#antlered one

[makennawoods7112]

[xartus]

I'm gonna try to summarize my recent research into "Carnonos":

It would seem that, in times of old (Mesolithic), a deer cult emerged in northern Europe/Eurasia

Of course the origins can't ever be fully known but it seems to have originated with sympathetic hunting magic and then evolved into something dealing more with "shamanism"/spiritual mediators

Its hypothesized that people, who depended on the deer for lots of things, would dress in their skins and antlers as a way to

a)hunt then without spooking the deer because they smelled and looked like them and

b)perform sympathetic magic in rituals where deer behavior would be mimicked while wearing deer costume as a way to invoke their presence and make the hunt more fruitful

While performing these rituals/hunting practices, the people became creatures of liminal nature: man and beast, capable of interacting with both and moving through both spaces

This liminal nature allowed for them to became mediators between the world of man and animals and also the world of spirits

So the question is: in depictions of people with antlers or in depictions of beings with deer and human qualities, what exactly is it?

Well yes it could just be the ritual mediator, that is a possibility and certainly probable. However, there's another theory that these depictions show a being that is the parallel spiritual mediator on the "other side", as a helper spirit to the human on this "side"

An ancestor of both humans and deer, the proto spiritual mediator, master of the liminal and all paths everywhere. And it doesn't have to be one thing, it could have been a type of spirit, who knows?

As time goes on, the liminal nature of the deer and deer-mediators becomes more organized and there becomes a distinct association not only with the hunt and the spirit world but also with leading the dead to their dwelling place. Thus this spirit, type of spirit, or ancester deer-mediator becomes a psychopomp and deer become highly associated with spiritual mediators/"shamans"

Time progresses and now it's the Neolithic. The economy has changed, trade has changed, we have changed. We are more removed from nature and develop an in-versus-out, us-versus-them mentality. The deer becomes a trade good proper. We have invented agriculture and with it a cult of the sun and the fertility of the earth. The deer becomes a symbol of the regeneration of natural cycles (think antlers shedding and growing), an emmisary of the now mysterious forces of nature and connected to the sun cult through these other associations

In some places this spirit becomes a deity of pastoral land, liminality, flocks and paths(Proto Undo European, Paxuson). In others, a deity of the hunt and a tutelary guardian(Anatolian, Hittite ect). In others still a deity involved in the ways of all fertility, land and human and animal(Scandanavian, Freyr). In the Celtic culture the child-deity seems to have retained some aspects of dual nature and psychopomp (Gaul, Carnonos)

Whether this spirit is a deified ancestor or a spirit sent from beyond to aid us or a type of spirit is ultimately irrelevant- what matters is that a conception of a being such as this existed and continued to exist in fragmented or evolved form for thousands of years

[paganpillar]

Cernunnos

Gaulish Mythology: God of the Underworld, liminality, fertility, wealth, and the wild.