Horned God

I thought I would share this - it's something I wrote a while back for a devotional that has just been published. I feel a bit shy posting it as apart from how much my own thoughts and practises have changed in that time, I'll be the first person to question how well I researched it (double checking sources hmm?!), but at the time I did the best I could

The Horned God in the East

I am not a scholar, nor am I particularly experienced.
But I was asked to be a messenger, and I shall be. As such
my words are nothing you could not find yourself with a
bit of surfing and researching. This isn't new information
I'm giving you, rather I'm hoping it will shine a light on
something that is not often in the forefront of peoples
thoughts.
I found the Horned God a long time before I found
Paganism in any of its forms. He was always there, but I
never had a name for Him. He simply was; a vibrant,
essential part of the world around me. None of the names I
found for Him felt right to me though. I didn't doubt that
He was Cernunnos, or Herne, nor even disguised as Robin
Hood; but none of these were names I felt comfortable
using. This perplexed me and even now I don't fully
understand it. For the longest while the name that came
closest for me was GreenMantle (inspired very much by the
Charles de Lint book of the same name), but that felt more
like a title than a name to me and so my search for His
name continued.
Then quite by accident I found a new name that I
would never have considered: Pashupati.
And that name felt... right. That the name I should
feel most comfortable with is one that is far beyond my
cultural roots is odd, but strange things happen every day.
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It was this name that made many of the others also
suddenly feel more... right.
Pashupati is considered a form of the God Shiva, so
how might we connect Pashupati and Shiva with
Cernunnos?
In 1856 a railway was being built across the Indus
Valley in what is now modern day Pakistan, when workers
came across the ruins of a city called Harappa. It wasn't
until 60 years later that true excavations began to unearth
Harappa, and then a second city called Mahenjo Daro, the
6000 year old culture covering an area twice as large as the
Egyptian kingdom. In the ruins of Harappa was found
what is now termed “the Indus Valley seals”. The seals are
covered in a rune-like script that is as yet undeciphered, but
more immediately obvious is the image that they depict.
The image is of an antlered man with a visibly erect penis,
sitting in a yogic pose surrounded by animals. The image is
strikingly similar to the image that is taken to be Cernunnos
shown on the Gundestrup cauldron that dates from
between the 4th and 1st centuries BCE and was found in
the peat bogs of Denmark. In terms of space and time the
two images couldn't be further apart, which makes their
likeness even more stunning.
In the Skanda Purana text, dating from
approximately the second century BCE, there is a passage
in which the Lord Shiva says: “As I reside here in the forest
of Sleshmantra [in the Indus Valley, also called Mriggsthali
- it translates as “the abode of deers”] in the form of a beast,
my name will hence be known as the Pashupati the world
over.” Pashupati means “Lord of Cattle” or “Lord of
Animals”, and was later taken to mean “Lord of Souls”. I
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personally find it interesting that the text says “the
Pashupati” not merely Pashupati. As such it sounds very
much like a title rather than a name: the Lord of the
Animals, or the Lord of Souls. Both of which describe facets
of Cernunnos very well too. On some of the seals Pashupati
is shown with hooves, rather reminiscent of Pan!
On the Gundestrup cauldron, Cernunnos is depicted
holding a torque (wealth) and a horned serpent (a symbol
of fertility and feminine energy) which is patently missing
from the Indus Valley seals. However the Indus Valley
seals do show Pashupati displaying an erect penis and
sometimes prominent testicles, which as well as being an
overt symbol of male energy are an obvious symbol of
fertility and virility. Though the image is slightly different
the same message of fertility is very clear. Although not
obvious there is another link between the snake of the
Gundestrup cauldron and the image on the Indus Valley
seals. In eastern practices the serpent is representative of
Kundalini energy that in tantric practice is drawn up
through the chakras. The God Pashupati sits in a pose
called 'Gorakshasana' - the cowherd posture. This is
supposedly an advanced tantric pose to direct the
Kundalini energy to the root chakra. While a serpent is not
visible on the Indus Valley seals it is certainly possible to
see the Kundalini snake implied in the imagery. The
animals that surround Pashupati are different from the
animals that surround Cernunnos on the Gundestrup
cauldron, but this difference in my mind is very superficial
- that the Lord of the animals should be surrounded by
different animals in different parts of the world would be
very logical.
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To me this seems clear that we are looking at a God
that has been known to many peoples across cultures and
time. That he should have so many names is unsurprising.
An interesting question is whether Pashupati travelled west
and became known as Cernunnos, or whether Cernunnos
migrated east and became known as Pashupati? Possibly,
as Doreen Valiente suggests, neither happened. Possibly
these cultures came to know the Horned God in complete
isolation from one another.
