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Anya, Daughter of Manannan

It is Halloween and my guide is hard to see. He says the skies are full of wild spirits, mostly Danu's followers who are always looking for new battles.

We travel the winds to Anya's court. There are hidden pathways through the clouds that my guide can see. We travel a path of sparkling stars to Anya's palace.

Anya is an emanation of Manannan, and thus a more distant emanation of Lir. However, she is not an ocean goddess. She is associated with rivers, lakes, and ponds, the fresh water that makes the earth fertile. Manannan and Lir are the power of the salt sea, while Anya is the rushing brook that lets fish leap and wildflowers grow. When the faerie world and human world were closer, her palace could be reached in Ireland where the rural land opened to Anya's gardens and fountains. When the worlds were separated, her palace became more distant, but still connected to certain sites.

We stand before a doorway blocked by soft fragrant flower petals. I cannot see through it except that I know there is light beyond it. My guide raises his hand, and a powerful ray of sunlight emerges from it, and hits the petals. The veil opens like a flower in the sun.

The castle that we see stands in the midst of lakes and rivers. It appears to be made of sandstone, with stained glass windows with designs of reeds and willows. There are wide roads for horses and processions, and living statues, and acrobats who bound through the air. There are children laughing and playing in the flower gardens, and building great sand castles. They are the children of the Fair Folk that sculpt with their hands and their minds.

My guide sends a messenger to the palace, and soon Anya emerges from the castle. She is dressed in emerald and gold, with a red-gold crown.

I tell her of my writing, and ask her to tell me about her life.

She says,

I am the queen of a world between worlds. I am no powerful warrior like my father, and grandfather, and others of the Fair Folk. I am queen of the small things, of life, play, and happiness. Those artists who come here are tired of noble military statues, and wish to make toys and paper airplanes. I am a patroness of the arts. Here, I have bards and mages and dancers and musicians. My palace walls are decorated with tapestries and weavings, and my ladies weave the stories of our people.

I liked my time when my kingdom was very close to the earth, and then I met many charming and eccentric characters. I liked shoemakers, saddle decorators, royal messengers with bright trumpets, and those who sold oils and spices from strange foreign places. They would come to us through the heavy fog, and leave the same way, and never realize that the land they had visited was not a place like other lands.

I inspire artists and dreamers, and I give them a place to rest and invent. This is a place of rest, relaxation, and deep quiet like the ocean of Lir. It is also bright and creative like the many palaces of Manannan and Fand.

I am sometimes called Manannan's daughter, wife or relative, but all of those are human ways of expressing deeper relationships. When Manannan and Fand shared their silver light with sapphire edges to create a treasure of pearls, I too emerged as a treasure of light of a different sort. As I came into being among richness and happiness, so have I sought that in my life. Thus my palace is a home of the arts.

I have no husband in the sense of an equal, but my consort is Ewain, who rules his people in another land.

We have poetry evenings, bardic competitions, and music to fly upon to the land of light. Our halls ring with laughter, drumming, and song.

Post by Gypsy Genie from

http://www.faerie-world.org/tales/anya.html

Re: Merlin, Missionary-Mage of the Fair Folk

Merlin's Reflections on Modern Culture

I have taken the liberty of seeing your world through your memory. I am quite shocked by what your world has become. For us, what is beautiful is what is spontaneous and alive and intense. The miles of wasteland and ruined desert, cracked cement, skyscrapers and ghost malls, slums and old factories, rusted cars and pollution - this is a world which has lost its sense of beauty, perhaps its identity as a place of meaning and of self expression. There is striving after symbolic wealth, and the arena of creativity becoming the merging of businesses, like the mating of great ugly dinosaurs. The sexuality, which naturally arises as a response to beauty, is shunted instead into power, so beautiful people and environments are nothing more than badges of wealth. The goal is to pile up more wealth and beauty than one can ever appreciate, greedily keeping it from others, so that its appreciation is corrupted.

Beauty in architecture is alien, empty, crystalline, like a machine or a dead thing. Beauty in art is out of fashion. Beauty in fashion follows corrupt social values - childhood sexuality, starvation and poverty that are fetishized, yet recognize a glut of wealth. Soldiers may be fashionable, or criminals, or prostitutes. Degradation is valued for its shock value, in a calloused culture where only pain and disgust are strong enough to feel.

This sort of thing is discouraging in terms of motivating contact. How can I explain to my people that the land they left long ago due to the greed and brutality of its people is worth our time and effort?

