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Today, he's almost entirely forgotten.

But he was one of the pioneers of the Horned God revival in the 20^th century.

Hans Holzer's 1969 book The Truth About Witchcraft was my second book about modern witchery. (The first was Sybil Leek's Diary of a Witch.) In it, he treats mostly with witchcraft of the Gardnerian and Gardnerian-derived varieties.

But A. Damon was different.

Damon lives with his wife upriver, writes Holzer, “within the frame-work of witch law,” as he put it when he invited me to drop in for a visit, and his “logo” or symbol is an interesting combination of the Horned God's horns and sex organs within a triangle (150).

My 14-year old's ears pricked up immediately.

Apparently, they hadn't changed the marquee since Holy Week.

He died for you, it read.

Well, there's the difference between the Old Ways and the New, I think, driving past: It's all in the tense.

One's about sin.

The other, food.

The Horned dies to feed us every day.

If he didn't, we'd starve.

 Stand astride Earth,

from whom the power:

magma, sap, the fire.

Up through soles,

ankles, knees, thighs:

at your loins, it joins,

torso, shoulders, neck,

and fills your skull,

from which erupt

your horns,

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.

What do you mean, “who's that”?

Haven't you ever seen a priest of the Horned before?

Well, duh. Of course they're ram's horns. When's the last time you saw a bull's horn shaped like that? Or an antler?

For gods' sakes. Of course they're tattoos. What did you think, he was born with them?

Where are you from anyway, Cowanistan?

Is the God of the Witches the Devil?

Is a tree the particleboard made from it?

One is a living being, the other a toxic product.

On the other hoof, he's a god. Gods show themselves differently to different people at different times in different places.

That he should don a Devil mask to some is not beyond conceiving.

In fact, considering both his sense of humor and his tendency to utilize available resources, it actually does seem like something that he might do.

The f**ker.

What does he feel, the Horned, as he sits upon the altar and gazes on the faces of his people?

What does he feel?

This I can tell you, I his priest, who have sat upon his shoulder and watched with him there.

It is love.

When he sits upon the altar and looks upon his people, he feels for us a love so unbounded, so all-encompassing, that he would do anything, give anything, for us.

Even to the laying down of his life upon that very altar, that we might feed on his flesh.