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The white stag, like many other mythical creatures, wanders through the tangled forests and wild moorlands of our distant past. Elusive and rare, our forefathers may have caught a glimpse in some hidden glade in the woods, or seen it moving ghost-like across the wild moors, or maybe stood high on a rocky outcrop crowned against the sky.

The white stag was always something to be desired yet always out of reach. Always leading the hunt onwards, ever onwards, to a destiny ordained by the gods. From the dark, distant memories of the wild hunt have grown the very stuff of legends.

Encounters with white stag

For those humans who do encountered a white stag, there were often profound consequences, sometimes stimulating great spiritual changes within a person. Sometimes these encounters have been the trigger of great events leading to the creation of nations and kingdoms. Even to this day the consequences of legendary encounters of the remote past are still visible and can be seen in action.

The white stag in mythology and folklore

Traditionally the white stag has often been interchangeable with the unicorn and appears in the folklore and mythology of many different cultures around the world. In ancient times deer were hunted for food but they also supplied leather, bone and gut which had many uses and were an important resource in hunter gatherer and early agricultural societies. So when a rare white stag was chanced upon, maybe it is no surprise that legends and myths grew up around the sightings of this unusual and mysterious beast.

Many of the legends can be traced back through European and Asian culture. From Mesopotamia, Babylon, and Assyria and from Mongolia, and China and even in Japanese mythology, the white stag can be found depicted in art, in records and in legends.

Celtic Mythology

In Celtic mythology, the White Stag symbolises the existence of the Otherworld and that forces from the Otherworld are present and in action. The Celtic god Cernunnos was depicted zoomorphically as a man with horns growing from his head.

In earlier times the Celts believed that the white stag was an agent from the ‘Other world’ and a bringer of great changes to those it encountered. The white stag often appeared when something sacred, or a law or code, was being broken.

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