Mano Cortuno: Sign of the Horns

"He who has eyes to see, let him see"
Matthew 7:21

Mano Cornuto means “horned hand” in Italian; the gesture is commonly depicted on charms against the evil eye. In this context, the "corna" represents a “poking out the eyes” gesture.

"Beyond all particular questions, the real problem lies in the question of truth."
~Joseph Ratzinger, a.k.a Benedict XV

Truly then, the Mano Cornuto hand gesture is a remnant of Pagan Rome, where ancient lunar goddess charms depicting animal horns were used for similar protective purposes... but why stop there? Without great difficulty we can trace this symbolism all the way back to ancient Sumeria (a.k.a. Babylon) the cradle of temple worship, where men first began elevating themselves to the status of "priesthood".

In the Hebrew scriptures: book of Exodus, Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt. A column of fire and smoke guides them to Mt. Sinai, where Moses receives the commandments from God. Later, he becomes enraged and smashes the tablets after coming down from the mountain, only to discover the Israelites worshiping a golden calf.

Perhaps confusion set in because this particular location: Mt. Horeb, was also home to an Egyptian Temple of Hathor (excavated by Sir W.M. Flinders Petrie in 1904).

The bible tells us that Moses was married to Zipporah the daughter of Jethro, the priest of Midian (Exodous 2:16). The Midianites revered numerous gods, (including Baal-peor, and Ashteroth) but they were specifically known to worship a fire god named Yahweh, and the Lunar goddess Hathor at shrines on Mt Horeb.

"Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians". (Acts 7:22)
Horeb means: "glowing heat" a reference to the sun. The alternate name for this mountain is Sinai - derived from Sin: the Sumerian diety of the moon.

"Then he took the calf they had made and he burnt it up with fire and crushed it till it was fine, after which he scattered it upon the surface of the waters and made the sons of Israel drink it". Exodous 32:19 

Gold is a noble metal: it is inert in an oxygen atmosphere and will not burn. Clearly, Moses transmuted this wickedly idolatrous (Goddess) image into it's masculine aspect (a patriarchal diety) universally symbolized by fire. Hence, recycled mythology for the sons of Israel.




The great mother Hathor was merely another version of Isis, the mother of Horus, often portrayed in pharaohs’ tombs in the sweeping universal image of either a woman or cow stretched across the sky. Hathor is the Egyptian replica of Mesopotamia’s Ninsun, the mother of Tammuz. Hat-hor literally means "dwelling of Horus" and she is depicted as both his mother and sometimes as his wife. (Encyclopedia of Mythology, Larousse, pp.23,25)

Since Horus and Osiris are often confused, Horus could also be considered as the husband of his own mother. There may have been a factual relationship upon which this was based. Like Ishtar to Tammuz, Isis was both wife and sister to Osiris. Their child may have married his mother in the guise of the father miraculously returned to join her. The Mesopotamian original myths contain similar hints at this incest, as do the Greek versions.

Whatever the origin of this connection, the position of Hathor became almost as important as Isis, but in this form as a great mother goddess and celestial cow whose milk the pharaohs drank in order to become divine. Hathor and Isis were both depicted with the horns of a cow and the solar disk crowning their heads. The Egyptian belief in the sacredness of cattle came, of course, directly from Mesopotamia where Dumuzi was worshipped as a Bull, Damu as a calf and Ninsun as a cow. The Egyptians did not invent this bovine fetish. They absorbed it from Mesopotamia, just as the peoples of the Indus Valley (the ancestors of modern Hindus). Hence, there are millions of people in the world today who venerate cattle.

In the Egyptian model both Osiris and Horus were associated with Apis in the form of both Bull and Calf, and Apis was both a solar deity and symbol of fertility. Osiris-Apis was jointly called Serapis. Apis was, not surprisingly, portrayed as black in colour. The solar disk was placed between his horns along with a white triangle on his forehead and a crescent moon on his side (symbol of Nanna, Nimrod deified in the Sumerian moon and bull-god). An important version of this crescent moon god would become Al-ilah or Allah, the most important god in the Arabian pantheon of deities, the god that Muhammad would mix with Jewish and Christian traditions and then elevate to be the sole deity of the cult he founded. This same crescent moon, sometimes with one or three attendant stars, is now found on the flag of almost every Islamic nation.

Another important version of the Egyptian bull story was that Apis was "begotten by a ray of sunlight that descended from heaven and impregnated a cow, which would thereafter never be able to give birth a second time." (When Egypt Ruled the East, Steindorf and Seele, University of Chicago Press, 1963, p.140) In other words not only did this cow-goddess experience a miraculous conception but had no further offspring. This belief figured prominently in the doctrine of the Early Church concerning the perpetual virginity of Mary, just as the image of Isis as "perfect mother" was absorbed into the doctrine of the "immaculate conception," that Mary was sinless in order to conceive Christ.