hmmm, looks like a very green man.....

What? a Green man...?

Just who is this Green Man, anyway...?

Lots of people have asked the Dollmaker that very question.

they ask.. "This Green Man Doll... just what is he about?"

(The Dollmaker is obliged to explain less frequently now,

since more people seem to know who Green Man is nowadays...)

{...an interesting sign of the times}

... be that as it may, the Dollmaker shall now answer the question, her way...

the question being

Who is Green Man?

Once upon a time, on earth...

there lived a race of ancient earthlings who had vines growing from their mouths and noses.

LOL. Just kidding. They were just ordinary humans like you and me.

Except that they were GREEN.

LOL. Just kidding. 

Okay, really now, once upon a time,

there lived an ancient race of ordinary people who were very into

GREENERY....

and I am not kidding about THAT...

This group of ancient earthlings observed that, by mid-winter, all the leaves had fallen from the trees, yet this did not mean that these trees were dead. On the contrary, the trees grew more leaves again in the Springtime. When the time was right, the trees came back to life.

(Sound familiar, self-evident, even simplistic?) 

Right. But it wasn't just the trees- the bushes and shrubs grew new leaves again too, the grass came back from dried-up husks, and the flowers popped out in renewed splendor- all of which fairly reliably led to fruiting, harvesting and eating... and indeed, folks back then made eating a priority; generally speaking, we still feel strongly about eating.

So Nature absolutely awed the simple folks of ancient times- they really marvelled at the behavior of the Greenery. They watched throughout the winter and waited for the Greenery to come back each year and they saw it as miraculous and darn near religious when the Green came back.

And each year in the Springtime... they called it-

The Return of the Green.

( I believe I mentioned they were simple folks.)

The color GREEN symbolized new growth...a new beginning...a fresh start...new life...food.

And the Return of the Green was a reason to party.

So, the simple Green-loving people of olden days would hold these wondrous festivals to celebrate the Springtime and the Return of the Greenery, during which they danced and frolicked about and found ingenious ways to entice the Greenery to flourish. Yes, friends, they did think that they could entice the Greenery to flourish, and they did not use the fertilizers we have today, but that gets us into another story...

...for now let us just say that since 

the GREENERY was the Theme of the Festivities,

someone had to REPRESENT the GREENERY in the PARADE! 

 Back in those days, the men were the actors; they even played the parts of women onstage, so of course it was a man who got to wear the costume made of leaves and branches and play the part of the GREENERY in the parade, waving to the rabble-rousing crowd while perched on a festively adorned donkey who also wore a matching costume of green and leafy branches.

The guy impersonating the Greenery became known as

the GREEN MAN.

(LOL!  YES THIS TRADITION LIVES ON EVEN TODAY!)

Now, then. During these ceremonies, there was much gratitude expressed among the ancients to the GREENERY for the wine which made philosophers of a few of them... and when these philosophical elders got together to contemplate the matter of the cyclical Greening, it struck the ones still standing that the man on the back of the donkey pretending to be a GREEN MAN, really was a GREEN MAN! 

It took centuries to unravel what these wise elders meant... but evidently the philosophers of old intuited that the individual representing the SACRED GREENERY had the same rejuvenative properties within himself as the plants he was honoring-

They understood that man can be said to be... well, green.

In other words, Self-Renewable. Capable of new growth.

For most people, some kind of restoration happens

during our "dormant" phase- during sleep.

This just keeps getting simpler and simpler...

.....................

Artists who could understand the philosophy of the day strove to preserve these blinding realizations in painting and sculpture.

They got to work carving the Green Man image into stone walls and into their huge heavy wooden doors.  Oftentimes they used a human face surrounded by leaves, sometimes with vines twirling in or around the mouth, sometimes with  rather odd expressions on the face...

Tourists coming across these images might wonder what sort of half-plant-half-human creatures these ancient artists were striving to represent -

...but scholars such as Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell have found the GREENMAN images fascinating and have written volumes describing Greenman as an ARCHETYPE, meaning that GREENMAN, representing 

 "Self-Renewal" 

(or- Rebirth- like- you can teach an old dog new tricks),

is a Universal Truth which can be experienced by humans worldwide, all races and nationalities, in any time period throughout endless Time...

 wow.

So, into these lofty realms enters yours truly, the Dollmaker. 

She who is always on the lookout for unique and powerful, new and meaningful imagery for her dolls...  hmmmmmm, what's this?

 Green, leafy and symbolic... oh yeah, got to make HIM!

(mages of Green Man from the Internet)

Therefore, savvy, informed gentlemen who come a-shopping at the Wee Peeple Doll Gallery will often select a Greenman Doll, realizing that

"SELF-RENEWAL" 

applies to emotional and spiritual (translate: relationship) renewal as much as it applies to the regeneration of fingernails and leaves.

hmmmm!

So, the answer to the question, "Who is this Green Man?"

can really be answered in quite a few ways...

which LEAVEs us... (pun intended)...

 looking into the trees

 and there, if you look carefully, sometimes, constructed of shadows and light, you MIGHT be able to see him- the Greenman... not the doll, not the archetype, not the parade-walker or the legend, but the real thing made of branches and leaves which move and breathe in the wind...

 watch for him.

Kandra Niagra, Dollmaker

PO Box 326

Smithville, Texas 78957

Phone: 512-360-2443

Email: bigkandra@aol.com

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12/10