PaganSquare


PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.

  • Home
    Home This is where you can find all the blog posts throughout the site.
  • Tags
    Tags Displays a list of tags that have been used in the blog.
  • Bloggers
    Bloggers Search for your favorite blogger from this site.
  • Login
    Login Login form
Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in vegetation god

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
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.

Last modified on
Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia "Nature looking back."
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    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 so

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Who Is God of Furniture?

Do an image-search for Green Man Chair. Go ahead. You'll be amazed at what you find.

There must be hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of Green Man chairs out there. I've got a couple down in the dining-room myself.

And that's just the chairs.

We tend to think of the Green Man as a being carved in stone, but that's mere coincidence of survival. Stone outlasts wood.

Artists have been carving (and painting) Green Men for some 2000 years now but, starting in the Middle Ages, Green Men (aptly enough) began to sprout everywhere.

What could be more appropriate than that the image and likeness of the God of Plants should be rendered in wood: the symbol and the reality in one. To sit in the Green Man's Chair is to be embraced by the Lord of Vegetation.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Early Green Man

I keep joking that I'm redoing my house in Early Green Man.

My friend Gary has a Green Man wall in his house. There must be 50 different Green Men in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and mediums on that Wall. You can't hardly help but bow. Me, I've got them all over the house, peeking out from the most unexpected corners. One of the hazards of 21st century consumerist paganism, I guess.

The Green God: Earth's Firstborn and, they say, favorite. (But maybe, like in my family, she just understands him better.) She does give him that incomparable Coat of Many Colors every year as a sign of favor. And so his brother becomes a kin-slayer, most terrible of crimes. But that's never the end with the Green Man. “Cut me down,” he says, “I spring up high.” Irrepressible.

Last modified on

Additional information