Yet there are bright points. The New Age you despair over is seeking a return to beauty and the older values. The interest in Shamanism has mage aspects, and Wicca in some forms tries to recapture a time more like our own. I realize that survival is an important value for much of the world - more important than beauty and wisdom and meaning and tradition. But not all rejection of beauty and tradition is due to the need for survival. Much of it is due to greed and lust for power.

There is no clear group to contact, no mage caste in the modern world with which to share ideas. I do not know where there are commonalities. But I will search for them.

Post from Gypsy Genie found on

http://www.faerie-world.org/tales/merlin.html

Re: Merlin, Missionary-Mage of the Fair Folk

Merlin Speaks

Merlin appears dressed like a Celt, with white hair and a long curved mustache. He wears a white tunic and brown boots. On his chest is a silver branch, the less violent side of the Red Branch [representing his lineage]. He holds a staff with a carved ram's head, a drinking horn, and a silver torc with lion faces around his neck. He also wears a long sword whose hilt sparkles with gems, surrounding a carved eye.

He says,

I have spoken with your teacher. Open your heart to me. I appreciate that you take your responsibilities seriously. I also do, which is why I have been disappointed at the ambitions of the students I have had. They sought to steal treasures and secrets, and hid their greed from view. I could see it but I thought they would overcome it. I was wrong.

To be a mage, a person must feel deeply for those he protects and have loyalty and family obligation. He or she must seek to understand the mountains and the stars, seek to learn the protection of the weak and conquest of the strong. The mage need not be a chieftain with a war-band, but he or she should have those they love and are willing to protect.

I am not a violent man, but I recognize and accept cultural limitations. Cultures do not easily accept the new and the strange - innovators must be warriors, fighting for their place in the natural order, bringing ideas down into physical reality.

I have tried to turn weak men into warriors, blind men into seers. But few were able to make these changes. They came to me all afire, but the embers burned down and they came to resemble ash. They could not bear the lightning in their veins.

I came of warring people. The Fair Folk are wise and ancient and artistic. That too is true, we are. However, different groups have different values. In some ways, we are more like the Scandinavian folk, with warriors and kings, prophetesses, and a world of warfare that continues into the afterlife. We are ancestors who live with the Gods, and our lives are their lives.

What does it mean to be a warrior, and a mage? For our people, the Siver Branch, war is a dance, our expression of desire and delight, of hope and of fear. It is how we show our courage, overcoming individual fears and anxieties for protection and glorification of the group.

Mages are warriors too, but of a different sort. They are the eyes and ears of the clan in other worlds. They learn the strategies of enemies, and see their motivations before they know them themselves. We are spies of a sort, but we do not kill by evil means. We try to talk others out of warfare, or to distract them. but if they will not be distracted, then we find their weak points and attack.

Our goddess is the Lady Danu. She is a shining star, a fiery beacon to us. She is a goddess from the skies and her rays of light emanate out many of our ancestors, the Danaan. They were travelers in the early days, gypsies and warriors with beautiful silks and brocades, weapons of silver and gold, and brave horses and falcons. They roamed through many worlds, with dance and song and the clash of swords, and they were an inspiration to the later gypsies who were belly dancers and horse-thieves. They rode through the clouds on gray horses with silver hooves carrying banners. From them came our people.

They visited many worlds and in the end decided to create a land of their own, as have so many others. The Danaan created a whole island paradise, Tirnan Og. It is a land of golden sun and silver trees, and jeweled fruit and rushing waters, and giant evergreen trees reaching into the clouds. The birdsongs are clear, the air fresh and cool, and the trees heavy with fruit.

It came to be known as the Island of Eternal Youth, not for its people (who are shape shifters and can be as young or old as they wish), but for the air and water, which always seems untouched and full of joy and energy, giving happiness and vitality to the people. Our ancestors took the best of the places they had visited, and used that imagery as a pattern on which to build their world.

It has long been our home, and a place of refuge or excitement for those who find their way there. We have beautiful forests, lush valleys, and rich lands - these have always been valued. We also have a land of love and dreams, which has drifted into folk-tale and ballad.

I admire my land. This is why I have returned. But I have long been interested in learning from other cultures, and teaching people our ways.

Merlin, Missionary-Mage of the Fair Folk

Merlin is a mage with a long history. Merlin was only one of his names, and a late one at that. He was a sort of missionary-mage, and he felt that other cultures and worlds should learn from us, and that we could learn from them. He came to the earth in fire and hail and lightning, to impress the kings, and he acted as an advisor. He taught them the importance of lineage and tradition, and how to communicate with the Fair Folk. They chose to worship and ask for boons, and sometimes pay visits. But the Christian warriors came with the fear of hell and the hope of heaven, and the knowledge of the lands of youth and beauty was mostly lost.

