Reminder that Toutâ Galation is still indeed at thing for all things Gaulish Polytheism, culture, language, and still going strong.
I’ve recently celebrated my 6th year as a member and we’re continuously ramping up with our curriculum being expanded upon, online events & festivals and plans for post-covid offline offshoots.
We’ve got a highly active community on discord, a freshly updated website, and the secrets of Cernunnos, of course.
Asking things!!! Describe a/the moment you fell in love with your gods/felt their presence very strongly!
giiiiiiirl. i’m never going to miss an opportunity to talk about this. this turned out to be longer than i anticipated.
I’ve been depressed for the past 6 years (ugh) and let me tell you guys something about the Turkish educational system; you have to take an exam to get into a good high school so that they can prepare you well enough for the other exams/tests you need to take in order to get into a good university. I’m an only child and my family takes education very seriously -which is something i appreciate- but my dad who is the paranoid half of my parents took it a little too far, unknowingly of course. long story short, i ended being this anxious, perfectionist, depressed ugly little shit that i am.
you know(?) how it is with mental disorders, every now and then it gets really bad and you feel like you are falling apart slowly. it was one of those days a few years ago. my parents always wanted me to be a doctor so they made me study maths&sciences in high school and although I was good at it, I was so fucking unhappy. it wasn’t what i wanted to do AT ALL. I wanted to study languages and this created a big tension at home and i felt like i had no one who could help me.
boy was i wrong. (this was all around the time when i started ‘properly’ worshipping Cernunnos) one day after i came home from school, i felt this urge to just take off. not like run away from the house kind of taking off but just this feeling of deliberately getting lost in the streets of İstanbul (i highly do not recommend getting lost in İstanbul btw). so i did it. i just walked and walked until i lost the sense of time and after i started paying attention, i found this tree branch that had fallen off and i took it. all the while i never once felt like i was alone.
i came home and i lit a few candles and an incense stick to thank Him for helping me relieve some stress. i was holding that branch and i was talking to Him and i just fucking broke down into tears. I fucking hate crying, emotions are disgusting. but i felt every negative thing just pouring out of me through those tears. i was just clutching that branch and hysterically crying and all of a sudden i felt as if someone turned off a switch inside me and i just stopped. I had never felt so light in my entire life. my heart wasn’t as heavy anymore and i knew He was always there, listening and paying attention. I know He is always there for me and that He listens and He knows.
Cernunnos may not always demand attention (He doesn’t like too much of it, even) and I’d used to worry a lot about whether He had left me because I wasn’t good enough for him. Now, I know that He is always there to help me get back up whenever I fall.
There are no surviving myths, or even written documents, concerning Cernunnos. We only know His name from the one written source, the Pillar of the Boatmen, which has an image of a man’s head with antlers and the single word “[C]ernunnos”.
This is Not A Lot.
In fact, it is an underwhelming, overwhelming, intimidating lack of information, myth, description. Conflation with other Gods and Spirits and Beings gives possible myths: The Wild Hunt, various and sundry myths of Pan and Dionysos, Wiccan myths and stories about the Hunter/Father/King, but nothing certain. Coming as I do from Roman Catholicism, where there are stories and set rituals, liturgy and rules, this absence of instruction or precedent is terrifying. It sparks in me a benign jealousy of Hellenism, for example. And while I am a Heathen and also worship Norse deities, who have their own sets of myths where I sometimes see Cernunnos fitting in, the lack of material on my God is disheartening...
...and so very, very apt. Cernunnos is liminal. He is Hard To Know. He is Hidden in the Forest and in Our Wild Selves. It is through dedication and practice and reverence and acceptance, or rather acknowledgement, of Unknowing that we can Know Him.
That said, I do associate Him with His own Wild Hunt. And I’ll end with a description of how I See Him.
The forest is thick, the air is heavy, and light is dimming. There is a mist, and it could be a summer fog or a winter chill-- He is in both. As if stepping out of shadows, He appears: tall, dark, strong, at once here and somewhere else. Dark brown hair frames his face, draping his shoulders, piercing blue eyes-- or green?-- and antlers. He is quiet, imposing, expectant. A teacher, a hunter, at once comforting and intense. There are depths and wells but also hunger, and still quiet. He is calm and wild, and waiting.
Ladies and Gentlemen and Variations Thereupon, we have come to a contentious subject.
I am a hard polytheist. This means that I see deities not as archetypes, not as flavors or regional versions of universal beings, and certainly not as different aspects of one supreme being who wears too many hats. Sure, I think we’re all cut from the same stardust, but I don’t think my gods have a hivemind, ulterior motive, or are all the same Person. To that end, I do believe that different groups of people have experienced the same Beings and given Them different names, faces, myths, and that these things have changed over time, geography, and cultural contact. This is not for me to parse out, as I am not a theologian, and my academic energy is directed elsewhere (for more information, see my collected works: ). But, for example, I think/know/experience Freyja and Frigg to be different Beings, and I don’t refer to Cernunnos as Herne, Pan, or Dionysos.
Below, a discussion of Cernunnos, different versions of Him, and other related Beings. This is gonna get long, so have a cut!
