Cernunnos

Cernunnos is a recurring figure in artwork and ritual objects from pre-Roman and, later, Latinized Gaul, as well as a minor figure in the Iberian Peninsula and possibly the British isles. The precise nature of this entity is fairly obscure, although he is believed to have been a psychopomp deity and/or a bi-directional, liminal, one between civilization and Nature, and he is typically depicted as sitting cross-legged, wearing or holding a torc, and surrounded by animals such as stags, bulls, horned serpents, dogs, and rats. His most notable physical feature is a large pair of antlers growing from his head, and indeed his name is derived from karnon, the Gaulish noun for "horn" or "antler".

In modern fiction and mysticism, with him very present in some branches of modern Paganism, Cernunnos has come to be seen as a deity of animals, hunting, and forest lands. He is often depicted as a form of powerful Nature Spirit who watches over forests and their denizens. His relationship with human hunters can vary from being a figure who must be propitiated in order to pursue his charges to being a patron of hunters, and indeed he is often a skilled hunter himself. His nonhuman traits are often expanded to his being depicted with an entirely stag-like head, often alongside cloven hooves for feet, instead of simply being a man with antlers, and he is typically associated with deer in a broader thematic sense as well. If he's presented as a male counterpart or a spouse to someone, that someone is likely to be some sort of Earth Mother figure.

In darker interpretations, he may also be associated with The Wild Hunt and his antlers may cross into Sinister Deer Skull territory. In these cases he is often conflated with Herne the Hunter, another horned hunter-figure originating from The Merry Wives of Windsor that has since entered English folklore. "Herne" is believed to derive from "horn" similarly to the derivation of "Cernunnos" from "karnon", and some folklorists posit a link between Shakespeare's Herne and the older Cernunnos myth, although proof of anything is fairly tenuous.

See also Horned Humanoid, The Marvellous Deer, Nature Spirit, and Forest Ranger. Subtrope of Public Domain Character.

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Examples

Comic Books

• The Brave and the Bold: Cernunnos makes a prominent appearance in The Brave and the Bold: Batman and Wonder Woman. He's a large, bearded, and horned humanoid, who resides in Tir Na Nóg along with his fellow Celtic deities. He attempts to keep peace between the two factions of gods, the Fomorians and the Tuatha dé Danann, but when his efforts fall on deaf ears he turns to Diana and Batman for help and, later, to help uncover the murderer of the Formorian king Elatha. While he's killed during the crossfire between the two sides, the story ends with him being reborn as a horned child.
• Sovereign Seven: Cernunnos/Herne the Hunter show up in the woods around Crossroads, with the Sovereigns put in the role of The Wild Hunt via Mind Control.

Fan Works

• Codex Equus: Cernunnos, the Lord of the Hunt, is the Coltic deer god of hunting, animals, the sun, rebirth and masculinity.

Literature

• The Child Thief: The Horned One is a significant god in the backstory. Via various bits of Canon Welding, he is one of the dead gods of Avalon and wielded the Arthurian sword Caliburn before it was stolen from him. His son, Ulfger, despises humanity and one of the central villains of the piece. He is also revealed to be the father of Heroic Sociopath Peter, which allows him to claim the sword from his half-brother and slay him.
• Lords and Ladies:
  • The elf king is a humanoid with stag antlers big enough to possibly hold the moon and "a great big tonker", who lives in a sauna in a parasite dimension with his fellows of The Wild Hunt, waiting until people forget about the ritual to protect against elves so he can return.
  • Parodied with Herne the Hunted, the god of small furry things that get pursued by hunters.
• The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel: Cernunnos appears in the third book, The Sorceress, leading The Wild Hunt. Unlike most of the mythological characters, he's not an Elder but an Archon, a race that preceded the Elders.

Live-Action TV

• Cernunnos is the main antagonist of the France-Belgian Sci-Fi show Black Spot. He has a mysterious link to the main heroine ever since he kidnapped her as a child, and now, she is obsessed to learn the truth. She is the only character who believes in Cernunnos' existence , as he is more of a myth for the people living in Villefranche, where the plot happens.
• Hercules: The Legendary Journeys: Spelled as "Kernunnos," he was part of the Big Bad Ensemble of Season 5 alongside Dahak, Dumuzi, Loki, Ares, Archangel Michael, and the Four Horsemen, after Herc left Greece to travel to Ireland.
• Robin of Sherwood features the Horned God, also known as Herne the Hunter. He was a patron god of nature, and one of his rituals was the Wild Hunt. Robin sometimes experiences visions and messages from Herne, who seems to approve of the outlaws.

