Cernunno, Odin, Dionysus and other deities of the 'Winter Sun'

di Marco Maculotti
cover: Hermann Hendrich, "Wotan", 1913

[follows from: Cosmic cycles and time regeneration: immolation rites of the 'King of the Old Year'].

In the previous publication we had the opportunity to analyze the ritual complex, recognizable everywhere among the ancient Indo-European populations, centered on theimmolation (real or symbolic) of the "King of the Old Year" (eg. Roman Saturnalia), as a symbolic representation of the "Dying Year" that must be sacrificed to ensure that the Cosmos (= the order of things), reinvigorated by this ceremonial action, grants the regeneration of Time and of the 'World' (in the Pythagorean meaning of Kosmos like interconnected unit) in the new year to come; year which, in this sense, becomes a micro-representation of the Aeon and, therefore, of the entire cyclical nature of the Cosmos. Let's now proceed toanalysis of some divinities intimately connected with the "solstitial crisis", to the point of rising to mythical representatives of the "Winter Sun" and, in full, of the "King of the Waning Year": Cernunno, the 'horned god' par excellence, as far as the Celtic area is concerned; Odin and the 'wild hunt' for the Scandinavian one and Dionysus for the Mediterranean area.

The radical *KRN

"In the radical KRN the mystery of Kronos / Cernunno is structured, dimension of the illud tempus of which the cervids often synthesize the essence." [Chiavarelli, p.146]

However, before starting with the actual analysis of the aforementioned divinities, it is necessary to make some observations regarding the already mentioned several times. radical * KRN and its variations. It appears connected to a series of 'saturnine' deities, both gods of fertility (like the Saturn of the Latin golden age and the Freyr of the Scandinavian tradition, its counterpart) how much of time and, therefore, of decay and death—Kronos and Kernunnus, but also Crom, “A kind of Saturn devouring its own children,” similar to the Babylonian Moloch, to whom the ancient Celts sacrificed their children; etymologists see the root of the term in the name of this divinity cromlech ("Table" by Crom, *pinch), that is the megalithic sacrificial altar on which the designated victims were immolated [Bosc, p.62]. Curiously, the etymology of the Celtic deity representing the other 'saturnine' function, that is to say that of god of fertility, equivalent to the Old Norse Freyr / Fródi, is the same, since the Celtic ruler of the golden age was named cormac (*pinch) [Polia, pp.29-30]. At the time of his rule there was an overabundance of honey: similarly, in the Eleusinian tradition, honey was the food of Cronos (*krn), which is inebriated by it in its timeless seat at the extreme western borders of The world, in the "Isola dei Beati" or Ogigia.

The search can be extended: in addition to Kronos, another Hellenic god related to the radical * KRN was Apollo Karneios (Karn therefore stands for "polo" karneios is equivalent to "polar, hyperborean"), its "double". This cult also existed in Brittany, only to end up, in the Christian era, canonized as the cult of St. Cornelius [Daniélou, p.195] - as you can see, the root *krn remains. On the occasion of the Spartan carnas in honor of Apollo Karneios, a ritual hunt took place, at the end of which a chosen one disguised as a ram (karnos, another animal horned like the deer, it too, therefore, a symbol of the "dying sun"; *krns, as Kronos e Kernunnus) was captured and sacrificed to the god [Burkert, p.435].

We would like to emphasize once again that i topos connected to the radical * KRN: sovereignty and royalty connected with generative power, the need for a sacrifice and the promise of a rebirth, and so on. To this we must add what has already been said previously, that is to say that the stem * KRN is found in a series of terms deriving from the ancient Indo-European phoneme such as horns, crown (symbol of royalty) as well as the symbolism of cervo, which precisely by virtue of the mutation of its horns, as we have seen, symbolically conveyed a message of regeneration and cyclical rebirth, and to the feast of Carnival, residue of the Roman Saturnalia [cfr. René Guénon: "On the meaning of carnival festivals"] —All terms deriving from the archaic root * KRN, which expresses its symbolism in the clearest way in the traditional representation of Cernunno, which we are now preparing to analyze more concretely.

