References to "the horned one" plz read!!

[malissia]

Hi, i am currently looking into the religion of wicca......its just that i have been reading everything i can about the religion and stuff and there are countless references about "the horned one" even in the rede......who is this horned one? is this refering to the devil, if not then what is it?

[shadowx]

It certainly isnt the devil...

The horned one has many names under various religions. He is a god often referred to in Wicca and other religions as being the partner (as well as his other two aspects of the son and i think warrior or something... Im not Wiccan so im not 100%).

He is not evil or bad in any way, he is strong, powerful, caring, fertile and depending what religion you follow within paganism he can represents things like the harvest, crops, vast trees, the sun, the sky etc...

The references to the chrstian devil (henceforth called "satan") come purely from the christians themselves.

Long before christianity took control of most of Europe many cultures within paganism believed in the horned god. The horns represent his fertility and power. NOT evilness. Christianity realised that their ideas werent spreading enough, despite their persecution and integration. So they started to demonise the "old gods" (for the sake of this post that term refers to any god or goddess worshipped before christianity). they did this by telling the pagans that the horned god was in fact the devil and made this whole lie up. This scared the less faithful pagans into christianity and provided a reason for the christians to hate pagans (they were now devil worshippers) this gave them free reign to do what they wanted.

So in conclusion the horned god is not the devil. It is a hard misconception to shake i have to admit since every reference to the devil is of course a reference to the horned god, they are almost the same now. If the idea of a horned god doesnt ring true with you then there is nothing wrong with imagining him in a different form, perhaps that of the green man (who i believe is the same god) or the oak lord (again, i think its the same one)

Fear not, wicca is not devil worship. Wiccans dont acknowledge a devil, they do not think one exists, so how can they worship him? Same goes for 99% of witches. the other 1% are, in my opinion, somewhat deluded!

[Symandinome]

OK just so there isnt any confusion. I will explain exactly who is the horned one and why he is horned.

The belief in the "Horned God " or by his other name The God of the Hunt dates back to Paleolithic times when the animals that these early people hunted were horned. The enitity/spirit/or power that these people felt controlled the outcome of the hunt was pictured by these people as having horns. This is evident through cave paintings from this time period. He is horned only because thats how the people pictured him since he was the god of the hunt over the animals that they hunted which happened to be horned. Nothing more, nothing less.

THe horned god who is known by many names in many cultures throughout Europe has nothing to do with the Christian concept/vision of the devil. If you do some research you will see that the devil or Satan's real name is Lucifer and was Gods most favorite and most beautiful angel. IN fact the word Lucifer means Light Bringer/Bearer. Lucifer became known as Satan because of a mistranslation of ancient Hebrew text. The word Ha-Satan was the original hebrew word referring the Lucifer as the Opponent or adversary. At some point in this translation the name was shortened and became Satan.

Satan was never pictured as being horned or having the legs of a goat in the bible His image as you picture him now, didnt come about until the middle ages when the Christian Church decided for it to be so. This happened because during the Middle Ages. Satanism got its start in the middle ages because the people of the time were being forced to pray to god and their prayers were not being answered so since "god" wasn't answering their prayers they thought why not try praying to the devil.

Satanism was an act of rebellion against the church and had nothign to do with paganism or the horned god. The church got wind of this rebellion from these new satanists and acknowledged them as anti-christian. The pagan people, in the churches eyes, were also anti-christian. SO to them since they were both anti-christian they both must be the same and therefore the horned god of the pagans must be what the devil looks like and from that moment on the horned god became the image of the devil today.

Neither path Satanism or Paganism have anything to do with one another AT ALL.

[Peregrine]

I realize this is an old thread with an old question but I would also like to add a few comments about horned gods. It can become a long tedious story but I'll try to keep it brief as possible.

I've come to realize that many Hebrews were originally polytheistic and that at least a faction of the Canaanites WERE Hebrews. The old religions of ancient Mesopotamia also invovled major powerful "horned gods." Enki as one of the creators of man and as a fertility god was sometimes compared to a wild bull, eager to mate with the cattle to produce plenty. His semen was considered "the water of life" (fresh water, rivers). One of his sacred animals is the goat and his astrological sign is the Capricorn, the "goat fish." Enki and his brother Enlil (god of wind, storms, sky, air) were sometimes portrayed with horned helmets/crowns and had parallels in Canaan as El (aka Ilu) and Baal Hadaad.

After the Hebrews and other Canaanites went into Babylonian captivity, the Hebrews concluded that it was because of disobedience. It is believed that Genesis to 2 Kings was written by one author, who fused roles of many gods into one, Yahweh, and did a lot of spin doctoring of old mythologies to show how man was cast out of the garden of Eden for disobedience and was now cast out of the "promised land" for disobedience. Roles of their old gods were fused and in some cases roles/mythologies given a complete inversion.

