Originally posted on The Sinking Roots.
Arawn was the first person to bring a strange and fascinating fact to my attention, and that was that Cernunnos was the first god that pagans learn about and, simultaneously, the last god that people really come to understand. Now, I am NOT saying that Cernunnos is this “special snowflake” god who occupies a higher throne than other gods – bear with me and please allow me to explain why I say this in the way that I am. (Not to mention that there is nothing cool about this; there are deep-wounding, painful reasons why He is like this, one being that His cultus and worship was literally wiped from humanity and His image was demonized into what Christians may recognize as Satan… but I’m totally not bitter about that, nope, NO ANGER THERE AT ALL).
Most polytheists, pagans, and witches have come to their present spiritual-religious ground via an introduction to Wicca. You can’t get past Scott Cunningham on this one, guys. We all know him. I myself picked up his Wicca and Living Wicca as my very first books to learn about this new path.; in fact, my mentor was (and is) Wiccan, and I began my baby steps into paganism by the “gateway” of Wicca, so to speak.
As I understand it, Wicca honors the presences of the God and Goddess – the God of which is seen as The Great Horned God. This horned god is often seen in the People of Herne, Gwynn ap Nudd, and… you guessed it, Cernunnos. I also understand that there is the idea of a “Role” or Energy and then several expressions of that Role/Energy in different cultures and religions. This “Role” and “Energy” of the God in Wicca is channeled mostly through the image and name of Cernunnos and/or The Horned/Antlered One. (You can see where He was quickly able to be demonized – the “Cern” in Cernunnos comes from the word cornu, meaning “horned” or “antlered”).
When I initially fell head-over-heels for Cernunnos, I began to look up information about Him on Google and in print texts. There was quite a bit of information (but it was repetitive enough to make me realize that we know virtually nothing about Him) that had my head spinning. All the world over, people were very familiar with Him, with His forms, His symbolisms, and his Work. If you’re pagan, you know about Cernunnos in some way. That’s how it works. He is also seamlessly ubiquitous, able to touch people, awaken their senses, and endear Them to Him in a way that makes them understand that He is a wonderful god. He seems to be everywhere!
Yet I know that very few people know Cernunnos. He is very selective with the people He decides to be close to, and He will test you often, frequently, sometimes endlessly before He decides to even consider you close… Quite like an animal needs their trust to be earned before he decides to be your companion – and then, and only then, will he decide in what way and how. Even then He may remain elusive, assessing your every edge and corner as the relationship develops, and it doesn’t help that there is little historical knowledge or background on just who He is or that He doesn’t enjoy the internet presence/conversation that other gods do. (Again, this is not a “speshul snowflake” moment – this is something that I have personally experienced, and that other close devotees of Him had definitely told me about, and definitely deserves its own post I’m not able to really go in-depth on this as of this moment).
For the sake of beginning to explain just what I’m going to talk about, I want to show you the results of a small project that I did. I revisited the “commonalities” of Cernunnos, as I saw shared amongst sources online. This is what I found, and I think that anyone who researches Cernunnos on the internet may find similar qualities both in physical depictions and in personality/symbolic traits. I will coin the term “godcanon” to refer to a collection of qualities commonly ascribed to/agreed upon a particular deity and/or their roles, as seen below:
- Long, luxurious wild hair
- Antlers
- Antlers everywhere
- Tanned skin
- Often goat-bodied from the hips down
- Associated with the colors of green, brown, and sometimes gold
- Definitely a nature god, if not THE nature god (and god of all wild things)
- Visitation: you’d probably have to go to the forest; He really doesn’t like being “called out” of His habitat, being a forest god and all, and He’s strongest when you are in natural environments
- Most active/associated to the seasons of spring and summer
- Depicted and seen as VERY buff and virile, in the prime(s) of His life
- Also has a very hefty sexual appetite and is definitely proud of it
- Symbols: the snake, the bull, the stag, the rammed snake, the torc, nature, trees, and sometimes the things of the Underworld (in His chthonic states),
- Basically anything and everything forest
- SO MUCH FREAKING FOREST
- The primality of the human person and the human person’s connection to the natural world
- Demeanors: comforting, warm, welcoming // mature, kingly, quiet // unnerving, piercing // full of joy and laughter, mischievous, He who embraces your wild and uninhibited sides and engages them playfully // SEX
- Connected to the Faery realms
- Also rather prone to witty humor and sexual jokes
And then I I take one look at Him.
