Cernunnos and Yoga, Part I
My earliest memories of people involved in spiritual practice come from a local Dutch Reformed church where my grandparents attended. When we were in town to stay with them, church attendance was mandatory. The sanctuary was scrupulously clean, everything made of polished, gleaming, unadorned wood from the floor, to the pews, to the altar. There were no adornments or images of any kind, except for a cross set into the back wall behind where the choir sat. While fellowship time in the narthex was loud, boisterous, and friendly, worship in the sanctuary began with a period of utter, profound silence until the service began. Prattle or fidgeting from a child was universally met with a powerful squeeze to the arm or the painful flicking of the ear with thumb and forefinger. Infants went to the nursery and were never to be found where they might wail through the sermon or scream through the congregational prayer. When we returned home after a severe and thoroughgoing exegesis of Scripture by the dominie, the pastor, we would begin lunch with the reading of Scripture at the table and a lengthy prayer prior to digging into the feast. As much as I hated such a regimen of discipline when I was a child, it sank deeply into me and colors my practice to this day.
My father’s work took him to the western Pacific when I was transitioning from childhood to youth, and we went with him, living in the Marianas Islands for two years. Twice a year, we went as a family for brief vacations either to Japan or to Hong Kong. On these visits we encountered Buddhist temples where clergy and local lay people could be found sitting on mats in a profound contemplative silence, punctuated and enhanced by the reverberations of occasional bells and the fragrant smell of burning incense. Here again, in a different faith, I saw the imposition of the discipline of silence and stillness. I was 11 or 12 at the time and found that this Dutch Reformed-style stillness in an exotic setting and in a different belief-system made it more interesting than it had been at church. I asked to buy some incense at a local vendor while we were visiting Tokyo, and attempted my own Buddhist-adjacent spiritual practice when we returned home. With my allowance, I bought a Japanese-style robe of some sort and wore it as part of the practice. My father began, contemptuously, to call me “Mr. Moto.” I am sure this cultural reference will be entirely lost on anyone under the age of 70; if you’re interested in discovering its significance, a brief Mr. Moto AI query, adding the name Peter Lorre, will satisfy your curiosity.
Years later, when I took up the practice of yoga, a discipline which I continue to follow to this day, I was delighted to find the same commitment to contemplation and inward silence. With yoga, however, the silence is not imposed; it is something which occurs naturally through the performance of poses and procedures. A lot of emphasis is put on breathing, on learning how to bring air into and out of the body in a slow and deliberate way, coordinating those breaths with the slow and deliberate movements of the body. As the practitioner mindfully assumes a pose, inhaling for certain movements while being careful to wait for an exhale before performing others, there is a focus brought to the consciousness which centers on the body, its structures, and its way of operating.
For the ceremonial magician, this is important stuff, since the traditions of that kind of magic have their roots in the old medieval idea of the “godly order.” According to this idea, the universe is something like a sphere containing a sphere containing a sphere, and so on. Each sphere, starting with the outermost sphere of the fixed stars, was held to exert powerful influences on the spheres within its particular enclosure. Stars exerted power over everything in the universe. Within that sphere, planets did not influence the stars behind them, but did influence everything in the inner spheres below them. Earth was believed to be at the center of all the spheres in the universe, under the influences of all the stars and planets, and every form of life and matter on earth was held to receive those influences into themselves. Thus, a human being was seen to be his own microcosm, his own little version, in miniature, of the entire cosmos. In each human being could be found organs that represented every one of the planets and all of the stars. Doctors operated under the assumption that the powers radiated by various entities in the cosmos must be taken into consideration and used as a part of therapy.
Such views have since been rejected as unscientific, yet I hold to the idea that each of us is related and tied to the rest of the universe, right down to his inmost being. We are part of the cosmic dance and do best when our movements coordinate and harmonize with the rhythms of the cosmos. In yogic teaching, there is an understanding that within the body are centers, called chakras, which regulate the operations of the physical self while at the same time performing that service for the components of our spiritual interiority. As one breathes in the practice of yoga, one learns, over time, to breathe “into” those centers, to become aware of them. With awareness comes increased consciousness of how one's body is currently working, of what its needs are, and of how one should live in accordance with those needs. Those chakra centers are each understood to be tied, by some invisible thread of influence and function, to the planets and stars, so that the saying “As above, so below” takes on a uniquely physical and intimate meaning for those who understand body and being as an expression, not just of local life, but as a local manifestation of the nature of the whole universe.
Which brings me to Cernunnos. I will leave you now with two photos, one of Cernunnos as he is depicted in silver on a panel of the Gundestrop Cauldron, and one of the Buddha in a yogic pose with his disciples, also fashioned in silver. Compare the two and do some thinking on your own. Note particularly the position of the feet, the animals in the background, and the vegetation. Until next time, Blessed Be!