Open-form lamp with twisted handle and bull's head finial (bronze)

La Tène culture (3-1^st c. BCE)

Switzerland

(Private collection)

By the light of this ancient Keltic lamp, the modern witch sees the shadow of the Horned God.

Look closely. What do you see?

With a little imagination, one may read this small (length: 9½") bronze lamp as a bull lying on his back: the lamp's bowl is the bull's body, its twisted handle and decorative finial the bull's neck and head.

Ex tauro, lux: from the bull, light.

Known as Lighber, the light-bearer, the god of the witches is understood by his votaries as the Enlightener, He Who Gives Understanding to his people, Wisdom to the Wise. Between His Horns burns the flame of illumination. If we read this god, Lord of the Beasts, as the collective body of all animal life on planet Earth, this understanding articulates the rise of consciousness, in which material existence reaches self-awareness.

To the witch's eye, this ancient artifact embodies this understanding.

Although described in a recent auctioneer's catalog as an oil lamp, in all likelihood this lamp (given its Alpine origin) was fueled by animal fat instead, even—rather poignantly, one thinks—by tallow (beef fat).

From the bull, light.

To the witchly eye, there are further intimations of the Horned to be read here. With its serpentine, twisted neck, one thinks of the torcs (literally, “twisted”) and serpents that frequently accompany the Horned in ancient Celtic iconography, not to mention His boon companion, the ram-headed serpent.

There is, of course, no indication that this lamp would have borne any of these meanings to the ancient Continental Celts who originally made and used it. What you read here is a thoroughly modern pagan act of eisigesis: reading-into.

But by the god-light from between the Horns, the witch's eye sees what it sees.

Ex tauro, lux.