Merlin's mission turned out unexpectedly. The Fair Folk became bearers of gifts, and then scapegoats for trouble. People ceased to respect us, and then stopped believing in us at all. So gods and empires rise and fall.

But in the early days, our missionary mage wished to share his knowledge. He wished to help those who suffer in the physical world who must live with disease, old age, and in fear of death by teaching them about happier worlds - the worlds of the Fair Folk. Merlin was a teacher and a builder of bridges, and was able to teach about many traditions rather than just one. Since the earliest times, mythology has surrounded him.

He was not incarnate as a human being, but organized his shape-shifter ability to gain a human body for an extended period of time. This is very difficult to do. Even to visualize and materialize a human body for a short period is very difficult to do, and is only undertaken for broad social goals.

Since he appeared without a history, several were made up for him by his detractors.

He was reputed to be a child of the devil and a nun, or a demon and a virgin, or a bishop and a witch - any unlikely malevolent sounding pair was chosen. He grew up away from society, which was why nobody saw him as a child. They said he only came to interfere with politics and religion to justify kings and policies that attacked Christendom and to act as a spokesman for unsophisticated rustics, and even animals. They also said he was a sorcerer, who spoke to the devil, corrupted women, and got paid back in the end, being imprisoned by a woman who had been his student. Based on this story, he was not only weak and evil, he was stupider than his student and subject to lust in his old age towards his student.

Was any of this true? Not very much. He actually came as a teacher, and taught a number of students, and most of them chose to be unknown. He had little to do with kings, though occasionally he defended ones that he thought had some virtue. He did not disguise Uther Pendragon, nor did he take away Arthur, nor did he physically create the Round Table. He did suggest the idea of a group of equal and virtuous knights, who would have knowledge, courage, and courtly ideals. Knowledge fell by the wayside, but they did keep the ideals of courage and courtliness.

While he gave advice to kings when asked, his primary job was educating future mages. He was called mad for his rejection of society and belief in the gods and ancestors, but this was just calumny. He was perfectly sane and reasonable, and this was why people came to ask advice.

He stayed in physical form for several decades, and then returned to our world . His return had nothing to do with students, female or otherwise. The physical body that he occupied was only made to last a certain number of years, and the time ran out.

There were Christians at the time who were scandalized by a male teacher who taught young women without chaperones. They could only imagine a sexual relationship of some sort - it was impossible that a female student would simply be interested in ideas, and that a male professor would support this. When Merlin left, some students carried on his tradition of secret teaching, and some traveled back with him to the land of the Fair Folk.

The characters later associated with Arthurian legend mix historical events with figures out of Merlin's teachings. The women who learned magic (Vivianne, Morgause) were called evil sorceresses. The queens of our world became Sovereignty, and the Lady of the Lake. Merlin's inspiration for the king became soldiers of the cross and the grail.

The Role of the Bard

The bards of the Fair Folk and human bards are quite different. The bards of the Fair Folk are singers and artists, full of dramatic flair. They are often shape shifters, and able to enter into the forms and identities of the people they describe. When they give histories, their stories become vivid before their audience.

Human bards were also entertainers, but this was only a secondary job, a side job as it were. They were really record keepers, and lineage holders, for the bards could determine a king's legitimacy. To satirize a king was to declare his access to the throne suspect. The role of the bard was that of historian and social commentator. They taught about the past and glorified heroes while insulting cowards and villains. They were both the newspaper and the opinion page. In cultures without written media, people had to learn through living sources. As such, events were not simply words on a page but dramas of vice and virtue.

Bards spoke mostly of human events with harps and staffs, and occasionally drums. They sometimes described relationships between the generations with the dead or the Fair Folk having revenge upon or giving blessings to descendents. The subject of their songs were ancestors of kings, heroes, owners of property, rights to natural resources, and the ownership of objects. The real owners knew the other owners, and bards were like lawyers with the memories of the exchanges in a time when few people wrote things down. They were specialized libraries of status and property. The bards knew who inherited from whom. This was the function for which they were paid, and falsification of records was considered a great evil. For commercial transactions, bards were the truth-tellers.

As truth-tellers, the bards were feared because they were taken seriously when they called people heroes or villains. Bards were commonly believed to be able to look into a person's soul, and discover if there was any villainy there. And how could a person combat such a charge? Killing a bard would be like burning down a newspaper office. It would only support the charge and confirm the villainy of the accused.

