some mysterious stuff

Lee Berman · 18 Jan 2011, 14:49 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 09:49:01 -0500
Subject: (urth) some mysterious stuff
Message-ID: <SNT123-W2E204AD3A264BB3EDC6C9CFF70 at phx.gbl>

>Looking up he saw the carved brown face from his mother's closet.

"A Green Man is a sculpture, drawing, or other representation of a face surrounded by or made 
from leaves. Branches or vines may sprout from the nose, mouth, nostrils or other parts of the 
face and these shoots may bear flowers or fruit. Commonly used as a decorative architectural 
ornament, Green Men are frequently found on carvings in churches and other buildings (both 
secular and ecclesiastical). "The Green Man" is also a popular name for English public houses 
and various interpretations of the name appear on inn signs, which sometimes show a full figure 
rather than just the head.

To the modern observer the earlier (Romanesque and medieval) carvings often have an unnervingly 
eerie or numinous quality.[says who?] This is sometimes said[by whom?] to indicate the vitality of 
the Green Man, who was able to survive as a symbol of pre-Christian traditions despite, and at the 
same time complementary to, the influence of Christianity: rather than alienate their new converts, 
early Christian missionaries would often adopt and adapt local gods, sometimes turning them into 
saints.[5]"

-Wikipedia

The connection of the carved Green Man figures to Dionysus and his representations is more or less a 
given.

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