by Jason Mankey
The term Green Man is actually an old one, even if its attachment to the foliate-head image is of a more recent vintage. In England, there are dozens of old pubs founded centuries ago that use “Green Man” in their title. However, the term Green Man was usually in reference to Robin Hood and similar figures who were believed to have lived in the woods during the Middle Ages.114 Considering how individuals like Margaret Murray have connected the Horned God to figures like Robin Hood, the reference is especially appealing to Modern Witches.
Green Men were also frequent visitors in the courts of both the Tudors and the Stuarts, who ruled England during most of the period from 1485 to 1714. In royal courts, Green Men were generally leaf-covered men who carried clubs, most likely in reference to drunkenness. Branches and pieces of brush were used as signs indicating the sale of alcohol in England during this period, which explains the dress of these Green Men.115
Despite what I’ve shared with you so far, it remains possible that many Green Man images were inspired by pagan antiquity. There are several ancient images that bear a striking similarity to several Green Men. One of the most remarkable dates from the year 300 CE (sometimes dated as early as 200 CE) and is part of the Mildenhall hoard (or treasure), currently on display at the British Museum in London. The “Great Dish” or “Great Plate of Bacchus” features the Greek Titan Oceanus (a deity of rivers and the sea) in its center, his visage appearing as if made of fallen leaves. The depiction of Oceanus with a leaf-like face was not limited to the Great Dish, and a fifth-century representation in present-day Turkey has similar features.116
There are a whole host of images alleged to be precursors to the Green Man, and this is not surprising due to his varied appearance in churches throughout Europe. One of the more convincing arguments is a third-
century depiction of Dionysus from modern Germany. Featuring a wilting head, this image foreshadows many of the “grotesques” that would appear over a thousand years later. Though Christian references to foliate heads can’t be found before the tenth century, there appears to be a Green Man on the tomb of Saint Abre in France dating back to the year 400 CE.117
Perhaps the most logical explanation for the image of the Green Man is that it was inspired by similar images found in India. Green Man images began to show up in Europe just as trade with India and China was starting to pick up across the continent. This was followed shortly thereafter by the Crusades, which made the world even smaller. Images from India and China could easily have been found among the Arab population of the Middle East and then transported back to Europe from there.
Images from Hindu temples sometimes feature heads expelling something similar to the plant matter that would soon be found in churches across Europe from Scotland to Russia. Images of demons from Nepal also bear a similarity to many of the more frightening Green Man images. While we often think the world is a huge, hard-to-traverse place, even twelve hundred years ago there were several links between Europe and Asia, and it’s not out of the question to wonder if art from India had an influence on the cathedrals of Europe.
Figure 10: The haunting image of the Green Man.
This image of the Green Man was inspired by a Green Man
from Norwich Cathedral in Norwich, England. Unlike most
other Green Men, his image adorns the back of a
folding chair instead of a church wall.
The name Green Man is a bit of a misnomer too, because (and this should not be a surprise by now) there are also a few Green Men who are clearly Green Women. Whatever the Green Men in churches were meant to represent (and it’s likely they represented a variety of things), they weren’t necessarily limited to male faces.
Green Men generally go unmarked in European churches, with no words identifying who they are meant to be or their meaning (figure 10). However, one church in France includes the name Silvanus on a Green Man image on a fountain at the Abbey of Saint-Denis in France around the year 1200.118 Silvanus was the Roman god of the forest.
The Green Man Today
By the 1970s, the Green Man as a symbol of fertility and the sacredness of nature had become a dominant talking point in most literature mentioning him. Even scholarly publications often commented on the Green Man as a relic of the Pagan past, so it’s no surprise that such ideas were repeated in the Witch and Pagan materials of the day. By the 1990s, the Green Man had even begun settling into shopping malls, and his face was being used by environmental groups as representative of their goals.
Polytheist Witches often talk about the gods as having “agency,” meaning they possess power in this world and are directly influencing events that concern them. Generally, the idea of agency is limited to deities who have ancient and traceable pedigrees, but this feels limiting to me. Whatever foliate heads meant in 1300 is immaterial to what the Green Man represents now. He is the soul of nature, and a connection to wild spaces, and this is something believed by millions of people.
Green Man images appear in hundreds of churches in Great Britain, and many of those churches are proud of their Green Men. They aren’t proud of them for representing sin, or even hope, but because they are symbols of wildness and the natural world. Many churches with Green Men even comment on their alleged origins among pagan antiquity, and they are proud of that! Perhaps images of the Green Man were placed on high church walls five hundred years ago in order to inspire us today!
And make no mistake that the voice of the Green Man (and Green Woman) is louder today than ever before. When I visit a church with their image, I can hear them whispering to me, no matter how anguished they appear to be. Perhaps some of that anguish was in anticipation over just how much of a mess we’ve made of our world today. (If I were a symbol of nature, I probably wouldn’t be happy in the twenty-first century either!)