Cernunnos: Some people see Cernunnos as fully-man, half-man half-deer, half-man half-goat, goat-man-goat, antlered-man, or even fully-deer. some see Him as a god of fertility, virility, abundance, spring and summer, rutting deer, and giant phalluses. Some see Him as a shaman god, distant and terrifying, Lord of Ecstatic Dance, harsh and bloodthirsty God without Mercy, and With Great Expectations. Some see Him as gentle, soft, loving, Lord of Furry Animals and Peaceful Woods. I see him as a mix of these, a God just as sovereign in Winter and Fall as in Spring and Summer, changing in ways appropriate to the seasons. I don’t picture phalluses, and I don’t hear screaming, but he’s not exactly fuzzy, either. To me, He is a Man who is a God, crowned with antlers, clothed in robes of winter or just pants in warmer weather. Quiet, intense, gentle, reserved. Wild but calm.
Herne the Hunter is often conflated with Cernunnos, either seen as two different versions of one god, or just two different personalities/jobs/names. As I have heard it, Herne was a real man, leader of a hunting band, who was killed by his fellow hunters out of greed. He ascended into powerful spirit status, and guards the woods in Berkeshire of Britain. He is also connected to the Green Man/Jack-in-the-Green. Details of the story change, but he was mentioned in Shakespeare’s “Merry Wives of Windsor,” which is believed to be the first written mention of Him, though scholars concede that Shakespeare may have based the character on an existing legend. He is worshipped as a powerful Spirit or God. It is possible that Herne may be based on Cernunnos, but personally, this name and version don’t match how I see my God. Doesn’t mean I’m right, just a matter of personal preference.
Odin, especially as the Anglo-Saxon Wodan/Norse Odin, has also been proposed as connected to both Cernunnos and Herne. For me, Odin represents war, madness, magic, knowledge, death, kings, and outcasts. While his colors of sovereignty, knowledge, and wildness do match Cernunnos, Cernunnos is not a King of other gods, but a King of Nature, the Wildwood. Cernunnos’ Knowing is inherent, supernatural but not quite from magic, while Wodan/Odin is/are Seeking constantly, learning magic, wandering as an outcast with a home in Asgard. Cernunnos’ home IS the wild, and he straddles the lines between life and death, civilization and nature, knowing and seeking. Like Herne, Wodan/Odin lead a Wild Hunt, and Cernunnos has His own as well but each for different purposes. Herne is a Hunter, riding with other spirits, perhaps looking for like-minded humans. Wodan/Odin’s Wild Hunt takes on a less voluntary vibe, as He is forever seeking reinforcements for the coming War. Cernunnos leads a hunt as a psychopomp, a leader and guide of spirits. This said, it is still better to throw yourself to the ground and stay in the middle of the road when you hear the Hunt coming...
Pan: A Greek deity/spirit, more alike to a goat than deer, which is certainly not how I see Cernunnos. I think the association is made to Herne, then to Cernunnos. Whatever the degrees of separation, Pan is a forest Being who plays the flute, has goat legs and horns (I can’t stop picturing Phil from Disney’s Hercules, I’m sorry), and seems really mischievous. See everything I’ve already written for why this doesn’t gel with how I see Cernunnos.
Dionysus: Seems like a great dude, but he’s also really Greek. See my explanation of hard polytheism above.
Bacchus: See above, except Roman.
Satan: Eh? As the Christian devil, I’m sure you don’t need an explanation for my why foresty, deer-antlered god of liminality doesn’t precisely match up with a demon bent on sending people to a Hell I also don’t believe in. Satanists and Luciferians can explain better than I can why Cernunnos isn’t quite like their guy, too. Too much goat, again, I think. Nothing against him, I just don’t see it.
I don’t really like this prompt. I’m a firm believer in UPG, and just because I’m a hard polytheist/not a Wiccan/not into goats doesn’t mean others are *wrong*. I believe that while Gods aren’t archetypes or different facets of one All, they can still appear differently to different people and still be Themselves. Just because I don’t really think that Cernunnos is Herne the Hunter is Pan is Wodan is Odin is Dionysus is Bacchus is Satan is Baphomet is Lucifer is Joe doesn’t mean I’m right and others are wrong and it’s impossible. Just because my god isn’t ally phalluses and fuzzy bunnies, or all screaming and hallucinating and blood, doesn’t mean people who experience this are wrong.
Really, the only thing that most people who do two minutes of research can be sure about is that He’s of Gaulish origin, not exactly Celtic Irish. But scholars are also apparently having a hard time separating Celtic and Gaulish history, so...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And now, a link to an article that explains all this MUCH BETTER: The “Right” Cernunnos by L.V. Boloix. An excerpt:
“But we are wrong, I think, when we begin establishing something like “godcanon” and sticking to it in the same manner and theology as that of a religion that is structured in a totally different way. [...] We need to stop taking a “monotheist” viewpoint of contemporary polytheism. This “godcanon” issue is one of the most subtle and deadly ones. We need to be careful.”
As a polytheist, I acknowledge that our experience are, and should be, as diverse as we are. Our Gods are not limited by us. Cernunnos will not be reigned in.
Cernunnos, like some other deities of religions that have experienced breaks in continuity (however long; looking at you, Freyja and Freyr), is known by what may actually be His title. “Cernunnos,” as well as linguists can tell, actually means “Horned/Antlered One” (see: the internet for more on this debate). When it comes to Him, that’s all we have with historical, textual evidence. So then we turn to UPG and personal flair. Following is a list of names and epithets that I’ve either used (*) or come across for Cernunnos.
