In Norse mythology we often see the symbolic designation Þul. One could litterally understand this as "an old and wise person", "a speaker", but it is more to it than that.
As the headline of this post indicates, and the original Norse word is related - Gullinhorni is equvalent to Þul. So, what is Gullinhorni? The word means "golden horns". Those horns are connected to the Bull (Gullinhorni being the mythological Bull itself). If you are but anything familiar with any native European mythology, you will know that the Bull represents ancestral power. It represents the struggle and the fight to overcome your ancestor. This is why you have to fight a Bull passing the brigde - Gjallarbrú - the brigde of high sound (1) seperating the realms between life and death. You have to wrestle the Bull/the Þul, take it by the horns, connected.
The horns are refered to as being of gold. The eternal metal, reflecting the sun, the symbol of the ancestral memory, thus the avatar of blood (blood memory).
From Hávamál;
134.
Ráðumk þér, Loddfáfnir,
en þú ráð nemir, -njóta mundu,
ef þú nemr, þér munu góð, ef þú getr -:
at hárum þulhlæ þú aldregi,
oft er gótt, þat er gamlir kveða;
oft ór skörpum belg
skilin orð koma
þeim er hangir með hám
ok skollir með skrám
ok váfir með vílmögum.
Much is lost in translations, but here is a more known English one:
134.
I rede thee, Loddfafnir! | and hear thou my rede,--
Profit thou hast if thou hearest,
Great thy gain if thou learnest:
Scorn not ever | the gray-haired singer,
Oft do the old speak good;
(Oft from shrivelled skin | come skillful counsels,
Though it hang with the hides,
And flap with the pelts,
And is blown with the bellies.)
Hávamál litterally tells of the obvious advise of listening to the elderly, of their experiences and words for your own benefit. But, this stanza also contains what a Þul is in Nature and in our ancestral cult. The second part of Hávamál is more symbolic, but in the same form containing advises, as is also the case for the first part, and the spesific part of Loddfáfnismál above. The "grey haired" old Þul, if clothes hang among skins and intestines, with symbolic golden horns; The ancestral power - and the carried gold - the symbol of re-birth and continious ancestral memory, is a well known symbol from myths to fairy tales and folklore. It is carrried by the old King, the one who have to be overcomed, as the old King is re-born in the new. This alone encapsulates the golden apples of Iðunn in all quintessence - those who symbolically keep the Gods eternally young.
This is why Hönír is known as Gullinkambi (the golden cock) with a scream upon the sun rising (and upon Ragnarök, the new beginning), relating to the first phase of re-incarnation, upon birth. This is why Heimdallr (time/transition) is known as Gullintanni (golden tooth) and relates to the second phase of re-incarnation, representing the entrance to the age of reasoning, and the fact that the Norse pagan sorcerers immitated this deity in those initiations. This is also why the boar of Freyr is named Gullinbursti and so on... This is why Fimbulþul (mighty sorcerer) posesses the primordial runes of wisdom, and the reason that Fimbulþul in fact is another name for Óðinn (your accumulated honorable ancestors).
Not only are the horns of gold, but the horns (antlers) represent "the chosen one". The original symbol of a crown for Kings and Queens. The same way the deer antlers fall and grow a new every season, the horned one are both the old Þul (the ancestor) and the decendant/initiate. The same way the old Fimbulþul (Óðinn) reemerges in the chosen one, his mythological son and avenger Válí. Another example would be the story of Alvíssmál when Þórr and Loki visit the cave of the all knowing dwarf - where a wisdom quiz is held until sunrise. During the stay in the cave, the dwarf tranfers the wisdom to Þórr, until the rays of the sun hit the dwarf, seal the faith and Miðgarðs véurr is born again. This makes perfectly sense when we know Þórr, among other things, as the human child, Loki as the spark, accelerator and adrenaline and dwarfs as very wise, rich and un-completed things.
Just as you should take advise from your living ancestors, you will take advise from the dead. You will find a Þul in every realm.
(1) The brigde of high sound could at a human microcosmos be known as the cervix.
(2) The old Þul in Loddfáfnismál (as Fimbulþul) could at a human microcosmos be known as the placenta the physical and meta-physical feeder and twin (like Freyr (the seed, the child) rides his Gullinbursti - the Boar). The same way that Yggr (ugly, scary, frightful) would be and is the kenning of Óðinn - but also the tree of life, being the microcosmos of a early human life. It all shiwers, screams and falls of course, like everything else in the dependent necessary relationship between life and death - thus starts a new - in eternal cycle.