Today people from all sorts of life believe that the Green Man is a representative of Paganism’s past and present, and because of that, it’s true! His origins may not be exactly that, but when I see a Green Man today, I know I’m either in a Witch-friendly place or among those who care for the earth. Today the Green Man is often drawn with horns on his head by contemporary artists, bringing the Green Man even closer to Modern Witchcraft and Pagan practices.
Jack in the Green
Often thought to be related to the Green Man, the figure known as Jack in the Green has been a part of English May Day celebrations for nearly two hundred years.119 The English anthropologist Sir James Frazer (1854–1941) called Jack “a vernal spirit of vegetation” and believed he represented an ancient tree spirit.120 Writing a few decades later, Lady Raglan would link the figure to the Green Man, and the two have been intertwined in the Pagan imagination ever since. The band Jethro Tull would include a song named after the figure on their 1977 album Songs from the Wood. (Pick this one up. It’s a Pagan classic.)
Jack in the Green certainly looks like some sort of vestige of ancient Paganism. Traditionally a Jack in the Green costume consists of a woven wicker (or wood) frame designed to cover the top half of a person’s body, intertwined with greenery and flowers. Jacks in the Green traditionally march and dance in May Day parades, where for much of the nineteenth century they were portrayed by chimney sweeps. With their merry and very green appearance, it’s easy to see a figure symbolic of spring fertility and renewal, but the truth of the matter is far stranger.
The origin of Jack in the Green lies with English milkmaids of the seventeenth century who once danced door to door on May Day with greenery and flowers in their hair and on their milk pails in search of cash. Eventually their May Day outfits grew more sophisticated (or odd), and they began to wear wooden pyramids on top of their head, again adorned with flowers and greenery. The warmer weather accompanying May also traditionally increased milk yields in England, a fact the maids probably wanted to draw attention to. Eventually the costumes of the milkmaids were adopted by English rag-pickers and chimney sweeps.121
In
the hands of the chimney sweeps, the costumes grew larger and more elaborate, transforming into the Jack of the Green that many of us are familiar with today.122 Since the summer months were traditionally bad for chimney sweeps, the Jack in the Green costumes attracted a lot of attention and were a rather successful form of advertising. Taking this a step further, many chimney sweeps dressed young boys as Jack in the Green, attracting more sympathy and money from May Day revelers.123
While the Jack in the Green is not a vestige of paganisms past, it has become a symbol of spring, and in that sense is certainly “Pagan.” Seeing a chimney sweep dressed up as Jack in the Green on a May Day morning in the 1850s was most certainly a sign of the spring’s power and a promise of the summer to come. As the decades rolled along, Jack in the Green gradually fell out of favor in many parts of England, but came roaring back at the start of the twentieth century in a revival of folk customs that has continued to the present day.
Connecting with the Green Man
With a wide array of conflicting images and no mythology, the Green Man can sometimes feel like a difficult figure to connect to. But as the soul of nature and the heartbeat of the natural world, he’s actually a pretty easy figure to grow close to. The Green Man can not only be seen in some of Europe’s oldest churches but can be found anyplace where we connect to nature.
The following exercise can be used as a guided meditation in a group setting, but if it’s something you choose to work with alone, you’ll want to commit an outline of it to memory. Reading something is never the same as actively participating in it! And if you find, when doing this alone, that you veer wildly from what’s on the printed page, that’s probably a good thing. Let the Green Man and the wild dictate your experience, not a book!
Ideally you’ll want to perform this activity outdoors, but if that’s not an option, indoors can be equally effective. If you do find yourself looking for the Green Man indoors, you’ll need:
A forest-scented oil, such as pine, cedarwood, or sandalwood—Alternatively, you can also use a similarly scented incense. I like to use an oil diffuser when possible, but as an alternative, you can use a diluted version of these oils and just place a dab under your nose.
Nature sounds—This can be a CD or from a streaming music service. If your neighborhood is quiet, you could also just open up the window, though you risk letting in invasive car and/or pedestrian noise.
If you are doing this exercise indoors, find a comfortable spot where you can sit on the floor, or choose a chair where you can sit upright, with your feet firmly on the floor. If you can position yourself in such a way that it’s possible to feel sunlight/moonlight or the breeze on your face and body from a window or door, take advantage of that. Before you sit down, get your nature sounds going, along with whatever you are using to create a woodland/forest scent. Once that’s all taken care of, sit down and begin the exercise.
If you are doing this outdoors, find a comfortable spot on the ground to sit. The ideal here is a forest or a woodland clearing of some kind, but even a public park with a couple of trees will work pretty well. If you can, sit with your back against a tree, with your spine straight and your legs straight in front of you touching the ground. It’s okay to lay a blanket on the ground for comfort, but even better if it’s just you (your clothes) and the natural world.
As you sit down and get comfortable, close your eyes and focus on the world around you. What do you hear? What do you feel? What do you sense? Do you notice the warmth of the sun or a cool breeze upon your skin? Are there birds chirping or crickets humming? Breathe deeply and pay attention to what your nose detects. Do you smell a forest floor, cut grass, or fresh flowers? All that you are sensing is in the domain of the Green Man, the spirit of nature.