This role of bards has been submerged in history, and they are remembered as a sort of wandering folk singer. Certainly they entertained people on cold winter nights before fires at inns, and before bonfires at holidays, and indeed for bards at the minor levels, this was all they knew how to do. But there were classes and levels of bards, and the more advanced ones went through years of memory training. In cultures without writing, memory became extremely important, and those with the best memories rose to political heights. Ordinary bards, on the other hand, would simply remember hundreds of songs and act them out.

Now the bards of the Fair Folk were more than singers. They were experts in transformation. If they sang about the hero Taliesin, they would take on his forms playing different roles. They could also project mental images so if they sang, for instance, about the salmon of wisdom, all could see it splashing to climb to its heights. They became the heroes of the Fair Folk, took on the joy and modesty of princesses, and taught the secrets of sorcery by demonstrating self-transformation.

A favorite topic of bards has been Oisin, a lost and wandering prince. The lord of the forest, Cernumos, had many different adventures with animals. Lugh had many problems being accepted, and that created many dramas, as did Aengus and his romances. All were the subject of bardic dramas.

The bardic schools would train their singers in many skills. For human bards, there were many issues of ancestry and affiliation before entrance into a school. For less formal bards, there was simply apprenticeship, and no requirements of blood or lineage. Successful bards were charismatic and could draw a crowd.

For the bards of the Fair Folk, there were skills in visualization and projection of mental imagery required. Bards needed a sense of harmony, of beauty, of flowing melodies, of control of the winds of change and ideas. The goal was not to draw a crowd, but to entertain and educate those interested in the course of events over time, and give a sense of direction for the future.

For Celtic people, bards and druids were mostly separate. Bards were librarians reading out loud to audiences, but the priestly group of druids was tied to gods, to nature, to magical control of the environment, and to fighting competing priests. When groups fought each other, the names of the gods of the losers were erased and forgotten. Memory of magic and nature stayed. This is why today there has been a fusion of the ancient gods with nature and magic. Their separate categories have been forgotten. Indeed, how many people remember Lir or Danu today? Their names were erased, first by warring tribes, and then by outsider religions. Their stories are gone.

What has come to substitute is a conglomeration of nature worship and magical spells, an assumption that the Fair Folk have no world of their own, and a belief that they must dwell in the invisible world of others- those of humans and animals. In the stories passed down by the Fair Folk's former Celtic neighbors, the Fair Folk became cowards hiding underground, and weakened beings subject to their spells and invocations.

This is the result of forgetting, and of no longer having bards. The few written records were burned by invaders who accused the Fair Folk of murder, sacrifice, strange sexuality, and other accusations that they routinely flung at each other. The Fair Folk were no longer there to deny the charges. The silence of the bards and the loss of the bardic tradition has ruined the reputation of the Fair Folk.

Posted by Gypsy Genie found on

http://www.faerie-world.org/tales/bards.html

Re: Origin stories of the people of Manannan Mac Lir

Manannan's Horses

My guide says,

When the Fair Folk lived in relation to humankind long ago, we initially traveled by the power of mind. This upset people with whom we had relationships, and they called it witchcraft and dark magic. It was neither. It was just travel but because it upset them, we decided to find another means of travel.

The island people had dark and blotched horses, which were stubborn and ill-tempered but could pull plows and chariots and sometimes ran wild. We decided to create horses worthy of our people. Our Lord Manannan made a world of dream and shadow between earth and sea, and there he decided to create a new species of horse. The earthly wild horses of the hills ran through this intermediate land, and they left their shadows or visual patterns in this world. As time passed, there was shadow upon shadow, all slightly out of alignment, which made a whole set of glowing shadows. The light of fire and spirit left by the horses in their reflections came to coalesce, and the glowing outlines of the horses against the mists and clouds became brighter.

Manannan made valleys and mountains for them to gallop through, and then a seashore with shining waves. The horses could run beneath the waters, shining in the vast and mysterious underwater world. As they ran through cloud and land and sea, their light condensed into rainbows, and then into spiritual bodies. Their bodies became white like the clouds, and their manes and tails green like the deep waters and the forests. Their hooves became golden like the treasure buried beneath land and sea for the gods. They became more solid as they ran, and strong and healthy, though they were spiritual rather than material.

These horses ran back from the world of clouds, and into the world of the Fair Folk, on land, sea, and sometimes in the human world, when the two worlds were superimposed, and the faeries would ride in processions. Horses were understood by all as a legitimate means of transportation. Humans were no longer suspicious of our mode of transport.

