By: EDWARD O'TOOLE
By: Phenomena Esotericist-at-Large
“If God didn't exist. then it would be necessary to invent him” - Voltaire
Modern Man requires a single all-encompassing God to act as a crutch. Some hate
Him, most love Him. Regardless, monotheism is the staple of the Western world –
for the majority both joy and sorrow are laid at the feet of one single deity.
Step back to before the Romanized Semitic belief infested Europe and God becomes
gods and, with that pluralism, an utterly different take on Beings Divine.
One reason I really dislike the Wolfgang Peterson film ‘Troy’ is that it omits
the most essential factor from Homer’s Iliad – the Olympians. Whether this was,
as I presume, so as not to offend the audience’s sensibilities or not, it makes
the War over Helen into something entirely different.
“Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless
ills upon the Achaeans.” (Opening line, Homer’s Iliad, trs by Samuel Butler)
The gods, and goddesses, took sides – as was their wont. Humans were mere pieces
in an endless game with the prized pieces being Heroes (as with Athena and
Odysseus in Homer’s sequel). While mortals did pray and perform sacrifices to
the gods – and celebrate their feast days – they knew that the gods generally
only responded to their own hand-picked favourites and, sometimes, not even then
when by giving aid they would further complicate rivalries on Mount Olympus,
such as when Odysseus angered Poseidon after blinding his son, the Cyclops
Polyphemus, and Zeus had to wait until Poseidon had gone to Ethiopia before
responding.
The Greek pantheon is probably the most accessible from the ancient European
races as its literature – in the form of epics – has been used in the education
system for hundreds of years. Being Northern European, however, I find it hard
to associate with Heavenly marbled halls, olive oil and togas. The Divine
archetypes – God the Father, God the Mother, God the Messenger, God the Hunter,
God the Warrior, God the Sea, God the Dead, etc – are easily transplanted into
Celtic, Norse and Germanic pantheons where a colder, darker and grimmer setting
enhances their feasibility.
If one has ever been on the Yorkshire Moors – up on Ilkley – with its Wuthering
Heights panorama, dense fog and bleak landscape, with the wind whipping and
howling and constant drizzle permeating into one’s bones, then the figure of The
Morrigan is highly perceptible. If one has eve been in an Old Woods – not the
new reusable coniferous type – with dense bracken and bramble, Oaks that grow
upwards rather than outwards, moss and lichen, pheasant and woodpecker call,
sunlight filtering thinly through foliage overhead, then Cernunnos is only a
shadow away.
In these places, a God conceived by an outcast tribe, wandering through the
blistering heat of an unforgiving desert, banished or enslaved by every
encountered civilized country, has no place. In such a setting, the gods are
closer to home – Jehovah is as alien as Quetzalcoatl.
I remember watching Richard Carpenter’s BBC series, Robin of Sherwood, as a
child and being amazed at the appearance of Herne the Hunter.
“Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,
Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns;
And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle,
And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner.
You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know
The superstitious idle-headed eld
Receiv'd, and did deliver to our age,
This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth.” - William Shakespeare, The Merry
Wives of Windsor
While most likely a solely Berkshire legend, the Herne portrayed in Robin of
Sherwood was an amalgamation of the Gaullic Cernunnos (as seen on the 1st
Century BCE Danish Gundestrup Cauldron) and the Anglo-Saxon Wild Hunt. A dark,
mysterious figure – a god with antlers and a robe of leaves – his presence fits
perfectly with the ancient great southern British forest of Anderida – that
immense and impenetrable woodland which terrified the Romans. Herne – or
Cernunnos - is not a god to be worshipped, or one to whom forgiveness should be
asked. He doesn’t ask for a set code of supplicant actions, he is just another
Being, if somewhat less mortal than Man. In the time before roads and
electricity, wandering through Cernunnos’ domain must have been a very scary
experience and having the Lord of the Forest on one’s side would have eased
one’s mind a touch.
The Morrigan, especially in her appearances in the ancient Irish epic, Táin Bó
Cúalnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), is similar in ‘godness’ , if not in
character or actions, to Athena or Aphrodite; she gets personally involved in
Queen Medb’s campaign and becomes the nemesis of the semi-divine Cuchulainn. The
Morrigan is a goddess often adopted by Wiccans and Neo-pagans, particularly
women, as she best represents the Triple-Goddess (virgin, mother, crone), or
Morrigan-Badb-Nemain (Phantom Queen, Crow and Frenzy). To males such as myself,
she is the Dark Yin to Cernunnos’ Yang; the Battle Crow or Cathubodva as she was
known in Gaul – a dark and sexual figure, similar to the Valkyries.
“Then it was that the Morrigan, daughter of Ernmas, came from the fairy
dwellings, in the guise of an old hag, engaged in milking a tawny, three-teated
milch cow.” (Táin Bó Cúalnge, trs. Joseph Dunn)
Both of the aforementioned gods – Cernunnos and The Morrigan – are utterly
dissimilar to the Hebraic Jehovah. The Heroes of the epics, if taken in modern
Judeo-Christian terms, would be seen as evil as their actions (and the actions
of the gods, especially) contradict every accepted societal convention. One only
has to read works such as the Odyssey, Beowulf or Táin Bó Cúalnge to see that if
such revered figures lived today in our fearful, lost, society, they would be
under lock and key. The gods of our Ancients reflected a time when individual
strength – physical, spiritual, moral or psychological – was held in highest
esteem, rather than the absolute conformity to which modern Man aspires. The
Heroes of these gods did not beg forgiveness, they challenged the Pantheon and
accepted the consequences as part of their quest for whatever it was they were
aiming for. They made allies of some gods – in return for favours – and enemies
of others.
One only has to compare the concept of the Afterlife to see the different
mindset: an eternal Feasting Hall where one may join one’s ancestors, drinking
and eating alongside Heroes and beautiful women, if one has proven oneself while
in the mortal coil, or an eternity of sitting at God’s feet.
What I just can’t fathom is how we moved from one to the other.
