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The Green Man Legend

Unraveling the Nature and Identity of the Green Man

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An enigma spanning thousands of years, the Green Man is a symbol of mysterious origin and history.  Permeating various religious faiths and cultures, the Green Man has survived countless transformations and cultural diversities, enduring in the same relative physical form to this day.  Although specifics about his beginnings and his worship are not fully known, due in large part to how far back and to what initial cultures he can be traced to, it is a testament to the widespread reach of his character that he is still remembered and worshipped to this day.

The Green Man is most highly believed to have begun as a pre-Christian entity, a spirit of nature personified as a man.  His earliest images have been dated long before the coming of the Christian religion, depictions dating back before the days of the Roman Empire.  However, it is with the coming of the empire that his images are noted as spanning religions, as he has been found both within the empire and at its borders, and then similar versions in other far reaching cultures such as India. Despite the range in locations of artifacts of the Green Man, he is most often associated with the society of the Celts, sequestered particularly in today's Britain and France, because of the high number of images found in these regions and the stylized way in which he has been portrayed. 

The Green Man is almost frequently depicted as a man's face, usually ranging from middle aged to elderly, appearing out of the wild of forest trappings.  His face is always encompassed by leaves, vines, and flowers, seeming to be literally born from the natural world.  However, the slight variations on his images come from the exact way in which the natural world explodes around him.  It is common for the Green Man to merely be surrounded by the greenery, hence the name ‘The Green Man’, but there have been archaeological finds of images in which the leaves and vines emanate from his mouth, ears, and other facial orifices, as well as depictions of his face made up completely of nature—facial lines carefully crafted as vines with his skin the very leaves themselves.  

Green Man below crossing at Rochester Cathedral.

Green Man below crossing at Rochester Cathedral. (Wikimedia Commons)

Because of these depictions, the Green Man is believed to have been intended as a symbol of growth and rebirth, the eternal seasonal cycle of the coming of spring and the life of Man.  This association stems from the pre-Christian notion that Man was born from nature, as evidenced by various mythological accounts of the way in which the world began, and the idea that Man is directly tied to the fate of nature.  It is the natural changing of seasons that presents the passage of time that ages Man, thus by depicting the Green Man in such a way that overwhelmingly illustrates Man's relationship with nature highlights the idea to worshippers that one cannot survive without the other.  This union with nature and mutual reliance upon one another is evidenced historically and archaeologically through Man's cultivation and development of the natural world, and the fruits nature thereby provided.  Man was predominately reliant on nature until recent centuries, so the Green Man as an expression of this close of a relationship also seems likely and a fairly powerful message.

The 'Green Man' of the Rosslyn Chapel is depicted with vines coming out of his mouth and surrounded by foliage.

The "Green Man" of the Rosslyn Chapel is depicted with vines coming out of his mouth and surrounded by foliage. Credit: Visit Scotland

Along with rebirth and reliance, there is one more powerful affiliation the images of the Green Man undoubtedly indicate.  With the cycles of the year comes the end of the year; with the cycles of life comes the end of life; and with the excessive use of nature comes the eventual, end of nature.  The Green Man's other important, powerful affiliation, then, is that of death and of endings.  A fair amount of images of the Green Man have been found on graves, his face an empty skull rather than flourishing man, once again made out of or exploding with greenery.  Though there is no physical face, archaeologists and art historians have expressed widespread belief that this is another mask of the Green Man, linked—as stated above—by the logical cycle of Man.  What makes the Green Man green, after all, is the signs of nature that espouse from him—whether it is coming out of his face or designing his face.  Thereby these skull and cross-bone depictions can logically be linked to this pre-Christian entity.

Elaborately carved grave slab at Shebbear (Devon, England) showing a skull sprouting flowering shoots

Elaborately carved grave slab at Shebbear (Devon, England) showing a skull sprouting flowering shoots (public domain)

The symbol of the Green Man can be summarized in the three R's—rebirth, reliance, and ruin.  Archaeological records link the Green Man to these three notions most evidently because of the three most important moments of time they represent, whether it is the life and death of nature, man, or the two affecting one another.  It should be understood that much of what is known about the Green Man is speculation, as mythological records are not utilized as hard evidence but rather as examples of the belief system of pre-existing cultures; nevertheless, these speculations are highly likely.