The horses were even more attractive with bright clothes and golden bridles, and when ridden by beautiful women and handsome warriors.

Post found by Gypsy Genie found on

http://www.faerie-world.org/tales/history.html

Re: Origin stories of the people of Manannan Mac Lir

The Story of Creation

The ethics of the Fair Folk are based on a god and a goddess who are different, yet equally valued and respected.

In the beginning was the boundless ocean, with no beginning or end, and all depth and no surface. Yet it came to have shining light within it, and this light rippled through it accompanied by the sound of harps. When the ripples would collide, the primal sound would change to violins and lyres, and to bagpipes and drums. Light created sound, and both created complexity.

From the shining white light of eternity came rainbows, with harp and flute. From the brilliant blue-green light at the beginning came the light of the ocean which became the light of the Fair Folk . At its most intense were Lord Manannan and Lady Fand, whose names are like the fluttering descent of reverberating harp strings. They rise out of the turquoise light in a great white sun, edged with blue, green, and gold. These are the colors of the people of Manannan , and they wear them as badges of honor. From other colored lights came the other gods, Lugh and Dowda (or Dagda). The sun itself was Lir, the radiance of creation.

The colors of creation where related to the different roles the Fair Folk played during life. The blue and green light was the basis of the creation of mages and artists, who are associated with rain and water. Those whose identities were based on red and orange light became the knights and warriors, associated with fire and wind. The white and yellow light produced hermits, seeking only to return to the source and avoiding the realms of manifestation. The indigo and purple lights produced sorcerers and priests, who explored subtle powers of grasping sky and earth, seeking to harness the power of the worlds of creation they had left.

Each group had different adventures. Those of blue light traveled the path of mage, writer and artist in creating beauty, those of red light walked the roads of blood and thunder and war, those of white light trod the path of renunciation, and those of purple light experienced secrecy and power, and sorcery and mysterious journeys.

When our gods began, they were pure thought, pure idea. They did not have bodies and worlds, only awareness. But this awareness came to create the matrix of the creation we know today - time and space, and then echoes of the cosmic ocean in rivers, lakes, and seas. There were fantastic plants, silver trees with golden fruit, giants flowers with perfume and soft petals, and beautiful palaces that glowed from within and were lit by gardens of luminous flowers. Eventually, plants, animals, and people appeared, and artists who recreated worlds out of less brilliant light.

It was from the conflict that arose from less brilliant forms of light that dissonance was created, and then hostility and destruction. While plant forms stayed bright in most worlds, animals and humans descended into conflict and partial darkness. In opposition to this darkness arose such virtues as courage and heroism, and compassion and self sacrifice. From the darkness again rose light. This is the history of the Fair Folk, the endless struggles of light and darkness. It is also the history of humankind.

Origin stories of the people of Manannan Mac Lir

The royal mage said,

This story is from one of our history books. We have told of creation from Lir's light, and the part of the color spectrum from which our universe was created. But there have been many adventures of our people, some with other races of the Fair Folk, and some with humanity.

Long ago, after our world was created, Manannan and Fand wanted to understand the rest of the universe. So they created a golden coach with fantastic whirled shapes and arches, and plants made of emeralds and pearls. They went to visit some of the lands of our people.

But they were not always welcome. Some people can be rather ugly and violent, and they sought excuses for war. Instead of receiving us as visitors, they called our gods trespassers. They threatened us with war animals, and the revenge of poisonous plants, and threatened to steal away the treasures of Manannan's world. The men were cruel and lustful, and sought to take Fand by force.

Manannan fought them off, and took his lady back to the World of Dreams. But he knew they would be followed, so our people of crafts and beauty and dance had to become warriors. This is the worst aspect of war - it drags everybody down to the level of hatred and violence. We cannot be killed, as humans are, and we do not end up with battlefields of death and decay. But the beauty of our land can be taken, our artwork smashed, our boats, which fly through the world can be burned, and our women and children taken away to a foreign land. So we had to turn lutes into swords, and fight. Nobody wants to do it, but everybody recognizes its importance. The mages knew that their people were not soldiers, but they also knew that the people could learn and create swiftly. So they sent out their minds and used their intuitive abilities to learn the skills of their warrior neighbors.

They saw that the desire for war was based on lack of creativity - that the opposing culture chose to steal or destroy rather than create for itself. Some gods were jealous of any creations but their own, and they end up starving their cultures of beauty. They do this in various ways. Some allow music but not art, some painting but not dance, and some are allowed to make swords but not pictures. So they came to steal and destroy for their god's glory so that none could create but him.

