The Legend of the Green Man: Foliage, Rebirth, and the Ancient Vegetative Spirit of Western Forests
The Face in the Stone In the architectural details of the medieval cathedrals and parish churches of Europe, carved onto the capitals of columns, the bosses of vaulted ceilings, and the corbels of doorways, a strange figure looks down upon the congregation. The Green Man is an image of a human head, either formed entirely of leaves or disgorging thick foliage from its mouth, eyes, nose, and ears. While the ecclesiastical authorities of the Middle Ages tolerated these carvings as decorative elements or symbols of moral decay, the persistence of this motif in over a thousand churches across Britain, France, and Germany suggests a deeper, pre-Christian coordinate system. The Green Man is the symbol of the vegetative spirit of nature —the force of growth, death, and regeneration that flows through the forests of the earth. He is the personification of the spring season , the power that causes the seed to burst in the soil and the green leaves to reclaim the branches after the death of ...