Paleolithic cave art was painted in midst of geological chaos, the cave's fissured jutting walls alive with dancing gods animated by shifting shadows, stalagmites and stalactites growing from floor and ceiling like nightmares of dragons' teeth. Indigenous rock art seems to be slumbering in the comfort of a rolled-down mineral bed, enchanted by numinous symbols of technicolored dreams.

In Western hagiography, horned humans can be traced back to an iconic Moses, who descended from his mountainous encounter having grown horns on his balding head. St. Jerome's translation of the Latin cornuta [the original Hebrew, geren, could mean "horns;" but also "rays of light," or "shining"] for the official Catholic Vulgate, inspired Michelangelo to see a Moses with horns waiting in a block of Carrara marble for the artist's chisel to free the curves of his fiery mind.

"When a shaman accesses a state of deep trance one of the most common experiences for the shaman to have is that of experiencing horns growing out of the top of this head. The sensation is that of feeling two spiraling energies emanating from either side of the head, whereupon one has the feeling of having horns. It is in fact an indication the two hemispheres of the brain coming into balance."

Even though, "today, horns sprouting from a person's forehead suggest the devil, the cuckold, or at best a pagan god," perhaps Jerome didn't make a mistake, but had dreamed into a deeper imaginal pool, in which horns represent divinity and incorruptibility; also virility, where the horn was seen as the rebirth of the moon.
It is not so strange, then, that American Far West indigenous rock art has horned "water ghosts" risen near curling ocean waves. While on the other side of reality "imagination soars, as a voice / beckons, a thunderous voice, endless / as sleep."