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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 Deer Antlers For Sale at the Deer ...

The deer was lying in the middle of the road. There was no way he was going to avoid hitting it.

My friend and a buddy were on long haul to a heathen gathering. Flying down the Interstate in the early October dusk, they'd been driving all day; his companion was asleep in the passenger seat. In retrospect, my friend thinks that he'd been on the verge of drifting off himself, when suddenly the deer—as it were—materialized right in front of him.

My friend swerves to avoid it, but it's too late. With an explosive boom, the driver's side wheel ricochets off the deer, and the truck actually rears up on its two side tires. A rollover seems inevitable.

Somehow, my friend manages to wrestle the truck, now careening for the ditch, back down onto all fours. He hauls hard on the wheel, spraying gravel. When he finally regains control, he pulls over and stops, and—his friend now rudely awake—the two of them sit there a long while just breathing, badly shaken.

“I've got to go move that carcass,” my friend says, finally. You don't go leaving dead deer laying in the middle of the road for someone else to hit.

My friend gets out. He checks the front of the vehicle. Oddly, the impact doesn't seem to have done any damage. He checks underneath, where he'd heard the buck's body bouncing; no damage there, either. Looking skyward, eyes closed against the sudden gentle rain, he murmurs a prayer of thanks and kisses the truck full on the hood. Then he goes around back to get a tool to help move the body.

They're on their way to a heathen gathering. The only tool they have with them that could possibly be of any use is a reproduction Viking Age ax.

My friend takes the ax and starts walking. On the way he thinks: A big guy with a big beard in a leather biker jacket, walking down the side of the road, hefting an ax. This is gonna look really good.

He walks for maybe a quarter of a mile before he gets to the deer: once a 300-pound lord of the prairie, now a mess of tangled legs and blood. With the help of the ax, he manages to drag it off of the road.

Saying a few words to send the deer on its way, he spots a broken antler laying in a pool of blood. He picks it up and pockets it.

He walks back to the truck and gets in. That's when the state trooper pulls up.

He leans into the open window. “We had a report of a big guy walking along the side of the road with an ax,” he says.

“That would be me,” my friend tells him. “I hit a deer about a quarter mile back, and didn't want to leave it in the middle of the road.”

“Oh,” says the cop. “Did you boys want the meat?”

No, they didn't. They drive off, and eventually arrive safely at the gathering.

Unpacking, they find that one of the two bottles of killer home-brewed mead that they've brought with them has broken.

His buddy chafes at the loss, but my friend is content.

“When we reared up on two tires, I prayed: Get me out of this, and I'll pour you out a bottle of mead,” he said.

The truck could have been totaled. They could both have been injured, or killed. Instead, the only casualties were a deer, and a bottle of mead.

My friend finishes his story. We both take a sip of beer.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

 

A Challenge to Pagan Artists

 

Horns are (so to speak) evergreen, antlers deciduous.

So does the Horned God shed his antlers?

Here in the US at least, the Horned is most frequently depicted with antlers. This is unsurprising. In large part, his contemporary iconography draws on the Antlered Gods of ancient Western Europe. Deer are by far the most popular game animal in the States, and a beloved icon of the natural world in American eyes. One should add that modern pagans have for the most part been at pains to distinguish their patron god from the “Devil,” most frequently conceived of wearing either bull's or goat's horns; hence the preference for the divinely antlered.

There's another reason for this iconographic preference, and an important one. Unlike horns which, once the horned animal has reached maturity, cease to grow, antlers are shed and regrow annually. In se, antlers embody the Year, the Cycle, Death and Rebirth.

Of course, you wouldn't guess as much to look at contemporary pagan art, in which the Antlered is depicted as permanently antlered.

In part, this is because modern pagan iconography is still in a process of formation. As it reaches maturity, one would expect to find images of the Antlered that better reflect the true cycles of the natural world.

(In part, let it be admitted, it reflects the fact that, claims of “Nature religion” aside, most modern paganism is actually pretty ignorant of the realia of the natural world.)

In future pagan art, expect cycles depicting the Antlered's birth, growth, and maturation, His antlers (or lack of such) reflecting such. One could, of course, draw up a Wheel of the Year based on antlers alone. May we all live to see it.

