Updated September 2026.
I write this piece from an intuitive spiritual point of view. I do not intend to infer any scientific or archaeological explanations.
Celtic Shamanism is a Middle-Class, largely white practice, a New Age tub-thumping cult that involves minimal contact with nature and overdosing on hope in the belief that climate change is transcendable by switching timelines (A door), energy work, and directed intention. In other words, psychotic magical thinking dressed up as radical feminism because of Boudica, QUEEN Boudica no less. Just because Boudica led a rebellion against Rome doesn’t make her a revolutionary. Nothing about rebellions against colonization led by the bourgeoisie is radical.
The antlered god of ancient Celtic tradition has no Roman equivalent. Here is a conceptual deity that appears only in Celtic iconography: relaxed in nature, with a torc in one hand (symbol of power & wealth) and, in the other, a curly, horned, goat-headed serpent. Cernunos may be his name, but what he represents is far more complex, for he is depicted as an embodiment of opposites: predator and prey; humans and nature, and yet he is a horned (antlered) human. This is perhaps the most powerful symbol: part man (hunter), part nature (hunted). This is primarily a male initiation deity, inviting the observer to become immersed in nature.
He is among predator and prey, and they are not in conflict: “The Lamb shall dwell with the wolf” is not a new concept
I have seen posts on social media claiming that Cernunnos was Lord Shiva and an attempt to claim that the Celts were an Indus or Aryan race.
Public Domain Image: Cernunnos, depicted on the Gundestrup cauldron c. 200 B.C.E. to 300 C.E.
From a contemplative perspective, the horned god appears not so much for appeasement and worship but to be emulated. Part man, part wild, grasping the symbol of life and death (goat-headed serpent), does he represent the transitions betweenSpirit and nature?
In life, death, and regeneration? The torc symbolizes wealth, magical power, and divine protection. Is the horned god’s wealth his connection to nature? Does the torc represent spiritual power while the purse open on his belt represents material wealth? Perhaps this wealth is the knowledge of nature, given generously by the spirit teachers of the wilderness.
Boudica was a mortal, a rebel, but not a deity. New-Age Celtic Shamanism ignores the Horned God because he is too close to nature; he is too raw and powerful, too complicated, requiring contemplation in his domain, which is nature. Whatever he is named, he is both nature and male, human and horned. He exists between life and death. He has been humbled by nature. This is the difference between Shamanic Practitioners and those people who spend long periods in nature. Boudica is easily accessible, but she is only mortal. The antlered deity is like the mystery of the dodecahedron; it is not Roman, and the Romans wrote nothing about it. It is a mystery.
What was so dangerous about the Antlered Man-God deity that the Romans didn’t even acknowledge his existence, wrote nothing about him, and yet he is depicted on expensive “ritual” artifacts and a pillar of the boatmen under Notre Dame Cathedral? But what do these motifs mean?
The Wild Hunt
The wild hunt, a common motif across Medieval Europe. Folklore held that a group of spectral riders went forth at night on the hunt. The Wild Hunt was believed to be a portent of catastrophe and could bring death to those unlucky enough to witness it.
“Many men both saw and heard a great number of huntsmen hunting. The huntsmen were black, huge, and hideous, and rode on black horses and on black he-goats, and their hounds were jet black, with eyes like saucers.”
Anglo-Saxon Chronicles [Laud], 1127
People feared the wild hunt, as it came from the realms of the Faerie and other spectral magical beings. The wild hunt was believed not to be a hunt for prey, but a brawl between spectral entities and mortals; those caught up in it rarely survived.
The Wild Hunt in Britain began to absorb Christian values, with hell hounds and black dogs hunting down sinners and the unbaptized.
Superstition about night and darkness, violent storms, thunder and lightning, and other natural phenomena likely contributed to the belief that spectral entities were brawling abroad. Violent storms are dangerous, so staying safe indoors was far better than being caught in the storm. The wild hunt, however, seems more like a distraction from what Cernunnos represents.
I am troubled by the assumptions around Cernunnos. We are told he is passively seated among the animals, yet he could also be dancing?
Passively seated, seated, or animatedly dancing in harmony with nature?
The deity is surrounded by animals; even the serpent grasped in his hand is animated, its tail coiled? No it is looped
Ganesh dancing; look at the leg and foot positions
Shiva Dancing; again, look at the leg positions
However, more interesting than whether he is dancing is this 4,000-year-old seal depicting the Pashupati, described in the Veda as the guardian of cattle. These animals have been domesticated, while the Pashupati seal from Harappa depicts a man or woman surrounded by wild animals, including a tiger and a rhino.
This image is remarkably similar to the Gundestrup cauldron image of the horned god seated among the animals. A similar image of the Buddha seated in the wilderness, under the Bodhi (Bo) tree. But the horns do not look like those of the cow or deer. The Water Buffalo, however, is native to South Asia and semi-wild. While these powerful animals are domesticable, they, like the hippopotamus, are as comfortable on land as in water; they are powerful symbols of the wilderness, and much like the deer in Europe, they held that majesty; it seems fitting that there is a Vedic deity for the wilderness.
Assumptions of Primitiveness and Isolation in Pre-Metal & Writing Cultures and What That Means For Today. The Stone Age is a series of assumptions, based on little evidence. Nomadic, ragged, unwashed, roamers, subsisting on whatever was available. Wandering from place to place, etc, etc.
Let’s, for a moment, view Europe, Africa & Asia as one continuous unnamed continent, visible and accessible by boat and beast of burden. With a constantly changing coastline as the sea levels fluctuated across a million years.
The 1st assumption is isolation, which doesn’t explain how obsidian tools are found in the Middle East, or among English prehistoric remains. In fact, the entire descriptive language of the pre- metal, pre-writing
ng world is dismissive and weighted with assumptions, prejudice, and Victorian superiority values which served the interests of colonialism and plunder.
Isolation is a myth: trade via rivers and pack animals such as domesticated Yaks, goats, camels, and other domesticable wild animals. We need to abandon the assumption of linearity in history, especially if we are to understand how complex pre-metal societies lived, and appreciate what we might learn about ourselves and our capacity to find closeness with nature, each other,r and the land.
The assumption that the horned deity on the Gundestrup cauldron is sitting is not based on anything written. It is another assumption. The Celts were a stratified people; they left no written records, but they had a complex society and traded and worked metal. They too had arrived from Europe during the Bronze Age collapse.
Almost everything we know about them comes from the writings of the conquerors and the assumptions of early “archaeologists” and antiquarians who connected Stonehenge with the Celts and blood rites.
When the food crisis really bites, they will denude nature of all edible plants, and some people will make fatal mistakes. The woods will be full of dead people like the Vance family.
An Invitation To Know Nature
Is the horned god an invitation to sit passively in nature or to join the dance of life with nature? The dance is not that of lutes, whistles, and drums; it is that of knowledge and the wisdom of wilderness. Not an invitation to be some kind of plucky survivor or dystopian survivalist: To know nature is to know oneself and the limitations of humans. Nature humbles us in ways only the skilled outdoor practitioner can know. If your closest encounter with nature is to only passively sit under trees or to lie in a hole in the ground, then the horned god is not for you, and dismissing survival skills is a mistake you only make once in a crisis.
A true shaman knows nature intimately and would embrace the skills to be there. The horned deity on the Gundestrup cauldron expresses divine ecstasy in nature: “come and join the dance.” While I didn’t use this as a source, I like Ronald Hutton’s approach.
Ronald Hutton: Resurgence Of The Horned God.
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