Cernunnos Folklore - Celtic Horned God
(KER noon os) The Lord of the Animals, 'Horned One', whose images are found in Romano-Celtic worship sites, and whose role as hunter and animal god is preserved in Celtic legend and folk lore. He ruled the active forces of life and death, giving and taking, in nature; in Romano-Celtic culture he was associated with wealth and prosperity, due to his role as Guardian of the Gateway to the Underworld where all potential forces and events originated. It should be stated emphatically that this deity has far to less to do with 'fertility' and sexuality than is assumed in popular fantasy, for he is a god of hunting, culling and taking.

His purpose is to purify through selection or sacrifice, in order that powers of growth and fertility may progress without stagnation. In this context of purification and de-pollution, he should be an especially interesting figure to us today, for he represents certain truthts known to our ancestors which have been neglected by us at our peril. The figure of Cernunnos from the Gundestrup Cauldron (second century AD) is probably the best-known representation of the Celtic Horned God (See plate next page).His very name is really the title, 'Horned One.' Holding a torc and a serpent, wearing an antlered cap, he sits in a yoga pose with his right heel against his genitals. Nearly all seated statues of Hindu deities show the same conventional pose. The torc and serpent are also genital symbols, female and male respectively.

Cernunnos is the spirit of the sacrificed stag-god, a nature deity to whom sacrifices were dedicated in order to maintain the wild creatures and the cycles of nature with his holy blood.

Cernunnos is the god of virility, fertility, animals, sex, nature, woodlands, reincarnation, crossroads, wealth, commerce and warriors. Correspondences for Cernunnos include the direction west, stags and rams, the oak, and peridot.

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