Now it is Yule Time. The Solstice is just past, the light starting to grow again, and Herne the Hunter is stirring in the depths of the forest.

Herne is mentioned in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor as a local ghost who haunts Windsor Wood. But Margaret Murray, in her 1931 book God of the Witches, posits that Herne is a manifestation of a much older being, Cernunnos, the Celtic horned god. (For more on this, see here).

Herne/Cernunnos is the God of Nature, Lord of the Forest and of wild creatures. Because it is Nature that feeds us, he is the provider of food and therefore of life. I think of him as the embodiment of Desire with a capital D—the fire in the belly that drives us all to live.

Herne
The spirit worlds are deep and high,
In firelight and smoky air,
In sparkling stream and cave and sky,
And Herne is there.

The forest seethes in emerald light,
In tusk of boar and snout of deer;
A shaman dances in the night,
And Herne is near.

And cities race on wheels and fumes,
Computer screens where data burns,
Workers scurry through the rooms:
So many Hernes.

The human world leafs from the Tree
Because we hunters chase and yearn;
Our hunger makes the world to be,
And so lives Herne.

Happy Yule to you all, and good hunting!