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One of humanity's oldest gods, the Horned is still worshiped around the world.

We do him no wrong if we think of him as the collective body of animal life on planet Earth.

Through the Hidden Centuries, the witches of the West kept faith with him and his ancient ways, as they still do.

In our day, once again, he raises up a people to himself.

Tell now of the Horned, His Bestiary.

Soon told.

For is this not his Book of Beasts, and him the All-Beast? in which is told the likeness of each beast, and kind, and singularity: its life and loves and ways, and life within his life?

For are they not in him, and he in them?

Is his life not in them, and theirs in him?

And does he not delight in them, as they in him?

His the life-in-great, and theirs in-small?

And every birth of them an increase to his being, and every death, diminishment?

And, being beasts ourselves, does not our love go out to them, and so to him?

To him the All-Beast, one-in-many, manyness in one?

Tale in a Time of Plague

As Pausanias tells it, the god Hermes once saved the city of Tanagra, in Boeotia, from a pandemic.

At the time, the plague raged all around the city, and the Tanagrans feared it was only a matter of time until it came to their doorsteps as well. Then Hermes, that ever-young god, was seen walking the circuit of the city's walls, bearing a ram on his shoulders.

Not one Tanagran died of plague.

Ever after, Hermes Kriophóros (“the ram-bearer”) was accounted the city's patron, and on his festivals the handsomest youth in town would ceremonially walk the circuit of the city's walls, bearing a lamb on his shoulders.

(Although Pausanias does not say so, presumably the lamb would have been borne ultimately to the god's temple, and there given to him in sacrifice.)

In Classical art, Ram-Bearing Hermes became a common icon of philanthropy, humanitas, and divine protection. The motif continued into the Christian centuries and, indeed, to this very day.

What do you want, he asked me,

sixteen and in love, that night

in the woods, and I answered:

You, for heart and center, all my days.

(Not wealth, nor fame, nor happiness.)

He sighed and shook his head,

tines tipped with firelight.

Not the world's best career move,

he told me tenderly, cupping

the back of my head in his hand:

a loving father ruing his willful son's

bad decision. But if you will

have it so, I promise you

this: enough. You will always

have enough. And so I have.

In this faith, I have lived my life.

(Never has he lied to me, never.)

So it has been, these fifty years

and more, and so it shall be,

I trust, to the end of my days.

It is enough.

To Isobel Gowdie, he gave

They say that the Horned, god of witches, has a cloak of invisibility.

Dernmantle, they call it—a dern is a secret—for which reason Dernmantle is counted among his many by-names. Remind me to tell you some time the tale of how he came by it.

(Some, though, call it a cap or helm: the Dernhelm.)

In this way, he walks among us, unknown, unseen. Lord of Beasts, where animals are, he is: nor do we always see him.

Down the long years, he has walked unseen. Through the hidden centuries, he walked among us still.

We, his people, are like to him. We, too, have the power to walk unseen.

At first hearing, many old witch-songs may not sound witchy at all, at all. Therein lies the magic.

To the cowan eye, the medieval Irish poem You of the Sweet-Tongued Cry may seem a simple nature poem, hymning the beauties of autumn and the rut.

The witch, though, sees both this, and more.

You of the Sweet-Tongued Cry

Our rite that night was a Rite of Opening the Gates. That's when I saw the Horned.

He sat cross-legged, as is his wont, on the threshold between What Is and What Is Not. His body was the blue-black of Deep Space, filled with stars. It was as if, from a photo of the night sky, someone had cut out a silhouette of a seated, antlered man. Behind Him, nothing; before Him, the many-colored world. Between the two, one vast Body of Stars.

I don't usually think of the Horned in cosmic terms. I see Him as a transpersonal person, the collective body of animal life here on planet Earth.

Yet there He was: the Cosmic Horned.

Opening the back door, I step out into the cold night to pour out the offerings.

Straddling the threshold, I face the stang in the corner of the garden. In the waning moonlight, the forked stake, standing in its cairn of stones, casts a long shadow.

A rabbit sits in the middle of the garden, a moonlit silhouette. Its ears are exactly the length of the stang's horns, held at precisely the same angle. I look at the rabbit; the rabbit looks at me.

It does not move as I pour out the offerings, and close the door.

Are we each as a cell in the greater body of a god?

Are there other Horned Gods, brothers and other selves, on other planets?