Question:
in the wiccan religion, is the horned god the devil?
?
2010-08-26 04:08:32 UTC
since i was a kid, i always dreamed of becoming a witch .but the thing is that i don't want to worship the devil...
Ten answers:
Child of Venus
2010-08-26 12:52:30 UTC
No, the Horned God is NOT the Devil. Wiccans, as a general rule, don't even believe in the Christian Devil. The Horned God is a nature God of the Hunt. His horns are reminiscent of the horns of the animals He both hunts and rules over. His horns are usually really antlers like the god Cernunnos. He is the Sun God, the Father Sky, and the Lord of the Hunt and all Nature. The Devil is a Christian concept who has no parallel in the Wiccan religion. When Christians started taking over, they demonized many pagan gods in order to squash out the pagan religions. The Devil got his popular portrayal as a horned creature from nature gods such as Pan and Cernunnos, who, in proper context, were never seen as evil deities. Pan is the king of the Satyrs, and so he, like other satyrs, has goat legs, hoofs, and horns. Wiccans see the God as having horns in honor of the old pagan nature deities. The Horned God is neither good nor evil. He is a God of Nature and as such can be as cruel or gentle as any part of nature.



Also, for the record, being a Wiccan does not make you a witch. Practicing witchcraft makes you a witch. Not all Wiccans are witches and not all witches are Wiccans. You can be both, but it's not necessary.

Venus Bless
shurtleff
2016-11-11 07:31:51 UTC
Wiccan Horned God
Badger G
2010-08-26 11:10:53 UTC
Not in the slightest.



Wiccans don't even believe in the Devil. It doesn't fit into their (or my own) Philosophy about the Universe.

We believe in Evil and in Good, but not from an outside force. It comes from within, and the best we can be is a GOOD person and make the world a better place.

"And it harm none, do what thou Will"



The Horned God is older than the Christan Devil since his image has been found all over Europe in one from or another for thousands of years. Pagan beliefs vary, of course, but the general symbolism stays the same.

The Church adopted the horns for their own devil images so that people would associate Paganism with Sin.



The Horned God is commonly worshiped as the male side of nature. The powerful, protective, noble, sexual and firtile male. His horns are Stag's horns (not often Goat horns, but the Goat isn't evel ether).

His equal and his consort is the Goddess, you may call her "Mother Earth" if you wish!
MSB
2010-08-26 19:23:26 UTC
Wicca is a religion. Witchcraft is a practice. 2 different things that can go hand in hand or be mutally exclusive. You can be both, one or the other, or neither.



You don't have to become Wiccan to practice Witchcraft. Practicing Witchcraft is not what makes one Wiccan.



Wiccans don't believe in the devil or Satan; it's not part of our religion.



In Wicca, the Horned One is only one of many forms God is envisioned. The horns come from Pagan Gods of the hunt, master of the wild beasts. They are a symbol of power and verility.



Please remember that we don't take mythology and artist drawings literally like Christians often take the Bible. We understand these myths about God are just people's ideas about God... the Horned God is just one idea about the nature of the Divine. In reality, God is a spirit-- an energy. He does not have horns, or a body for that matter... it is humans who gave Him different names and images.





These ideas of Horned Gods predate Christianity and any idea of a devil (There never was a devil character in Judaism, though few Christians realize this... the devil was strictly a Christian invention based on the misunderstanding of the Jewish concept "Ha Satan," and it came centuries after the start of Christianity). Christians based the Satan character's looks largely on horned Gods to discourage people from Paganism.





Either way, no one has to believe in or worship the Horned God to practice Witchcraft.
?
2010-08-26 08:47:11 UTC
No. Wicca isn't Satanism. We don't believe in Christian deities, nor do we accept evil as something we should recognize in a religion. The Great Horned God is merely a consort of the Goddess and is a symbol of male energy in the form of the divine. He is represented by the sun, whereas the Goddess is represented by the moon.



The only reason the Great Horned God is similar to the devil, is because a lot of things in Christianity have roots in Paganism (Pagan Holidays, traditions, etc.). The "devil" is in image of the Horned God to give the impression that Paganism is evil, which it is not at all. It's actually very peaceful... in my humble opinion.





EDIT: @Sue: If anything is a tool here, it's not Witchcraft, it's you. Don't answer questions that you can't speak intelligently about.
Nikos
2016-05-15 03:21:00 UTC
Well, Gerald Gardner said :



“Now the god is represented by the high priest (if there is one) and it is he who was called the Devil in the old days. I was very curious about him and asked at once when I was ‘inside’, by which they mean a member of the cult: ‘Who and what is called the Devil?’ Though members of the cult never use and, indeed, dislike the term, they knew what I meant and said: ‘You know him, the leader. He is the high priest, the high priestess’s husband.'”



“When all the talk was of the Devil, the leader would dress as Satan; when it was of others, as of Woden, of King Arthur in Somerset, of Sir Walter Calverley in Yorkshire and of Wild Edric in Shropshire, doubtless the leader would also dress the part required,” (Witchcraft Today, pg. 136).



“He was the horned god […]; but when the people of the mixed races became strong in the cult, I think there came a time when the masked (unknown) man took his place […] who protected the cult in secret. It is very likely that it might be agreed that at one meeting the masked unknown (whom I shall for convenience call the Devil) took the place and, at the next, the old known tribal chief took it. […]. The Church called him the ‘devil’ and he became known as such.”