While this seems perfectly valid to me I am also
enthralled by the implicit mystery of the Tarim mummies
of the Taklimakan desert in China. In the mid 1900's in
China the bodies of approximately 200 mummies were
found. These bodies had been preserved naturally by the
salt sands that they were buried in, bearing no resemblance
to Egyptian mummification. So perfectly were the bodies
preserved that it was obvious that these people were of
caucasian origins having red and blonde hair, long noses,
and tall “gangly” bodies. Not only were their features
obviously caucasian, so too were their clothes - these
people wore a material remarkably similar to tartan! When
carbon-dated the oldest of these mummies was shown to be
3,980 years old, though many mummies remain undated
(The Indus Valley seals are dated to between 2000 and 3000
BCE). When the DNA was tested after much politically
charged negotiation they were found to have European
genetic markers.
Scholars have tentatively connected these ancient
bodies to a race of people referred to in Chinese texts as
“Tokharians” and in his article “The horned God in India
and Europe'” Neil MacGregor Campbell queries whether it
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may have been these ancient peoples that spread the
worship of the Horned God. Tocharian is a branch of the
Indo-European languages, and as such this tribe of people
can be considered as cousins to the Celtic peoples that
worshipped Cernunnos. These two branches shared a
common heritage and it would be realistic to expect
similarities that extend beyond those that are found in
linguistics and their textile production! To me it seems
reasonable to believe that worship of the Horned God
spread both east and west from a common source (though
precisely where that is is still down to scholarly debate) and
so we find expressions of the Horned God in the British
Isles as Cernunnos and we find him yet again in the east as
the Pashupati.
Today the worship of the Horned God in our
western societies, in which ever guise he may take, is
something that we Pagans have to reconstruct as so little
has survived intact from our past. We are left with a few
customs, a few stories, and we are left to fill in the blanks
with as much intuition and ingenuity as we can muster.
However Eastern practices are rich in comparison. My own
curiosity has taken me here to further explore Cernunnos as
Pashupati.
Pashupati is believed to be a form of Shiva, the great
God of nature's destruction, and this resonates for me as
Cernunnos' links to the underworld. That the Pashupati
pre-dates the Vedic Shiva is most likely from an intellectual
point of view if not a religious one. Whether Pashupati
became Shiva is another path of thought that I think, for
myself at least, is very worth following up on. However for
the purposes of discovering how the Pashupati is
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worshipped by modern day followers I am accepting that
Shiva is a name that the Pashupati goes by, if only for the
reason that Hindi followers believe this and as such their
worship of Shiva-Pashupati is still therefore worship of
Pashupati.
The Pashupatinath in Kathmandu, Nepal, is one of
the main Hindu temples and pilgrimage sites, and as such a
holy site non-Hindus cannot enter but may look upon the
temple and watch the cremation rites from the far bank of
the sacred river Bagmati, besides which the temple stands.
Here the worship of Shiva (and as such Pashupati) is highly
organised. Before entering the Pashupatinath temple the
priest much first visit the temple of Vasuki (the King of the
Nagas - “the King of the Snakes” - another interesting
connection with the imagery on the Gundestrup cauldron).
Each day the Mul Bhatta (the main priest) and four
priests supposedly spend six hours in worship. This takes
the form of ritual mantra (the use of sound to attune the
soul) and yantra (the use of certain specific geometric
patterns used in meditation to retune the soul). Part of the
daily ritual involves the bathing of a shivalinga with waters
from the Bagmati river. A shivalinga is a representation of a
phallus (linga), often in conjunction with a symbolic vulva
(yoni). Shivalingas have reportedly been discovered in the
ruins of the Indus Valley which would lead to the
assumption that the symbolic linga is something that
originates with the worship of Pashupati. In the Harappa
city culture of the Indus Valley there is also strong evidence
for the worship of a mother Goddess hand in hand with the
Lord of the animals. That the mother Goddess and
Pashupati would have formed a spiritual partnership
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seems to be suggested by the union of the linga and the
yoni to form a shivalinga. It would seem that the God's
lover, though separate, was integral to His story and
worship.
Another interesting point about the main shivalinga
in the Pashupatinath is that it has five faces that are
identified as five different faces of Shiva. To the north is the
face of Barun or Vamdeva, the innocent God of giving and
of healing. To the east is Tatpurush or Parbrahma - I found
this to be the hardest face to research. I found it refered to
as “the supreme man” and the ego, but also as the face that
sits in meditation and blesses the Earth. To the south is
Aghor the peaceful Lord of Death. The westward face is
that of Sadjyot that is said to be the face of a child and
represents creative power, having connections to the birth
of souls and the cycle of life that is both birth and death.
