The horned god - in the modern neopagan religion Wicca - is a male deity, a partner of the Triune goddess . The idea of such a deity goes back to the writings of the English anthropologist Margaret Murray (1863-1963).
Content
The teachings of Murray
Margaret Murray, in her popular work on the history of witchcraft in Europe, “The Witch Cult in Western Europe” (1921), defends the idea that the image of the devil and the satanic sabbaths , which supposedly were witches , were distorted reflections of what really existed from prehistoric times in Europe pagan cult. Persecuted by the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, witches and sorcerers M. Murray was considered as the last followers of this ancient religion.
In the book “The God of the Witches” ( The God of the Witches , 1931), Murray made an attempt to historically substantiate the existence of the worship of the “horned god” back in the Stone Age . At the same time, she refers to the evidence of cave painting: for example, the image of the "shaman" in the French cave of Trois-Frérre . Murray made up horned gods from various cultures of the Ancient East here: ancient Egyptian Amon with horns of aries and Hator with horns of a cow, horned "Lord of the beasts" on a seal from Mohenjo-Daro and others. Similar images are found in ancient Greek mythology - the Cretan Minotaur , the god Pan , Dionysus Zagray . In his book, M. Murray also mentions the Celtic god Kernunn , whose image in a hat with horns, supposedly resembling a shaman, was found on a part of the relief of the ancient altar under the Notre Dame Cathedral . Later, he transformed into the folkloric image of Herne the Hunter .
According to the constructions of Murray, who did not receive support in the academic community, worship of the "horned god" in Europe and the adjacent Mediterranean region existed at least from the end of the last ice age until the Roman conquest of Celtic Gaul.
As confirmation of the existence of the horned god cult in the Christian era, Murray cites Theodore of Tarsus , Archbishop of Canterbury at the end of the 7th century , who in his Epistle Liber poenitentialis threatens with a three-year excommunication to everyone who in January calendars will be dressed in animal skins and will depict a bull or a deer. Murray interprets the massive witch-hunt in the 15th and 17th centuries in the same way. She also explains the horns in the traditional iconography of the devil and devils: the clergy associated them with dark power in order to destroy the ancient cult of the horned deity in the minds of the population. “ This preserved creed ... testifies that under the shadow of the dominant Christian religion the old cult with all its rituals existed almost untouched ,” the researcher concludes [1] .
M. Murray calls “Dorset Auxerre” - a kind of carnival mask image; along with the mask it was customary to put on animal skin. The mask itself supposedly disappeared at the end of the 19th century . Until 1967, a wooden sculpture was also depicted depicting Ato , which, according to the followers of the neo-pagan cult of Wicca , was the proper name of the Horned God.
- The images that Murray associated with the cult of the Horned God
Beastmaster on Print 420 from Mohenjo-Daro
Celtic god Cernunnos
Dorset auxerre
The vast majority of scholars recognize the argument of the British writer and anthropologist as not weighty enough to allow the parallel existence of some widespread, secret pagan cult that originated in the Stone Age - in more than a thousand years of Christianized Europe. The idea of the cult of the horned god is mainly regarded as a fantasy. Despite this, some less important aspects of her research enjoy some support [2] [3] .
Wiccanism
The writings of Margaret Murray had a direct impact on the formation of the neopagan worship of Wicca . Its founder, Gerald Gardner , claimed that in 1939 he was admitted to the Vedic society ( coven ) under the name New Forest . The rites and teachings of this group allegedly corresponded to what was described in the writings of Murray. From this, Gardner concluded that he had met with the last fans of the Horned, which have survived from ancient times.
Since J. Gardner was afraid that the ancient teaching itself would disappear with the death of members of this coven, he decided to establish a new community with a wider range of participants. In order to attract public attention, in 1954 Gardner organized the publication of Witchcraft Today , which outlines the Vedic teachings and rites known to him.
Since the information he had about witch societies at his disposal was incomplete and fragmentary, Gardner takes a lot from the work of the English magician and occultist Alistair Crowley , whom he knew personally, as well as from the work of Charles Godfrey Leland Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches and others sources. In modern Wiccan rituals, God is represented by a masked man who acts in conjunction with the high priestess, who in turn represents the Triune Goddess .
Literary image editing
The works of M. Murray and the neopagan teaching "Wicca" found their echo in the work of a number of authors of literature of the fantasy genre . Another source of material for science fiction writers was the book of the English writer Robert Graves, The White Goddess . Graves cites the following myth of his own composition: the triune goddess is sacrificed in the form of a deer god. In the ancient Greek tradition, such was the fate of Dionysus Zagreos, torn by the Titans, and Actaeon , torn by the dogs of Artemis .
The most popular from the reader of fantasy literature, created on the basis of the teachings of M. Murray, R. Graves and Wicca, was a series of novels by Marion Z. Bradley " Mists of Avalon ", as well as its continuation. In them, the "horned god" transforms into the legendary King Arthur .
Notes
- ↑ Murray God of the Witches Oxford University Press 1970, S. 34
- ↑ Ginzburg, Carlo. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath.
- ↑ "Other historians, like Byloff and Bonomo, have been willing to build upon the useful aspects of Murray's work without adopting its untenable elements, and the independent and careful researches of contemporary scholars have lent aspects of the Murray thesis considerable new strength." - JB Russell (1972) Witchcraft in the Middle Ages . Cornell University Press. p.37.
Literature
- Penny Nigel, Prudence Jones. History of Pagan Europe / Transl. from English - St. Petersburg: Eurasia, 2000 .-- 448 p.: Ill. - Series "Barbaricum". - ISBN 5-8071-0051-4 .
- Gerald Gardner: Witchcraft Today. Rider, London 1954
- Gerald Gardner: The Meaning of Witchcraft. Aquarian Press, London 1959
- Robert Graves: The White Goddess. Faber & Faber, London 1948
- Margaret Murray: The Witch-cult in Western Europe. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1921
- Margaret Murray: The God of the Witches. S. Low, Marston & Co., London 1931
- Diane Purkiss: The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations. Routledge, London 1996, ISBN 978-0-415-08761-2