With your back straight, focus inward on your own body; wiggle your toes, notice your diaphragm moving up and down as you breathe, and gently move your fingers. Concentrate on your spinal column for a moment, and feel the energy that moves up and down through it. Visualize that energy moving through your body, and picture it moving downward from your shoulder blades to the small of your back. When that energy reaches the end of your spinal column, push it out through your body, to extend into the ground beneath you. As that energy moves out of your body and into the earth, keep your consciousness with it.
As your energy slips into the earth, feel what is around you there. Depending on the time of year, the soil you feel might be holding on to life, waiting for it to be reborn in the spring, or perhaps that soil is alive with green growing things. Whatever is there, take notice of it and feel its energy. Alive or dead, it is of this world, and a part of the cycle we are all connected to.
(If you are indoors while doing this exercise, you’ll have to push your energy out through the floor you are sitting on, through your home’s foundation, etc. Eventually, though, you will find the natural world, even if it’s buried under a couple of feet of concrete.)
Move your consciousness and energy through the ground around you, being especially aware of any roots you might encounter—and you will encounter roots eventually, no matter where you begin your journey. As you become aware of the roots in the ground, travel up those roots, letting your energy mix with that of the plants you are experiencing. When you reach the top of one of those plants, are you a blade of glass wiggling in the room? Or perhaps a flower in bloom with a bee on it searching for nectar? Feel the plants around you, allow yourself to feel for a moment what being a dandelion or a clover in a field might be like.
(Depending on where you are, it’s possible that the energy you feel might not be pleasant. If a plant is sick, dying, or poisoned, then being inside its shoots and leaves will be uncomfortable. If this is the case, reflect for a moment on what we humans have done to the world. You may want to release a little bit of your own energy into what you are feeling as a way to give that plant strength and as an apology for the shortsightedness of humanity.)
When your energy reaches the top of one plant, descend back into the earth in search of your next root. Eventually you will find roots that just feel older, wiser, and more powerful than anything you’ve previously encountered. Certain species of trees interlock their roots, making it hard to determine where one tree begins and another ends; make your way through the tangle of roots until your consciousness and energy reside in the trunk of a powerful tree.124
As you enter the tree, stop for a moment to feel all of the energy around you. If you concentrate hard enough, you should be able to hear and feel something that sounds similar to a human heartbeat. Thumm, thumm, thumm, thumm … that’s the power of the tree and the heart of nature. Feel the pulsing power of the nutrients and the water that the roots of your tree bring in from deep inside the earth. Allow your consciousness to slowly move up the trunk of the tree, diverging from the tree’s trunk occasionally to let your energy run through the trees branches.
There in the branches, let your energy go into the leaves and fruits of the tree. As a leaf, feel the sun on your surface taking in the solar energy that sustains life. As a seed, pine cone, or fruit, feel the potential for creation that exists within you. Feel the wind rustle along your surface, or feel a bird or insect perch upon you as you sway there.
Move up the tree, through branches that reach ever higher, then back to the tree’s trunk … up, up, up until you reach the top of the tree. When you arrive there, push the edge of your consciousness just out of and over the highest branch, while holding onto your connection to the tree’s energy. Looking down from the top of the tree, you should be able to see the wonder of the natural world below. Still connected to your tree, you should truly feel like a part of the earth and all of creation.
Thumm, thumm, thumm … That energy you feel, the awe that you feel, that is the power of the Green Man (or Green Woman). They are the heart of nature, pulsating, powerful, and full of life. Even when we feel disconnected from them, they are there with us in so
me way, if we are but willing to look. The image of the Green Man is how people have expressed their continued devotion to the wild spaces and the green growing things of the earth, but to experience and feel the Green Man, we must look to Earth herself.
As you look down upon the world from the top of your tree, listen to and sense the energies around you. In trees, the powers of earth (soil), air (the breeze that pollinates), fire (the sun’s rays), and water all come together. Here in this space, it’s possible to hear or feel a message from the Green Man. Open yourself up to whatever wisdom might be shared with you, or simply revel in the power of being one with the trees and the wild, for it is in these spaces that the Green Man lives.
When you are comfortable with all you have explored, move back down through your tree, perhaps leaving some of your energy as a gift. Sink down into the roots of the tree, your consciousness and remaining energy moving once more through the ground. When you arrive at where you started your journey, let your energy reenter your spinal column, and feel it reintegrating with your body. As the energy begins to move through your arms and legs, recall what it felt like to be at one with the earth, at one with the Green Man.
It’s highly possible that the first time you do this exercise, you will feel absolutely nothing. If that’s the case, there’s no need to worry; simply try again! It might take three or four tries until you get it right, especially if you’ve never experienced anything outside of your body. Besides, this meditation is not the only way to feel the mysteries of the Green Man. The same experiences are waiting for you outside in the wild of nature. There we can feel his call too!