He’s sitting in my chair, calm and silent and at home in my room. He has long black hair trailing down his shoulders just as His robes are trailing to the floor; He’s pale-skinned and sinfully blue-eyed in a piercing, meditative way. He definitely has human legs, black hunter’s boots at all; He’s never come to me as a half-animal, or half-anything. He is dressed for the Hunt or perhaps as a Sovereign of Winter, seeped in ravens and fog and the underlying mad-wild passion that is usually felt in the presence of Odin. He is Winter incarnate to me, not breathing a single leaf of spring or summer or fall. He is serious, a king who prefers not to joke too much but does a great job at balancing severity and mercy with a hand that is surprisingly gentle. There’s no heat of sexual passion or tension that emanates from Him (although I definitely can’t say the same, hurrhurr), and there are no snakes and stags that crawl in my Sight of Him at this moment. There is no torc, no Tuatha, no distinctly Celtic flair or symbology. There’s no green or brown and certainly no gold; He’s a god of blues, blacks, greys, silvers.
This only prompted me to have a “BINGO!” moment, which would be worded like this: many of my experiences with Cernunnos had nothing to do with what is “commonly attributed” to Him. In fact, my experiences with Him do not fit neatly (or at all) in what is this “godcanon” of His. It can even be said that the deity that I work with can be contested, if one wanted to take up that particular challenge – and it is completely valid. Indeed, my experiences with, and views of, Him are so strikingly different from how other people interact with Him that sometimes I have a very hard time understanding just how I identify this deity as Cernunnos when He clearly doesn’t fit into the “godcanon” that I just researched. They are so different that, for months, I stifled Him because I thought that I “wasn’t seeing Him right.” (I’ll get to this now).
Never have I seen a torc in my life, much less make that association with him. Snakes have only come up when Lilith has poked in to say hello, while He has just recently designated ravens as a sort of symbol for me. I haven’t really had a sexual experience with Him (not to mention that He’s REALLY NOT THE COMFORTING TYPE with me, even though He definitely loves to reach out to others in their anger and their sorrow with such comfort).
So when I did this project and pieced together a Person based on individual qualities, I could sort of see Him.
I know that it’s Him. I know it. Even when I read the “canon” descriptions of Cernunnos online, and it somehow seems like They’re TOTALLY different people, I recognize His soul, His being, in both descriptions. It’s sort of like personally knowing someone named Jay, and then seeing them online dressed in a completely different way, and I’m still able to recognize that, yes, that is Jay.
But it also is very strange, because I may be very used to one side of Jay, and when I see another side of Jay that I’m not familiar with, it almost seems as if Jay is a totally different person that I can’t connect with.
Granted, I do understand that this is information I’m compiling that is mostly visual. Of course, visual attributes aren’t the 100% way to know who someone is; it shouldn’t ever be something to fall back on as a pass-or-fail standard. Whether Cernunnos wears a tuxedo one day or a loincloth the next won’t affect Him as a Person; He’ll still be the same Person to me even if He looks a little different.
What I’m trying to explain is that there’s a lot of problems that come up when you have something like a “godcanon.” Knowing how some people can get when attempting to structure their religio-spiritual reality and the way in which they engage themselves in their faith, this is very dangerous if the “godcanon” stops being a collection of shared experiences and starts being The Rule Of Experiences, where whatever does not match with the “godcanon” is instantly shoved away.
In sum, there is a very dangerous line being walked when you’re identifying a god simply by things like “godcanon” to the point where three things can happen:
1) If God X doesn’t have Y and Z, it’s NOT God X;
2) If God X asks you something that doesn’t correspond to Y and Z, it’s not real; and
2) Y and Z becomes the ultimate expression of God X’s godhood and therefore gives absolutely no room for God X to do Their thing.
Let us apply this to my own personal experience with Cernunnos.
We can reasonably say that there is good cause to see that the Cernunnos that I experience does not match up with the “godcanon” previously bulleted in this post.
So… Who do I have in my bedroom? Who exactly is the subject of my devotions?
And, if it is Him, then what does this mean? What are the implications of this?
Should these questions even matter?
When Cernunnos folded Himself down in my bedroom for the very first time, He provided no reference to pinecones, the smell of the forest, or even His name; I staggered out of my divine experience wondering if it had really been Him. (I was confused for weeks, too, until He made it clear that it was Him).
There was a time where He approached me strictly as an animal, also without words or any sort of indication as to Who or What He was. His actions of prowling around me, of hiding Himself from me in this animalistic way, found me tormented night-after-night, wondering what the fuck I was doing wrong in my devotional path as I desperately hung on to people’s words on pagan blog threads about Him at three in the morning and thinking, “I really got it all wrong.”
Now I am dealing with Him in a way that makes me think I’m working with someone who is blood-related to Odin in his Wild Hunt, Dark (Sexy!) Shaman King mask, complete with ravens, furs and leathers, and stunning, piercing blue eyes. (Yes, not hiding how much I really like Him, especially His eyes).
