Rheims Cernunnos
Gallo-Roman relief, 1st century CE
Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
People of the Goat
Once we dwelt in the fertile plains. Beef was our food, the milk of cows our drink.
Then we were driven out.
Into the rocky, unfertile hills we fled, which cannot sustain a cow.
We became a people of the goat, for whom the Horned wears caprine horns and hide.
Like goats, we witches are survivors.
That's why it can't help but seem to me something of a moral failing that I don't like goat's milk.
Oh, I've tried. “This chèvre has a nice, lemony tang to it,” I say hopefully.
But in my heart, I understand that it's really myself that I'm trying to talk around.
Maybe it's just a matter of what I'm used to.
Maybe I'm secretly longing for those fat days of our onetime freedom.
Well, I'll drink my cow's milk, and be glad of it, best of foods.
But even here in the fertile plains, we do not forget.
Black Goat of the Sabbat,
seated on the altar:
to you, to you, my Buck,
I make my prayer.
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