Rheims Cernunnos
Gallo-Roman relief, 1st century CE
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.
Why do they call it the Bull Stone?
Not difficult.
There's a golden bull buried underneath. That's why they call it the Bull Stone.
Well, that's what they say.
Recently the warlocks converged on Sweetwood Temenos in the heart of America's Witch Country, among the hollow hills of the Midwest's Driftless Area, to site the shrine that we'd like to build there.
With the able help of the sanctuary's warden and resident priest, Iacchus, we found just the place.
And there we'll raise the Bull Stone.
The land-shelf stands on the southwestern side of the ridge that forms Sweetwood's spine, just downslope from the Grand Circle. It forms a natural pocket amphitheater overlooking the bend in the sinuous coulee (ravine) at the ridge's foot. It gazes out between the trunks of Sweetwood's eponymous sugar maples to a natural groove in the forested horizon where two ridges abut, about five miles distant.
In the center will stand the Bull Stone: a longstone in constant conversation, in intimate intercourse, with the wooded shelf on which it stands, and with that green horizon. Viewed straight on, it will neatly bisect that far notch. The shrine will thus be a shrine of Union, embodying the Great Rite that it symbolizes.
The shrine and its stone will offer our permanent prayers for the herds, the hunt, and the crops so necessary to our people's well-being.
Men will raise the Stone as a gift to Sweetwood and the People of Sweetwood. It is not, however, intended to be specifically a men's shrine, but rather, as stated, for Land and People together.
The Stone will come from the land itself, likely from the walls of the coulee above which it will stand. Our plan, using ropes, poles, rollers, and winches in the manner of the ancestors, is to find the Stone, to move it to site, and to raise it up in power. Likely this will be the work of seasons and, possibly, of years.
That's as may be. We are the people of the Land, and we're not going away.
The Golden Bull is already making, even as you read this.
Even now, He is coming.
To raise the Bull Stone, we'll need funds for rope, safety gear, and food for the work crews.
If you'd like to contribute, click here.
Rheims Cernunnos
Gallo-Roman relief, 1st century CE