Rebekah and the Green Man
by Kate Everson
Smashwords edition
Copyright 2011 Kate Everson
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Rebekah felt she knew who the Green Man was. She had seen him everywhere, in Celtic churches, over the stone arched doorways, or in the high domed ceiling or even hiding in the dark oak pews.
She felt a kinship with him. Even though he didn’t always look quite the same, she knew it was the same spirit that inhabited this quaint creature. The leaves surrounding his head, vines in his mouth, his eyes staring out at you like he knew your very soul. He did know hers, Rebekah thought. All too well.
She had first spotted the Green Man on her trip to Scotland. A visit to a lovely old cathedral in Dunblane was an eye-opener. Its history went back to St. Blane, a Celtic saint around the year 600. Educated in Ireland, Blane had come to the Pictish lands as a missionary. St. Columba had died on Iona in 597, a few years earlier. Blane is said to have been given a dun or fort at Dunblane as a site for a monastery.
Rebekah loved all this Celtic stuff! It spoke to her like nothing else. And the Green Man was a symbol of all that it meant to her.
Although this Green Man was carved into the oak seats in the 1400s, it still held a presence of the ancient Celtic ways.
“ And a Scotch thistle too,” she laughed. “This Green Man is a true Scot.”
Rebekah had seen other Green Men in various places in the Celtic lands and each one was a little different. In the 15th century Rosslyn Chapel, just south of Edinburgh, there were said to be 103 images of the Green Man!
“I love you!” laughed Rebekah. Now, here was a man she could relate to!
They didn’t show themselves easily, and were often hidden in the stonework or wooden carvings. Rebekah liked that about them. Even though they sometimes appeared sinister, they often looked comical and they either made her jump or laugh.
“Someone alive in the greenery,” she thought. “What a lovely thought!”
Rebekah knew that it was all just the carvers’ imagination, but often wondered where it came from. There were so many and all very much alike in theme. They started appearing in England in the 12th century, but had been discovered in Europe throughout the Roman empire much earlier than that, if you counted the little people seen hiding in the leaves on temples and decorations from the first century.
It reminded Rebekah of her own homeland of Canada where she often saw faces in trees. Weren’t these the original Green Men? She imagined that fairies lived there and were reaching out to people who passed by, through their knotty faces.
The cedars in the park were so smooth, she loved to feel their bark and sometimes sit on the trail and talk to them. The holes left where branches had fallen off seemed like eyes and there was always a nose or a mouth to go with it.
“Hello,” she would say very seriously to a tree. “And how are you today?”
She didn’t expect an answer but sometimes she got one. It wasn’t in words exactly, but more a feeling. The peace of the forest, the sound of the birds, the gentleness of a dear sweet friend talking to her face to face.
Rebekah had felt that camaraderie in the Celtic churches too, strange as it seemed. She didn’t know why, but she felt she had to keep coming back, linking in to that ancient chemistry that still existed between her and that era.
“Maybe I was a Celt,” she thought to herself. “I likely lived in a grove of oak trees and knew them all by name!”
She connected her love of nature with the Celts who honoured the seasons and the solstices and made medicine of herbs and potions. Their legends were intriguing to Rebekah and she longed to call herself Arianrhod, goddess of the moon! She loved the moon in all its stages, but she loved the full moon best and would often stand under it, feeling its energy.
On her trip to Dunblane, there was more than the Green Man to connect with. The stained glass windows also spoke to her. Not the typically religious ones, but the ones with warriors in chainmail and swords, shields and helmets. Even the women were warriors in Celtic times, and she could feel the fighting spirit in her.
“Oh, I know,” she laughed. “I’m such a wimp in real life!”
There were so many beautiful windows at Dunblane, she could barely stand it! She wanted to embrace all those strong people, those angels or whatever they were, whose eyes stared out at her so soulfully. She imagined they were the warriors of God, and they had a huge battle on their hands. Good and evil. Always a war going on somewhere!
She felt that inside herself. Always a battle. Good and evil? All she knew was there were forces that compelled her to do things. She wished she had more control.
Rebekah knew there were unseen energies in the world trying to exert their dominance. She felt them every day. Sometimes they left her exhausted.
If only she knew the truth, and by some divine grace could stay on that path! It would mean so much to her. But she was always being pulled away, led astray, and lost in a battle she had not expected. Battlefield of the mind, that’s for sure!
There was always some conflict in her life. If she only had these weapons! A spear, a bow and arrow, or a shield and a breastplate of armour.
Maybe she did.
Maybe she had them and didn’t know it. Not real weapons, but unseen ones. Maybe that little Green Man peering out from the bushes held the key. He had that all-knowing smile, with the greenery clenched between his teeth!
Rebekah closed her eyes and imagined where she would be if this was indeed 7th century Britain. On a lonely isle in the Hebrides, carving standing stones into Celtic crosses? Or standing inside a tiny chapel in the forest, made out of mud and stone, sweetly singing the lost song of her tribe?
Perhaps none of these! Maybe a goddess, in the ethereal world, not a human at all. Who says she had to be human? Wasn’t that where all the pain started?
Rebekah loved the stained glass window of the Blue Girl. She seemed astonished, star-struck, by whatever she saw. What was it?
She clearly saw something that astounded her. Maybe she saw light coming from one of those tall windows. In the light was a heavenly being, surrounded in rainbow colours, and radiating pure Joy.
“I feel her astonishment,” Rebekah said softly. “I have been there. I have known this.”
She sighed. Why had she forgotten so much?
Yet, deep inside she knew. She had to learn it all again. The battle was ongoing. To know it, to really know it, she had to fight. And this time, she had to win.
The heavens and the earth depended on it. Each person, each soul, including Rebekah, must do their part to win the war.
She smiled. She had armour. She had weapons. She had all the power of the moon and stars, the whole Universe on her side. They would win.
* * The End* *