Cernunno, the "Horned God"

Of the cult of Cernunno (Kernunnus), which the Romans called simply "the Horned", there are attestations since the Mesolithic and Neolithic times. In more recent times, the importance of this deity in northern Gaul is attested, among other things, by the altar found under the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. The depictions of him are extremely consistent throughout the Celtic area: the most obvious attribute of him is a stag's antler stage, and he is usually depicted as a mature man with long hair and beard, in the manner of Chthonic Dionysus. . His iconography was then confused in the Middle Ages, especially in the British area, with that of green man, which we will have the opportunity to talk about shortly.

The god's cervine horns are "decorated with rings which may be wicker circles or bronze rings used as coins" [Murray, p.26]. This symbolism conveys, once again, a message of cyclicality and rebirth, starting from horns which, as we have seen, are a symbol of the cyclical and eternal regeneration of nature, as the deer change them every year. Even the symbol of the hoops it is obviously connected to the cyclical nature of the ages: Okeanos, forerunner of Kronos as a divinity of Time, was imagined by the ancient Hellenes as a ring that surrounded the earth [cf. Cyclical time and linear time: Kronos / Shiva, the "Time that devours everything"]. The ring is astronomically connected to the planet Saturn, demonstrating its sovereignty over the element chronic (temporal): the custom of exchanging rings between newlyweds is equivalent to "binding" in an eternal promise under the aegis of the god of Time, or of Saturn / Kronos.

It follows that Kernunnus, in addition to being a divinity of wild nature and generative power, as is usually recognized, also operates a dominion over the temporal function, similarly to Kronos in the Hellenic tradition and to Janus, who reigned before Saturn in Lazio, the whose two faces actually represent the duplicity of Time in its dichotomous pairs of past / future, historical time / timeless eternity, profane time / sacred time. To what we have already said, it should be added that in the iconography Cernunno held in his hand - and often wore a torques, emblem of the circularity of the year (and, therefore, by symbolic extension, of the Aeon), as well as a serpente horned, symbol of time and spring rebirth. Even reptiles, in fact, shed their skin in spring when new antlers grow on the deer to replace those fallen in autumn [Chiavarelli, p.46].

Furthermore, in ancient tradition, Cernunnos was also recognized as having the function of psychopump divinity: the god, in fact, adorned with leafy boxes, symbol of the cyclical nature of time and cosmic rebirth, gathered the souls of the dead to escort them into the afterlife, accompanied by goddess of the hunt Flidass who, like his Greek counterpart Artemis, drove a chariot pulled by deer (in the Scandinavian context, the pair of psychopomp gods consisted of Odin and Freyja, who shared the souls of the dead on the battlefield). The deer itself was considered by the Celts to be an animal capable of leading the dead to the paradise of the blessed, to the point that the corpse was sometimes sewn into a deer's skin, so that the path to paradise was easier [Jacq, p .63]. At the same time, there is also an inseparable link, as for other divinities as well as for Cernunno, regarding the psychopompic function on the one hand and the initiator on the other: the death of the deceased, whose corpse is sewn into the skin of a cervide, is ultimately equivalent to an initiation, as the Celts believed that, following physical death, the soul sucked into the great cosmic matrix would continue to live in the etheric worlds and then reincarnate again in the sublunary plane. In this sense, Cernunno is also the initiator who teaches the art of inner transmutation, based on the understanding of the rhythms of the cosmos and in particular in the realization of the eternal return of the cycles of creation, destruction and new creation of the Cosmos, of the The world and, consequently, even the human microcosm.

Odin and the "Hunting Selvaggia »

The attributes of Cernunno, especially the cervine horns, resulted in medieval English folklore in the figure of Herne o Old Hernie, the "ghost hunter", which is certainly also affected by Norse influences, as it remembers Odin / Wotan as the conductor of theexercitus feralis. At the same time, in the countryside of Northern Europe, the adoration of the ancient was still alive Nick o Neck ("demon"), to the point that the Church had to canonize him in the guise of St. Nicholas, who in Cornomoney order (*krn), in the sacred iconography, still retains the horns [Murray, p.36]. FromOld nick on the one hand, the Alpine and winter celebrations connected to the figure of the Krampus (*pinch), on the other, the folkloristic figure of Santa Claus (Santa Claus), also 'double' of Odin, who performs his shamanic flight, during the "solstice crisis", driven by reindeer (deer, horns, cyclicality, rebirth) [cf. The archaic substratum of the end of year celebrations: the traditional significance of the 12 days between Christmas and the Epiphany].

