The Horned God

In a gust of musk and honeysuckle
And rotting leaves,
The Green Man appears,
Tawny-gold and piercing
His animal eyes,
Tendrils branching and coiling
Out of his mouth.

The Horned God bears the New Year in on his antlers,
The Black Goat with a candle between his horns.
Now is the time between the times,
The seasons’ key turning.

The Godstone and the Hagstone
Stand in nuptial union against the sky.

The white stag wends through the wildwood,
Collared with a silver crown,
Luring the dazzled knight on and on,
Deeper into darkness.

The Celtic sorcerer assumes the Crane Stance,
Standing on one leg with right hand behind his back,
And right eye closed,
Intoning incantations and imprecations
Against his foes.

The Wild Hunt gallops across the heavens,
The witch slips her body’s leash
And flies by night,
Sending forth the fetch
Along ghost roads
To the midnight sabbat,
The hexentanz.

Instantly the Law of Misrule
Turns all upside-down and inside-out,
In infinite regression
Back to the womb of death.
The sun has entered Capricorn
And Saturn is overhead,
Lovers feast on each other,
The ass is offered in sacrifice.
The Christmas Fool, in animal skins,
Dances through the streets
With sword-dancers and morris-men.

The Devil lifts his pitchfork up,
The three tines white, red and black:
Creation, preservation, dissolution.

The red skeleton is rising,
The firewheels are burning, turning,
The black bull’s pizzle pricks the clouds.

Stripped to his crystal bones,
The shaman runs with the laughing stag
Through winter’s testing fire.

Cast a hex-star on the skull
And hearken to its babbling oracles,
The waters of memory’s well.

On stormy nights when thunder and lightning
Eviscerate the sky,
And rough winds rage through the boughs,
The gnarled host of woodwoses
Stampede forth out of the wildwood,
Raging through the oaks and pines,
Raising their eldritch voices
Amid the charivari,
Shaggy with ivy, leaves and moss,
Some mounted on deer and unicorns,
Brandishing leafy staves in their hands,
And at their head rides the Horned Wildman
Mounted on a stag, waving his oak club,
And beside him, on a unicorn,
Dame Wode, his queen.

Horsemen, smiths and shepherds
Assemble at Azazel’s whim,
Venus rises above the horizon,
Forge of the hidden man.