Editing Horned God (section)

===Margaret Murray===
Following the writings of [[suffragist]] [[Matilda Joslyn Gage]]<ref>
{{Cite book
|title=Woman, Church and State
|publisher=Forgotten Books
|first=Matilda
|last=Gage
|year=2008
|isbn=978-1-60620-191-6}}
</ref> and others, [[Margaret Murray]], in her 1921 book ''[[The Witch-Cult in Western Europe]]'', proposed the theory that the witches of the early-modern period were remnants of a pagan cult and that the Christian Church had declared the god of the witches was in fact [[the Devil]]. Without recourse to any specific representation of this deity, Murray speculates that the head coverings common in [[inquisition]]-derived descriptions of the devil "may throw light on one of the possible origins of the cult."<ref name="MurrayWitch">{{Cite book|author-link=Margaret Murray |last=Murray |first=Margaret |title=The Witch-cult in Western Europe (1921)|year=2006|publisher=Standard Publications|isbn=1-59462-126-8}}</ref>

[[File:Nejamesa horned god of India.png|thumb|left|Horned God [[Naigamesha]] of the Indian sub-religion [[Kaumaram]]. Possibly from the Shunga period (1st–2nd century BCE), or earlier.]]
In 1931 Murray published a sequel, ''The God of the Witches'', which tries to gather evidence in support of her witch-cult theory. In Chapter 1 "The Horned God".<ref name="MurraGod">{{Cite book|last=Murray |first=Margaret |title=The God of the Witches (1931)|year=1970|isbn=0-19-501270-4|publisher=OUA USA}}</ref> Murray claims that various depictions of humans with horns from [[Europe]]an and [[India]]n sources, ranging from the [[Paleolithic]] French cave painting of "[[The Sorcerer (cave art)|The Sorcerer]]" to the Indic [[Pashupati]] to the modern English [[Dorset Ooser]], are evidence for an unbroken, Europe-wide tradition of worship of a singular Horned God. Murray derived this model of a horned god cult from [[James Frazer]] and [[Jules Michelet]].<ref>
{{Cite book
|title=The Witch in History
|publisher=Routledge
|first=Diane
|last=Purkiss
|year=2006
|isbn=0-415-08762-7}}
</ref>{{rp|36}}

In dealing with "[[The Sorcerer (cave art)|The Sorcerer]]",<ref name=MurrayWitch/>{{rp|23–4}} the earliest evidence claimed, Murray based her observations on a drawing by [[Henri Breuil]], which some modern scholars such as Ronald Hutton claim is inaccurate. Hutton states that modern photographs show the original cave art lacks horns, a human torso or any other significant detail on its upper half.<ref>
{{Cite book
|title=Witches, Druids, and King Arthur
|publisher=Hambledon Continuum
|first=Ronald
|last=Hutton
|year=2006
|isbn=1-85285-555-X}}
</ref>{{rp|34}}  However, others, such as celebrated prehistorian [[Jean Clottes]], assert that Breuil's sketch is indeed accurate.  Clottes stated that "I have seen it myself perhaps 20 times over the years".<ref name="Cave Art Cobblers?">{{cite web|url=http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/07/06/cave-art-cobblers/|title=Cave Art Cobblers? – Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog|date=6 July 2011}}</ref>

Breuil considered his drawing to represent a shaman or magician—an interpretation which gives the image its name. Murray having seen the drawing called Breuil's image "the first depiction of a deity", an idea which Breuil and others later adopted.

Murray also used an inaccurate drawing of a [[Mesolithic]] rock-painting at [[El Cogul|Cogul]] in northeast Spain as evidence of group religious ceremony of the cult, although the central male figure is not horned.<ref name=MurrayWitch/>{{rp|65}} The illustration she used of the Cogul painting leaves out a number of figures, human and animal, and the original is more likely a sequence of superimposed but unrelated illustrations, rather than a depiction of a single scene.<ref name=triumph/>{{rp|197}}

Despite widespread criticism of Murray's scholarship some minor aspects of her work continued to have supporters.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Ginzburg |first=Carlo |author-link=Carlo Ginzburg |title=Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath}}</ref>{{rp|9}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=J. B. |year=1972 |title=Witchcraft in the Middle Ages |publisher=Cornell University Press |pages=37 |quote=Other historians, like Byloff and Bonomo, have been willing to build upon the useful aspects of Murray's work without adopting its untenable elements, and the independent and careful researches of contemporary scholars have lent aspects of the Murray thesis considerable new strength.}}</ref>

====Influences from literature====
The popular image of the Greek god [[Pan (god)|Pan]] was removed from its classical context in the writings of the [[Romantics]] of the 18th century and connected with their ideals of a pastoral England. This, along with the general public's increasing lack of familiarity of [[Greek mythology]] at the time led to the figure of Pan becoming generalised as a 'horned god', and applying connotations to the character, such as benevolence that were not evident in the original Greek myths which in turn gave rise to the popular acceptance of Murray's hypothetical horned god of the witches.<ref name=triumph/>

