Is the Horned One Really Evil?

Archetypal devil with the horns, shaggy legs and cloven hooves.

In the Western world, people are led to believe that the Devil is in the form of a horned man with shaggy legs and cloven hooves for legs. This is the archetypal image of the devil that has descended through Christianity and its imagery can be seen everywhere in movies, books, artwork and across frescoes in medieval churches. The strangest thing about this is that the description of the devil was never mentioned in any part of the bible.

That means that the whole imagery of the devil was interpreted by man. It was definitely not an arbitrary artistic impression of some medieval Christian priest. This is because the imagery matches the imagery of the Horned God of the Celtic people. What this means is that the medieval clergy probably proliferated this imagery of the devil in Europe deliberately to demonize the Celtic deity.

In actuality, the Horned God of the Wiccan religion (neopagan) is really the divinity associated with nature, wilderness, fertility, hunting, and the life cycle. In other words, he assists in the harvests  and all that grows during the summer months. This would mean that the deity itself is actually benevolent. He was obviously propitiated a lot in the old Celtic tradition but things have become very different since the time of Christianity.  The image of the Horned God had since been subverted into that of the Christian devil. What was sacred to the medieval Celts have suddenly become a demonic entity.

Ultimately, the image of the devil that we know of today is a testament of unfair early Christian conversion tactic against the indigenous Celtic faith of Europe. The image of the devil in so enduring that many people in this day and age continue to believe in the horned devil without ever learning of the truth.

The Horned One is in reality a nature spirit or elemental of the forests, trees, fertility and so forth.