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Water from the Tines

Anyone that knows Old Hornie knows him both for a trickster and a shifter of shapes, who “shows himself to each according to their desire.” Nor indeed is he god of witches alone, but everyone's, knowing or no.

(Frearth Hobson)

While visiting a friend in Ireland's Burren region, mythologist Martin Shaw spent the night in the mossy limestone cave once inhabited by Colmán mac Duagh, a 7th-century holy man.

The next night, he dreamt that he was back in the cave.

A stag came to the entrance of the cave, in moonlight. He looked in and he was twelve-tined, which means he had a great rack. I suddenly realized in the dream that I was phenomenally thirsty. As I had that thought, the stag, which I know in some form was Yeshua [= Jesus] leaned forward with his antlers, and on the tip of every antler was a drop of water. It's very much like an icon. I was underneath it with my hands cupped, gathering every drop of God-water, of Yeshua-water, of Spirit-water. I drank, and then I woke up [Dreher 215].

Forthwith, fair reader, some questions.

Even as a callow first-time reader of Dante's Divine Comedy, I could readily see the major design flaw in the overarching architectonic symbolism of that soaring cathedral of a masterpiece.

It makes Lucifer the—literal—center of the universe.

Like Dante, I too had my own selva oscura experience.

He, though, wanted to find his way out of the dark forest.

Me, I sought a way in.

Forests can be literal or figurative. Mine were both.

The self, too, is a dark forest: one that it took me long to find the courage to enter.

In the end, desperation drove me.

Walking God

When the First Ancestors came to America, they found paths.

Before ever human had set foot on ground, paths were already laid down.

The Horned, god of witches, made them.

Wherever the ancestors went, they found ways, ways worn by no human foot, ways that spoke with the wisdom of the Land.

The Horned, god of witches, made them all.

For this, we call Him the way-god.

Roads, streets, trails, paths, ways: anything that links one place to another.

All are His, for He made them.

All His paths lead somewhere.

Why is the Animal God, He Who Is All Animals, god of roads?

Easily told.

Him that we call the Horned is a walking god.

Animals move from place to place. It is what we do, our outstanding characteristic.

When we go, we rarely go aimlessly. Where we go, we go for a reason.

Our paths lead from one place to another.

They speak with the wisdom of the Land.

In the days of my anguished adolescence, I would go to the woods at night.

Having stashed my shoes under a fallen tree, I would walk the deer-paths, barefoot, until the roaring in my head grew silent, until the I of I had entirely disappeared, and become one with the forest.

(In the darkness, bare feet will always find the path.)

In this way, my life was saved.

At the jack o' lantern Gate, the Horned lays down his crown of antlers and autumn leaves.

He removes his torc.

He doffs his cloak.

Even the scanty loincloth he strips off.

Without looking back, he passes through the Gate.

Long after his pale rippling flanks have disappeared into darkness, we can still hear the dry leaves, crunching underfoot.

Later, around the hearth, someone asks: Gods, weren't you cold?

He laughs.

Here's the point at which I'm supposed to say—his voice drops a register—I was so deep in trance, I didn't even notice the cold, he says.

He laughs again and shakes his head.

Of course I was cold, he says. By the time I'd got to where I'd stashed my clothes, I swear, both nuts had crawled all the way back up into their sockets.

We laugh, as intended, but unconsciously, we all edge a little nearer the fire. Winter is upon us.

Claude Tholosan's 1445 (?) treatise So That the Errors of Magicians and Witches has some pretty profound things to say about the Horned.

Admittedly, he does call him Diabolus, the Devil.

But lay that by for now.

He shows himself to each according to their desire...nor is he seen except by whom he wishes.

“He shows himself to each according to their desire.”

He's skin-strong, this one, a changer of shapes, and how you see him depends on you and your expectations. He shapes himself to you.

Relationship. It's all about relationship: his with you, yours with him.

What a god.

He shows himself to some as a man, to some as a woman, or some beast. Me, I saw a beautiful naked man with branching antlers.

To some he shows himself as Cernunnos, to some as Pan.

To Herb Sloane, founder of Our Lady of Endor Coven and the Ophitic Gnostic Cultus of Sathanas (ca. 1965)—as perhaps to M. Tholosan—he showed himself as the Devil.

One might even suppose, then—surely it is not beyond his capability—that to some he shows himself as Christ.

I say again: what a god.

“...Nor is he seen except by whom he wishes.”

Why "buck naked"?

Here's what we know about the expression. It's American; it dates from the early 19^th century; it's definitely not a euphemism for “butt-naked”, which expression doesn't turn up until the 1950s.

So, what's so naked about a buck?

700 years ago, “buck” referred specifically to a he-goat, but with time the term has come to be used for the males of several different species, including deer, rabbits, and (humorously) humans. But, America being America, and the deer being the American animal par excellence, in American usage “buck” has come to mean a male deer preeminently.

(Except to romantic pagans of Ye Olde Renn Fest variety, for whom every deer with antlers is a “stag,” and all big black birds, crows included, “ravens.” Gods, folks.)

So why would a buck be more naked than any other animal?

Well, consider a buck in flight. The tail goes up, exposing a white patch for others to follow.

Exposing also, well...other parts that aren't usually exposed. Um, sensitive parts, intimate parts.

That's pretty naked.

But there's more.

I don't need to tell you that the god of the witches goes by many names: names like “Old Buck.”

“I love you more than I love God,” my first boyfriend once told me.

Then he freaked out, because it was true.

Two young priests-in-training—me to the Horned, he to Christ—trying our best to follow our respective loves, in a time of discountenance for love of man for man.

In the end, the cognitive strain became too great for him to bear. It never occurred to him what from the start seemed obvious to me: that he best loved one by loving the other as well.

So we went our separate ways: him to his priesthood, god and people, me to mine.

We're now both nearer death than birth. My life has been the happier, I think. He has a pension, though.

Do some loves exclude others? Do we not, in loving others, love our gods as well?

For the Horned, for Him Who is all animal life, surely so. And for Christ?

To me, who maybe have no right to an opinion, it seems that perhaps a case could be made. Gods help me, I'm no longer so convinced as once I was that, in the end, my boyfriend's god and mine are even so different, after all.