The Horned God of the English

In the above etching from the Horns of Gallehus we find two figures with horns, one holding a Spear and Noose, the other a Sword and 'Boomerang'. The figure holding the 'noose' could represent the 'God of the Hanged' - Woden. The area where these horns were found is in Denmark, which was Jutland at one time, where the Jutes dwelt. So this has associations with the English Tribes who came under Hengest and Horsa. 

The figure of 'The Devil' is seen as a goat-headed, horned figure with the body of a man and the cloven feet of a goat. We know that Woden was turned into 'The Devil' through his by-names Nicor and Nikuda which became 'Old Nick'; he was depicted as a Horned God. The Goat-God and the Stag-God seem to overlap and are very ancient to these islands. There is a link between the two in the name 'Puck' which derives from 'buck' or 'bock'; 'Puck' is famous in the Rudyard Kipling book Puck of Puck's Hill, based around an area in East Sussex where Kipling lived. 

Puck was also called 'Robin Goodfellow' and here we see the link to Woden who is 'Robin Hood'. He is depicted as a Horned God - as 'The Devil' - and seen as an 'evil sprite' or 'goblin' through demonisation by the Church. His presence here in England has been well documented, and there is a strange tale related to this figure which I am going to recount here.

I lived the early part of my life in a village that was one just on the outskirts of Leicester - Humberstone. This village is named after the Humber Stone which is a megalithic stone which now stands in a field on Sandcliffe Avenue, off Thurmaston Lane in Leicester. Only the top of the stone can be seen today, but it seems to have been around nine feet high according to older sources when it was excavated. The stone is pentagonal in shape, has a heavily grooved top, vertical sides and is estimated to be around twenty-tons in weight. The grooves are said to be man-made. 

The stone has had various names - Hoston, Holston, Holy Stone and Heel Stone - and from this we can see that the first two are corruptions of the last two, and that the original name was probably - Heil Stone. This became 'Holy Stone' at a later time. According to one source the Sun arose directly over this around 1,200 BCE (which fits with catastrophic changes here in these islands at this time). There is another megalithic stone in Leicester called 'St. John's Stone' which is aligned to the Midsummer Sun; the 'Fairies' are said to dance around this on Midsummer's Day. (*)

When the work on the by-pass and roundabout were undertaken a few other large stones were tossed aside by the JCBs; this may indicate there was a stone circle around this one, or it was part of a stone circle. Very little else is known of the stone but it is said to have a 'curse' upon it.

In 1980 the Leicester Mercury ran a headline about a boy of 10 years old who awoke to see a 'creature' at the bottom of his bed. This had a goat's head and long curving horns, the body of a man, and cloven hooves. The boy drew the picture at school and the teacher asked about it and then contacted the paper who ran the article. This account seems to tally with some form of Archetypal Image of the Horned God. What we have to take into account here is the hundreds of years of indoctrination into the 'God vs, Devil' promoted by the Church, since this image may well have stuck in the minds of the masses, and indeed the boy may have been aware of this particular image. 

The Humber Stone is on Thurmaston Lane, the name 'Thurmaston' being of Danish origin; it is linked to a name based around 'Thor' which is rather a coincidence when we consider goats being sacred to Thor. There are similar names in Leicestershire - Thurcaston & Thurlaston - all associated with Danish names built around the god Thor. 

The above shows the Humber Stone, or least the top part of the stone; the roughness of the top was said to have come when a farmer tried to plough over the top of it. It would appear that the farmer had 120 acres of land at the time, land which he lost and he ended his life a pauper - due to the 'curse', it is said. Of course, the Thurs-Rune is the Cursing-Rune. 

The 'Celtic' god known as 'Cernunnos' is usually depicted with stag's horns; we know that he was known as Herne the Hunter by the Saxons. And we know that the name 'Herne' appears over the other side of England in Kent - the land of the Jutes. The stag does appear on the Horn of Gallehus. There is also another thing here and that is the Cerne Abbas Giant (Herne the Hunter) has the same posture as on the horn, and as on the Long Man of Wilmington. It is also perhaps significant that the older name for the hill-figure in Dorset was Heil, the same name given to this stone. 

This is the same section of the above but drawn from a different angle; the 'Horned Gods' appears here to represent the Lord of the Animals. The Lord of the Trees and the Lord of the Animals are one and the same figure. The image is not clear but the symbol under the shield of the figure on the far left looks somewhat like the AEgishjalmr, as does the smaller symbol under the sword on the figure to the right. The 'Divine Twins' are gods connected with protection, so there may be a link here since the AEgishjalmr is a protective symbol. As I have shown it also seems connected to the Thurs-Rune. 

The 'Horned God' must have been of extreme importance to these islands since the Archetype was taken up by modern 'Wicca' which has no connections whatever with the Ancient Mysteries. The link between these two was made through modern 'wicca' and the 'witchcraft' of the Middle Ages; but this link has no basis in fact. What is important is the archetype and not the 'history', and this archetype appears here in an area where dwelt the Jutes, as does the name 'Herne' in place-names in Kent. 

(*) The association of Midsummer's Eve/Day and 'Fairies' underlines the dream I mentioned in the last post on the Ar-Kan Rune-Lag blog. When we say 'Fairies' we have a problem because the 'Celtic Fairies' are a mixture of various ideas, from Elves to the beings associated with Fate (Waelcyrge). Midsummer's Day is linked to Baeldaeg (Balder) in that the Light starts to wane at this time of the year, although the power of the Sun grows stronger. The true nature of the 'Fairies' would be as the Fair Folk (which the Welsh do call them), these being the 'Shining Ones' - the Elves.