Rheims Cernunnos
Gallo-Roman relief, 1st century CE
Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
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.
Word of the Horned
A Matter of Love
“Beautiful pouch,” says my friend.
He's right. The leather is deftly-tanned: supple, golden, fragrant.
My friend has asked me to read the bones for him: the sacred whitetail knucklebones that live in this same pouch in a jar here at Temple of the Moon.
“It's made from a reindeer scrotum,” I tell him, thinking that the fact will interest him, he being an admirer of all things male. The Saami waste no part of a reindeer: a matter both of practicality, and of love.
Instead, he cringes.
“Ow,” he says.
“No need to take it personally,” I assure him. “I think it's pretty cool.”
“Well, how would you feel if it were your scrotum?” he asks.
Point taken, but I think of Hunter's Law, the Word of the Horned that governs the hunt.
Use everything. Waste nothing.
I smile. In the end, it's really a matter of love.
“Come on, let's get started,” I say, and take the bones, wrapped in their casting-cloth, out of the pouch
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