The Green Man Legend

The Green Man can be found all over the world, from Ireland and England to Rome and China. The earliest known Green Man stories known originated from India over 2300 years ago in fact.

In the 17th century in England many pubs and taverns were given the name The Green Man and indeed the Green Man was quite fashionable back then.

The significance of the Green Man isn't known exactly and there are many many stories, tales, legends, myths and folk-lores as to what he represents and where he comes from.The only thing which we can be almost certain of is that he was a man of the forest and surrounding woodlands and represents life, death and rebirth as well as fertility. He also has some connection with Mother nature, indeed it has been said that he is an amalgamation of mankind and nature and has both human and plant qualities and features, arms and legs as well as branches and leaves.

My own theory of why the Green Man legend began at least 2400 years ago in India (but may have been earlia than this and of course no one actually knows which Country or Continent first claimed him as being their finding) is that the Green Man legend began due to the already widely believed Mother Earth theory which was already in place. Mother Earth was responsible for rebirth, life, death and the underworld and everything on our planet.

I think that the early civilisations could not fathom out how the Earth Mother could possibly re-produce new life every single Spring without having being impregnated by a "Father Earth" figure as human Mothers require.

Every Spring without fail, the once bare Winter branches would sprout new leaves which, to humans meant rebirth and new life starting in the Spring and finally coming to maturity by bearing fruit between heavy foliage of green leavesevery single summer, knowing that most of the greenery appeared to be un-needed due to it dying and falling off the trees again after the fruition stages had taken place....so..they used what knowledge they did have, put 2 + 2 together and came up with 5, 5 being the Green Man theory, what else were all those heavy, thick leaves for other than to hide him from their view while he made his Earth Mother pregnant yet again. This may even have been why mankind began covering up their sexxual organs, first with leaves as the Green Man did??

It is not rocket science that early civilisations knew that it took a human Mother 9 months or 3 seasons to create and give birth to a new life, and so by human mathematics of pregnancy seemingly being the same duration it seemed apparent that the "Father Earth" impregnated the "Mother Earth" each summer. Because of their certainty that a man was needed along with their uncertainty about how the earths botanical biological clock did its ticking, nothing about how a tree could reproduce itself from the Mother Earth obviously to them meant that the "Green man" was hidden from their view by the heavy new foliage because they gradually worked out that Mother earth was re-planted by the seeds falling the "Green Man" just as human male seeds impregnated human women.

I think that the "Green Man" legend began out of human mankind and our sense of discovery, the early man used what logic they had, albeit what we now know was often faulty logic etc.

The green man for me is the most logical thing that we could have made any sense of with the virtually unknown biological sciences of botanical reproduction that we now know exists today. There...what do you think of my own personal Green Man theory?...have you a theory of your own which you would like to share as I would love to hear it and add it along with my own here on this lens?.

Add your theory's to the guestbook module below please

I am the face in the trees'

Amid the thickest leaves

I am here and I'm there

I am everywhere

I'm both of myth and of lore

You have never seen me before

But I watch you see

Oh, you can never ever

find me

'

In Britain we often see the Green Man carved into the wooden frames of old church doorways and sculpted as gargoyles on church stonework, the reason for this being that the churches were Christian and much of Britain still had Pagan believers so the architects were told to add the gargoyles depicting the Green Man to stop the pagans from revolting and causing an outcry for building churches for the Christians to worship in.which were often built on Pagan burial and ceremonial grounds, i suppose it was a kind of compromise between the two faiths at the time and has absolutely nothing to do with Christians worshipping the Green Man whatsoever.

Pagans used to worship the Green Man and still hold him dear to this day and believe that The Green Man dies in the winter and re-emerges in the spring fresh and new.

Some Pagans even believe that he is God of the Underworld or The Horned-God and he plays a huge part in the Pagan and Wiccan way of life today as he has always done.