In order to defend our people, the mages created a fence of beauty around our world, full of distractions and false pathways to confuse the attackers. The weakness of soldiers is obedience - they cannot find their way through mazes when each soldier has a different maze and the leaders cannot agree on the direction in which to proceed. Each soldier had fantasies and desires created before his eyes, and each had to tread a labyrinth to reach those goals. Reality was superimposed upon reality, and false pathways led to deep prisons. Very little of their army made it through the maze. Our people were victorious and succeeded in fighting off the invaders.

The mages worked hard, and were given noble status. Today they work with both gods and goddesses, both with Queen Anya, and also with Manannan and Fand. While the Queen Anya travels with them and they are part of her court, for Manannan, they are more consultants to be called on in times of need.

This was our origin story of the warrior and protective mages of our people.

Re: The Green Man, Spirit of the Forest

A Green Man Ritual

The Green Man is a forest deity who is depicted as a human face surrounded by foliage. He controls all gree and growing things and ensures that crops grow and pastures are lush. Request his aid to protect your garden during the waxing of the Moon. To start, form a human figure from garden material. Immerse the figure in a bowl or body of water. Place the figure among your garden plants, and recite this charm:

Father of green leaves,

Bring the rain,

Bring forth the flowers,

herbs, and grain.

Protect soil and plants

from all pests.

Let this garden of mine

be blessed.

*Sprinkle some water around the garden.*

Blessed Be

by James Kambos

Posted by Gypsy Genie found on

http://witchesofthecraft.com/2015/05/01/deity-of-the-day-for-beltane-is-the-green-man-spirit-of-the-forest/

The Green Man, Spirit of the Forest

For our ancient ancestors, many spirits and deities were associated with nature, wildlife, and plant growth. After all, if you had just spent the winter starving and freezing, when spring arrived it was certainly time to give thanks to whatever spirits watched over your tribe. The spring season, particularly around Beltane, is typically tied to a number of pre-Christian nature spirits. Many of these are similar in origin and characteristics, but tend to vary based on region and language. In English folklore, few characters stand out -- or are as recognizable -- as the Green Man.

Strongly connected to Jack in the Green and the May King, as well as John Barleycorn during the fall harvest, the figure known as the Green Man is a god of vegetation and plant life. He symbolizes the life that is found in the natural plant world, and in the earth itself. Consider, for a moment, the forest. In the British Isles, the forests a thousand years ago were vast, spreading for miles and miles, farther than the eye could see. Because of the sheer size, the forest could be a dark and scary place.

However, it was also a place you had to enter, whether you wanted to or not, because it provided meat for hunting, plants for eating, and wood for burning and building. In the winter, the forest must have seemed quite dead and desolate... but in the spring, it returned to life. It would be logical for early peoples to have applied some sort of spiritual aspect to the cycle of life, death and rebirth.

Folklorist James Frazer associates the Green Man with May Day celebrations, and with the character of Jack in the Green, who is a more modern adaptation of the Green Man. Jack is a more specifically defined version of the nature spirit than the earlier Green Man archetype. Frazer speculates that while some form of the Green Man was probably present in a variety of separate early cultures, he developed independently into a variety of newer, more modern characters. This would explain why in some areas he is Jack, while in others he is Robin of the Hood, or Herne the Hunter in different parts of England. Likewise, other, non-British cultures seem to have similar nature deities.

The Green Man is typically portrayed as a human face surrounded by dense foliage. Such images appear as far back as the eleventh century, in church carvings. As Christianity spread, the Green Man went into hiding, with stonemasons leaving secret images of his face around cathedrals and churches. He enjoyed a revival during the Victorian era, when he became popular with architects, who used his visage as a decorative aspect in buildings.

Legends connected to the archetype of the Green Man are everywhere. In the Arthurian legend, the tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a prime example. The Green Knight represents the pre-Christian nature religion of the British Isles. Although he originally confronts Gawain as an enemy, the two later are able to work together - perhaps a metaphor for the assimilation of British Paganism with the new Christian theology. Many scholars also suggest that the tales of Robin Hood evolved from Green Man mythology. Allusions to the Green Man can even be found in J.M. Barrie's classic Peter Pan - an eternally youthful boy, dressed in green and living in the forest with the wild animals. Today, some traditions of Wicca interpret the Green Man as an aspect of the Horned God, Cernunnos.

Found by Gypsy Genie

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