The figure of the ancient 'Father of the Æsir' was effectively merged in medieval times with that of Wildermann, giving birth to all these more recent 'demonic' figures (Old Nick, Krampus, Herne, Robin Goodfellow); and yet, in the opinion of Massimo Centini [p.77], Odin himself - at the same time psychopomp divinity, 'Warlord' and head of the "Wild Hunt"-, "in his evoking atavistic magical rituals, he appropriates a considerable amount of rites coming from the most ancient agrarian cults", to whose mythical model the various pre-Christian folkloric agrarian traditions generically defined should also be traced "Ritual battles" [cf. Metamorphosis and ritual battles in the myth and folklore of the Eurasian populations], be it the Berserker Nordic, Italic Luperci, Lithuanian werewolves or Friulian benandanti [cf. The Friulian benandanti and the ancient European fertility cults]. Odin also intervenes in battle through the work of magic, giving the warriors loyal to him kraptr (*kr), fearsome luminous force equivalent to kratos (again *kr) which was granted by Zeus [Polia, p.77].

It would seem, indeed, that all these numinous powers, as well as a certain chthonic-telluric and chaotic-wild aspect of nature, are also symbolically connected to the Winter Sun, or rather to the "Dying sun" in the final days of the year coinciding with the "solstice crisis", during which the heliacal star reaches its annual nadir [cf. Cosmic cycles and time regeneration: immolation rites of the 'King of the Old Year']. In fact, according to tradition, it was above all in this period of the year that one could witness the "Wild Hunt", generally considered [Centini, p.75] "a diabolical apparition, a procession of infernal spirits which, with horrible din, they go around at night, causing anyone who approaches with the intention of observing them some illness (...) At the head of the procession we see the green knight or another diabolical figure riding in front of everyone on a nag [in the case of Odin, his eight-legged steed named Sleipnir]; behind there is a terrible confusion of spirits and witches ”. The period of the "solstice crisis" appears therefore connected with the return of the dead, following the god in the phantom mob; this may lead us to further observations, especially now that we are preparing to analyze the mystery beliefs of the Greco-Roman area, of which we have more testimonies and more exhaustive studies.

Dionysus, the "Sun of the Dead»

With regard to the Mediterranean area, we must concentrate on the numinous figure called Dionysus: in these Nietzsche, in addition to theorising the well-known Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomy, believed to see the nemesis of Zeus (understood as "god of the diurnal sky", similar to the Dyaus indo -European), describing it as a "god of the night sky, darkness, bad weather, the underworld" [p.46]; actually, it is noted that Dionysus was often called "Zeus chtonio / inferior" and, therefore, associated with Hades / Pluto, starting from the well-known fragment of Heraclitus. This leads us once again to consider the mystery of divinities used at the same time for the dominion of life (and of germination in the plant world) as well as that of the dead and the underworld. [cf. Divinity of the Underworld, the Afterlife and the Mysteries].

james hillman, author of a monograph on The dream and the underworld [pp. 61-2] wrote about the identity between Hades and Dionysus formulated by Heraclitus:

"The Hades that is in Dionysus says that there is an invisible meaning in sexual acts, a sense for the soul in the phallic parade, that all our vital force (...) alludes to the underworld of images (...) Dionysus is also a underworld divinity (which draws you down, as a depressive experience) (...) The other side of that mysterious divinity, the Dionysus who is in Hades, means that there is one zoe, a vitality, in all the phenomena of the underworld (…) The images of Hades are also Dionysian: not fertile in the natural sense, but in the psychic sense, imaginatively fertile. There is, under the earth, an imagination overflowing with animal shapes, gasping and making music. There is a dance in death. Hades and Dionysus are the same god. »

