Cernunnos Resting 9x12 brush pen sketch of gundestrup cauldron scene

So here is the drawing that I based the Cernunnos Resting Ukiyo A print on. I talk about the design a little more over at the Relevant Irreverence page, but essentially it is a drawing of the same scene as the Gundestrup Caudron captured. I just assigned it a new story because we don’t know the one that went with it.

Anyway, my brobot wanted to talk to you about it some.

Cernunnos Resting:

The Original Brush Pen Artwork & The Lost Worlds of Pagan Europe

This brush pen illustration of Cernunnos Resting serves as the original hand-drawn composition that later became the basis for the Ukiyo A print. Unlike its more stylized descendant, this piece carries the raw, organic energy of ink on paper, with its bold lines and vibrant colors evoking a primal world long lost to the march of history.

At its core, this artwork is a modern reimagining of the Gundestrup Cauldron’s most famous panel—Cernunnos, the Horned God, seated cross-legged at the heart of a sacred grove, surrounded by animals that both define and protect the natural world. The piece is a celebration of pre-Christian spiritual traditions, an homage to Druidic mystery, Celtic animism, and the pantheons of forgotten Europe—all of which were systematically erased, co-opted, or destroyed by the expansion of the Roman Catholic Church and its subsequent cultural dominance.


A Visual Echo of the Gundestrup Cauldron

The composition of Cernunnos Resting strongly mirrors the Gundestrup Cauldron, the enigmatic silver vessel from the La Tène period (~150 BCE – 1 CE) that remains one of the greatest surviving artifacts of pre-Christian European religion. Just as on the cauldron, this image places Cernunnos front and center, cross-legged beneath the great World Tree, his antlers merging with the forest, reinforcing his status as a liminal deity between humanity and the wild.

In his left hand, he holds a serpent, a symbol of wisdom, transformation, and the chthonic underworld, mirroring the same pose seen on the cauldron. In his right hand, he lifts the torc, the sacred neck-ring of power and status among the Gauls, further tying him to ancient warrior-kings and the lost ruling classes of the Celts.

Around him stand the iconic animals of his dominion:

  • The Stag—his spiritual counterpart, a beast of renewal, virility, and the eternal cycle of death and rebirth.
  • The Bull—an animal of immense fertility and sacrifice, often linked to Indo-European sky gods and the cycles of the land.
  • The Wolf—a predator and guide, an ambiguous force of chaos and transformation, much like Cernunnos himself.
  • The Rabbit & The Rat—small but powerful, representing the hidden, everyday magic of the earth, from fertility to scavenging and survival.

Together, these creatures form a sacred circle, a world in balance—until, of course, that balance was shattered.


The March of the Church & The Erasure of the Old Gods

Cernunnos Resting is not just an artistic tribute—it is a visual act of defiance, a lament for a world stolen by conquest, conversion, and cultural eradication.

With the Roman conquest of Gaul, Britannia, and Iberia, the old gods were first assimilated into Roman deities. Cernunnos, if remembered at all, morphed into depictions of Mercury, Pan, or even later, Christian demons—his antlers twisted into Satanic horns, his sacred serpents rebranded as symbols of temptation and sin.

The final deathblow came with the expansion of Christianity across Western Europe. Pagan temples were razed, sacred groves burned, and the Druidic priesthood systematically eliminated. The animistic worldview of the Celts, where gods lived in rivers, forests, and stones, was replaced by the strict monotheism of Rome—one God, one Book, one Truth. By the Middle Ages, Cernunnos and his kin had all but vanished from recorded history.

But erasure is never complete. The folk memory of the Horned God survived in whispers, in fairy tales, in the Green Man carved into church doorways, in the masked revelers of rural festivals. Even today, he re-emerges, his image woven back into the fabric of modern pagan revivals, reconstructionist religions, and art—including this very piece.


The Art as a Call to Remember

This original brush pen version of Cernunnos Resting is a statement—a refusal to let the past be forgotten. Unlike the later Ukiyo A print, which stylizes the composition with Japanese woodblock influence, this drawing retains its primal, untamed essence, reflecting the raw vitality of animistic belief systems that once flourished before civilization codified them into extinction.

It asks us to consider:

  • What was lost when the old gods were silenced?
  • How different would our relationship with nature be if the forests were still seen as sacred?
  • And what, if anything, can still be reclaimed?

Cernunnos is resting, but not gone. Perhaps it is time for us to listen again.

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