Cernunnos – God of the Hunt

Name – Cernunnos or Herne

Name Meaning – Horned God

Pantheon – Celtic

Animals – Stags, ram-horned serpents, bulls, dogs and rats.

Symbols – Stag, Oak leaves, antlers, ramps horns and pan pipes

Colors – Green, gold and silver

Sacred plant/tree – Ivy, Oak, Mistletoe, Juniper and Valerian

Moon – Oak/Holly

God of – Fertility, vegetation, Lord/Protector of the Forest, Master of the Hunt

Depicted as a man with a beard, a wild shaggy hair and stag antlers. He is often seen wearing or holding a torc, holding a coin purse or spreading the coins and flanked on the sides with snakes.

Cernunnos is a Celtic horned god. Sadly, there is a lack of surviving literature about the details about his name, his followers and his significance. What literature is available, primarily art found on pillars, tombs and engravings can be found spread throughout Europe such as the British Isles and Western Europe. Due to the lack of literature, there is some conjecture on who Cernunnos is.

 In some traditions he is seen as the god of death and dying, although there is no evidence to back this claim and in others. In other traditions he is seen as the God of Hunt, the Green Man and is most often seen as a Shamanic God. In Wicca Cernunnos is the BIG God. He is the one that helps spin the wheel of the season. When the Wicca books mention the god that is born at Yule, marries the Goddess and then dies in the Autumn. 

When it comes to Cernunnos, because of the lack of concrete information, deciding to celebrate him is a very personal path.