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.
The Ram-Bearing God
Tale in a Time of Plague
As Pausanias tells it, the god Hermes once saved the city of Tanagra, in Boeotia, from a pandemic.
At the time, the plague raged all around the city, and the Tanagrans feared it was only a matter of time until it came to their doorsteps as well. Then Hermes, that ever-young god, was seen walking the circuit of the city's walls, bearing a ram on his shoulders.
Not one Tanagran died of plague.
Ever after, Hermes Kriophóros (“the ram-bearer”) was accounted the city's patron, and on his festivals the handsomest youth in town would ceremonially walk the circuit of the city's walls, bearing a lamb on his shoulders.
(Although Pausanias does not say so, presumably the lamb would have been borne ultimately to the god's temple, and there given to him in sacrifice.)
In Classical art, Ram-Bearing Hermes became a common icon of philanthropy, humanitas, and divine protection. The motif continued into the Christian centuries and, indeed, to this very day.
In our own time of plague, let us remember. Maybe a ram to the Horned wouldn't be such a bad idea.
The Couple from the Shakespeare Inn
After the Claudian conquest of Britain in 63 CE, British gods often took on Roman faces. As archaeologist Miranda Aldhouse-Green tells in her 2018 Sacred Britannia: The Gods and Rituals of Roman Britain, in Britain, Mercury—the Roman Hermes—frequently sprouted horns.
In this relief from the Roman city of Glevum (= modern Gloucester), in the tribal territory of the Dobunni, Celtic predecessors of the Anglo-Saxon Hwicce (the original tribe of Witches), the Celtic Hermes, shown here alongside his consort, sports the god's usual Mediterranean attributes: youthful beauty, heroic nudity, a money-bag, the caduceus, and the cockerel.
But the wings of his pétasos (winged hat) have morphed into horns. Behold the God of the Witches.
The God of Uley
Gods rise and fall, but holy places go on and on.
The hill-fort at West Hill in Uley (YULE-ee), Gloustershire, also in the territory of the tribe of Witches, has been a sacred place for a long, long time.
Evidence suggests that a ceremonial enclosure stood here during the Neolithic period. Later, an Iron Age Celtic sanctuary—a wooden temenos-wall surrounding two shrines—was built during the 1st century BCE. We don't know to what gods the shrines were sacred, but the Romano-British temple that was raised there in the 2nd century CE was dedicated to Mercury. It would seem to have become a regional sanctuary and site of pilgrimage for some 300 years.
In the 5th century, the cult statue of Mercury was broken up and his temple dismantled; a wooden church—later rebuilt in stone—was raised in its place.
Interestingly, though, the archaeologists who excavated the site in the mid 20th-century, found the head of the god's statue, still beautiful after 1900 years, to have been intentionally—carefully, lovingly almost—buried nearby (Aldhouse-Green 192).
Although—unlike his brothers throughout Celtic Britain—the Mercury of Uley sprouts no horns, note that the twin curls at the peak of his forehead bear a marked, if subtle, resemble to a pair of spiraling ram's horns.
Well, you know that tricksy, ever-young God of the Witches, with all his shenanigans and guises.
See them or no, his horns are always there.
Miranda Aldhouse-Green (2018) Sacred Britannia: The Gods and Rituals of Roman Britain. Thames & Hudson.
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