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The newsletter has been in the current format for sometime now, so we thought it was about time for a change. Just because! Hope you all approve.
Apologies for forgetting to put in the date of this year’s Long Weekend last month. It is planned for June 21-24th. You don’t have to come for the whole four days so see Shaun for rendezvous points if you are planning to come for part of the trip. He also has details of accommodation in the Peterchurch area and is doing a block-booking at the campsite so let him know as soon as possible if you are camping.
Swallowhead Spring, an ancient sacred spring near Avebury, the source of the River Kennet, is the site of the morning dowsing session. Meet at 10.45am on Sunday April 22nd, at the Silbury Hill car-park on the A4. I am told that the path to the spring has been improved but stout foot-ware is usually required here.
The spring is believed to date from pagan times and even today many tie rags to the trees in the hope that their desires may come to fruition.
At one time local people used to congregate at Silbury Hill to drink a mixture of water from Swallowhead spring, and sugar. Ken Watts a respected local author suggests that this may be a survival of prehistoric water-source worship.
After the usual pub lunch we plan to visit Langdean Stone Circle, an interesting and beautiful spot near East Kennet, where nobody can agree on whether the large sarcens were an ancient stone circle or if they had another function. Langdean means Long Dean or valley and it is sometimes called Thorn Hill Stone Circle after the hill immediately to its west. Plenty of interesting dowsing! S.C.
A copy of me is coming to call.
Get up, my friend, and greet me
In a copy of your hall.
Mirroring each other in an image
Of your house, we'll quietly
Brew a lovely fax of tea.
We won't waste time on small talk,
We'll sign or sing a song
To bind our minds together
For the long long journey we must make
As carbons from our own age
To Avebury two thousand
BCE. Assuming we're permitted
By gatekeepers and guardians
We'll over-view the feasting,
As white-robed Druids wend their way among
The stones, hand-fasting pilgrims,
Sacrificing sheep and goats
On the great pre-Christian day of Beltane.
There will be people playing
Rock and roll some market stalls,
Lots of hanky-panky in the long grass.
The ditches gleaming chalk white,
The whirling women dancing.
The pilgrims still arriving late at night
As we slip away, shadows
Returning to a mirage
Of your home, where I will leave you. I won't
Have been anywhere near you
And you won't know I was there
Unless you had feelings of restlessness
Just after lunch today
When we set out on our trip
To Avebury before the common era.
Appearing in the skies there
As ghosts from the future. Oh,
Don't worry. They get a lot of that at
Avebury
Peter McDade
Imogen Corregan gave an extremely interesting talk on “The Green Man”, or Foliate Heads as they were known until 1929, when the green man name was first used by the eminent folklorist Lady Raglan. The name stuck.
As a dowsing group we often go to old churches on field trips as there are usually lots of things to practice dowsing on, and you can guarantee that several members will be busily searching the place for green men
Imogen showed slides of many fine examples of stone carved ones in churches and several secular ones, also some that had been carved in wood, mainly on church misericords. During the talk she pointed out that although the image is popularly associated with Jack in the Green, Sir Gawain, etc., there is nothing in literature of the mediaeval period to suggest that this is true. The fact is that nobody really knows very much about how they came to be so popular in British churches of this period.
Although the theory that they pre-date Christianity has its detractors, the fact is that many of them are almost exact copies of those found in India which are a couple of thousand years older that our carvings.
It would be interesting to know whether those travellers who brought back the designs did so because of the meaning behind them, rather than just because they liked the designs. If so, then it begs the question why our churches suddenly started to acquire them. Imogen spoke about the horrific events that took place here in the fourteenth century. If the people felt that God had deserted them, could this be why a religious image from a pagan part of the world started to become popular over here.
We may never know the whole story but that won’t stop us enjoying the hunt for the green man. Incidentally, one of the places we hope to visit on the long weekend is Kilpeck Church which has green men and other superb carvings in profusion.
Imogen had not yet got around to visiting India to look at the Green Man carvings there, but hopes to do so when time and finances permit. An interesting talk with a number of new places to add to the visiting list!
Several brave souls turned up for the Avebury trip – I suspect that we would have got even more had the National trust not raised the car-park fee to a fiver. However, most of those who turned up were members of the NT so did not have to pay. One benefit is that the car-park is now properly attended so probably is a lot less vandal prone than it used to be.
The morning session was spent in the main circle, then after lunch Windmill Hill was next on the list. It felt very vibrant, no doubt due to the closeness to the spring equinox a couple of days before. Lots of strong energy points and underground streams and not forgetting the Michael and Mary lines.
A pleasant day despite the cold wind.
Incidentally if you are thinking of a trip to Windmill Hill be warned that the trackway from the road up to the gate of the field has deteriorated very badly over the last few months – serious potholes so don’t take the vintage Rolls.
This piece appeared in “The Lady” 20 June 2006 and was discovered by Pat Cannings whilst doing research for a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream that she is directing.
