placeholder
Cernunnos is the antlered god of the Celts, often interpreted as "lord of the animals". His name is actually attested – on the Pillar of the Boatmen in Paris (1st c. AD) "_ernunnos" stands above a horned deity. Otherwise we know him almost only from images, hardly from texts.
His most famous depiction adorns the silver cauldron of Gundestrup (c. 1st c. BC, found in a Danish bog): a god with a stag's antlers, sitting cross-legged, in one hand a neck ring (torc), in the other a ram-headed serpent, surrounded by animals. The image radiates calm and power over nature.
Because texts are lacking, Cernunnos is interpreted from his images: as a god of wild animals, of fertility, of the forest and perhaps of the threshold between the worlds. The antlers – which the stag sheds and regrows each year – fit well with a god of growth and renewal. But this is not certain.
"Wits must he have who wanders wide, but all is easy at home."Hávamál 5, after Henry A. Bellows 1923 (public domain)
Cernunnos is the quiet, powerful face of Celtic nature religion – a god we see but barely hear. More in the overview Celtic Religion.
Celtic Religion · The Druids · Tiwaz · Germanic Religion · Nehalennia.
All Festivals & Belief articles →
They appear almost in passing in the old texts, yet they are everywhere: the disir, female spirits who watch over a …
Read more →Forget the translucent veil-ghost. The draugr of the Old Norse sagas comes back in the flesh – heavy as an ox, darkly …
Read more →In the sagas of the North, no one sleeps harmlessly. A dream there is rarely a mere echo of the day, but a messenger …
Read more →