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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in greenman

 

 

Deep and Deeper

Take a look at any random collection of historic Leaf Mask images. What you will find is many Green Men, but few (if any) Green Women.

Why not?

If words like “sexism” and “patriarchy” are coming into your head right now, don't let them distract you.

The answer is simpler and more basic than that.

 

Green Pubes

It was one of those Winters that seemed like it was never going to end.

Just at the point—here in the frozen North it happens pretty much every year—that I was beginning to feel that Winter was eternal and Spring a mere figment of my Winter-bruised imagination—I had a dream so impacting that I'll never forget it.

In the dream, I'm gazing down contemplatively over the expanse of my own naked body. In place of pubic hair, a crisp little thicket of glossy green leaves grows directly from my skin.

Hair : animals :: leaves : plants.

 

Dionysiaca

The Leaf Mask motif first emerges in art in the Mediterranean world at the beginning of the first millennium, growing out of the common Dionysiac image of a reveler crowned with vine-leaves.

At a traveling exhibit of items from Pompeii (destroyed 79 CE) that came through the Twin Cities some years ago, I saw a painting which struck me as a kind of proto-Green Man: a male head wearing a vine-leaf crown, in which the hair and the leaves of the crown merged visually in such a way that you couldn't tell which was which.

Becoming one with the vine: it doesn't get more bacchic than that.

 

Clintonism

Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

Behold: the Green "Man" that adorns the official invitation to King Charles' upcoming coronation.

(Note that heraldic artist Andrew Jamieson's winsome little Green Guy, sporting as he does the traditional floral/vegetal attributes of the constituent nations of the so-called WISE Islands—daffodils [Wales], shamrocks [Ireland], thistles [Scotland], and wild roses [England]—renders him a quintessentially pan-British figure.)

Oh, the foofarrah.

Does King Charles' Green Man Make Him a Pagan?” howls The Spectator.

(Technically, of course, you'll notice that the Leaf Mask in question is actually that of a Green Cat, a traditional subset of the Green Man design, but that's by the by. BtW, I'm planning to be posting specifically about the Green Beast some time in the near future, so stay tuned.)

No, silly cowans, of course it doesn't mean he's pagan. (Green Men are commonly found in churches, remember?) Charles Windsor is a practicing Christian, titular head of the Anglican Church, who regularly goes on retreats at a Greek Orthodox monastery in Mount Athos. (His father was capital-O-Orthodox, by baptism at least.)

Remember, though, Charlie is savvy. This is the man, you'll recall, who once told the press that he regards himself not so much as “Protector of the Faith”, as “Protector of Faith.”

Guess what, folks: that means us, too.

You can also be sure that he knows damn well that, while the Green Man may be an ecumenical symbol of the natural world and all of humanity's essential kinship therewith, he—said Green Man—is ours—i.e. the pagans'—in particular.

No, unlike (purportedly) some of his ancestors, this king is not a witch.

But be of good cheer, O pagans of Britain. Mr. Windsor is sending us a message, and knowingly so: the Green King—champion of organic agriculture and sustainable living long, long before they became fashionable—is on our side.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

 

 

Reading Michael Pollan's “The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World”

 

Did we domesticate plants, or did plants domesticate us?

 

For years now I've been hearing about a woman in California, priestess to the Green God, who bears on her face the imprint of her god: leaf beard and mustache in green tattoo. Whether or not there really is such a person, I don't know.

But if there is, I love her. Sometimes courage and piety are indistinguishable.

 

Books about the Green Man tend to be long on iconography and short on concept. No more.

In his 2002 The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World, Michael Pollan—though he never once mentions Him—has written a theology of the Green God. For "Green God," just read "Plants."

The general view of the Green Man as a sort of vague “Father Nature” figure, while emotionally appealing, has just never been intellectually satisfying. Pollan, however, gets specific. In Botany, he muses on the age-long, epic relationship between Plant and Animal, Green God and Red. Here, deliciously, we reach that place of pagan felicity where science and mythology are indistinguishable.

Plants developed flowers to appeal sexually to animals. It's a truth, but what a truth.

The beauty of Botany lies in its specifics. Pollan divides it into four chapters, each treating with a vegetal particular: Apple, Tulip, Marijuana, Potato, each offering the Animal (and, specifically, Human) world the means by which to satisfy a particular inborn desire: for Sweetness, for Beauty, for Intoxication, for Control.

