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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in god of the witches

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

                                                    

 

The little girl was heartbroken.

They killed him! she sobbed. They killed him!

And him so tall and shining, and his antlers reaching up, up, up to the trees, and his velvet muzzle that you wanted to stroke.

And he called you his bonny wee bird, and his daughter.

And he came down from the altar and danced, danced with everyone.

And him so shining and full of life, and now he's dead. He's dead.

The mother takes the child into her arms and holds her head against her shoulder.

Oh, but only see, she whispers into her ear, turning her around again to face the altar.

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In Which Our Intrepid Blogger Makes an Outrageous Claim

Hwæt, we seax-Hwiccum   in síð-dagum...
"Lo, we knife-Witches   in these latter days..."

 

Many peoples worship the Horned God—as god of all Red Life, why wouldn't they?—but to the Latter-Day Tribe of Witches, he is ours, our god in particular.

Why so? Easily answered.

The Horned is especial god of witches, ours to us, because we are his offspring.

As we see it, we are literally the Children of our God.

This is why the Swedish witches called him Antecessor: goer-before, ancestor.

Many tribes trace descent from a common ancestor. Scots Gaelic clann (pronounced klawn), the source of the English word clan, literally means “children (of).” In this, the Tribe (in Witch, that would be Thede) of Witches is no different from any other.

Why are some people witches and some not? Easily answered.

The Horned overshadows our fathers at the moment of our conception.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
A Little Horn of Ointment

Oh, he's a hard god, the Horned: he hurts, but then he heals.

His seal upon you is a scar, your witch's mark. (They say it's the mark of his teeth.) We are the Scarred, the witches: a people like our god. He, too, is Scarred; I know, for I have seen.

Make him unhappy, and he flogs: publicly, at the Sabbat. Back in the hills whence I come, they say that he uses rose canes to do this.

But to each, he gives a little horn of ointment. He hurts, but then he heals: the rose and the thorn. As the Basque witches told Inquisitor Pierre de Lancre (a curse upon his memory), after he flogs, or sets his mark upon you, he anoints you with his special salve, and heals you of your hurts (Wilby 115).

(This explains why, when examined, the Basque witches—confessions notwithstanding—showed no sign of tooth or lash: the Horned's ointment heals all hurts, they say.)

To my knowledge, anyway, it's been long and long since the rose canes came out at the Sabbat; but I've been there myself, and danced, and seen the scarring, and the anointing thereafter.

Nor should you think that what I say is only metaphor.

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Intimations of a Horned God: A Bronze la Tène Lamp, Circa 100 BCE

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

La Tène culture (3-1st 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 gains 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.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Triptych, with Horns

In India, on nights of the autumn full moon, the blue god Krishna stands in a clearing in the forest and plays his flute.

Hearing this, his worshipers—regardless of caste or marital status—cast social convention aside, and rush off to the woods for an ecstatic celebration, in which they dance wildly and have sex with their god.

This is called the rasa-lila, or "juice-play."

 ***

Among the Kalasha of what is now Pakistan, the only surviving Indo-European people who have practiced their ancestral religion continuously since ancient times, the presiding figure of the Prûn festival, the autumnal celebration which honors the grape-harvest and the return of the flocks from their summer pastures, is called the Budálak.

The Budalak is a virile young goat-herd who, dressed in goat-skins and horns, dances vigorously with the young women in wine-fueled, fire-lit nighttime celebrations, while—to the sound of drums and flutes—the old women sing his raunchy, raucous songs.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Anvil of the Horned One

“That's the anvil of the Horned One,” a friend wrote to me recently, meaning a hard, but ultimately formative, situation.

As regards the situation, his analysis was bang on, but in the days that followed I've found myself reflecting again and again on that resonant phrase: the anvil of the Horned One.

In Old Craft, the God of Witches is (inter alia) a Smith-God: among his many by-names is Coal-Black Smith.

Back in the day, goes the story, when you had to cloak everything in the Church's names and stories, he came to be called—and so still is, by some—by the name of the Biblical smith, Tubal Cain. “The Clan of Tubal-Cain,” Bobby Cochrane (father of modern Old Craft) called his Royal Windsor coven: one clan in the Tribe of Witches.

The point here is that, as god of animals, he's also god of culture: the originator and teacher of the civilized arts. (Humans aren't the only animals possessed of culture, of course.) Hence smithery: the anvil, tongs, and hammer are his tokens.

Yet there's more than mythology here.

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Recent comment in this post - Show all comments
  • Kile Martz
    Kile Martz says #
    KM is honored to be your muse for this particular post. ~ O, let me suffer on the anvil of the horned one so that he might forge
How the God of the Witches Saved the Lives of His People,  and Fell Like a Star from Heaven

The men with the bows creep closer to the firelight in the clearing. Sheriff's men, foresters all, they move quietly through the night woods.

The witches' sentries have already died silent deaths, raising no alarm.

Now the hunters' chiefest quarry stands directly before them.

From the trees, they watch as he mounts the altar before his adoring congregation: naked, shining, tall. He raises his arms, and the singing begins. His antlers seem to touch the trees. Between them, constellations revolve.

The first arrow takes him under the ribs, the next in the throat. Five, six, seven arrows follow, in rapid succession. The witches begin to scream. Their god topples from the stone, like a star falling from heaven.

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