GREEN MAN - The Archetype of Oneness with the Earth. William Anderson with photography by Clive Hicks, Compass Books. £12 99.

Don’t be fooled by the Green Man. He of the hey nonny no and derry down day (that archetypal English symbol of the halcyon days of the Greenwood and Robin bedecked in Lincoln green; Jack in the Green, Robin Goodfellow and the legendary Green Knight) may conjure up a responsive Englishness, a pilgrimage back to Old Albion, but there is more then meets the eye in this symbol.
    The foliate head, etched by the masons’ chisels in many a church and carved by the sculptor’s knives on many a cathedral seat, played a role in the development of the Gothic civilisation of medieval Europe, in the Renaissance and in the rise of modern science. Further, according to author William Anderson and photographer Clive Hicks, his present emergence signifies a recovery of the sense of the sacred in nature, and of new humility among scientists.
    The Green Man utters life through his mouth. His words, they assert, are leaves, the living force of experience. Anciently he was the Prophet, now he comes back as the archetype of the Poet, to redeem our thought and our language, to give simplicity and clarity to the confusion and complexity of modern technological society, and to point us towards renewing the harmony and the unity to the world of Nature with inescapable love.
    In his origins he is much older than our Christian era, yet this image of death and rebirth has been nurtured by the Christian faith, not least in the many symbols of the Green Man in church and cathedral. And like the unicorn, the griffin, the centaur, he is a composite image (a man’s head and foliage).
    A bravura journey of detection into his origins has been initiated. This journey, nay pilgrimage, has been approached with a full eye on his present and coming significance throughout the British Isles and across Europe. The photographic work is exceptional and the lengths to which the detective has pursued his prey are manifold and marvellous.
    Here is a veritable tour-de-force that illustrates the ‘Age of Aquarius’ was alive before Jesus walked and talked among us; man’s perceptions have been keener than we have hitherto given credit for and our New Age movements are, quite simply, old hat - Flower Power has reigned for centuries. Prince Charles’s oft-times lambasted ways of talking to the plants are nothing new and Sir Gawain has been in search of the Green Knight forever and a day.
    Doug Pickford