{"id":23332,"date":"2019-03-20T16:00:46","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T21:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=23332"},"modified":"2019-03-17T10:57:48","modified_gmt":"2019-03-17T15:57:48","slug":"reverend-janglebones-soap-box-little-green-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2019\/03\/20\/reverend-janglebones-soap-box-little-green-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Reverend Janglebones’ Soap-Box: Little Green Men"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0The birds are back, baby! The evenings are longer and the outside smells like the outside again. When spring hits its regularly scheduled stride it\u2019s hard not to carry it in your own step. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0It seems like just when you\u2019ve begun to acclimate to the slower pace of winter the spirit of its peppy successor steps in and simply can\u2019t resist, in its childlike wonder, to smash the big green button of life\u2019s triumphant return. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0I\u2019m getting poetic with this because there does seem to be an almost eerily specific quality to spring. Some kind of archetype that has been perceived and depicted by many cultures in ways that leave the question of coincidence up to just about any curious observer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The Green Man of Spring is a myth that, strangely, shows up in ancient architecture and ruins from Eastern Asia all the way to North America. Many of these instances occurring completely independently of one another and at different points in history. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0These smiling, gnarly gnome like faces (surrounded in a frame of leaves or vines) were depicted in holy buildings and jewelry, both secular and ecclesiastical. As if it were a fact of the world that all ancient people could plainly see, regardless of their religion, faith or doctrine.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Dalua, as the Celts called him, was always a representation of new life. Of fertility and sustenance and the sort of dewy-eyed Disney love of innocence and cute little baby woodland animals. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Alternatively, one wouldn\u2019t be amiss if they caught a whiff of Dionysus\u2019 or Bacchus\u2019 wine in the air, as they are also widely associated with the more adult side of the Green Man (<\/span>after dark).<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0It does however, as ancient legends often do, get darker.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The Aztec had a deity they called Tlaloc that they believed controlled the rains. Now, connecting an occurrence in nature to the divine is natural (it\u2019s an effective means to understand both nature <\/span>and <\/span><\/i>the divine), but the way in which a culture does so is entirely the choice of that culture, alone. I know all of this logically, and still I\u2019ll have a hard time sleeping after thinking about the slave children who were sacrificed to ensure the timely arrival of the rains each year. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0There is no way to judge this form of worship, as there is simply no comparison between their now long-gone world and the one in which we have theologians and newspapers, but it\u2019s bone chilling just the same.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0That is just one dark interpretation of the Spirit of Spring. There are far more positive relationships forged with the Green Man than not. One of my favorites is 13th Century \u201cParzival\u201d by German author <\/span>Wolfram von Eschenbach. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0It is a romance<\/span> tale of innocence and pure love: two things Parzival had to possess as prerequisites, for he was to be steward of the Holy Grail and keep it safe until the coming of Arthur the King. Parzival\u2019s bravery was drawn from his pure love and, through its might, he accomplished heroic and legendary deeds.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0That\u2019s kind of a lot to live up to, but sometimes having the courage to let one\u2019s own innocence show, and forgetting about fear for a while, can be truly inspiring to those who have the desire, if not the courage, to smash the big green button themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

Brian Yoder<\/strong>
\nReporter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0The birds are back, baby! The evenings are longer and the outside smells like the outside again. When spring hits its regularly scheduled stride it\u2019s hard not to carry it in your own step. \u00a0 \u00a0It seems like just when you\u2019ve begun to acclimate to the slower pace of winter the spirit of its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10416,"featured_media":23333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[3124,3126,3127,3125,225],"class_list":["post-23332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-brian-yoder","tag-little-green-men","tag-myth","tag-reverend-janglebones-soap-box","tag-spring"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-64k","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/rain-grass-pexels.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23332"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23334,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23332\/revisions\/23334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}