Though, as I have said, Pollan never once mentions the Green Man—he does bring up witches, though, our kind of witches—if the book has a presiding deity, it's Dionysos, Who puts in frequent appearances throughout. Who is He, after all, but the Plant God, Lord of Intoxication, an Elder God peering through the tragi-comic mask of a Younger?

Throughout, Pollan discusses in intoxicating depth such topics as Desire, Attraction, the nature of Beauty, Memory, the need to Forget, and the nature of Consciousness. He spreads for us here a sumptuous intellectual feast that cannot help but contrast with the Happy Meal™ superficiality (and intellectual sterility) of so much contemporary pagan writing.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

Unsurprisingly, the couple that sold handmade brooms at the Renn Fest turned out to be witches.

Now, Witch World is a small place, with three degrees of separation at most, so each year, I would make it a point to stop in, and we'd swap stories for a while.

One year I was absolutely wowed by a set of hand-crafted wooden bellows hanging on the wall, the surface beautifully carved with a Green Man face.

The symbolism could hardly be more apposite. Bellows = air = the breath of life. Whose image could they possibly bear other than that of the God of All Green Life, whose reciprocal breath gives life to all us Red-bloods. And bellows blow up the Fire, which burns....wood, of course, the Green Man's very flesh. Rendered in—what else?—wood.

Charmed, I took the bellows up to the till.

“Tell,” I said.

The Green Man bellows had been crafted by their coven woodcarver. “They're his first,” they told me. “He'll be delighted to hear that he's made a sale.”

I was in love, and the price was more than reasonable, so of course I bought the Green Man bellows. I've joked for years about how I seem to be redoing my house in Early Green Man, which is frankly no more than the truth. Walking through my home, you'll find more Green Men than you could...well, than you could shake a stick at.

Back at the Renn Fest a few weeks later, I naturally stopped in at Broomhilda to say “Blessed Be.”

Laughing, they told me the story. They'd called their coven brother to tell him that he'd made a sale, and asked if he wanted to carve another set.

“F*ck no,” he told them. “Making those was so much work, I couldn't possibly charge enough to make it worthwhile.”

Last modified on

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Washing the Greenman

March brought us a windstorm large enough to knock out our power, rain on the Equinox for the community egg hunt, and a whole host of viruses, which circulated around our family.  The last two weeks, we fought through sickness to be productive, both in the home and garden, clearing away the old, and making room for the new.

 
One part of our garden gone long-neglected was an old terra cotta Greenman, hung on the house by the previous gardener over a decade before.
 
I might have brushed away cobwebs once, but I think it kept slipping my mind over the more pressing and practical issues of digging, weeding, building, and so on.  But after nine years of living in the woods, and about five attempting to make a productive garden out of some of it, I turned and looked hard at the Greenman and understood.
 
After tilling and digging and building this weekend, I went back outside at dusk, took him down off the wall, and gave him a good wash.
 
The blast of cool water sent the worst cobwebs away into the dirt, and scrubbed free bird droppings. I washed behind his ears, where old spider egg casing hung empty and graying.  With the help of a gloved finger, I nudged away filth and debris around the wire where the hook held it.
 
Once rehung, he seemed to smile a bit more, his cheeks glowing in the fading sunlight.  Then we had a talk, and I asked his help in looking out for our little garden.  
 
"Thanks," I said, "for watching out for this space.  Thank you for working with the Mother to make sure things grow.  I ask you aid me in making this bit of land grow vegetables and fruits and herbs for my family, and a little extra for our animal neighbors.  Please help us in making this a working plot of land to feed and nourish those within the house and those who come to visit. Thank you."
 
I felt he heard me.  I felt he understood, and I gave him a nod and turned to go.
 
Before I left, though, I asked one more favor. "And would mind helping me reduce the number of slugs who come to call?  Not all of them, just enough to keep our garden growing strong."
 
Washing the Greenman reminded me of something:
 
When you're struggling to achieve something you feel is important, and practical steps aren't working, maybe it's time to take a look around.  There may be something or someone neglected who seemed superfluous but may prove instrumental in removing the biggest obstacles in your path.
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