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.

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Some Thoughts on a Contemporary Cernunnos

That the Horned God speaks directly to contemporary needs and sensibilities may readily be deduced from the hundreds—if not thousands—of contemporary visual images that He has inspired.

I'd like to take a little time to muse on what strikes me as one of the simplest, most beautiful and, simultaneously, most articulate of those many images: Thalia Took's "Cernunnos." 

Took takes as her prototype the famous—and eponymous—image of Cernunnos from the Gallo-Roman Pillar of the Boatmen discovered in 1710 underneath the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris (see below). Both images share a full-face view of the god, with antlers, beard, torque, and leaf-shaped cervine ears. Clearly this is a god who readily hears prayer, his hearing as sensitive as a deer's. Both images are inscribed with the name of the god: in the Notre Dame Cernunnos, above the image itself; in Took's, charmingly, below.

I'm struck by the visual economy of Took's rendering. We see only the base of the god's antlers; his shoulders and bare chest suggest both virility and nudity. His pentagrammatic face—beard, antler, ear, ear, antler, beard again—gazes out directly at the viewer, enhaloed in his wild tangle of hair. This is a wilder, more untamed god than that of the Paris Boatmen. 

In your imagination, take away Cernunnos' antlers, ears, and "torque" (on which, more shortly).  Connoisseurs of historic irony will note that the god, with his open face, short beard, and centrally-parted shoulder-length hair bears a strong resemblance to traditional images of Jesus. This is sheer brilliance on Took's part: it both lends the image a disquieting familiarity, and with gentle humor redresses the fact that early Christian artists, in the absence of any real knowledge of the historical Jesus' appearance, based what has come to be the standard image of the Christian god on pagan prototypes. Call it a cattle-raid of icons.

Note both the economy and the aptness of Took's palette. The original Pillar of the Boatmen Cernunnos sculpture would likely have been painted, but we can no longer say what the colors might have been. Took here renders the god solely in greens and browns: precisely what one would expect for a god of woodland and wildlife.

Also well worth noting are the ways in which Took departs from the Paris image. We see here the subtlety of her approach. The Paris Cernunnos wears a royal torque and, as god of wealth, sports two more hanging from his antlers. Here, though, what at first seems to be a torque proves, on closer inspection, to be a green snake. Like Shiva, the Western Antlered also wears around his neck a living serpent, which (as witches well know) whispers into his leaf-shaped cervine ears the mysteries of the Great Below.

b2ap3_thumbnail_Cernunnos_20190219-170530_1.jpg

Note also the greenness of the god's eyes. "Old Emerald Eyes," witches call him. Anyone who has ever encountered a deer in the headlights will know that its eyes, brown by day, by night reflect instead a startling green.

Look into the god's eyes. Like deer, he sports a double pupil in each iris. (Interestingly, goats have double pupils as well, although theirs are vertical.) I wonder if we may not also see here also an exceedingly subtle allusion to the phantasmorgical imagination of the world of the Celtic imagination, where multiple irises characterize certain extraordinary—and far-seeing—figures: Fedelm, the noted seeress, with three pupils in each eye, Cuchulainn with seven. This Cernunnos boasts not only a deer's acute hearing, but its sensitive vision as well.

Well, there's my thousand words on this particular image. It seems only fitting to conclude with thanks and praise to Thalia Took for sharing her powerful, and profound, vision of this god.

Living with icons is one of the joys of pagan life. I've got mine. You can order yours here.


 

 

 

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Tagged in: Cernunnos Pagan art
Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.

Comments

  • Aline "Macha" O'Brien
    Aline "Macha" O'Brien Tuesday, 19 February 2019

    Beautiful! Another one to print out for my inmates' binder of shadows. Thanks.

  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch Wednesday, 20 February 2019

    Please, and with my blessing!

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