The Horned God is the God of the Witches, the God of all of the Secret Folk.
He is the original son of the Great Mother, (some say her reflection)…the Great Mother who is the soul of Nature…and he is that portion of the power of Nature that impregnates, and contains full awareness of itself…He is a spirit…the great bearer of light, between his horns…He, the one that brought the light of self-awareness to mankind! He, who opens our eyes to the flame of divinity that burns within us…we follow him….for he is the primal sorcerer that taught the cunning arts to our ancestors, and he protects the faithful.
He is the Consort of the Mother. Without him, the crops will not come…the green will not return to the land after winter…He wears the horns of the king stag, because it is the king stag who bears the power over the fertility of the holt…it is the horned beast that carries within the power to fertilize and to make full. He is the randy goat-lord, ever seeking to satisfy his lustful urges upon the maenads and dryads of his kingdom. The deep symbolism of the inner-marriage of witch-wyfs to their own Fetch-husbands was played out in full force at the old Sabbatsteads, where the Magister, taken by the spirit of the Horned One, copulated with the Witch-women in orgiastic rites ending only at dawn of the next day…The children of these unions were unusually gifted and powerful in the old ways.
He is God and Father of Man and Beast. He appears to us in the form of the Horned Man, to show his three natures, all wed together in balance: The God, the Man, and the Beast…this is the state of equilibrium all wise people should aspire to. As Father of all, he is a God. As Father of Mankind, he is a man. As father of beasts, he wears the Horns, signifying his animal-nature, and his sovereignty over
the untamed world.
He, our lord the Horned One is the bearer of the serpent; he, like all spirits, like all things, follows the serpent…. he dies and is reborn yearly, as the serpent sheds its skin…he comes forth as the power comes forth, blazing and bright, the child of promise who will end the cold, dark grip of winter, and save us from the dead-time! He finds fullness and power, and he feels dissolution and change…and he too goes to death and finds rebirth to continue the cycle. The child from the east, The Reigning Lord, The Maimed King, the Lord of the Dead, so goes the life of all men. So is the coil of the serpent.
As the Green Man, he comes forth in summer to bring the fertile life of the land to fruit. As the Red Man, he leads the Dark-Rade of the Yell-hounds and the Dead across the sky, and nothing grows or thrives. But these are the crossed arrows on his Stang, the two horns, the Lord of Life and Death is Lord over all of these things. He, the keeper of the gates of life and death, he reigns in the ancestor country over the spirits of the departed.
He rules over the herds in the forest, as he rules over us. Their lives cannot be taken without his leave… and thus the cult of the Hunted Stag God had its foundation in the lost depths of pre-history. The fall of the hunted beast was, after a manner, the sacrificial death of the God himself…another sacrifice to sustain our lives.
He is the King of Elf-home…the Lord of the Feeorin. He stands before the Cauldron of the Old Woman, and he is the forgotten Tree of the Worlds that extends its reach into all the level of existence…this is the cunning mind of our God, which reaches all places, and touches all things. Never forget that the Tree had its root from the cauldron…this is the mystery of creation.
Once, the king of the people had to take his place. As a ruler over the earth, the King was the human representative of the consort of the Earth-Mother…this was the “sacred kingship” wherein the King and the Land become One…One, quite literally, as the wife of the King, or sometimes a woman chosen for him, represented the land itself, and his mating with her was the mating of the God with the Earth. And at one time, the king died as the spirit of the Father died, so that the land could be re-fertilized. Of course, the sacred king would be re-born as the spirit of the All-Father is reborn, to reign again.
Our God has reigned over nearly all Gods and families of Gods throughout history. He was called “All” by the ancient Greeks, who named him as the most ancient, who was before the Other Gods…and there, he also wore the horns. He has been “god” and “father” to all…the impregnating force behind the lightning and thunder and rain…the sovereign Father of the Gods who united with the Earth to make it fertile. But it was the Most Ancients of this land that adored him as the Stag-God of the Hunt…and as the very Animal-God that opened the human eyes to the wild and primal layers of our own selves….thereby admitting us into the mysteries of the Green World, the deepest gnosis of Nature…that mystical state of oneness with the forest and beast and flower that our ancestors once dwelled in…Here is to be found the greatest powers.
The new religion believes that it has unique claim over “god the father” but they have no idea…they have chosen to ignore the darkness, and the death, and the sexuality inherent in the All-Father, and choose to think of the father as a distant figure…when the truth is far from that. They call our God “The Devil” but that truth is even further from that. The Father is All…he is All…and this is his true name.
He may always be found here, in the forest, Where we adore him under many of his secret names…here, you will hear him called “Robin Goodfellow” or “Master Pouck”… that is the name of the God who wears the horns, and in the darkness of this forest leads us in revelry and instructs us in the secret craft. The oldest people called him “Hou”…but “Lucet” is the name we know him by. He lives through us…He is a great spirit and the tutelary spirit of all of the Hidden Folk. As he reigns over the animals, he is the God who grants knowledge of Familiar spirits to the cunning witches who approach him…