We will be able to better develop arguments of this kind in the continuation of this study, at a later date. Here, we are concerned above all to focus on how, in the Dionysian Mysteries, Dionysus  as 'god of the underworld' personages also the numinous power of the "Sun of the Old Year"; and precisely as the archetypal representative of the heliacal star in its terminal phase, the latter - through a human representative - had to be ritually sacrificed during the "solstitial crisis" to allow the birth and coming of the "New Year Sun" (Apollo ): hence, the mythology of Dionysus Zagreus dismembered by the Titans and those derived from it and homologous, such as eg. that of Orpheus dismembered and devoured by the bacchantes, and other mythical narratives of this kind, probably reminiscent of very ancient fertility cults of a chthonic-inferior character.

Actually the god of the bacchantes / maenads Dionysus, as well as being a divinity of budding power (in particular of the vine and ivy; this connecting him to the green man and at Cernunno), as well as fairs, is also believed to be a chthonic god who "manifests himself in the winter period and perhaps at the point where the souls of the dead return to earth" [Daniélou, p.68], in the same way as Odino conductor of the 'Wild Hunt'. The esoteric core of the Dionysian Mysteries has been well identified by Caroline Lanzani, author of an exhaustive study on the Dionysian religion, in which she writes [p.23]:

«Solar energy also penetrates underground, according to the elementary concept of the germination of plants, but it also resides in the underground, according to the more scientific concept of central cosmic fire. Dionysus is thus the Sun of the Dead and is also a catactonic deity. In fact, the myth represents the descent of Dionysus-Orpheus into Hell. As long as the Sun is absent from the sky (Apollo in the Hyperboreans = Winter) the germinating force of the earth is in force (Dionysus = sun in the underground). "

Later in the same work, the scholar adds [Ibidem, p.83]:

«We will therefore not hesitate to affirm that the Little Mysteries celebrate the conception of the Solar God in Mother Earth (Demeter). Passing to the catactonic state, God puts an end, so to speak, to the virginal condition of the Earth, a condition that is externalized and personified by the sacred symbolism in the girl Core (...) Descended into the womb of the Earth, acquired her catactonic personality (Pluto), the Sun enters into union with Demeter-Core and represents the germinative force that acts in mystery and shadow, to cover the Earth again with its youthful mantle of herbs and flowers. Core reappears in the light, the earth regains her youth with an eternal affair: Demeter finds the lost Core. And the new Sun of the young year has already been born: Dionysus the divine child was born »

In this he feels overshadowed the concept of solar energy which, associated with the humidity of the earth, is the cause of vegetation [Ibidem, p.90]. In this sense, the Dionysus "bearded and crowned with ivy" [Kerényi, p.168], double Hellenic of the green man British, is connected, in the same way as Pan, to wild nature, or rather tothe energy priapic that animates this wild and primordial nature [cf. From Pan to the Devil: the 'demonization' and the removal of ancient European cults]. This masculine energy of a vigorous and so to speak 'impregnating' character used to come and still is worshiped in India in the form of Linga di Śiva, just as in ancient Rome it assumed the form of the phallus of Priapus [cf. Priapus "unveiled" in an ancient Molise tradition] and in Pharaonic Egypt it was symbolically conveyed in the form of the obelisk.

This primordial energy, which follows no direction or any external command, but appears overflowing in its immense creative potential, ultimately appears connected to the cosmic function of creation as Chaos ed entropy, as removal from the Monad, that is to say from the primordial principle, and then to the dissolution: and in this regard it should be remembered that Rudolf Otto noted that, apart from Dionysus, no other Hellenic divinity was "endowed with titles that are even remotely so horrible and capable of revealing the most ruthless savagery" [Ibidem, p.98]: the Orphic hymn dedicated to him [hymn XXX, p.89] defines him as "wild, mysterious, arcane, which has two horns and two forms, crowned of vine leaves, with the forehead of a bull, warlike (…) who feeds on raw meat, trieteric, lover of vineyards, dressed in foliage ".

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