It was in the last-most Being that I found something else totally shattered for a second time: my way of approaching Him, my way of seeing Him and expecting to act a certain way (I actually wrote a post about that particular ass-kicking HERE). It was all torn out of my fingers and I was basically whipped with it, told to let it go. I know Him as a subversive god (a word I think He placed right there for me while I was writing this particular line). But see, this is the part that is truly the point of this entire post:
He broke my view of Him, the view that I wanted and dreamed about and wanted to engage in and formed by what He was supposed to be, because He wanted me to realize that I wasn’t accepting Him. He instead forced me to see Him for the Person that He truly was. And I had no choice but to be open to Him, to welcome Him, to throw away my doubts and my illusions and instead be able to truly face Him with confidence.
And He did this for a very good reason.
He wanted me to see Him – not what other people saw, not what other people experienced, not what other people offered. He didn’t want me to cling to the mouths of others. He didn’t want the crux of my devotional journey to be weighted against how others saw/felt/experienced Him and just use a process of elimination against the “godcanon” when things got confusing or went south. He wanted me to know that it was okay that there wasn’t any sexual tension, that there weren’t any mentions of spring. He wanted me to know that it was okay that I wasn’t astral traveling, that I wasn’t talking to him 24/7, that I didn’t have a backyard to give offerings in.
In other words, He wanted me to know that the relationship that we had together was just fine – that there was nothing wrong with what we had. He wanted me to have confidence in the relationship that I had developed with Him even when there was little to no support for it found in the pagan communities.
And this is what leads me to the “godcanon” problem that I’ve suffered with for so long, the problem that He allowed me to see and to move past.
Many polytheists, pagans, and witches may come from a background of organized religion, most likely being one of the three Abrahamic faiths. Many also have been raised in a social-mental structure that has roots in the Abrahamic faiths, of which there are three main components:
- A stable and highly developed theology of deity
- An information-rich and highly organized manner of employing this theology in a meaningful way (code, creed, and ceremony)
- A community that preserves, maintains, and forwards #1 and #2 in a way where the religion and the community are absolutely inseparable.
So, of course, we are not wrong in seeking information about our gods, or sharing our experiences with Them, or being able to make a community with this information. In fact, it can be an incredibly powerful and supporting thing, to be able to come together in shared experiences and delineate which ones are the most common or the most strongly shared. This is natural and this is human.
But we are wrong, I think, when we begin establishing something like “godcanon” and sticking to it in the same manner and theology as that of a religion that is structured in a totally different way.
Devotional polytheism is not about how well you can follow the rules. Devotional polytheism is not Catholicism, where there is a church authority that is considered to be just as powerful as Scripture and there is an enormous emphasis on structure, ritual, a set way of how to do things correctly. And I would like to state that I don’t think any kind of polytheism should be about following a “godcanon.” (It is different from following the rules that a deity gave you; in this case, you’re honoring your deity’s wishes in a particular way. You’re not leaning so heavily on the “godcanon” to the point that you have no polytheism without the canon).
We need to stop taking a “monotheist” viewpoint of contemporary polytheism. This “godcanon” issue is one of the most subtle and deadly ones. We need to be careful.
See, the really bad thing about finding common threads between experiences lies in the dangerous tendency to begin marking those experiences as more legitimate than others. It affects the people who judge an experience and refuse to consider its acceptance into the complexities and Mysteries of the gods if it does not fit neatly into an established canon; and it directly affects the people who experience the gods in ways that are not fitting neatly into an established canon. How? Well, people may come to think that their Relationships aren’t real or are wrong. Maybe people question themselves (and their experiences) constantly in comparison in other people, and so reinforce this behavior to the point of obsession and blindness.
Now, it may seem as if I am saying, “Well, if you DO experience God X with Y and Z, then it can’t be God X because you’re clearly sticking to the godcanon.” No, that is not the case at ALL. I’m not going to start shitting on people who have experienced Him in the ways that are present in the “godcanon.” I am not saying that suddenly any devotee who experiences torcs and snakes and Celtic symbology with Cernunnos are going about it wrong, are not being “open” enough, or are engaging in a shallow way. THIS IS NOT WHAT I’M SAYING.
What I’m saying is that we can’t put rules on the gods. We can’t limit Them to lists. We can’t chastise people for their experiences when they don’t fit (and when they DO fit!). We can’t treat them like shit or push them away from the community because they had X experience or Y quality with a deity that no one else has has. It’s not an issue of a “special snowflake.” There’s a difference between engaging a devotee in matters of discernment, in a way to genuinely try to understand a person’s way of engagement, in a way where there can be steps taken and support given and to be welcome to the fluidity and characters of the gods… and being a asshole and screaming out “LET’S GET THIS MOTHERFUCKER!”
Yeah, sounds funny, but you think I’m joking. I bet ten dollars some of you are reading this and going, “Yes, yes, yes, I know what you’re talking about.” Again: big difference between offering to ask questions about discernment and being the person who calls for the axes and torches the moment someone even appears to deviate from the “norm.”
