Yesterday went to the Green Man Playgroup Easter Fayre. That’s a pagan double whammy. The whole idea of an Easter Fayre being the celebration of the Saxon spring goddess of Eostre “whose feast was the vernal equinox and whose animal was the spring hare”. The eggs that the kids hunted for in a box of shredded tissue paper are the symbols of the rebirth of the countryside. That this quaint afternoon out was organised by the Green Man Playgroup (named after the Green Man roundabout, itself named after the famous inn of that name where Dick Turpin was alleged to have drank, but as Nick once said, find me a pub on the edge of London that doesn’t claim a Turpin reference) was apt as the Green Man being the leafy deity of May and is also associate with rebirth:
“…There are legends of him (Khidr) in which, like Osiris, he is dismembered and reborn; and prophecies connecting him, like the Green Man, with the end of time. His name means the Green One or Verdant One, he is the voice of inspiration to the aspirant and committed artist. He can come as a white light or the gleam on a blade of grass, but more often as an inner mood. The sign of his presence is the ability to work or experience with tireless enthusiasm beyond one’s normal capacities. In this there may be a link across cultures, … one reason for the enthusiasm of the medieval sculptors for the Green Man may be that he was the source of inspiration.” — William Anderson, “Green Man: The Archetype of our Oneness with the Earth”
The hall sits in the grounds of the Welsh church – which I reckon is just a modern manifestation of Druidary. It’s my theory that the Druids adopted a tactic of entryism into the church a bit like Trotskyists joining the Labour Party. The atmosphere reminded me of the village jumble sales of my childhood except for the frenzy of excitement over the raffle the like of which I haven’t seen since I witness the raffling of tinned fruit at my Nan’s old people’s home in the early 80’s. I couldn’t convince my 3 year old that the South Park figures were worth buying, but at 10 pence I allowed myself a little indulgence.
The sense of pagan festivities had been signalled by the arrival of an envelope in the morning from the mystical and brilliant Bodmin Moor Explorer. Bodmin’s photo on his/her Myspace profile is of a Humpty Dumpty type character – a pace egg of sorts (I’m sure Bodmin will clarify this – my folklore is a bit sketchy). The envelope contained a copy of Network News a zine of folklore of mystical stuff published by Earthly Delights, some subversive postcards (Bodmin can’t possibly have known that the day before I’d been researching the basis of the fictional ‘red mercury dirty bomb plot’ could he?) and a badge that I shall attach to my walking jacket.
london