The "green man," is a pagan nature god from classical northern myth. In pagan belief, trees were held sacred and forest groves were perceived as the dwelling place of gods, goddesses, and a wide variety of nature spirits.

The “green man” symbol that has been found carved into wood and stone pagan temples and graves of medieval churches and cathedrals, and used as a Victorian architectural motif, can be found across an areas that stretch from Ireland in the west to Russia in the east. The name "green man"* dates back only to 1939, when folklorist Lady Raglan coined the term after making a connection between the architectural faces and the "Jack of the Green") tales of folklore.

Modern May Day celebrations were once part of pagan spring fertility rites with overtly sexual elements (the ‘May pole representing the phallus), but the Christian Church was quick to squash any lewdness they perceived in the rituals. A deep animistic belief with a strong reverence for trees and the holiness of nature was embedded among the peoples in the far north of Europe and in the British Isles. These two areas were where the Christian priests of the Dark Ages (such as Devon's stern St. Bonifice) particularly sought to eradicate the pagan beliefs and even cut down and burned sacred trees and entire groves and forests.

In Norse mythology, a giant ash tree called Yggdrasil held the universe together. Its three great roots linked Asgard (the realm of the gods), Rime-Thusar (the realm of the Frost Giants), and Niflheim (the realm of the dead) with the human world (Midgard). The Celtic tribes of Britain and Ireland asserted that each type of tree contained magical properties. Each letter in the Celtic "ogham"* alphabet stood for a tree and its magical associations and can be seen embedded in the mythology of the Celts; e.g. the"Battle of the Trees," "The Romance of Taliesin.”**

Vegetation imagery and deities echo within Northern myths and those from the Mediterranean. Dionysus is thought be many scholars to be a forerunner to the Green Man symbol. He was often depicted masked, crowned in vine and ivy leaves. As deity of the wilderness and wine, ecstasy, and sexual abandon, his presence mythically could drive whole communities mad, and women under his influence (the maenads) roamed ecstatically through the forest. The cult of Dionysus was one of the great Mystery religions, with rites that range from the intellectual and contemplative to those that were drunken and orgiastic. Dionysus is also associated with death and rebirth as a god of the underworld (Okeanos). He was born three times; first as the son of Persephone and Zeus (devoured as a child by Titans), second as the son of Semele of Thebes (who dies as a result of Hera's jealousy before the baby comes to term), and third, as the fetus from Semele's body born out of the thigh of Zeus.

Trees as sacred also plays an important part in Greek and Roman mythology with particular trees aligned symbolically with gods; Zeus-oak, Adonis-myrrh, Daphne-laurel, Artemis-forest groves. Further motifs between Greco-Roman and the Norse can be seen with the dryads, the nymphs who live in trees and die when the tree is cut down. In Northern Europe, the Faeries who inhabit the trees, take revenge on humans who destroy their habitats. In other stories, the faeries mourn after the destruction of their home and when they die, the beauty and magical soul of the land die with them. Other parallels exist with the tree trolls of Finland and Norway. In Sweden, the swor skogsfru (wood wives) are seductive and utterly beautiful from the front. From the back, these faerie women are made of bark and are hollow as logs. In Italy, the silvane (wood women) mate with silvani (wood men) to produce the folleti, the enchanting faeries of the land. In England, brownies and pixies make their homes in oak tree roots, and each kind of tree has its own faerie to tend it and enable its growth. Men made of bark seduce young maids in the fairy tales of eastern Europe. Some of the men are dangerous, while others make tender lovers. The forest of Broceliande (now known as Paimpont) in Brittany also possesses tales that range from the benevolent to the malign.

In romantic literature- the hero’s quest, the movement from the known to the unknown, the test of faith- many of these same elements and symbols are integral to the story and have carried throughout the ages from the medieval era through to contemporary fantasy literature.

“Jack of the Green” is also associated with spring new growth as pageants ritually ‘kill’ Jack with wooden swords and then the crowd takes the leaves off Jack as souvenirs of luck, the resurrection of spring, etc. The re-enactments are associated with revival/resurrection of the tree spirit in a more youthful, potent, and vibrant form. The pageants are reminiscent of a time when a blending of the pagan and the Christian was common in order for conversion.

In Hastings, England, the Jack in the Green pageant is re-enacted each spring by a man in a towering eight-foot-tall costume of leaves, topped by a masked face and a crown made out of flowers. He moves through the town accompanied by men (Morris and clog dancers) whose hair, skin, and clothes are all green, and a young girl bearing flowers, dressed and painted entirely in black. As the dancers entertain the crowds, Jack, the trickster/fool figure, romps and chases the young maidens. When he reaches a mound in the woods below the local castle, the dancers take out their wooden swords and strike the leaf man dead. The ritual of reading a poem over the creature solemnly occurs, then the crowd cheers in as each person takes a leaf from the Jack for luck. In Bavaria the tree-spirit, Pfingstl, roams through rural villages wearing leaves of alder and hazelnut with a high pointed cap covered by flowers. Two boys with swords accompany him as he moves through the houses, knocking on doors and asking for presents but often getting thoroughly drenched by water instead. The ritual ends when the boys kill the green man. In Picardy, a member of the "Compagnons du Loup Vert" dresses in a green wolf skin and foliage and enters the church carrying a candle and garlands of flowers. He waits until the Gloria is sung, then walks to the alter to stand through the mass. At its end, the entire congregation rushes up to strip the green wolf of his leaves, bearing them away for luck.

*The name "green man" is still controversial:
"...the legitimacy of the connection still remains controversial, with little real evidence to settle the question one way or the other. Earliest known examples of the foliate head (as it was known prior to Lady Raglan) date back to classical Rome -- yet it was not until this pagan symbol was adopted by the Christian church that the form fully developed and proliferated across Europe. No known writings exist that explain what the foliate head represented in earlier religions, or why precisely it became incorporated into Christian architecture, but most folklorists conjecture that the foliate head symbolized mythic rebirth and regeneration, and thus became linked to Christian iconography of resurrection. (The Tree of Life, a virtually universal symbol of life, death and regeneration, was adapted to Christian symbolism in a similar manner) (Terry Windling, Tales of the Mythic Forest).

**see Robert Graves, The White Goddess, for detail regarding the symbolism of the Celtic alphabet.

For further reading:
William Anderson and Clive Hicks, Green Man
Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough
Sara Maitland, Angel Maker
Robert Pogue Harrison, Forests: the Shadow of Civilization
Jane Yolen, Dream Weaver, Sweeny's Flight
Dante's The Divine Comedy (Infern-o"Wood of Suicides")
JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.
Neil Gaiman, Stardust
William Morris, The Wood Beyond the World
Hope Mirrlees, Lud in the Mist
James Stephens, The Crock of Gold
Charles de Lint, Memory and Dream, Someplace to Be Flying, The Wild Wood
Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose, The Book of Atrix Wolfe, Stepping from the Shadows.
Sean Russell, World Without End and Sea Without a Shore);
Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber
Kingsley Amis, The Green Man
Naomi Mitchison, The Corn King and Spring Queen
Ariosto, Orlando Furioso
Gawain and the Green Knight
Valentine and Orson

Authors in general:
Alan Garner
Ursula K. Le Guin
Philip Pullman
Robert Holdstock

Wildman imagery:
Gilgamesh
Tarzan of the Apes
Yvain
Casper Hauer
The Jungle Book
Alice Hoffman, Second Nature

Artwork
Andy Goldsworthy, Wood
Peter Randall-Page, Granite Song
Thomas Joshua Cooper, Between Dark and Dark, Dreaming the Gokstadt