We need to be more careful with how we see the gods; we have to allow Them to express Themselves in the way They wish to, not the way we’d like Them to or the way we think They’d like to, should, or ought to do.. It is in this acceptance of plurality that we can come closer to Them, to ourselves, and to each other. Our drive to devotion shouldn’t be, as one of my friends put it, a Work that is devoted to “rewrite” or “write over” the gods in favor of information that’s agreed upon by other people. Neither should our drive be to network a community that accepts one but excises another.
We need to be brave, whether it’s listening to something new or admitting something old or mutually shared. We need to be brave and speak with our gods, no matter how strange Their words might sound. They will let us know how we’re doing. As with all devotional relationships, there is push-and-pull, receptivity-and-reciprocity. We cannot close channels; one of the most painful, and difficult, things I’ve encountered is this action of keeping heart and mind constantly open to Him. Why?
Because it’s difficult to read about another person’s experience that others chime into eagerly, and you’re left wondering what’s wrong with you because you haven’t had it (or the other way around). It’s difficult to be able to live with a Person who may be one way with You but clearly plural with other People in a certain way. It’s difficult when things don’t seem to make sense in the face of the appearance of the totally clear. It’s difficult to have the bravery to be able to even consider opening up a line of communication with other devotees, simply because some people have made it such hostile terrain that it is virtually impossible (and actually dangerous!) to be able to talk about this. And then it’s difficult to be open to your god because you have this sort of idea that there are some things that your god can/should say and some things that your god can’t/shouldn’t say.
Perfect example: today, god-spouses and spirit workers enjoy (somewhat?) a community that is accepting them – and even then, this community is very, very, very small because the larger communities won’t even hear of it. Ten years ago this was certainly not the case; I can only imagine the torment, confusion, and fear of a devotee who received an offer of marriage or Work of spirit-working and wondered what the fuck was going on (not to mention the heavy, sharp criticisms and lack of support that many of them receive still to this day). I remember reading something about Cernunnos that made me, for a long time, believe that offers of a spousal relationship with Him were completely out of the question. (I now know this to not be true, but I wanted to point that out as an example of how dangerous “godcanon” can be in one’s personal relationship with the gods – in other words, it deafens you and is very happy to allow you to have a “filter” that one shouldn’t have. It was strong enough in me that He had to sort of swoop in and break me open).
I asked Arawn about this and he gave me probably the most concise, rich answer I could have ever gotten.
“Yes, I DO think that different Gods have distinct qualities that CAN be identifiable, as both of us see when interfacing with other devotees, but there are JUST as many differences as consistencies.”
The heart of polytheism lies not in the community, but in the gods Themselves. It is through the gods that we can live in community – not the other way around). I also think it’s important to understand that we come together because of our differences and our pluralities. The heart of polytheism should be in loving and honoring our gods as They are, not loving and honoring our gods as how we see Them and/or loving and honoring Them with the caveat that our devotions MUST fit a certain delineation that MUST be shared by a community.
This seems like a point that is useless because everyone would like to do this, but it’s truly one of the most difficult things to do. We are creatures of expectation, especially when dealing with stuff we don’t understand. And when we fall passionately in love with our gods, just as we fall in love with people, we have a sort of “standard” that we place on them – after all, we are human beings, and we judge and we discern. We try to demystify, try to understand, try to commune with Them in communion with others.
But They directly go against everything we know. The gods are fluid and moving. They are constantly the same and constantly changing. And the gods can be, and are, subversive in every single way imaginable and past our imagination. The gods do not operate in a theology of monotheism. The gods are not all-knowing, all-seeing, all-present and fully permeating every second and every atom of reality in past, present, and future. Neither are They cosmic vending machines, free-wish granting spirits, or happy-go-lucky-only-positive-energy beings. And I don’t think we could ever have the right to demand Them to act a certain way, to do certain things, or to otherwise be a Person that They are not – quite like it is unfair to ask something of someone that they cannot do, or demanding than an apple tree bear pears. It’s not happening.
Cernunnos is not limited to certain qualities or images. If you try to engage in Him this way, you may only get shadows – pieces – a caricature of Him. Yes, you may be aware of the ubiquitous presence of Old Hornie, but to know Cernunnos? Are you willing to know? Is He willing to let you know? Those are other matters entirely, and few people have come to engage with Him in this way. It’s not easy to escape the safety of neatly written, organized lines and peer into the eyes of a god.
So with all of this writing, what’s my answer?
I guess my answer is in the posing of a question.
The question shouldn’t be, “Do I have the right deity?” or “Am I seeing this deity in the right way?” or “What do I do with this “godcanon” business?”
The question should be, as Arawn perfectly put it, “How do our different relationships with the SAME deity create a place where we can stand on the same ground and do something meaningful FOR that deity?”
Towards Polytheist Theoilogies 