Cernunnos: Looking Every Which Way

Cernunnos is probably the most famous yet least understood of the Celtic gods. Like the other Gaulish gods, he’s left us no mythology, only images. If we want to know what sort of god he was, then, there’s no alternative to sitting down with those images and looking closely. When we do, we discover some amazing things, the most important of which is that what we thought about him was wrong. Please note that I am dealing with the Gaulish god Cernunnos, not the Wiccan Horned God who sometimes goes by the same name. An article every student of Cernunnos should be familiar with is Bober, Phyllis Fray. Cernunnos: Origins and Transformation of a Celtic Divinity. American Journal of Archaeology, 55:1 (Jan., 1951), 13-51. She surveys earlier views and then gives her own. She ends with a catalog of artifacts that are either images of Cernunnos, or that have been suggested as connected with him. There have been quite a few images found since she wrote, and I disagree with her on some, but she gives detailed descriptions of the images she includes, so the catalog is very valuable. The article is available on-line at I’ve also broken this video into these parts: Part 1: Part 2: Part 3: Part 4: Part 5: Part 6: Part 7: Part 8: They’ve been gathered into a playlist as well: I’ll eventually be posting the script on my website, along with photo credits. Wherever possible I’ve relied on Wikipedia Commons. The lower quality black and white pictures come from the original academic publications of the artifacts. Sorry about the sound quality. I don’t have a very good microphone. If I get a better one I’ll rerecord this. If you like what I’m doing, please subscribe.