Dylan Thomas’s “Force that drives the green fuse that drives the flower” alludes, at least in part, to the primal energy signified by the Green Man. Thomas portrays the force’s potent urgency toward deterioration and death, but the Green Man’s energy, even then, despite Thomas’s depressive assessment, brims with fecundity. A figure of unlimited vegetative force, the Green Man appears in many cultures and in many disguises. He survives as both pagan god and Christian icon. In the greater archetypes he is the dying and reviving god of ancient religions, and the Sacred Tree as depicted in the Vedas and in Norse mythology. One can catch a glimpse of him, not yet quite overcome by green, in Neolithic imagery, in Tammuz of the Babylonians, in the Egyptian god Osiris, in the Dionysian Mysteries, and in (Kur-noo-nohs) Cernunnos of the Celts. We also sense him in the divinities of Jainism, the American Indian, the Brazilian forest, and in the Aztec God Xipe Tótec (whose “heart is emerald”). He lives in the tales of Robin Hood, Jack-in-the-Green, the King of May, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
The Green Man’s fertile residence within Christian iconography concentrates, as in no other mythology or religion, in the figure’s head. In the West, the oldest type manifests as a single leaf or many leaves forming a male head. In another, vegetation disgorges from his mouth, and even sometimes from his ears and eyes - forming his hair, beard, eyebrows, and moustache. Finally, in some, his face materializes as fruit or flower born and nestled within the green. His eyes always look at us from the original spring.
For me, the Green Man lives most in the Sufi being, Khidr (a wali, or enlightened one, sometime called a prophet or even an angel), known as the Verdant or Green One, whose footsteps leave a green imprint. He appears unexpectedly to the true aspirant and inspired poets when they least expect him and most need him. Khidr, in my opinion, is in all probability the strongest influence on our most familiar church images of the Green Man. After the conquest in the West, Arabic masons and carvers shared not only their highly evolved technical skills, but also their stories, with Romanesque and Gothic artists. Present before then in western culture, the Green Man, at this point, solidifies his power as Christian icon. As a symbol of resurrection and regeneration his image becomes integral, especially from the 11th to the 16th centuries, to many of the great cathedrals and wayside churches of Europe.
The Green Man is not separate from us; he is our source, emphasizing and celebrating the positive creative laws of Nature, the native intelligence that shepherds and protects this world, and the ecological rightness that guides us. The Green Man reveals and bestows life’s mysteries – indeed, he embodies them - generating in us the impulse to personify anything that deeply moves us, and compelling us to plow our hands into the soil where his promise dwells, nestled in Persephone’s arms, perpetually ready to germinate in and nurture the world.