Archive for July 1st, 2010
The Horned God
Just a quick aside as I begin today’s post: With now 540 posts, 25,000 visits have been recorded here since the first post twenty months ago. What do these numbers mean? Well, not much of anything actually. They are simply numbers.
Today is Canada Day. Rather than post a scene with the red and white Canadian flag, I have used red to add to the image here. This is, after all, a Canadian Goat.
Sometimes I just want to have fun with a photo. Today’s photo is the result of just such a playfulness. I took this goat’s photo in mid-June while I was in British Columbia. I found this goat high in the hills not too far from Kamloops. The little woman was basically in charge of a ranch of large work horses and a handful of donkeys. Yes, this goat is a female goat.
I have to admit that when I took the photo I didn’t know that the goat was a female. I assumed it was a male. When she looked at me, I fell into the childhood beliefs. In a
way, I sensed I was looking at the devil as I stared into her eyes. It is easy to guess that I had grown up with a typical Christian background in a culture that had for movie classics The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby. All good Catholics knew that Satan had the horns of a ram.
Of course, that was long ago.
Yet still, the image is powerful – masculine, primal, sensual. Here is a masculine image that is the reverse of the ascetic image of the sun. This is the Horned God.
“The Horned God is is the lord of life, death and the underworld. And is the Sun to the Goddess’ Moon. He alternates with the Goddess in ruling over the fertility cycle of birth, death and rebirth. He is born at the winter solstice, unites with the Goddess in marriage at Bealtaine, and dies at the summer solstice to bring fertility to the land as the Sacred King.” (http://www.paganspath.com/magik/hornedgod.htm)
It was while I was taking photos of the sun and moon for the SoFoBoMo project that I found this photo opportunity. Of course, finding this reference to both sun and moon is a happy coincidence. And thanks to this particular goat, I learned that the wild man is also a wild woman.
