Cernunnos Archetype, Symbol and Myth

Cernunnos Archetype, Symbol and Myth

Cernunnos (pronounced KIRE-NIN- NOS) The Horned One is an old God. 
Yet to me, he is more archetype than myth. For me myth has it's space in narritive, in healing and teaching story. In myth, as in The Dreaming we see ourselves and not ourselves. A "traditional narrative", but where would these stories have sprung from? Narratives tend to follow a form, and often weave deep psycholgical truths, images and ideas with current ideas, people or settings. It is our most deep nature to create stories, narratives. Interalizing the outer world and externalizing the inner one. Yet their must be a middle ground, usually one of ritual.
As an archtype he can be seen as a liminal guardian. One who gives life and rules over death. He is wild and untamed but poised and contained. This liminal space of potentiality he allows exploration of both places and expands the middle ground.
Yet this place is not pulled from fantasy. This place is where the red deer dwells. Calm and placid until threatened where the males can roar like a carivore and fight to a bloody death. Yet their fights for territory among males are highly ritualised and often end peacefully.  
We tend to think of humans from the past as "primitive" but in truth there is little difference from them and us. Their reasoning was as great, their capsity for thought, feeling and imagination. They would have seen this mighty animals politely dance with this opponent and perhaps thought it a good idea.
As an archetype he is so potent because he crystalized as part of our earliest collective memory

The Sorcerer made 13,000 B.C




While for some he is an absolute virtue of "maleness", other see him as androdine. His horns reminisent of both female reproductive parts and like the Tree of Life the placental tree.
As a symbol of "wildness" and life and death his gender is less important than the Guardianship of the boundary of "human" space and non human space. I have tried to draw and paint him many times, trying find the wild, dangerous and violent side of him, yet the eyes always come out calm, and even gentle.
As his painting looks down at me through the soft lights of our Yuletide tree I wonder at the merry dance he leads me on. Allowing me glipses, like the white stag at hunter's moon last year only move unheard back into the shade. He reminds me of someone I used to know.

Bright Blessings xxx