Green Man (Renewal of the Earth)
The face and features of the Green Man are formed of leaves. He represents the masculine role in sexual coupling and fertility and the flowering of life and talent. Progress is uncluttered and easy. His qualities are innocence, success, and easy progress.
Invoking Innocence, Easy Progress, and Success.
IF YOU ARE DRAWN TO THIS ORACLE, you are attracting youthful, zestful energy into your life. In the manner of the greening of spring, easy progress is ahead of you. Ideas and actions will seem innocent and spontaneous.
In conveying the fertility of the forest and plants to people and livestock, the Green Man is the consort of the mother goddess, assisting in the greening of spring and summer and the fruitfulness of the earth. The Green Man's face and features are formed of leaves and vines. Deriving his prowess from the earth, he represents the masculine role in sexual coupling, fertility, and the flowering of human life and talent. He signifies innocence, easy progress, and success, especially in initiating new activities.
Throughout Celtic history, mother goddesses have various consorts. Often goddesses and gods, such as Nantosuelta and Sucellus and Rosmerta and Mercury, are consistently paired as divine partners or lovers. The Green Man is one such consort, a precociously sexual and youthful consort conveying fertility wherever he goes.
The virility of the antlered god Cernunnos and the Green Man are interrelated, so much so that the Green Man might be considered a variant of Cernunnos. From the earliest evidence left by Bronze and Iron Age Celts, Cernunnos presides over the forest, wearing the branching antlers of a stag. His imagery is potent and powerful, assuring the fertility of the natural world in human life. Similarly, in a carving from Germany known as the St. Goar pillar, vegetation grows from the Green Man's head and forms his beard. On the Gundestrup Cauldron, the head of a male is covered with the stylised hair formed of intertwining leaves. As in so many Celtic images the power resides in the head.
Images of the Green Man adorning European cathedrals and churches portray his head and especially his hair, beard, and mustache as a composite of leaves, branches, and vines. Long leaves may stem from his mouth to form an exaggerated beard or mustache. Grapevines, sometimes bearing grapes, run out of the sides of his mouth encircling his head as stylised hair and beard. A mass of leaves may surround his head. His image on the facades and interiors of churches artfully combines the Green Man's foliate persona with figures from the Christian gospels. His appearance is typically placed as though he were an unnamed guardian, as in the Gothic spire of the Münster of Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. Largely hidden from view from below, heads of the Green Man look down from the open fretwork spire in grief and sorrow at the crucified Christ on the cross below. In a Romanesque carving from Exeter, the Virgin Mary holds her child supported by the foliate head of a Green Man, his eyes closed as though in ageless invocation.
In contrast to the subtle fertility imagery of church art, the explicit, sexual imagery of a youthful consort is boldly portrayed in Irish myth and legend. Like the land itself, Irish legends are rich and moist with youthful sexuality. Much lighthearted phallic humour, for example, quickens the narrative of the Irish epic Táiin Bó Cuailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley). As a responsible sovereign, Queen Medb (often thought to be a personification of a goddess because Celtic tribes did not necessarily have queens) tests the prowess of her many consorts. In their encounter in the wood, Fergus fails to meet Medb's expectations and he "loses his sword." Similarly, Imbolc, the Feast of Brigit celebrated on February 1, is marked with sexual overtones evocative of an older agrarian perspective that linked the fertility of crops, livestock, and humans. According to one folk tradition, the man of the house enters the household in the name of Brigit and "those within ... go on their knees, open their eyes and admit Brigit," an overtly sexual reference to mating on Imbolc as a means of invoking the blessing of the goddess on the fertility of the household. The robust and fertile image of the Green Man is continued in the Irish Strawboys, the "masked and straw-costumed well-wishers who graced with their presence the house-parties of Irish country weddings."
However, your success is limited by natural circumstances beyond your control. Though appearing in many guises through the centuries, the Green Man is always younger and less experienced than the mother goddess, the sovereign Mother Earth. This youthful innocence can accomplish many ends, but you will need greater strength, confidence, and maturity to fully accomplish your goals. By accepting the limits of the situation, you will find much personal satisfaction and ready success. On the other hand, if you overextend your energy or ambition or brashly push ahead, the situation may turn from success to disappointment, and even ridicule.
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