God of the Wild Wood

Cernunnos is the deity who has been with me from the start. When I first started out in the late '90s/early '00s, I started with wicca, and was asked to choose a God and Goddess. Cernunnos was there, and even though our relationship has changed, and the forms in which he has shown himself to me have changed, he is still with me. At first he came to me as the wiccan Horned God, shallow, masculine, broadstrokes archetype and not defined. As my path grew deeper, he tossed off that mantle and I got to know him as Cernunnos -- Gaulish deity of the hunt and wealth. And now he has changed again. To me, he is Cernunnos -- Hunter and Hunted, Witchfather, Wyld King of the Fae.

The background picture of this shrine is a photo taken by myself, in 2011. We were on holiday in a forest here in the Netherlands, and as we were walking through it, I saw this silhouette in the distance. The Horned Hunter. A cloaked figure with antlers reaching for the heavens. As we came closer we found it was a tree that had fallen over. The earth made his cloak and the roots his antlers. How fitting for a chthonic god! We took pictures and I left an offering.
Three years later we returned and he was still there. Different but easily recognizable. In 2025 we went there again. His likeness has been absorbed into the wild nature, and the "statue" is gone, but the forest is still very much His