals and books. We take the free flow of information for granted today, but research was far more difficult even just thirty years ago. “Histories” that make me laugh a bit today were simply the best most authors could do at the time.

  In fairness, a lot of the bad information came from academic sources that had been popular in previous decades. Witches like Gerald Gardner took their history from books printed in the early twentieth century, then that particular version of history was shared again and again, with no one ever really bothering to check to see if it still held up. Many of the most popular Witch books ever published (and most of them are still bestsellers today) contain history that just doesn’t hold up, but for many people, that history has been difficult to let go of.

  The stories about the history of the Horned God that I heard growing up in the 1990s are what I’ve come to call The Myth of the Horned God and Witchcraft, and I call this body of work a myth for a very particular reason: because some of it is true. Not only true in the sense that there’s a kernel of historicity there, but also true in a mythological sense. Our now-antiquated versions of the Horned God’s history connect us with our ancient ancestors and to our more recent Craft ancestors who shared those stories.

  The myth of the Horned God is worth telling because of the connections that arise from it. It’s also worth retelling because it’s still very present in the world of Witchcraft today. It’s a tale that is still told around campfires, and often held onto as if it were holy writ, despite not holding up to academic scrutiny. It’s a his
tory that is also still present in a lot of Witchcraft books, and it’s a history that speaks to a lot of people. No book on the Horned God would be complete without it.

  The Myth of the Horned God

  Fifteen thousand years ago in the darkness of a massive system of caves located in modern-day France, some unknown person painted the first picture of the Horned God. Though he doesn’t quite look like the Horned God many of us know today, he’s still recognizable. His feet are those of a man and he stands upright, and he has a tail, perhaps so that all might see his animal nature. His body is covered in fur, but he clearly has hands instead of hooves or paws. His eyes are recognizable as human, though there’s an odd owl-like appearance to his face. Most impressively of all, he has the antlers of a stag atop his head, and in that spot, they look completely natural. The antlers are no crown, but a part of his very being.

  The animal attributes, so clearly visible on that cave wall, portray his connection to the earth and the natural world. This was no god of war or god of the sky; the Horned God was the deity of mountains, plains, and forests. His animal nature also revealed him to be a god of lust, sex, and physical desire. In addition to his horns, he was a god to whom the phallus was sacred. Over time, worship of this Horned God would spread from the cave where he was born throughout Europe and later the entire world.