Cernunnos
The Horned God of
Nature and The Underworld
Cernunnos
Sources: https://www.worldhistory.org/Cernunnos/ https://occult-world.com/cernunnos/ -
Cernunnos was an ancient Celtic god who represented nature, flora and fauna, and fertility. He is frequently depicted in Celtic art wearing stag antlers or horns and usually a torc around his neck. Few details are known about him but celebrated representations of the god in Celtic art include the Val Camonica rock painting, the Gundestrup Cauldron, the bronze deity-figure from Bouray, and the Nautae Parisiaci monument. Cernunnos may have been one of the inspirations for depictions of Satan in Christian art and hero figures in the medieval literature of Wales and Ireland.
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Cernunnos was perhaps the most important deity in the Celtic religion if we consider the frequency he is represented in ancient Celtic art from Ireland to Romania. Known as ‘the horned one’, he represented nature, fruit, grain, animals, fertility, and prosperity. He may also have been regarded as an ancestor deity. However, the Celts left very few written records and so it is not clear how specific Celtic gods were worshipped or even what exactly they represented.
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Julius Caesar (d. 44 BCE) gave an account of Celtic gods in his Gallic Wars, but he is there comparing them with reference to the Roman world. Caesar equates Cernunnos with Dis Pater, a Roman god of death and the Underworld who is perhaps an aspect of Pluto. From other ancient authors and Celtic art, it seems likely that sacrifices of animals and perhaps even humans (prisoners of war) were given in Cernunnos’ and other gods’ honour.
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Votive offerings were made in the form of food, precious manufactured goods such as highly decorated metal cauldrons, fine pottery, and small monuments such as pillars and relief tablets.
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It is important to restate that so little is known of Cernunnos that it is possible we are entirely misinterpreting representations of him in Celtic art. As the historian J. MacKillop notes: "our knowledge of Cernunnos is so tenuous that he may not be a divinity at all but rather a shaman-like priest with antlers affixed to his head" (2006, 19).
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Cernunnos is the Latin name given this mysterious Celtic deity. Cernunnos is usually translated as “the horned one” and derives from an Indo-European root word ker meaning “growth” or “to become large and hard.” It may be a name, or it may be a title: the word appears on an altar found at Notre Dame together with his image.
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On the Gundestrup Cauldron, a highly ornamented silver vessel, discovered in a Danish peat bog in 1891 and dated to the first or second century BCE, Cernunnos sits cross-legged surrounded by forest animals, holding a ram-horned serpent in one hand and a torc in the other. In a relief from Reims, France, Cernunnos sits cross-legged with a stag and bull at his feet. He has a large sack from which he distributes what may be coins or grain.
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Cernunnos’ image appears throughout Celtic Europe, from Ireland to Romania. The oldest surviving image is from the fourth-century BCE Italian Alps, which were then Celtic. He remains beloved in the Neo-Pagan community, where he may be associated with the Green Man. Cernunnos has dominion over nature, animals, and abundance. He dispenses and distributes wealth. He is the Lord of Souls, Celtic Lord of the Underworld, the dead, healing, and wealth.
Heilung - Norupo
The lyrics are based on the Norwegian Rune Poem in Original Old Norse.
Wealth is a source of discord among kinsmen;
the wolf lives in the forest.
Dross comes from bad iron;
the reindeer often races over the frozen snow.
Giant causes anguish to women;
misfortune makes few men cheerful.
Estuary is the way of most journeys;
but a scabbard is of swords.
Riding is said to be the worst thing for horses;
Reginn forged the finest sword.
Ulcer is fatal to children;
death makes a corpse pale.
Hail is the coldest of grain;
Christ created the world of old.
Constraint gives scant choice;
a naked man is chilled by the frost.
Ice we call the broad bridge;
the blind man must be led.
Plenty is a boon to men;
I say that Frothi was generous.
Sun is the light of the world;
I bow to the divine decree.
Tyr is a one-handed god;
often has the smith to blow.
Birch has the greenest leaves of any shrub;
Loki was fortunate in his deceit.
