In ancient times, the role of the male was well defined. He was the hunter, the warrior, the sage and elder. He was the provider of meat, and the protector of the home. As time progressed, the gender lines of the olden days have disappeared.
Only by invoking the God and utilizing the symbolism can we all truly form our own opinions and experiences with the God in our daily lives.
Aspects of the God in our Tradition
The God is gentle, tender and comforting, but he is also the Hunter. He is the Dying God, but his death is always in the service of life. He is untamed sexuality, as a deep holy, loving power. He is the force of feelings. Our God wears horns, they are the crescents relating to the mysteries of the Moon and the symbol of animal vitality. In some aspects he is all black, not because he is dreaded, but because darkness and night are times of power and a part of the cycles of time.
The Horned God embodies the power of feeling. His animal horns represent the truth of undisguised emotion, which seeks to please no master. He is the Life Force and the Life Cycle. His power is always directed to the service of life.
He is also the God of Love. This love includes sexuality, which is wild and untamed as well as gentle and tender. He is the Dying God and the Horned Hunter, the bringer of death so that life may go on. He is the Searcher, the Seeker. He, as well as the Goddess, unifies all opposites. He is the proud stag that haunts the heart of the forest, the hidden forest of the self. He is the stallion, swift as thought, whose crescent hooves leave lunar marks even as they strike solar sparks. He is the moon bull with the crescent horns and the hooves that thunder over the Earth. He is all that within us will never be domesticated, that which refuses to be compromised, diluted, molded, or tempered. He is free.
He is the dream world, the Other Lord. He is the self-voyaging of the dark waters of the unconscious mind. The gates He guards are the threshold that divides the conscious from the unconscious; the gates of night and day through which we pass in and out of life. As He is ever dying, He is also ever reborn. In the moment of his transformation, he becomes immortal even as love is immortal.
Symbology of the God
Antler
Antlers symbolize the pagan Horned God, the sacred Stag. They are almost symbolically interchangeable with Horns.
Antlers represent the God who is a symbol of all wild creatures, especially those virile creatures who give themselves away to serve the life of the people.
The Bull
The Bull is an ancient symbol for the power of the God, specifically as a devotee of His Goddess-Mother.
In ancient Crete, women would dance around and leap over bulls in sacred rituals. The Bull survives in many mythological forms, even today. The Minotaur is probably the most well-known example.
The Bull owes this association in part to the shape of its horns, in part to its connection with the Sacred Cow-Goddess, and in part to its power and virility. A single bull will produce a herd of calves, which creates prosperity for the people.
Eye of Horus
The Eye of Horus is a God symbol that conveys ultimate protection. (Although originally it was seen as the Eye of Maat.) It was thought, because of this power of protection, to aid one in reincarnating.
This Eye is sometimes seen as two-fold. A right eye for the feminine – the Moon – is called the Eye of Horus or Thoth, and a left eye for the masculine – the Sun – is called Ra.
Naming this symbol after Horus may have evolved to simplify communication, since Horus – the Sky – contained both the Sun and the Moon as His eyes.
Gold
Shining like the warm Sun, gold is a symbol of the God in general, and the Sun God in particular. Gold is a yang metal.
Gold is also a symbol of spiritual pursuit and purity, because it does not tarnish or rust. Gold is incorruptible, as is the Divine.
Holly
Holly is the Winter God symbol, the Green Man in his winter guise. He is the complement of the Oak King, the Summer God.
As an evergreen, Holly is revered as a symbol of eternal life. The red berries, reminiscent of Persephone’s pomegranates, reinforces this meaning.
The Holly King represents life that lives on, beneath the surface. On the surface, the God is dead; the Green has given way to white snows. But this death is an illusion. The God, this symbol promises, will rise again. Holly is the promise of that.
Horn
Horns are an ancient God symbol. Horns have been associated with worship of the Divine perhaps since the dawn of human consciousness. Stone Age art everywhere depicts men wearing horns and antlers.
One obvious reason for this correlation is the visual similarity between horns and the Crescent Moon. The first is a symbol of male virility and spiritual power, and the second is a symbol of the creative power of the female.
Thus the curved horn, such as a bull’s horn, can simultaneously signify the God and the Goddess, specifically the God as lover and child of the Goddess.
This explains the Bull’s ancient power as a spiritual animal.
Maypole
The Maypole is an ancient phallic God symbol, representing the generative power of the God.
The Maypole would be set into the Earth at Beltane (May Eve). This symbolically fertilized the Earth Mother to produce new life in the Spring.
Then women and men danced around this sacred union, women widdershins and men deosil. As the lines wove in and out, ribbons tied to the head of the Maypole interlaced into a colorful sheath along the Maypole.
Oak
Oak is associated with Wicca because it was particularly sacred to the Druids, from which Wicca was said to have evolved.
The word Druid may in fact come from the same root as the word for Oak. It is from oak trees that sacred mistletoe was gathered.
Oak is associated with the masculine divinity. The Oak King is the Green Man in his summer aspect: growing, powerful, virile.
The Stag, Buck
The stag is a symbol of the Horned God. This is the God of joyful virility, radiating Power and life force. It is He who gives Himself away so that others can live.
The stag is not only a Wicca symbol, but also widely used in Neopaganism.
Sun
European tradition has the Sun as male, so any image of the Sun is, in Wicca, a God symbol.
The God in Wicca symbolism is connected with the cycles of the Sun: the birth, growth, failing, death, and then rebirth of the sun and the seasons of nature that are tied into this cycle.
This is a symbol of the God who gives himself away, so that His people can live. And in this way He preserves His immortality . . . for after death, He can be again born of the Goddess.
The Sun King, who was the God’s representative on Earth, would similarly reign for a year, or another symbolic period of time, and then would give his life for the good of all.
Sun-Antlered Stag
The image of the Stag with the sun cupped in his antlers is a symbol of the masculine aspect of the Divine, the Great God.
This God symbol shows both the worldly God and Highest God united as one. The God who is manifest in a physical body, yet retains knowledge of his true Self.
