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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Old Hornie

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

In Which Our Intrepid Blogger Delivers a Warning

 

The old election sign by the side of the road once read

BERNIE

2020

but, bent by the weight of the wet, heavy February snow, it now reads instead

      RNIE

2020  

Naturally, as I drive by, my witch's eye automatically reads

HORNIE

2020


Old Hornie for President? I find myself thinking. F*ck, I'd vote for Him any day of the Moon.

Last modified on
Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Good riddance to bad rubbish.
  • Kile Martz
    Kile Martz says #
    The snow, like the truth, has been burying the most stubborn of Trump signs still scattered around our village.

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
On First Meeting Old Hornie in the Woods

Yes, it's true: I first met Old Hornie in the woods when I was 16.

And no, I'm not going to tell you about it.

I suspect that many (if not most) of us have experienced something like this: the Encounter that changes everything that comes after.

You might think that more of us would talk about these Meetings. In a community like the pagan community, which lacks (for the most part) central accreditation, such narratives would serve to establish credibility.

But in my experience, people mostly don't want to talk about these things. A holy silence surrounds them. For me, that unwillingness to talk is precisely one of the hallmarks of authentic encounter.

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  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Just so.
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    In the book "The Wind in the Willows" there is a chapter called piper at the gates of dawn. I believe that the author had his own

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
In the Name of the Horns

Horns ward.

The Sign of the Horns has been a sign of power since long before it became a Heavy Metal cliché.

Because horns aren't just for beauty or display.

They're weapons. They ward because they warn. Theirs is the power of protection.

You could call the Horns a mudra. (In Witch we usually just say: hand-sign.) You could call them an invocation. (You know Who I mean.) In Anthropologist, you could call them an apotropaic: a turning away, an averting.

The Horns have been warding off the hostile, the unchancy, the ill-favored, for centuries, if not millennia.

You can mutter “Horns ward [me]” or “Horns protect [me]” if you like. It certainly won't hurt.

But only make the Sign and the Horns will do their work, seen or unseen, spoken or unspoken.

Some might call this a fire-fight-fire scenario: like warding like, the unchancy against the unchancy.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Tony Lima
    Tony Lima says #
    Yeah, yeah, horns symbolize mostly good things, one of which is feared by many is in super-sexual capabilities that may even survi
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Ever a good averter, to be sure. And it does make the grass grow.
  • Thor Halvorsen
    Thor Halvorsen says #
    As a Deaf Pagan, I have to add that not only do they represent the pagan horns, Heavy Metal horns, but in the language of the Amer

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Tale of the Horned Skier

If ever you wondered who in ages of ages first invented the art of skiing, this 4000-year old petroglyph from Rødøy ("Red Island") in Norway should leave little doubt.

That wily old Guy with the Horns: father of arts and sciences, wellspring of human culture. Is it not he who brought us Fire and instructed us in its use? Is it not he who taught us to hunt, and gave us the Old Law: to take no more than is needful, and to kill both quickly and ruthfully?

The story of how he taught us to ski has been lost to time. Can we doubt, though, that it was originally a hunter's tale?

It may be that the tale of the Horned One, the Two Serpents, and the First Skis is not, after all, lost beyond all recovery.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
God-Gots

My friend Michelle made a savvy observation the other day that, in this season of the ancestors, I'd like to pass along.

We tend to think of gods and ancestors as separate categories (at least, I do). But in the Wide World of Paganism, these are actually overlapping modalities of being.

To pagans, it's perfectly conceivable that gods should have human offspring. Unlike some, we don't maintain a wall of separation between human and divine.

Achilles, after all, was reckoned a descendant of Zeus (through Herakles). To take a somewhat less exalted example, the current incumbent of the British throne, Betty Windsor, is (believe it or don't) counted (along with her ancestors, the Anglo-Saxon kings of Wessex) among the offspring of Woden.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

Call of the Horned God

Blessings be with our ancestors!

May it be so!

Mother of Witches, Lady of the Moon!

I adorn my King!

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  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    I've made the change accordingly. I think we'll be hearing a lot more of this one. The instinct to edit is deeply embedded. I rar
  • Michele
    Michele says #
    for some reason this website tacks on stuff to the front of the link at the bottom of the article. It's just http://13knots.blogs

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Devil's Lash

At old style sabbats, they say, the Devil would stand at the edge of the circle and whip up the dancing.

Literally.

(In the mountains back East, where I come from, they say that he'd use rose canes to do this. Yikes.)

One of the few truly effective ritual initiations that I've ever witnessed was priested by one of the local dungeon daddies. Now that scourging really meant something.

Burtrand of Minnesota Church of the Wicca—the grandfather of the local pagan community—used to insist that the scourge is one of the Horned's most important, and least understood, attributes.

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