Philip, the headless horseman

On September 20, I happened upon, and saved, this meme:

Just a clever pun. I’m a connoisseur.

Today I reached the epilogue of Joshua Cutchin’s Ecology of Souls, which is, unexpectedly, about headlessness as a recurring paranormal theme. This made me think of Washington Irving’s famous headless horseman, which reminded me of the meme because the name Philip denotes a horseman (from the Greek for “lover of horses”). Then I read this in Cutchin:

[C]ollecting heads often underscored martial prowess, rather than serving any greater metaphysical purpose. Victory trophies involved fashioning drinking goblets from vanquished enemies’ skulls, for instance.

My next thought was that he was probably going to go on to mention decapitated horses or someone named Philip. Right on both counts:

Elsewhere in the world beheaded animals, many of them psychopomps like horses, were also interred as grave goods.

And:

“Certainly there is no shortage of Celtic examples of magical decapitation,” wrote Philippe Walter.

In the last book I read, Mike Clelland’s novel The Unseen, the main character discovers a dead body and buries it but leaves the head unburied. And in my Book of Mormon blog, I’m coming up soon on one of the book’s most controversial episodes: the decapitation of the unconscious Laban by the otherwise sympathetic character Nephi. Laban was drunk, having perhaps had one too many Phillip’s head screwdrivers.

One more thing:

Lower Pecos petroglyphs from southwest Texas, for example, show shamans alternately with antlers or without heads entirely.

The above quote from Cutchin juxtaposes antlered men with headless men. Back in 2020 I had a dream  about a man with antlers. Care to guess what his name was?

I had a clear vision of Philip -- as a man, not a reindeer, but wearing a rather elaborate headdress in the shape of a pair of caribou antlers which, as they were covered in red satin, did look rather Christmassy.