Basic Wiccan Workbook, Eclectic Tradition

by Cynthia Gregory

Priestess and Witch, Circle of Winged Toads and Compost Coven

5. THE GOD

Horned One

The God is the balancing force for the Goddess. They are not in opposition to each other but in partnership and relationship. When the Goddess is Mother, the God can be Son. When She is Maiden, He may be Brother. At Beltaine they love each other with the strength and lust of youth. When he is cut down with the corn, She grieves as the Dark Hag.

Our image of the God comes from pre-Christian sources and from our own imagining of a non-patriarchal God, strong in his own right not at the expense of the female. Prehistoric people portrayed His image in the bull-heads mounted on temple walls and at the entrance to tombs. The Celtic people revered Cernunnos or Herne the Hunter, a stag-horned god associated with abundance and success. Neoplatonic philosophers called the Horned God Pentamorph; "He of the five shapes"; Human, Bull, Ram, Goat, Stag.

The God is the wildness of nature, the untamed and untamable aspect of divinity and ourselves. He is exuberant, erotic and animal. He has horns like the stag to represent his oneness with his animal nature. He is desire. "Desire is erotic glue that holds the worlds together." His is the magic of the phallus, the shape-shifter, rising and falling only to rise again.

He is also the sun and the corn. The energy of sun turned into grain. As such he is the willing sacrifice whose death feeds life. The yearly cycle of his birth, growth, death and rebirth mirrors our own. He is our guide, our comforter, consoling us through his example.

Invocations:

HOOF AND HORN CHANT
Hoof and horn, hoof and horn,
All that dies shall be reborn
Corn and grain, corn and grain
All that falls shall rise again

SEED SOWER
Seed sower, grain reborn, Horned One, come!