Cernunnos: Speculative Archaeology and its influence on modern Paganism

By Katrina Stone

Somewhere between 100-200 CE, a man in what is now today known as France carved a word upon a stone. That word, found nowhere else to this day, was Cernunnos. It is inscribed in Latin, and scholars have said that it means “Horned One”.

Since the finding of this one word on a stone, many people have speculated what it means. The most common is that it is the name of a God. Many Wiccans have put forth the theory (which they state as indisputable fact) that Cernunnos, the horned God of the Celts, was worshipped far and wide, from Gaul to Britain (and sometimes is the same god as Pan, but that ties into the Wiccan “All gods are one God, and all goddesses are one Goddess thing). My theory on how this word became so entrenched with the Horned God of the Pagans view starts with Margaret Murray. Her theory of the Horned God of the Witches was put into practice by Gerald Gardner and expanded upon by Doreen Valiente.

The Story of Llew Llaw Gyffes

"This is the story of Llew Llaw Gyffes, the Lion with a Sure Hand. He is given three Tyngedau (Fate or destinies), following the three stages of a man and the three ways in which the Divine Masculine would present himself to mortals, as Youth, Warrior and Sage.

The Triad

This is my re-telling of the tale of Llew Llaw Gyffes. The tale in it’s entirety can be found in the Mabinogion. The collection of Welsh legends translated by Lady Charlotte Guest. I first heard this story as a child. Then it was told to me in Welsh and that is how I remember it best. I have re-read the story from the English version to refresh my memory and to help me here.

The Triad mentioned is from other sources. The ancient Bards would use two forms of Triad. One type held a store of wisdom, others were used as mnemonics, to remind the bard of the tale he is to tell. The latter type is the one quoted.

Among the “Trioedd Ynys Prydain” (The Triads of the Island of Britain) is written this;

“Three disloyal households of the Island of Prydain;

The household of Gronw Pebyr of Penllyn who refused to stand in place of their lord to receive the poisoned darts from Llew Llaw Gyffes in Lech Goronwy in Blaen Cynfael; and the household of Gwrgi and Peredur, who deserted their lords at Caer Greu, when there was appointment for battle next morning against Eda Glinmaur, and they were both slain; and the third, the household of Alan Fyrgan, who returned back by stealth from their lord, on the road at night with his servants at Camlan, and there he was slain.”"


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The Fabrication of 'Celtic' Astrology

The Celtic 'tree zodiac' fabrications, the direct result of Robert Graves' invention of a tree calendar', have become an almost insurmountable barrier to any serious study of the forms of astrology that were practised by pre-Christian Celtic society. For fifty years, from the time Graves' published his book The White Goddess (1946), a veritable industry has been built up among his acolytes, which preach artificial astrological ideas based on Graves' spurious arguments. Some have even published books on what they fondly term 'Celtic Astrology', manufacturing a completely artificial 'astrological system'.

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The Origins of Modern Druidry

A fantastic lecture from OBOD given by the much respected Professor Ronald Hutton.

The First Mt. Haemus Lecture : The Origins of Modern Druidry

  The purpose of this paper is to discover why it was that Europeans in general had no interest in Druids for most of the Middle Ages, and yet were hugely enthusiastic about them by the middle of the eighteenth century. In England the timescale is even shorter, because during the 1720s and 1730s the ancient Druids remained shadowy, marginal and unpopular figures in the national imagination, and yet within half a century had become the definitive characters of national prehistory, and celebrated in plays, poems, songs, paintings and garden ornaments. Even more to the point, by the 1780s, from Wales to London, people were starting to found Druid orders in an effort to recover and revive their wisdom. This is a story that has never been told before, and it is hoped that the research embodied in this essay will represent a first step in knowledge of it.

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Why Wicca Is Not Celtic

The following is by no means an indictment of the religion called Wicca. Wicca is indeed a valid and powerful path for those who truthfully walk it and understand it. However, there is a body of people who believe that Wicca is the descendant of the religious ways of the Gaelic or other Celtic peoples (or 'Celts' as a general nomenclature). This simply is not the case.

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In the Beginning....

Information for Druids and Celtic Pagans