The Guide
A hiker lost in the woods encounters a mythological hybrid celebrated in Celtic, pagan, and wiccan traditions...
While hiking in the forest in Maine one day, remembering the words of Robert Frost, I took the road less traveled, and it did indeed make all the difference...for I became hopelessly lost! I plodded along mile after mile, cursing the beloved New England poet, and searching for familiar landmarks, only to find none. Slapping at mosquitoes and nursing a painful blister on my heel, I whipped.out my cell phone to call for help only to find that I had no reception that deep in the woods, the tall trees around me blocking the signal; my GPS app wasn't working either; just peachy!
Fatigued and growing desperate, I was straining my eyes trying to find a clearing or path to a higher elevation when something appeared to be taking form out of the jumble of greens and browns some distance off to the side of me. I blinked my eyes hard, thinking it some trick of the light, but the sensation of a form moving slightly stayed with me.
"Great!," I muttered to myself, "Things just keep getting better and better!" I retreated a bit and sought cover, for I had no weapon with me other than a Swiss army knife. I thought myself unlikely to fend off much of anything with its small blade, but still sought its reassuring if impotent presence in my pocket as I withdrew from whatever it was ahead.
My pulse pounding in my head, I tried as I retreated to keep a watchful eye on whatever it was that I had dimly seen a few hundred yards away, but found that I could no longer see whatever animal or thing had drawn my attention and raised my alarm. Somehow, my inability to fix its location increased my level of fear even more, for some kind of primal inner sense alerted me to the feeling that what I had seen was not gone, but was actually...
..._with me! _ I gasped as I beheld the form of the creature which had easily and silently appeared just slightly behind me off to one side. The being had the appearance of a well-muscled man naked to the waist, around which he was clothed with some kind of rough garment which appeared to be made of animal hide; his legs, like the rest of him, were bare and deeply tanned. The strange man-thing regarded me with black eyes so wide and dark that I could see no white in them at all; they seemed full of intelligence, and somehow despite the extraordinary circumstances he exerted a calming influence on me. Most remarkable, however, was the fact that the stranger's head was crowned with antlers! They poked through his abundant hair, and amplified the smallest movement of his head.
In spite of the strangeness of his appearance, I perceived no menace from my visitor, but only an overwhelming sense of curiosity.
I could contain myself no longer, "Who...what are you?," I asked with a sense of wonder and astonishment.
The man-thing regarded me silently for a moment, the faintest trace of a recognizable smile passing briefly over his human features. "I am known by many names, but prefer to be called Cernunnos," replied the being at last. "As for what I am, " he continued, "I am the God of the forest, I am the lord of animals. "
The remarkable being then paused, his thoughts interrupted. A look of displeasure crossed his features; he perceived something which I did not. "An outsider is nearby," he declared solemnly. "He brings chaos and destruction!" Moments later, a round from a hunter's rifle struck the stag man in the back, the bullet exiting through his chest in a bloody spray. Appearing more annoyed than wounded, Cernunnos wheeled about and stepped in the direction from which the hunter had fired several hundred yards away.
Incredulous that his prey was moving towards him, the hunter again shouldered his rifle. "I don't know what you are," the hunter declared, "but some newspaper is gonna pay a lot of money for you," he announced to the approaching hybrid, squeezing his trigger finger and sending another round through the stag-man's chest, this one exploding through his back. The antlered man roared, although whether in pain or anger I could not tell; in either case, he quickened his advance. With the gap between the two narrowing, the hunter raised his rifle again, but Cernunnos was upon him. He snatched the rifle away from the hunter, and flung it a great distance away.
"I...have had...enough...of you!," Cernunnos declared to the hunter before lowering his head, and running the man through with his antlers. The hunter crumpled to the ground, succumbing almost immediately to multiple penetrating injuries. The tips of his antlers now red with blood, the great stag-man walked back to my presence. I feared for his survival, however, as his body bore massive gunshot injuries from the hunter. Cernunnos must have seen the horror in my eyes, for he looked at me, and reassured me:
"Fear not! For I am the Lord of the hunt, and of the hunted!," he said. With that, the antlered one placed both of his palms upon the trunk of a tree, and I could see his wounds, though mortal, begin to heal themselves at an accelerated pace right before my eyes!
"Who are you, Wolverine?," I marveled.
"I know not him of whom you speak, although truly wolverines are well known to me," answered Cernunnos. "But to answer your unspoken questions, I am the receiver of the dead, and the giver of rest. I am also the God of cleansing, and of rebirth. This hunter will return, although in a revised and improved edition. Trouble yourself not with him. But I believe that you have needs, young traveler...are you lost, and seeking directions out of this good forest?"
Strangely, I had no further desire to leave the woods, for sometimes it is in the journey itself that we find our destination. I found myself strangely drawn to this stag man, and it was later that same day that I would begin to understand why Cernunnos was also considered the God of male sexuality, and the celebration of it...