Cernunnos
Cernunnos is the name of a pre-Christian Celtic deity. The name is conventionally assigned to male god figures in Celtic art that wear antlers and torcs.
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Crux of the matter |
Speak of the devil |
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Attestation
The word Cernunnos is found in that form on exactly one contemporary inscription, the Pillar of the Boatmen
This is the extent of the evidence that Cernunnos was the name of a deity. The word would appear to mean "the one with antlers", and ultimately derives from the Indo-European root *k̑r̥no-, "horn"; the English word itself is a cognate.
A number of horned or antlered figures appear in Celtic art; a celebrated example is on the Gundestrup cauldron
Contemporary revival
The scant attestation of the name Cernunnos has not prevented a great deal of speculation from moderns who find the idea of such a deity fetching. Cernunnos has been linked with Shiva
On even scantier evidence, Cernunnos has been identified as the "Horned God" or "Devil" worshipped by Margaret Murray's pseudohistorical witchcraft cult, and as such became the male deity worshiped alongside the Goddess in most forms of Wicca. Murray also identifies Cernunnos with Herne the Hunter
External links
- Jason Mankey, The Strange Triumph of Cernunnos over Pan, patheos.org
- Ceisiwr Serith, Cernunnos: Looking Every Which Way.
Notes
- Ronald Hutton notes that heroes "who appear to be human, such as Medb
File:Wikipedia's W.svg or Saint Brigid, probably were indeed once regarded as divine... the warriors who are the main protagonists of the stories have the same status as those in the Greek myths, standing between the human and divine orders. To regard characters such as Cú ChulainnFile:Wikipedia's W.svg , Fergus Mac RoichFile:Wikipedia's W.svg or Conall Cernach as former gods turned into humans by a later storyteller is to misunderstand their literary and religious function... Cú Chulainn is no more a former god than Superman is." Hutton, Ronald (1991). The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, USA: Blackwell. pp. 175–176. - Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,
Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns;
And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle,
And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner.
-- Act 4, scene 4.
References
- Cernunnos, at Histoire du Monde, Mar 27. 2007. (French)
- Xavier Delamarre, Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise (Éditions Errance, 2003), pp. 106–107.
- Koch, John T. (ed.) "Cernunnos", in Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2006; ISBN 1851094407)
- Ronald Hutton, Pagan Britain, ch. 5, "The Roman Impact". (Yale, 2015; ISBN 0300205465)