CERNUNNOS
As the archetypal spirit of nature, the
image of Cernunnos can be found in Romano-Celtic worship
sites throughout the Celtic lands. His role as an animal
god and hunter was central to early Celtic religion and has
been preserved in folklore and magic to the present day.
The cult of Cernunnos was especially encouraged by the
Druids in their attempt to regularize the local Celtic
dieties into some sort of pantheon. It was their wish to
establish him as a national, rather than a local diety. The
Druids had some success as he was possibly the nearest the
Celts got to a universal father god within their fragmented
system of worship.
He is portrayed on many Celtic artifacts and works of art
as far back as they can be recovered. The Gundestrup
Cauldron is probably the best known piece, containing, as
it does, what has become the most widely published Celtic
scene ever, a depiction of Cernunnos sitting cross-legged
in the company of a stag and a boar, holding a torc in his
right hand and a snake in his left. Cernunnos was invoked
in many Celtic ceremonies and he appeared in many guises.
He was the randy goat representing the fertility rites of
Beltaine, a festival held on the first of May, which marked
the beginning of the Celtic summer. He was also the master
of the hunt who came to full power in late summer and early
autumn. As the guardian of the gates to the Otherworld
Cernunnos became associated with wealth and prosperity,
although his earlier function had been of a nature diety
holding sway over the woodlands, and animals, as well as
the active forces of life and death, regeneration and male
fertility.
Cernunnos was of such importance to the Celts that the
Christian church made him a special target of abuse, taking
his image to be that of the Devil, deo falsus or “false
god”. This was not a judgment on his attributes, but rather
a device for frightening the European populace away from
the Old Religion.
His status as a fertility god is of much later origin, he
has much less to do with sexuality than popular wisdom
would suggest. He is the god of hunting, culling and
taking, so that through selection and sacrifice, he is able
to utilize the powers of fertility, regeneration and growth
to purify and strengthen the animal kingdom.
Stories of Cernunnos are sketchy and come largely from oral
sources. Both his image and his name survive in present-day
Britain. The former in many rituals and folk dances
performed around the countryside, particularly the Abbots
Bromley horn dance, and the latter in place names such as
Cerne Abbas in Devon, and the legend of Herne the Hunter, a
fabled antlered entity said to roam the Forest of
Windsor.