There are many places where undisputed Green Men appear, and many people find him an intriguing figure. So why does he often appear in religious, and specifically Christian, settings all over Europe and even extending into parts of the Middle East and India?
The name ‘Green Man’ has been given to several different characters. Some link him with the woodwose, a wild man with a Club, possibly intended to be John the Baptist or Hercules. This figure appears on some Church fonts, e.g. at Stradbroks in Suffolk, and as a supporter (a figure at the side of the shield) in heraldry. In this form perhaps he symbolised the taming of strength. But the woodwose often appears shaggy and stupid, very different from the true Green Man.
On signs outside inns called ‘The Green Man’ he is often pictured as a kind of Robin Hood figure, sometimes alternatively named Jack-in-the-green or Jack-in-the-Tree.
Was he a Celtic fertility god, the beneficent spirit of vegetation, the tree spirit, still being built into churches after 1000 years of Christianity, and currently revived by people who love such places as Stonehenge, Tintagel, and Glastonbury with their associated legends?
On May Day, a day associated with the return of life, a Chimney Sweep sometimes became a living Green Man, being decked in a wicker frame decorated with leaves and flowers, and paraded around. Or a man was led through the fields as a token of aiding their fertility, and then symbolically drowned. By his death he was thought to make life-giving forces available to the village.
The annual Burry Man festival in the village of South Queensferry, Scotland, appears to be a living equivalent of the Green Man in much the same way as the Jack-in-the-Tree or Chimney Sweep mentioned above.
Such rites persisted well after the time many Christian churches were being built (and Green Men were being incorporated within them) for in 1540 Bishop Latimer was told in another town it was no good opening a church for a service because everybody was attending such ceremonies. Other accounts speak of the revellers entering Church to dance their rituals there, even when a service was already in progress. Priests disapproved, but people’s customs were strong and were often backed by the squire, so the parson had to keep quiet. Rogation Day Ceremonies, with their blessing of the fields, is probably a Christianisation of such activities.
He may represent the bringing of the tree spirit or spirit of nature under the guidance of Christ, in the way that many pagan ideas and rituals have been baptised into Christianity - a common practice in the attempt to lead people from Other Beliefs into the Christian Faith.
This last thought might go even further, possibly linking with the other figure in the church porch vaulting. That figure is presumably Jesus, the wreath on his brow perhaps representing the crown of thorns. But has he, too, vegetation around his head? Is this merely decoration, as often appears on vault bosses? Or is there another possibility? Christ, the Logos (the Word) has been equated with the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. Also, Christian thought claims that the act of creation was performed through the pre-existent Christ. When the writer of the book quoted below was shown this face he raised the suggestion that it might be to do with the Spirit, the Creator Spirit, being revealed through created things.
The Green Man has a special meaning today. After centuries of man’s exploitation of nature for his own benefit, as if mankind is the only creature that counts, we are now beginning to realise how dependent we are upon the natural world, that we are part and parcel of the whole of G-d’s creation, and therefore must learn to work in co-operation with it. The Green Man, especially in his strange structure blending the human form and vegetation, can be taken to symbolise the unity of mankind with the natural world. Perhaps it is not surprising that he should have a place in Christian Churches of all types for when they were built mankind was much closer to nature than we are, at least in the industrialised western world.
Given that we now know for certain that Rosslyn Chapel was built by the St Clair family specifically as a Christian edifice it seems clear that the Green Men within the chapel were, by 1446, no longer pagan but had been adopted as a Christian symbol
Free eBooks (Can Be Downloaded):
Israel Regardie - The Art And Meaning Of MagicRobert Leo Odom - Sunday Sacredness In Roman Paganism
Aleister Crowley - Green Alps Partial Poetry
Devi Spring - The Emerging Indo Pagans
Franz Cumont - After Life In Roman Paganism