If the horned god doesn't represent devil in Wicca as many say then why did Gerald say these things?

Here is the article that talks about What Did Gardner Say About the Devil:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/commontansy/2016/02/what-did-gardner-say-about-the-devil/
anonymous
2015-08-02 09:17:40 UTC
RE:

in the wiccan religion, is the horned god the devil?

since i was a kid, i always dreamed of becoming a witch .but the thing is that i don't want to worship the devil...
brother_in_magic
2010-08-26 09:46:40 UTC
No, he is a god of fertility, of the Wild Beasts and also a guide of the souls of the dead. He existed long before Christianity, which made the devil look like him in art to discourage new Christian converts from relapsing to their old religion.(Lucifer was actually supposed to be a beautiful young man, not a horned creature!) The Horned One is also known as Cernunnos, a celtic god, the Wild Huntsman and Herne the Hunter.St Cornelly of Brittany in France is a Christian saint but a rather spurious one--his name meaned 'horned', and he's depicted riding a stag; in fact he is probably a Christianised version of the same ancient god.
?
2015-02-25 02:18:25 UTC
Yeah, pretty much. Gerald Gardner invented a Horned God because superstitious people who believed witches were real and they had actual magic powers envisioned witches dancing with a goat-headed Devil, and Gardner wanted to be a "real witch", so he threw the Devil into his religion back in the 30s/40s/50s, but then turned around and said that it was really the gods Pan and Cernunnos and that those two gods are really one being, just as every non-Abrahamic god and every goddess all over the world is really one Horned God and one Goddess (see, that already sounds stupid. Don't be ripping off Hinduism, mister Gardner!).



This is laughable. Pan was a Greek deity that most people were afraid of (because he was the god of the woods, and people without modern day conveniences actually knew what the woods were really like). Cernunnos was a deity worshipped in Gaul (AKA France), and we have exactly ONE archaeological/historical record of his name, and several other horned/antlered supposed deities on artifacts discovered in what was once called Gaul.



Now what Gardner SHOULD have done was say that Cernunnos was the same as FAUNUS, which is actually plausible since Cernunnos is evidence of syncretism between Gaulish and Roman religion. It just made him sound stupid because as any kid who's read The Heroes of Olympus can tell you, Greek and Roman mythology were not exactly the same thing!



It's also stupid because Cernunnos was a GAULLISH deity, not a BRITISH one. This may come as a shock to many "pagans" who love to throw the word "Celtic" around, but the Celts didn't believe the same ******* things! Furthermore, the VAST majority of knowledge of Celtic mythology comes from Gaelic sources (specifically Irish) and Welsh because the Romans never did a good job of establishing their authority in Wales and because I don't think they even attempted to conquer Ireland. This is a problem for modern day Celtic "pagans" because almost all of that Celtic knowledge I just mentioned was written down by CHRISTIANS because they Celts had no system of writing of their own.



Beyond the obvious reason why this is a problem for Wiccans is also the fact the huge ******* time span between the Christianization of the British Isles and the Celtic era of Gaul/France. Celtic religion was long dead in France by the time Christian monks started writing down the pagans' stories, largely due to the pagan Romans' attempts to stamp it out (they had a strong revenge ***** for the Gauls, because of the Gaulish sacking of Rome).



Do you see how silly it is for a man claiming to be worshipping the ancient BRITISH Celtic gods to be naming his primary male deity after an obscure deity from hundreds of miles away who probably stopped being worshipped WAY before the British gods were ever written about in detail?



But wait, it gets even sillier! He claims the reason why his totally-not-Satan-witch-god is called Cernunnos is because this secret cult of witches worshipped THE EXACT SAME DEITIES ACROSS ALL OF EUROPE! But wait, it gets even stupider than that! THE WITCH CULT HAS EXISTED SINCE STONE AGE TIMES.



So yeah, basically, the Horned God is the Devil, only the Wiccans want to pretend that that isn't true. Other "pagan" witches are much more honest; Traditional Witches will flat out state that Satan is in fact the Horned God, but it's Satan who's just a demonization of the Horned God rather than the other way around.



Honestly, don't do magic; it's not real. Even Wiccans will defend themselves saying "it's just focused prayer". So in other words exactly what I and billions of other Christians do only without 30+ dollars of my money gone to spend on candles, herbs, smelly smoke stuff, fancy-looking knives (when you could just as easily pull a knife out of the kitchen), fancy-looking cups, and also all the time wasted spent creating a temple by casting a circle and calling of the elemental Watchtowers.
Chali
2010-08-26 04:15:27 UTC
In wiccan religion there is no "devil" figure. The horned god is the male aspect of the diety (depending on the version of wicca, and there are several sects so you may find different beliefs dependent on which sect you choose to explore). This male aspect is generally matched with a female aspect. These are not "good and evil" they are the male and female.



There are several good books about Wicca that would help you to understand this particular religion. As a religious studies major (BA), I visited the local wiccan group for 8 months, studying their methods and approaches and they were very welcoming and open in their practices. They were willing to explain everything, even the different sects and practices and how they were different. You might consider doing the same.



BTW I am not a wiccan, but the things that I learned in my studies have helped me to better understand and respect those who choose to practice this often misunderstood religion.


This content was originally posted on Y! Answers, a Q&A website that shut down in 2021.
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