by: Rick Johnson 
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
RikJohnson@juno.com
Recently an Australian pagan called Delilah asked me a question dealing with the possible connection between the ancient Wild Hunt and our modern Stag night. I know of no evidence connecting the two but this got me to thinking and so I must emphasize that these thoughts are my own and not official Gardnerian beliefs.
To understand this we must remember Craft Theology dealing with the dead. Ideally, the soul is tied to the body until something happens to sunder them apart. You fall off a cliff and die. You are shot in a war and die. You have a heart attack and die… you get the idea. Somehow, you die and so the bonds that hold the soul to the physical body are severed and the two separate.
Normally, this is automatic and the soul sees it’s body, realizes that it is dead and upon turning around, it sees the ‘Tunnel of Light’, enters this tunnel and meets the Horned God who escorts the soul into the Summerland where it grows young and can be reborn by the graces of the Great Mother.
Occasionally problems happen because neither the Gods nor the Universe is perfect. And sometimes the soul refuses to leave the body. When that happens, the Horned God has to step in and take hold of the soul, rip it from the lifeless body and toss it through the Tunnel. It is this act that gives “Death” such a bad reputation. People think that “Death” or the Horned God kills people and without Him, we would liver forever.
That’s not completely true. Yes, without “Death”, we would live forever but consider those people who were blown to small pieces by a bomb or run over by a truck or ravaged by disease or carved into dog meat by an irate spouse… Each of these events would still happen but the body would still live, in pieces, unable to die or to live, suffering eternally, a form of living death.
It is the Horned God in His guise as “Death”, the Consoler, the Comforter, who sees these bodies who can no longer support a soul and He gives them release, allowing the soul to continue on in another body.
And sometimes the soul is sundered from the body but does not realize that he is dead. The soul, now a ‘ghost’, seeks to communicate with people, frantically screaming to passers by “why can’t you hear me?” yet not understanding that he is dead.
It is these latter souls, the lost ones, that must be hunted down and collected to be taken through the Tunnel to the Summerland that they may be reborn.
But these souls still think that they are alive and believe that it is we, the living, who are insane for ignoring them. They see the Horned God and fearing Him, run and hide forcing the Horned God to chase them down for their own good.
It is this latter act from which The Wild Hunt takes it’s name. The Horned God riding across the countryside with his hounds seeking those lost souls that they may be taken to the Summerland for rebirth.
It is this part that is Religion. The next section is psychology.
Give a person something that they have to do and they will do it grudgenly and try to find a reason to avoid that task. “Oh, mother, I don’t want to go to church! I think I have a stomach ache!” But make that action fun and they will do it willingly “You mean I can go to the movies and get church-school credit? Cool!” Eventually, if you make that action fun enough, people will continue to perform that act long after the reason for it has been forgotten.
Look at the maypole dance. Once a fertility dance to encourage young men and women to ‘frolic’ in the fields in honour of the Horned God (the maypole is His phallus), people even today hold Maypole dances even though they no longer remember what the Maypole symbolizes, a shock to the puritan church-goers who encourage their young children to dance around that decorated stick.
Another thing to remember is that any good religious ceremony is little more than a Divine Play designed to imitate, on the Earthly Plane, some act performed by the Gods. Thus at Yule we pass the High Priest between the legs of the High Priestess to imitate the Goddess giving birth to the Sun God. We jump Bonfires to give strength to the new-born Sun God that He will grow strong and we will have an early Spring. We dance the Maypole to symbolize the Sacred Marriage (and honeymoon) of the Great Mother and the Horned God. And so we perform the Wild Hunt to represent the Horned God’s search for those souls that are lost and need to be ushered into the Summerland.
Long after the religious reasons for this act are forgotten, men perform the Wild Hunt because it is fun! Men like to dress up, make noise, run across the fields on horseback with dogs and making a fuss. We don’t remember why we do it, we just remember that it’s fun and that’s what matters.
Now for the theory:
Let’s speculate for a moment that men have been doing this for centuries. It’s a guy thing because hunting is traditionally a man’s occupation as weaving is a woman’s. So you have generations of men going out occasionally to perform the ‘wild hunt’. The guy in charge wears a helmet with antlers to show that he is the boss, the rest act like dogs or hunting hounds and they chase across the countryside hunting. They don’t remember what they are hunting, they only remember that it’s fun.
They also remember that if anyone appears in their path (ghost), they have the freedom to chase them down and have fun (capture lost souls). And so they get together occasionally, act like dogs, pee in public, belch, make rude comments about your wife’s sister and generally do all those things that were you to do them at home would result in a frying pan across the head. You don’t remember why you are doing this, you only remember that it’s a time for guys to get together, do guy things and have guy fun without all those pesky women’s rules.
Then one day you yell at the guy in the horse, “There’s three feet of snow here, I’m freezing my ***’s off! Can’t we drop into the pub for a pint or two to warm the blood?” To which the guy wearing the antler helmet says, “Sure! This saddle chafes my ass anyway.” And the wild hunt moves indoors.
But the guys don’t want to give up the fun so they continue to be gross and act like guys, only now they are at a table in a warm bar.
The waitresses see these guys and Mary says, “Men are dogs, I don’t want to wait on them!” to which Carol responds, “I’ll do it! Just let me shove this bar towel into my bra and hike my skirt up.”
And when the evening is over and the guys have dragged themselves home, Mary is complaining that those respectable women in the corner only tipped her $5 while Carol acted like a slut which gave all women a bad name, and as Carol pulls the towel out of her bodice, she counts out $500 in tips and remarks “I’d like to have one of these ‘stags nights’ every week. I could retire in a year.”
And so encouraged by the waitress who makes money off drunken men and the desire for men to get away from their wives and the freedom to belch in public, the wild hunt changes into stag parties where wild acts are encouraged.
The question becomes, is this where it came from? Can we state that a stag party is a religious event because it may have come from a Divine Play? I don’t know. But I see no reason why we cannot return the stag night to the Wild Hunt or combine them both into something equally enjoyable and holy.
To contact me or to request topics to be covered, send to RikJohnson@juno.com
by: Rick Johnson
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
