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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in apotropaic

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
In the Name of the Horns

Horns ward.

The Sign of the Horns has been a sign of power since long before it became a Heavy Metal cliché.

Because horns aren't just for beauty or display.

They're weapons. They ward because they warn. Theirs is the power of protection.

You could call the Horns a mudra. (In Witch we usually just say: hand-sign.) You could call them an invocation. (You know Who I mean.) In Anthropologist, you could call them an apotropaic: a turning away, an averting.

The Horns have been warding off the hostile, the unchancy, the ill-favored, for centuries, if not millennia.

You can mutter “Horns ward [me]” or “Horns protect [me]” if you like. It certainly won't hurt.

But only make the Sign and the Horns will do their work, seen or unseen, spoken or unspoken.

Some might call this a fire-fight-fire scenario: like warding like, the unchancy against the unchancy.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Tony Lima
    Tony Lima says #
    Yeah, yeah, horns symbolize mostly good things, one of which is feared by many is in super-sexual capabilities that may even survi
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Ever a good averter, to be sure. And it does make the grass grow.
  • Thor Halvorsen
    Thor Halvorsen says #
    As a Deaf Pagan, I have to add that not only do they represent the pagan horns, Heavy Metal horns, but in the language of the Amer

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