The face considered most important is the featureless face
on top called Ishan which is the invisible force of the
universe, the third eye of Shiva symbolic of transcendental
knowledge.
There are the five faces, though there is also mention
of a sixth face, that which is not visible, facing down that I
have found named Kalangi Rudra. Rudra is another name
that often appears as another name for and/or linked to
both Shiva and Pashupati. The meaning of the name is
debated over, but suggestions of its meaning are “The
Roarer”, “The Howler” (both of these suggestions
obviously stem from Rudra's connection with storms and
the wind) “Wild One”, “The Fierce God”, “The Red”, “The
Brilliant”, “The Terrible” and “The Archer”. Rudra is a God
of the hunt, fierce and wild with His bow and arrow. Like
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Shiva is a God of destruction, Rudra also is called a God of
death. “Rudra” can also be taken to mean simply the
number eleven, and He is sometimes refered to as but one
of a group of Gods (sometimes said to number eleven in
total, but not all sources I read agree). As a God of death He
also controls disease and is petitioned to remove diseases
and keep children safe from them.
Though in the earliest portrayals of Him Rudra is
almost a cruel and feared God it is likely that this is because
He pre-dates the Vedic Gods and as such would have been
seen through biased eyes and would have appeared wild
and dangerous leading Him to be maligned (much as with
the Titans of Greek mythology). I find Rudra's connections
to the hunt and archery (and as such he was considered to
be able to tame even the wildest of animals) very
interesting as my western ears suddenly hear echoes of
Cernunnos and Herne yet again. All these names weave an
enormously tangled web and deciding what is and is not of
relevance is difficult. Something that has been used by
Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists since way back in history is a
Rudraksha - 'eye of Rudra' - which is a rosary-like string of
prayer beads made from the seeds of the Rudraksha tree
which, so the story goes, sprung up from the earth where
Shiva's tears fell. The name suggests that this tradition also
predates the Vedic mythology. Prayer beads are something
commonly used by other religions in the west, most notably
the Catholic rosary, but the earliest prayer beads are those
found in Hinduism.
The depiction of the Pashupati on the Indus seals
suggests that He was also very much connected to the
practice of yoga, and the current mythology of Shiva also
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tells us that Shiva taught the art of yoga and He is also the
Lord of the Dance, often depicted in various dance
postures. To followers of Shiva dance is a very exact art
form requiring control of the body, mind and the breath. It
is Shiva's dance that destroys and creates the world.
Certainly there is reason to believe that yogic practice
(possibly of a devotional manner?) dates back to worship of
the Pashupati from the pose He holds on the Indus seals.
On discovering this I wonder if there was ever any
similar sort of worship of Cernnunos in the West. My
thoughts, quite strangely, turned to morris dancing the
traditional dance, often thought of as particularly English
(though it appears in various guises throughout much of
western Europe) of rhythmic steps performed in modern
times by two or more men, often involving sticks, bells and
handkerchiefs. There is no documentation of morris
dancing any earlier than the 15th century though there is
often speculation that it is pagan in its origin. Could be?
The morris dance it seems is often performed to
celebrate the returning season of spring. Mummers plays
which often involve morris dancing are performed near to
Christmas with the themes of death and rebirth.
Interestingly this leads me to the Hindu festival of
Mahashivariti/The Night of Shiva, celebrated around
February in Nepal at the Pashupathinath. The exact date
changes each year as the festival is celebrated on the 13th
night of the Krishna Pasha moon in the month of Phalguna.
In Nepal February comes at the end of winter and the
beginning of spring, and so this festival of Mahashivarati
marks the ending of the winter months much at the same
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seasonal time that we can expect to come across morris
dancing.
The festival of Mahashivarati lasts a day and a night.
During the daytime there is fasting followed by a night
long vigil that ends with ritual bathing in the sacred
Bagmati river. For this one night the use of cannabis is
allowed as a sacred herb of Shiva. The very least we can
take from this is that the Horned God's perceived nature in
the East is one of destruction and regeneration, revered
during the winter (destruction) and the spring
(regeneration). We can infer that this is when He is
perceived to be at His strongest. The story goes that Shiva
told his wife that this was His most favorite time of year
and so for ever more this is when celebrations are held in
His honor.
By now in my researching I have a tenuous hold of a
whole meandering bunch of threads that I have tried to lay
out before you. Is Cernnonos the Pashupati (let's not forget
that Cernunnos too is a term that simply means Horned
God)? Personally for me the answer is “yes”. I feel like I’ve
only just begun to feel around the edges of something too
large for me to grasp at the moment, but my how I'm
enjoying the trying! My own research in this area has given
me wisps of inspiration for how the Horned God might
been worshipped, and how He might still be.