Featured image: Green Man mask by Lauren Raine (Wikimedia Commons)

Coming next in Part 2: The Green Man: A Pre-Christian Icon in Christian Monuments

Bibliography

Araneo, Phyllis. "Green Man Resurrected: An Examination of the Underlying Meanings and Messages of the Re-Emergence of the Ancient Image of the Green Man in Contemporary, Western, Visual Culture." Master's thesis: University of the Sunshine Coast, 2006. Queensland, Australia.

Basford, Kathleen. The Green Man (D.S. Brewer: Suffolk, 1998.)

Castleden, Rodney. The Element Encyclopedia of the Celts (HarperCollins: United Kingdom, 2012.)

Centerwall, Brandon S. "The Name of the Green Man," Folklore, 108, 1997. pp. 25-33.

Datlow, Ellen. The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest (Viking Press: USA, 2002.)

Srinivasan, Doris Meth. Many Heads, Arms and Eyes: Origin, Meaning and Form in Multiplicity in Indian Art (Brill: Netherlands, 1997.)

Green, M.  Gods of the Celts (Sutton Publishing Limited: United Kingdom, 1986.)

Matthews, John. The Quest for the Green Man (Quest Books: Illinois, 2001.)

By Ryan Stone

 

Comments

To the author: what are you saying I wonder? “Man was predominately reliant on nature until recent centuries...” 

Really?

Regards,

TakeCare

I can not say, if there was a green man...but the truth could be of interest.

There are civilization that have Green Skin. Like high powered Red Skin (our enemy)

The reason such people show up here is because Lord Rama, Hanuman and Lord Krishna were available on Planet Earth...Hence the deal.

Bard A Madsen's picture

That is right and it goes further back, Ralph. I see Karla in the comments on part two has some good points. The oldest record is in the cuneiform texts with Ishtar going through the seven gates of hell to get Tammuz back. It is in the Old Testament also with the women crying for Tammuz. I'm positive this goes back to when the comet hit the Earth 13Kyrs. ago and killed off the mammoth and blotted out the Sun. The comet came out of the constellation of Taurus and is still known as the Taurid Stream which is commemorated as Halloween and the Festival of the Dead (as in the death from the Deluge), this is why the bull is represented in the story as far back as Gobekli Tepe. The seven gates, the grapes (as Karla points out), and the mistletoe that kills Baldr (the Sun) are the small cluster of the Pleiades on the Apis Bulls back for example which is how the constellation is and the radiant point of the Taurid Stream emanates from this point to this day. Some say that this radiant point processes, but Mankind's traditions say otherwise. I wrote a book about this subject, at the moment I'm trying to redo the whole thing in html so that it will become an ebook, but don't hold your breath the learning curve is terrible. Anyone willing to give me some pointers would be greatly appreciated.

The Green Man was an image of Osiris, who was always green. And often green with vegetation (the Osiris bed). But they could not portray Osiris in a Christian church, so they made the Green Man imagery. ..... There are more secrets within Christianity, than within Masonry.

https://magazinecrew.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/osiris-tomb-of-nefertar...

Fabulous article! According to the monograph by Dr. Samantha Riches, "St. George", she was able to trace the pre-Christian origins of the Green Man through its identity as "Green George", an epithet of St. George", IIRC, but also through the death and "rebirth" motif of St. George and a couple identical pre-Christian figures (one from Greece and another from the Middle East where St. George's cult was traced) who were said to die and be revived from death, but were also died a green color after being revived. I mentioned this data to tenured Prof. Ronald Hutton, and I was genuinely surprsed by his reaction! I got the impression that he was unfamiliar with Dr. Riches' research, but he was also more than hesitant to consider it, even declaiming it as being non-current academia that he could merely dismiss with little thought. I always thought that scholars should keep their minds open to new research and ideas, even if they differ from their own conclusions, rather than closing their minds hatter reaching a preconceived determination.

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Riley Winters's picture

Riley

Riley Winters is a Pre-PhD art historical, archaeological, and philological researcher who holds a degree in Classical Studies and Art History, and a Medieval and Renaissance Studies minor from Christopher Newport University. She is also a graduate of Celtic and Viking... Read More

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