Man is an augmentation of the dust;
great is the claw of the hawk.
A waterfall is a River which falls from a mountain-side;
but ornaments are of gold.
Yew is the greenest of trees in winter;
it is wont to crackle when it burns.
Pictures Videos Music and Additional Reading
Munknörr - Cernunnos
Music Ambient
Cernunnos on the Gundestrup cauldron (plate A). He sits cross-legged, wielding a torc in one hand and a ram-horned serpent in the other.
Cernunnos is a Celtic god whose name is only clearly attested once, on the 1st-century CE Pillar of the Boatmen from Paris, where it is associated with an image of an aged, antlered figure with torcs around his horns.
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Through the Pillar of the Boatmen, the name "Cernunnos" has been used to identify the members of an iconographic cluster, consisting of depictions of an antlered god (often aged and with crossed legs) associated with torcs, ram-horned (or ram-headed) serpents, symbols of fertility, and wild beasts (especially deer). The use of the name this way is common, though not uncontroversial. As many as 25 depictions of the Cernunnos-type have been identified. Though this iconographic group is best attested in north-eastern Gaul, depictions of the god have been identified as far off as Italy (Val Camonica) and Denmark (Gundestrup).
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CernunnosFaun - Cernunnos
Lyrics Language is German Translated into English
At the edge of the world,
the sun timidly reaches for the stars,
and our village lay peacefully in the first light.
And as the morning gently whispered to us
a hint of the coming day,
a trail was found not far from the huts,
that of a magnificent stag,
winding blazingly toward the forest.
In its face, we sensed
that this animal was more magnificent
than any we had hunted to this day.
We sought hunting glory, victory, and trophies,
before the sun was even in the sky, we were in arms.
And riding on the early mists of day,
we hunters left the village.
At that hour, there were still many of us,
set out to conquer the forest,
to seek our hunting fortune in the twilight of the morning
and among the whispering leaves. We hurried from tree to tree,
silent, our eyes fixed on the deer's trail,
strange writing in leaf and sand, unfamiliar words,
which we followed without understanding.
The forest was a single shadow,
in which questions and answers were, as it were, concealed.
But we saw only the trail,
at the end of which we thought the mighty trophy lay.
The prey's stride remained powerful,
and its hooves stretched far, far away.
This was the time to be and to become,
and this hunt would be like no other,
that we had dared to this day,
and like no other animal, which traversed the forest as if it wanted to mark it. Softly, from the forest floor, his powerful trail whispers to us,
that in this stag's wake lay a mystery,
even more magnificent than he himself.
Some of us fled this mystery,
exhausted, others gave up,
and with each hour,
the number of hunting companions diminished.
But the leaves whispered more brightly,
with each one who left the forest,
almost as if the thicket were laughing at us.
Soon, as day drew near to evening,
the shadow of hunger had long since darkened their faces,
only two remained.
And one of the two was me.
In a clearing,
at the bottom of which the shadow of the evening sun
mingled with the strange tracks, we finally stood facing him,
that magnificent stag,
with his hoof full of mystery. His gaze met ours,
the last light of day fell majestically through his magnificent antlers
and we, who had come to conquer him, froze in silent awe.
How could we have done it?
We stood eye to eye with God,
the air filled with shimmering wonder
and forgotten the hunt and glory.
Then the bow of the last companion fell
and he fled stag and forest, home to the village.
Only I remained,
who saw myself in the stag's silver eye.
How strange was what I saw,
How strange what I recognized.
I had been a hunter
and now had become prey.
At the end of the hunt I stood myself,
had followed my own trail,
from morning to evening,
had called it enigmatically
and had not been able to leave it.
How could anyone else have stood here in my place!
I stood facing myself,
the spear in my hand a sheer mockery.
The stag was gone,
only I remained.
Its antlers sprouted from my temples
and in the last light of the sun I stood,
neither hunter nor prey,
just me,
and my own trophy.
An ornament that no one would see
and that no one would know.
I would return home to the village as one of many whom the gods supposedly disliked.
But I was on a higher hunt
and, without hurling a spear,
had won the supreme favor of the gods.