October 18

Today’s Otherkin Myth is about the Horned God of the UK

Who is the Horned God? Not hard: His name is Cernunnos and his image is found throughout Britain and Europe.

However, there is another answer to this question which better fits the multitude of horned god images and mythology: There are many horned gods and there are many types of horns.

Cernunnos is not actually horned at all. He is antlered and this is different, both physically and symbolically. Horns are a permanent fixture on a animal. They are made mostly keratin, a fibrous protein which is also present in our skin and hair. The keratin covers an inner core of living bone. Antlers are made from dead bone and unlike horns, they are shed seasonally - deer lose their antlers in autumn and regrow them in the spring.

Having made that distinction, I now confess that this article will look at both horned and antlered gods. It will concentrate on the Romano-British time periods and will look at general animal symbolism in pre-Christian Britain and the images of horned gods left to us by the Romano-British . We will extend this into the (mostly medieval) mythology of Britain and Ireland, looking at the role of horned animals and characters, looking for further clues about the lore of horned animals and the possible survival of older symbolism and lore into these tales. We will also be touching upon horned images from outside the British Isles for comparison purposes.

Having made the distinction between horned and antlered, we also need to look at whether or not different types of horns carry different symbolism. From the surviving imagery, that seems to be the case, although there are points of cross-over. There are three main groups of horned animal in Britain, the ram, the bull and the goat.

The goat becomes important later, particularly as the Christians began equating goat horns with their devil. (This was probably inspired by gods such as Pan and although this development is fascinating, it is outside the scope of this article.) During the iron-age and Roman period, the goat does not seem to have been widespread in Britain, probably because the hardier sheep does far better in our climate. Having said that, because the sheep of this time were far more goat-like than the modern fluffy creatures, it can be hard to tell the two apart in the archaeological record. Ram horns do appear, particularly in the figure of the mysterious ram-horned serpent that often accompanies antlered images. Bulls and bull-horned deities are the most commonly represented and this is unsurprising given the importance of cattle to the British economy and the impressive stature of a fully grown bull.

Although we do have some horned images from earlier times, the first significant horned god evidence was left by the Romans and Romano-British. However, the information is still scanty and we have a very incomplete picture of these gods, their attributes and their worship. There are many horned images without inscriptions and also some confusion over the various recorded god-titles. Most of these are descriptive (i.e. Belatucadros, Bright Shining One, Mogons, Great One etc.) This can be really useful as it gives us information about the attributes of these deities. On the other hand, most gods have more than one attribute and we have no idea if these titles might actually describing different facets of the same god. This tendency can be seen in Ireland with the figure of the Dagda, known variously as Ruad Rofhessa (Lord of Great Knowledge), Deirgderc (Red Eye) and Eochaid Ollathair (All-Father). However, as a polytheist, where there is no evidence to the contrary, I prefer to assume that each title belongs to an individual god.

The Roman practice of equating or comparing British deities with their own gods is also helpful to us. If we understand the symbolism and charactistics of gods such as Mars, Mercury and Silvanus, we can infer additional information concerning native gods and this can really help us to better understand their attributes.

Another important avenue is to look at the type of animal horn represented upon a god. If we understand the symbolism attached to an animal such as the bull or deer, we can begin to see how the depiction of horns might symbolise characteristics of the various horned deities. To do this, we can look at the representation of horns on contemporary pieces such as figurines, armour and horse trappings. We can also look at how that animal is portrayed in later myth, though we must do this carefully, bearing in mind that over a thousand years may separate this lore from the Romano-British evidence. 

                                                                                                                                                Contributed  by Valeria Shirkalina