Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth

In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.

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Green Breath

In medieval art, the Green Man is frequently depicted (as here) exhaling vegetation.

I'd always taken this as a symbol of death—someday you'll be dead and plants will grow out of your mouth—but while reading a book about ancient Maya art, I realized that I was missing something important.

In Maya culture, nothing was more valuable than jade. Jade (being green and permanent) = life; when you live in a tropical rain forest, how not? In Classical Mayan art, nobles were frequently represented with a jade bead suspended in the air between their mouths and noses: the breath of life.

That's why the Green Man exhales vegetation: he's the giver of the breath of life. This, of course, is literally true: that incredible reciprocal arrangement that we Red-Bloods have with the Green-Bloods called the Oxygen Cycle.

If we take the Green Man/Green God as the collective embodiment of all the flora on Planet Earth—a reading utterly in consonance with Received Tradition—we may indeed say that from Him comes the Breath of Life.

At the crossroads of the Old Ways, myth and science meet.

 

Faces in the leaves:

Nature looking back.


(Stoh Posceven)

 

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Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.

Comments

  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham Friday, 20 September 2019

    When I was much younger I could look into the leaves of a tree and after a while I would see a face among the leaves. there is some fancy word for this effect but I haven't memorized it. Now that I amolder I never seem to take the time for the effect to occur.

  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch Saturday, 21 September 2019
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