{{Main|Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches#Influence on Wicca and Stregheria}}
[[File:Lucifer Liege Luc Viatour.jpg|thumb|276x276px|[[Lucifer]] ''([[Le génie du mal]])'' by [[Guillaume Geefs]] (Cathedral of St. Paul, [[Liège]], Belgium)]]
The reception of ''Aradia'' amongst Neopagans has not been entirely positive. Clifton suggests that modern claims of revealing an Italian pagan witchcraft tradition, for example those of [[Leo Martello]] and [[Raven Grimassi]], must be "match[ed] against", and compared with the claims in ''Aradia''. He further suggests that a lack of comfort with ''Aradia'' may be due to an "insecurity" within Neopaganism about the movement's claim to authenticity as a religious revival.<ref name="Clifton">
{{Cite book
|title=The Paganism reader
|publisher=Routledge
|first=Chas
|last=Clifton
|author2=Harvey, Graham
|year=2004
|isbn=0-415-30353-2}}
</ref>{{rp|61}}

Valiente offers another explanation for the negative reaction of some neopagans; that the identification of [[Lucifer]] as the god of the witches in ''Aradia'' was "too strong meat" for Wiccans who were used to the gentler, romantic paganism of Gerald Gardner and were especially quick to reject any relationship between witchcraft and [[Satanism]].<ref name="Valiente61">{{Cite book |title=The Rebirth of Witchcraft |publisher=Robert Hale Ltd |first=Doreen |last=Valiente |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-7090-8369-6 }} Quoted in
* {{Cite book |last=Clifton |first=Chas |author2=Harvey, Graham |year=2004 |title=The Paganism Reader |publisher=Routledge |isbn=0-415-30353-2 |page=61}}</ref>

{{main|Witch-cult hypothesis#Post-Murray}}
In 1985 Classical historian [[Georg Luck]], in his ''Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds'', theorised that the origins of the Witch-cult may have appeared in late antiquity as a faith primarily designed to worship the Horned God, stemming from the merging of [[Cernunnos]], a horned god of the Celts, with the Greco-Roman [[Pan (god)|Pan]]/[[Faunus]],<ref name="LuckArcana" /> a combination of gods which he posits created a new deity, around which the remaining [[pagan]]s, those refusing to convert to Christianity, rallied and that this deity provided the prototype for later Christian conceptions of the [[Devil]], and his worshippers were cast by the Church as witches.<ref name="LuckArcana" />

====Influences from occultism====
[[File:Baphomet by Éliphas Lévi.jpg|thumb|upright|The 19th century image of a Sabbatic Goat, created by [[Eliphas Levi|Eliphas Lévi]]. Baphomet serves as an historical model for Murray's concept.]]

Eliphas Levi's image of "[[Baphomet]]" serves as an example of the transformation of the Devil into a benevolent fertility deity and provided the prototype for Murray's horned god.<ref name="Wood"/> Murray's central thesis that images of the Devil were actually of [[deities]] and that [[Christianity]] had demonised these worshippers as following [[Satan]], is first recorded in the work of Levi in the fashionable 19th-century [[Occult]]ist circles of England and France.<ref name="Wood">Juliette Wood, "[http://www.juliettewood.com/papers/Tarot.pdf The Celtic Tarot and the Secret Traditions: A Study in Modern Legend Making]": ''Folklore'', Vol. 109, 1998</ref>  Levi created his image of Baphomet, published in his ''[[Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie]]'' (1855), by combining symbolism from diverse traditions, including the ''[[The Devil (Tarot card)|Diable]]'' card of the 16th and 17th century [[Tarot of Marseille]]. Lévi called his image "The Goat of Mendes", possibly following [[Herodotus]]' account<ref>Herodotus, ''Histories'' ii. 42, 46 and 166.</ref> that the god of Mendes—the Greek name for Djedet, Egypt—was depicted with a goat's face and legs.  Herodotus relates how all male goats were held in great reverence by the Mendesians, and how in his time a woman publicly [[Zoophilia|copulated with a goat]].<ref>Herodotus, ''Histories'' ii. 46. [[Plutarch]] specifically associates [[Osiris]] with the "goat at Mendes." [http://www.sacred-texts.com/gno/th1/th140.htm ''De Iside et Osiride'', lxxiii.]</ref> [[E. A. Wallis Budge]] writes,

{{blockquote|At several places in the Delta, e.g. Hermopolis, Lycopolis, and Mendes, the god Pan and a goat were worshipped; Strabo, quoting (xvii. 1, 19) Pindar, says that in these places goats had intercourse with women, and Herodotus (ii. 46) instances a case which was said to have taken place in the open day. The Mendisians, according to this last writer, paid reverence to all goats, and more to the males than to the females, and particularly to one he-goat, on the death of which public mourning is observed throughout the whole Mendesian district; they call both Pan and the goat Mendes, and both were worshipped as gods of generation and fecundity. Diodorus ([https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/1D*.html#ref32 i. 88]) compares the cult of the goat of Mendes with that of Priapus, and groups the god with the Pans and the Satyrs. The goat referred to by all these writers is the famous Mendean Ram, or Ram of Mendes, the cult of which was, according to Manetho, established by Kakau, the king of the IInd dynasty.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6SBLAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA353|title=The Gods of the Egyptians: Or, Studies in Egyptian Mythology|first=Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis|last=Budge|date=28 July 2018|publisher=Methuen & Company|via=Google Books}}</ref>}}

Historically, the deity that was venerated at Egyptian Mendes was a ram deity [[Banebdjedet]] (literally Ba of the lord of djed, and titled "the Lord of Mendes"), who was the soul of [[Osiris]]. Lévi combined the images of the Tarot of Marseilles Devil card and refigured the ram ''Banebdjed'' as a he-goat, further imagined by him as "copulator in Anep and inseminator in the district of Mendes".