Being god of all Red Life, the Horned may wear horns of any kind, or none. But antlers are unique: in their embodiment of the Year, they demonstrate an overt nearness to the Green Life of plants as well. Here the Red God comes nearest his twin brother, the Green.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Antlers Forever

Gods know that I'm no great fan of Patricia Kenneally-Morrison's Kelts-in-Space series, The Keltiad, but that's not to say that, in her envisioning of what a pagan society might look like from the inside, she doesn't occasionally get things right.

Indeed, sometimes she gets them very right indeed.

PK-M's Kelts-in-Space know of a figure called the Caberfèidh, pronounced CAB-ber-fay. In Scots Gaelic, this means “stag's antlers.” In fact, he's no kind of fay at all—or maybe, on second thought, he is—but rather the pan-Keltic Antlered God Himself.

On Earth, Caberfèidh is the title of the hereditary chieftain of Clan Mackenzie. (“Clan” means “children”: hence, the “children of Mackenzie.” It's the Q-Celtic version of the word that's plant in P-Celtic Welsh, as in Plant Brân, the “children of Brân.”) A pretty felicitous image, this: the clan itself the stag, and the chief the very antlers thereof.

The metaphor is a profound one. That antlers are by nature deciduous, while the stag himself lives on, comments obliquely on the sacrificial nature of the chieftaincy.

Sure, and when it comes to the Caberfeidh, we're of one body with Him, indeed, and He Himself the Antlers.

And if you should hap to meet the Antlers Himself, be sure to say Him so.

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  • Jamie
    Jamie says #
    Mr. Posch, Who knows? Isolated off-world settlements might be ideal locations for pan-Pagan enclaves. Maybe not the future city

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Eyes of a Witch

How do you know a witch when you see one?

According to Catalan witch-lore, it's easy: you look into the eyes. Witches' eyes are distinctive.

(Catalunya's witches—bruixas—are a fascinating lot. Their witch-marks look like two horns, crossed. They dance naked a lot, especially on Midsummer's Eve, especially on Montserrat [Sawtooth Mountain] and Pedraforca [Forked Stone], the two sacred Sabbat Mounts of Català.)

Look into the witch's eyes.

In one eye, you'll see a double pupil.

In the other, a deer's antler.

Friend, can you read these runes?

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs

As we approach Winter Solstice there are many wonderful tales to tell. Tales that have been shared around fires for thousands of years.I have been working a lot creating prayer beads and this is a rather special limited edition set inspired by the Cailleach. They were made on the day of the full moon and now in the time of the waning moon as we approach the Winter Solstice the white moonstone holds that magic of the stillness and quiet this time of year can offer if we step away from the maddening crowds and take our inspiration from the landscape whose trees and plants have returned deep down to their roots.

 

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  • JudithAnn
    JudithAnn says #
    Thank you. The guided meditation and music was beautiful. I have been connecting with the Cailleach for the past few dark seasons

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
How Many Tines on That God?

I am a stag of seven tines.

(Song of Amairgin)

The Paris Cernunnos has four.

The "sorcerer" of Les Trois Frères, apparently, seven.

For all his youthful appearance, the Gundestrup Antlered sports a lordly fourteen.

Tines.

Antlers are a miracle. They're the fastest-growing bone on the planet. By Samhain, they're actually dead. Dead horns on a living buck: small wonder that the Antlered is reckoned lord of the dead.

Novelist Rosemary Sutcliff, in Mark of the Horse Lord, describes a cave-painting of the Lord of Herds and the Hunting Trail: "towering into the upper gloom, gaunt and grotesque but magnificent, the figure of a man with the head of a twelve-point stag."

Trophy-hunters value number of points: more is better. The more points, the older (and presumably wiser) the stag.

One wonders just what the meaning of different numbers of tines might be in representations of the Horned God. Having posed the question, the answers readily present themselves.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Elen - the Wild Spirit

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  • Jenn
    Jenn says #
    I love this so much!
  • Ted Czukor
    Ted Czukor says #
    Beautiful. Thank you so much.

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