The Foliate Head From Paganism and the Green Man Tradition

 In all that follows, true Christians know why there is religious error in Christendom that has existed from the fourth century, and that because it became the policy of the Roman Catholic Church to let paganism indigenously exist as a “folklore religion” alongside the few remnants surviving from the earlier, apostolic Christianity. This policy was and is in defiance of the Bible’s requirement that worship of the God of the Bible must remain free of whatever smacks of paganism: “Therefore, get out from among them and separate yourselves,’ says Jehovah, ‘and quit touching the unclean thing’” (2 Corinthians 6:17).

 [https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2021/01/introducing-the-green-man/]

 “The Green Man, a character from traditional folk culture, has captured the imaginations of many in the modern world. Books, articles, and websites on the Green Man abound, each of them looking at the figure from its own perspective. Those who have commented on or employed the image of the Green Man range from historians to neopagan worshippers, from festival organizers to novelists, and from folklorists to participants in Renaissance fairs….”

 “. . . [T]he term “Green Man” . . .  had existed for hundreds of years” prior to scholars’ mention of the term in the twentieth century….

 “. . . [R]ituals common among the peasantry involve a character called “the green man,” . . . [e.g., ] . . . that the Green Knight of the great Middle English romance /Sir Gawain and the Green Knight/ could be a manifestation of this character from folk culture….

A theory of the Green Man folklore tradition may be stated this way: “. . . [M ]edieval Christians in Britain celebrated a ritual similar to the May Day ritual from 1901. The ritual itself had come down to them from pagan ancestors, among whom it involved the death and resurrection of a vegetation spirit, sometimes even including the sacrifice of the person portraying the King or Green Man. The ritual had been Christianized so that it no longer involved a sacrifice, but people revered the Green Man and recognized the symbolic equivalence of the figure with Christ. The ritual therefore symbolized for them the death and resurrection of Christ, the “focal point of [their] religious ideals.” Because of this, they decorated Christian churches with portraits of the man performing the ritual, as a symbol of Christ, the resurrected God. As years went on, such rituals lost more of their religious underpinnings, but they persisted in form, giving rise to the common name and image of the “Green Man” for inns and pubs. They were still being performed in 1901….

“This theory . . . comports well in a very general sense with what folklorists know about the religious lives of many people. Many of us adhere to religions that have official liturgies, approved beliefs, and established theologies; yet we also believe in ideas, and follow traditions, not officially approved by those religions. Much of the imagery surrounding Christmas in America involves Santa Claus, elves, Christmas trees, and reindeer, none of which is part of most official denominations’ Christmas beliefs. Even in many churches, these images are prominently displayed during the season, but observers from a foreign culture might search in vain for any explanation of these symbols within the official teachings of the church.

“Folklorists call such unofficial beliefs, images, and practices connected to religious observance “folk religion.”

“Don Yoder, in his book /Discovering American Folklife/, included the following definition:

““Folk religion is the totality of all those views and practices of religion that exist among the people apart from and alongside the strictly theological and liturgical forms of the official religion.”

“One interesting aspect of Catholic religion is the existence of folk saints, holy people or other beings revered as saints by groups of people, but not recognized as such by the church. Typically, the story surrounding a folk saint and the details of the saint’s following are referred to as that saint’s “cult.”  The “Cult of St. Guinefort,” for example, reveres a heroic French dog of the 13th century. By speaking of the Green Man or Robin Hood having a “cult” in the 16th and 17 centuries . . . [suggests] that the figure was an unofficial folk saint….

“The May Day ritual . . . [is] undoubtedly an aspect of English folk religion. [And the theory that] . . . it was an adaptation of a very old pagan rite, and that the foliate heads and the earliest “Green Man” pub signs were illustrations of the same folk-religious ritual as it existed among Christians [from the Medieval to modern times] . . . This theory will probably remain unproven, but it is not outlandish. It doesn’t require medieval English people to be “defiantly pagan,” or carvers to be “subversive" [i.e., heretics] [I]t requires them to be Christians whose folk religious practices included a seasonal ritual adapted from their pagan ancestors, and who understood the symbolic connection of that ritual to Christianity. Consequently, one of their important symbols was the Green Man, even though that symbol was not part of the official religion.

“ . . . Many folklorists and anthropologists have argued, and continue to argue, that aspects of Christian folk religion are derived from pagan practices. Some of these pre-Christian practices are quite obvious in today’s world, such as referring to the Christmas season as “Yule,” decorating eggs for holidays such as Easter, and depositing votive offerings at bodies of water. Doing these things doesn’t make one “defiantly pagan,” but it does demonstrate that, to some degree, “unofficial paganism subsists side by side with the official religion.”

“The foliate head, too, certainly seems to be based on pagan antecedents. It’s true that these pagan antecedents have not been found in Britain, but Britain has never been cut off from continental or global cultural influences. Unless we imagine that Green Men in British church architecture have nothing to do with the similar figures in French and German churches, limiting our focus narrowly to Britain doesn’t make sense, . . . [because there is abundant evidence] that the ritual was a British version of a ritual that was also Continental. Other, better examples [of such evidence] exist from elsewhere in the Roman world, including several from the palace of Diocletian in Split, Croatia . . .  [where we do find] "two foliate heads are from a pagan context: the Temple of Jupiter at the Palace of Diocletian in Split, Croatia, ca. 300 C.E. ….

“No one would deny that meanings change over time, but the principle that older meanings are “unhelpful” in understanding more recent ones would surprise any scholar who works with meaning over time, whether in history, linguistics, or literature. In any case, drawing a strict dichotomy between Christian and pagan iconography, and between British and Continental iconography . . . is unnecessary and misleading. The halos we see around saints’ heads in artworks are not original to Christian imagery, but were adopted into Christianity early in the church’s history from Classical and other sources. They are Christian but also pagan, and their pagan meaning may inform their Christian meaning. The same seems to be true of the foliate head [and, as the credible theory goes, the connection foliate head from paganism with British folklore religion's uses of ‘the Green Man’].”

Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to celebrate/honor Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, May Day, and any other tradition that has the trappings of paganism. We have quit touching the unclean things from pagan/folklore religion.