“What can a hog do? Absolutely nothing!” came a deep resonate voice from beneath a near by tree.
Paul moved his body around to look at who spoke. Pigs have little side to side motion for their heads and cannot look up at the sky.
Paul saw what looked like a horned demon sitting below the tree and as Paul thought this, the figure laughed.
“No Paul, I’m not a demon, though a certain mono-theon’s followers have labeled me as such. No, I’m much more powerful than a demon. I’m a God!”
Paul looked at him, huge stag antlers grew from his head. His body was covered in thick hair, like that of a deer, but otherwise his body looked like a normal brawny man. His face was calm and gentle looking and fully bearded. In his left hand he had a snake with small ram’s horns. The snake twined his way up the God’s arm so that the head of the ram horned snake lay against the God’s left shoulder. In the God’s right hand he held a golden torc. The God wore a golden torc around his neck. Paul couldn’t help but also notice the God had a huge erect phallus between his crossed legs. He fixed Paul with his glittering green eyes in a gaze Paul could not break.
“I have a truth to tell you that your angel and your demon did not bother to reveal because, like it or not Paul, they both ‘need’ you. Are you surprised? The angel needs you for ultimate ‘good’ and the demon needs you for ultimate ‘evil’. For a long time, the universe has been in balance, neither good nor evil and that is how it should be, because the Universe is as the Chinese say. Tao, it simply is.”
“A few thousand years ago, the priests of a Middle Eastern God convinced a bunch of people that he was the ‘only’ God; at least the only God for them, but the idea of one God spread, because the truth is, ultimately there is only one. Even I am only an aspect of that one and as such, I am not nearly as powerful. However, the One is rather ‘detached’ as it were and does not intervene in the every day lives of mortals. The One does not interact with mortals; his ‘Angels’ do.”
“Of course, for contrast’s sake, he needed a dark mirror image, so he cast one of his Angels into the role and the Angel dutifully took up that role of ‘Prince of Darkness’. Please! That one knows nothing of the true Darkness, the empty Void from which everything came and to which everything will return; The Dark Mother who is neither cruel nor kind but simply is, She who gives birth to all and devours all; The Void, Lady Entropy.
Beside Her, ‘Satan’ and his demons are but bit players… as are we all.” The Stag Horned God said with a chuckle.”
Paul thought, “Yeah, but what has this all got to do with me?”
“It’s simple, your angel is pissed at you because you went over to the other side in this little game of ‘count the souls’. The truth neither wants you to know. The truth that all of us who are Gods know and some of us still share with mankind is that none of us own your soul and none of us can purchase it, enslave it or control it. My dear son, you didn’t trade your soul to be a pig, your soul is still in your body.”
“Sqeal!” Paul forgot he couldn’t speak and what he said was, “What?”
Herne the Hunter and the Hunted, Lord of the Animals, laughed merrily.
“You changed yourself. You believed it was possible and so you did it. There is a pig out there who looks like you, but it’s nothing you didn’t do yourself. The power of your own belief changed you both; this is what brought you to my attention Paul, you’re special. In fact, many special people seem to be drawn to that mansion over there.” The Antlered Lord nodded in the direction of the mansion.
“Few of those special people listen to me when I give them the truth. They believe that demon and their angel and refuse to see anything else. The fellow with the horse body is as talented as you are, but he labors under a misconception. He believes that pathetic excuse for an ethereal being did it to him and he being so ‘God Fearin’ he would not be able to accept what I’ve just told you. The demon, of course, isn’t going to tell him because as long as he believes he feeds the demon the energy that goes with that belief. Further, if the Demon allows him to tell his story uncorrected, it makes it that much easier to catch people like you and so, unwittingly, the horse man aids the demon.”
Kernunnos Lord of the Beasts, Ruler of Annwn the Place of the Dead, closed His glittering green eyes. He was suffused with peace that radiated outward and Paul noticed animals began to gather about him, beneath the Sacred Oak where he sat. A proud Stag first, then a Grizzly and a Wolf. Raven and dove flew into the tree; Hawk, Eagle and Owl beside them. A Snake curled at the Horned Lord’s feet. A Boar, not unlike Paul made its way to the God’s side. Before long, male representatives of all the forest’s animals were gathered around the Elder God to include insects and spiders.
Paul remembered a tale he had heard of how The Buddha had created the Chinese calendar, how Buddha had sat beneath a tree meditating and each animal in the zodiac had come to The Buddha and The Buddha named one year out of the cycle for the animal. How even the snails had crawled up on The Buddha’s naked head and shielded him from the sun with their shells. This scene looked very much like that.
Kernunnos opened His green eyes and Paul was once again transfixed by the gravity well the God used for a gaze.
“As I said, Paul, you are special. In ages past, in another part if this world, I called those to me who could do what you have done. It’s in the old legends; Druids who could shift form as easily as another man puts on different clothes; heroes who had totemic animals and took their shape in battle or when hunting a bride. Even the children of Odin had such men. Ulfhednar and Berserks and ‘Swine Warriors’, the men who became ferocious Boars in battle. My children!” The Lord of the Animals said in a resounding voice like that of the earth groaning or the wind howling or the waves crashing on the shore or the roar of the forest fire or all of these things and more. Every eye was fixed in adoration of the Horned One. “Show your brother!”
In an instant, the area around the God was filled with shimmering shapes, as each of the animals became a human male. Each as naked as the animal they were, save for a golden torc around their necks.
“Come Paul, it is time you reclaimed your human form. You will learn to take many others under my tutelage. Choose now: know the truth or wallow in the darkness the demon helped you make for yourself! Take this as a symbol of your freedom and a symbol of your soul’s nobility and wear it as your brothers do.”
Kernunnos held up the golden torc.
Paul decided to…