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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Cernunnos

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
The Sanctuary and Taranis

For this blog post, I’m going to talk about two parts of the White Mountain Druid Sanctuary complex (located in Trout Lake, WA) in more detail.  The entire site is called White Mountain Druid Sanctuary, but then on the site is a building called The Sanctuary.  It was actually here before Kirk Thomas started manifesting his vision of the Stone Circle and all that has followed.  


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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
A 1st-Century BCE Gold Cernunnos?

The Horned God is hot right now.

So call me a skeptic if you like, but I'm sorry: some things are just a little too convenient. How do you say "Too good to be true" in Witch?

An item that turned up on E-bay some while back was identified by the seller as a 1st century BCE golden La Tène phalera (harness decoration) depicting the god Cernunnos. Unprovenanced, supposedly from a private collection, it was priced at $7400.

Sorry, I'm not convinced. How convenient that a piece of art—previously, so far as I can tell, unknown to any art historian—depicting this god and none other (arguably the most identifiable god in Keltic mythology) should just happen to turn up in a "private collection."

If genuine, it's a pretty significant artifact, of intense interest to scholarship. If not...well.

The supposed phalera depicts the god in bust, with raised arms and branching (and intertwining) antlers. In his hands the god holds two items identified by the seller as torques, but which look more like curvilinear swastikas. If what he's wearing around his neck is supposed to be a torque, it doesn't resemble any other torque that I've ever seen in Keltic art.

And there's something wrong with those antlers, with their wavy tines on both sides of the beam. Image-search "Deer in Keltic art" and see if you can turn up anything like them.

More than anything else, the piece looks like the famous Gundestrup Antlered re-rendered in the form of the god-busts on the same cauldron, made by an artist not quite fluent in Keltic style. It's an interesting coincidence that, of all the "Cernunnoi" known from Keltic antiquity, only this one and the Gundestrup god are unbearded.

Art forgery is a profitable business. Within months of the initial excavations at Knossos, Minoan fakes were readily available on the European art market. Demand was high, and money good.

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  • Mab Nahash
    Mab Nahash says #
    The biggest giveaway is the squashed nose and right side of the face. Clearly that's an attempt to render the battered look of the

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Stories That Tell Themselves

On March 6, 1710, workmen excavating a crypt beneath the nave of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris discovered a number of carved blocks from a Gallo-Roman votive pillar set up by the Guild of Boatmen some time during the first quarter of the first century CE. By far the most famous image from this pillar shows the head of the Gaulish god Cernunnos, bearded and deer-eared, his antlers hung with torcs.

On March 18, 1314, Jacques de Molay, 23rd and last Grand Master of the order of the Knights Templar, was burned at the stake on an island in the Seine River in Paris. The order had been suppressed, seven years previously, on charges of heresy, including the worship of a mysterious bearded Head. De Molay's last request of his executioners is that they tie him so that he can face the Cathedral of Notre Dame as he burns. They grant his request.

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  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Thanks, Troy: we live by our stories. Bwa ha ha.
  • Troy Young
    Troy Young says #
    A superb story indeed and well worth sharing.

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