By Biddy Fraser
There may not be fairies at the bottom of my garden, but there is a Green Man - the reason being that I bought him from a shop and put him there.
Whereas some people like to collect garden gnomes, I prefer images of the "Green Man", that traditional face from folklore. Wherever I travel I look for him. I am a Green Man "spotter", if you like, taking photographs and noting down the locations where I find him.
The Green Man is obviously a strong masculine image with his ragged, out-of-¬control leafy hair and wildly curling beard, but he also has a feminine side.
He is a symbol of nature and fertility, a sort of Father Earth. He reminds us of the ancient pattern of the seasons, of planting, growth and harvest.
It is sometimes difficult to tell whether he is smiling or grimacing, but whatever his expression, he offers the comforting assurance - even in the dark depths of winter - that nature has a habit of renewing itself.
Although the Green Man's origins are considered to be pagan, nobody knows just exactly what these roots are. Many people have tried to find out though, one of the most celebrated being a certain Lady Raglan who wrote a book about the Green Man in 1939. This was the first time that he was actually referred to as, "The Green Man". Lady Raglan coined the name.
Before that, he had had a variety of nicknames ranging from "Wild Man of the Woods" to "Jack-in-the-Green", but the current name chimes in well today with our modern concerns about saving the environment.
Images of the Green Man can be found all over the world. He has been spotted in Mexico among the remains of the ancient Mayan and Aztec cultures. He is depicted in the Swayambhunath Temple in Kathmandu. He is known as the Kirtimukha in Borneo and is used as decoration in temples in India.
He is also of course, frequently found in Europe, although sometimes in quite surprising places. Travelling recently to Venice, I saw a representation in the Doges Palace that struck me as slightly incongruous. Venice is obviously a city more known for its narrows streets and waterways, than parks, trees or even flowers. But then, that is the Green Man for you; he is always surprising.
Once a year, when Venice holds its world-famous carnival, you can see a variety of Green Men strolling through the city's magical alleys. They are a disconcerting sight for, although you know there is a real human being inside that costume, in the surreal, anarchic atmosphere of carnival there is always room for doubt. Then, I imagine that is just exactly how people who saw the Green Man in pageants and carnivals have always felt down the ages when confronted by his enigmatic mask.
But the Green Man does not always present himself as the kind of static image you find carved in stone or as a carnival mask. He has made frequent appearances in folk tales and literature and has been the subject of legends.
Just think of Robin Goodfellow, or Puck in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream: think of Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men.
It is not a coincidence, I think, that both of these characters appear to have multi-faceted personalities, which, like their stone counterparts in cathedrals and churches, are often very difficult to "read". Sometimes they can seem mischievous, sometimes benevolent, sometimes kind and sometimes malevolent, like nature itself.
The Green Man has also appeared in poetry down the ages, playing a starring role in one of the earliest English epic poems ever written. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a poem written in the 14th century, he takes on the role of the Great God who dies and is reborn.
Perhaps this idea that he is able to defeat death explains the Green Man's discreet presence in so many Christian churches. To the architects of our great cathedrals and ancient churches, he may have symbolised hope and rebirth, he may simply have been another way of representing the enduring power of faith.
Then there are the aforementioned Jack-in-the-Greens, who were familiar sights in the pageants and entertainments of centuries past and those of today. These Jack-in-the-Greens would be represented by a man wearing a heavy costume of branches and leaves, so that it seemed to his audience that a tree had sprung to life.
Then, there is another pagan figure: the "Wildman" representations of this chap are also often found in churches and many descriptions of him can be found in medieval literature. The Wildman is always very hairy and he often wields a large wooden club or, even, an uprooted tree.
He is definitely not someone you would want to bump into, particularly along a lonely unlit lane in the Middle Ages, as you were making your lonely way home at night.
Darkness and lonely walks have. I suspect, done more than a little to promote the legend of the Green Man. After all, in the many centuries before the electric light was invented, when most people lived in the country, it was highly likely that a man making his solitary way home from the fields at dusk did occasionally spot something slightly unnerving in the hedgerow. Especially, if he had downed a pint or two of ale at his local hostelry before he set out.
It would not have taken too much imagination to decide that the face he had just spotted in the hedgerow, or on a gnarled trunk of an old tree, really did belong to some uncanny creature.
Unnerving or not, the spry face of the Green Man is a very welcome sight in my own garden. For he not only reminds me of the reassuring cycle of the seasons, he also tells me that it is never wise to take nature completely for granted.
Is the Green Man in the shrubbery at the bottom of my garden, smiling or is he, in fact, grimacing? It is impossible to tell, but whatever his expression in spring and summer, autumn or winter he never fails to make me stop and think.
“The Quest for the Green Man” by John Matthews is published in paperback by Godsfield Press at £14.99.
The dowsing workshop run in March was fully subscribed to, in fact we squeezed in a couple of last minute extras. Shaun was the principle instructor, having been trained as an instructor by the BSD a few years ago, and did a sterling job as usual.
The day went off well and we were even able to do some work out in the stone circle in spite of the bitter wind.