New God for a New Paganism

Abstract

Modern Pagan religions are past-oriented, seeking inspiration and legitimation from the pre-Christian religions that once existed in and around Europe. This has led modern Pagan groups to adopt various ideas about pre-Christian religions and their survival that stem from late nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholarship – including the notion of the Green Man. The belief that the foliate heads of medieval ecclesiastical architecture demonstrated evidence for a pre-Christian religion surviving into the High and Late Middle Ages, as articulated in its most complete form by Lady Raglan in 1939, appealed to early Wiccans such as Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente, who interpreted these heads as depictions of the Wiccan Horned God. By the 1990s, the Green Man had become arecurring image in the modern Pagan milieu who was increasingly incorporated into ritual, while the 2000s witnessed the growth of modern Pagan literature devoted to this new sylvan god.