Some of the gods on the front lines for villification and contempt at this point were Enki and Enlil. Enlil aka Baal Hadaad in particular took a heavy blow that sticks with him to this day. Formerly known as "the lord of all that flies," his title was given a nasty pun as "lord of the flies," he was compared to dung and his followers to flies that swarm around dung. Even now he is top on a list as a Goetic demon even though he had often been praised previously as a life-giver, protector, and provider of prosperity. (It was said in Sumer that "without him, a city could not rise.")

It used to be that comparison to sheep was an insult. Hebrews took challenge to this and praised sheep; Christians later did the same. The cattle (and the bull's horns) and the goats took a blow, compared to a Xtian devil during the course of events after that.

[Kassandra]

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Things get twisted over time, don't they. It's like that game where you sit in a circle and one person starts a whispered secret, and by the time it's traveled the entire circle from mouth to ear, the secret's been totally changed.

I was amused when studying art in college how artists' depictions of Biblical characters and scenes were often based on totally faulty information, simple facts that got (somtimes humorously) twisted over time. Take for example, the statue of Moses in Italy, complete with a cute pair of Satanic-looking horns on his head! lol The great sculptor, Michaelangelo, based this sculpture, as did many Rennaisance artists their artwork, on erroneous information ...well, how was he to know? He wasn't a historian, nor a linguist. He trusted the information available to him at the time, taught by the church leaders.



The Moses (c. 1513–1515) is a sculpture by the Italian
High Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti, housed
in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. Commissioned
in 1505 by Pope Julius II for his tomb, it depicts the
Biblical figure Moses with horns on his head, based on a
description in the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the
Bible used at that time..... This was, however, a mistranslation
of the original Greek text... MacCulloch comments about this:
"Jerome, [the translator of the Old Testament into Latin],
mistaking particles of Hebrew, had turned this into a description
of Moses wearing a pair of horns - and so the Lawgiver is
frequently depicted in the art of the Western Church, even after
humanists had gleefully removed the horns from the text of Exodus.
--Wikipedia

Christianity is rife with many similar twists and turns. Your comment on the synthesizing of pagan gods which eventually evolved into what's come down to us as the Christian god and devil is interesting. In fact, Alexander Hislop's 19th century book, The Two Babylons, contended that the Roman papacy itself is none other than a complete redo of Babylonian religion, in just about every detail. Hislop, a devout Christian minister, provided a compelling, point-by-point comparison between the two belief systems. I don't know where that book stands now in light of modern scholarship, but I think it does provide food for thought, if nothing else.

And no, I never consider any thread in this forum as too old to comment upon, so please always feel free.

.

[Peregrine]

I'll have to read up on that one. So much to read, so little time. I did sometimes come across comments on places like YouTube, more conservative Protestant types typing something about that. For a Protestant, it is often a terrible insult to compare something with Catholicism. I've seen them call Catholicism a Satanic religion also. (does a weary facepalm)

Then again, I've seen all sorts of bizarre comments on the old Mesopotamian gods so like with anything I have to take it with a grain of salt. I've really been walking a gauntlet for the past year and a half, trying to weed through a lot. If I listen to David Icke, for instance, it is all a conspiracy by a reptilian race from other space. Zecharia Sitchin's "The Lost Book of Enki" is a bit of a painful read for me on a couple of levels. Like Icke, he has a very dedicated group of followers but I'm just not into him either. At least he keeps my beloved Enki as a nice guy though.

I've also come across some who insist that we can see it all in the Vedas, that they were a corrupted form of Hinduism and sometimes I see the reverse argument. Personally I see a relation most between them and modern Hinduism, with variations of course but without the need to say one is better or the other is wrong or anything like that.

I hate to say it because of the stigma, but I swear the Satanists and Luciferians almost always make more sense than all of them put together.

Old Mesopotamian gods have been villified much over thousands of years, starting with the Canaanite deities. Archaeology is showing a rather sad but interesting picture if I look at it as objectively as possible. It is hard for me to take it in, really.

Not sure what to think if that and the Papacy, though. I was under the impression it was more Apollonian in nature. Oye, so much to do.

newangel


PS Also forgot to mention that Lucifer in the book of Isaiah was originally a Babylonian king by many accounts, originally known as Helel Ben Shachar. There was an old Canaanite song about the morning star that glows bright but only temporarily until the sun comes to overpower it. It relates to an old tale about a king that tried to steal the throne of Baal Hadaad (god of air, wind, storms) It was intended as a sort of jeering at this king who had been oppressing them severely, like saying he better enjoy his power trip while he can because his time is short and he has a rude awakening in store very soon.