Tabletop Games

• Pathfinder:
  • The empyreal lord Cernunnos resembles a human with a pair of antlers rising from his brows. He's primarily associated with hunting and the wilderness, serving as a patron of Forest Rangers who seek to keep wild places free of the intrusion of evil beings.
  • Erastil, the god of forests, community, hunting, and family, typically takes the form of a man dressed in hunting leathers and with the head of a stag. He is also Cernunnos' parent alongside the harvest goddess Jaidi.
• Rifts: The Cernun are horned Snake People resembling the ram-horned serpents prevalent in Celtic art. It's speculated that they may have inspired this motif in the first place, and that an ancient Cernun dimensional traveler may have been what started the myth of the horned god Cernunnos.
• Warhammer:
  • Kurnous is the elven god of animals, hunting, and the wilderness. He is typically depicted as a ten-foot-tall elf with the head and tail of a stag, and is worshipped primarily by Wood Elves and by the High Elves of the kingdoms of Avelorn and Ellyrion, which are some of the wildest and most heavily forested areas of the High Elven homeland of Ulthuan. His worshippers honor him by hunting challenging quarries, but never killing more than they must. He is believed to be the husband of Isha, the goddess of life, birth and growth, and together with her to be the ancestor of all elves.
  • Orion, the king of the Wood Elves, is both an avatar of Kurnous and himself based on the figure of Cernunnos. He has the antlers and hooves of a stag, rules over the wildest and most magical forest in the Old World, and often leads The Wild Hunt in its roaming over surrounding lands.
  • Humans living in more wilderness areas often worship the nature god Taal who greatly resembles Kurnous to the point that it's suspected Taal is just the human name for the ancient elven god.
• Warhammer 40,000: Kurnous was part of the Eldar pantheon, and was explicitly Isha's husband. His portfolio appears to be similar, if not identical, to his fantasy counterpart, although he plays a much smaller role. Beside being the mythological co-creator of the Eldar and a few entanglements with a rival Eldar god, Kaela Mensha Khaine, Kurnous' main part of the metaplot is dying along with the majority of the Eldar Pantheon and most of the Eldar species during the calamitous birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh.

Theatre

• The Merry Wives of Windsor provides the first known record of Herne the Hunter, a horned leader of a spectral hunt who later became conflated with Cernunnos and influenced much of his modern portrayal. Rather than appearing in person, he's part of an in-universe ghost story that describes him as the ghost of a Windsor Forest gamekeeper, whose horned specter roams about an ancient oak tree, rattling chains and causing cows to produce blood instead of milk.

Video Games

• The Elder Scrolls: The Deadric Prince Hircine has several traits in common with Cernunnos — he claims hunting and all things related to it as his sphere of influence, and his statues and avatars often take the form of a humanoid with antlers or with a stag's head. He is served by a race of Lesser Daedra called the Herne, sometimes placing them in charge of hunts that he does not personally participate in.
• Etrian Odyssey: Cernunnos is the boss of the second stratum, the Primitive Jungle. In this game, it is a humanoid creature with massive ram-like horns rather than stag antlers.
• Fate/Grand Order: Cernunnos is the only remaining deity in the British Lostbelt following Sefar's "cleansing" of the world in this pruned timeline. Originally there to punish the fairies for failing to produce Excalibur, the weapon needed to slay the White Titan, the god took pity on them instead. What resulted is The Farmer and the Viper, with the fairies being the vipers who bit Cernunnos' farmer, killing him despite the kindness and compassion he had shown to them. The deity's body would then become the land on which Fairy Britain lays upon. However, the deity left a Dying Curse in its final moments, in which the descendants of the original six fairies who committed the crime would eventually decay into Mors if they haven't fulfilled their "purpose" in life. In the present day, Cernunnos, or rather, its body, is resurrected during the third part of the 6th Lostbelt's story as one of the prophesized Six Calamities, being the 5th one respectively. It ultimately becomes the Climax Boss of the Lostbelt, being arguably the toughest boss in the game thus far, using The Power of Hate as its main weapon against the player in the form of stackable curses.
• Gems of War features Herne, an antlered centaur from Divinion Fields. There is also a troop called Cernunnos from Glacial Peaks, but he does not seem to have any characteristics in common with his namesake.
• Love of Magic: Cernunnos is the oldest remaining god, leader of the Celtic pantheon, father of the other pantheons, and MC's father.
• The Pathless: Cernos, the Elk Spirit, is the godlike guardian of nature and plant life. In shape, he resembles a giant, glowing stag.
• The Secret World: The third act features a visit to a vampire-besieged country town in Romania, where a forest god can be encountered at the local tavern. Taking the form of a huge man with a stag's head and antlers, he's essentially the living incarnation of the forest, and he's currently suffering chronic pain from the Filth pollution that the invading vampires have brought with them — hence why he's spending so much time getting drunk. Although he has no name of his own, he's been known as the Green Man, the Horned God, Faunus, and, of course, Cernunnos... although the barmaid affectionately calls him "Cern".
• Shin Megami Tensei has Cernunnos as a summonable demon, appearing as a squat, hairy humanoid with antlers riding a giant stag skull. Particularly, in Shin Megami Tensei IV he first attempts to restart the Wicker Men sacrifices, and flees when defeated. Then he joins forces with Baphomet, another demonized deity, in order to scam Hunters out of the power necessary to restore his original form as the elder deity Pales.
• Smite: Cernunnos, the Horned God, is depicted as a hairy man with the antlers, ears, and legs of a stag. He's the god of the wilderness, animals and the seasons, and his moveset mostly revolves around controlling plants, cycling through seasonal phases, and moving through the map's jungle areas. His skins modify his design to various degrees, such as by giving him goat horns or a fully cervine head.
• Titan Quest: Cernunnos does not appear directly, but is referenced in several items. The "Guise of the Horned God" is a set of armor consisting of the Harness of Cernunnos, Stag Helm of Cernunnos, Torc of Cernunnos and Wild Hunt Spear, while the relic Cernunnos' Majesty can be used to enchant armor to provide additional protection from plants and beastman enemies.
• Valheim: The Greydwarves are Plant Person monsters haunting the Black Forest biome with a pair of antlers on their backs. Oddly enough, the Elder (their king) doesn't have them.
• Warcraft III: The demigod Cenarius and his children, the Keepers of the Grove, are stag-like centaurs with antlers and an arm that turns into a gnarled root who guard the forests of Ashenvale. They can create treants from trees, use roots to trap enemies, and summon healing rains around themselves.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: Huntress Wizard has tree branch antlers, leaf hair, nature-based magical abilities including transforming into a hawk, and has been shown riding a deer as her mount during a hunt.

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