The Guardian of the Green

“He is, as you have seen him. He is the Master of wood, water and hill…{owning the land} would indeed be a burden. The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves. Tom Bombadil is the Master. No one has ever caught old Tom walking in the forest, wading in the water, leaping on the hill-tops under light and shadow. He has no fear. Tom Bombadil is master.”

One of the many genesis-points for Fencraft was a desire to split out the Wiccan God into a Triple God with three, aesthetically/mechanically distinct faces. Problems for me about the God: his amorphous vagueness, his role as a carrying-basket for all gods (no matter what they do) as linked merely by the male gender, and my inability to really untangle that three letter word with a capital G from a vision of the Christian God. At first, these were:

Then this process got out of hand, into two years of nine-by-nine grids, and finally to the Landcraft we know today which codfies these different strands of lore into a clear, abstracted map. Among the questions asked were:

You can still see many of the figures identified through this process in BTA.

The Guardian of the Green is a power who has the “job” of organising and ruling over the processes of the natural world. We can see this divinity in sentimental Victorian poems, in which fairies “paint” the flowers or put the dormice to sleep; and we can see it in the myths of the Green Man, who somehow personifies the countryside – wordlessly, with no myths around him, but so clearly present in the Landweird that we have needed to invent him.

Princess Mononoke

Domains

Solar-Stellar / Landish

Man and beast / man and nature / harmony and medation between the needs of man and the natural world. Total sensory immersion in a state of being.

Solar characteristics

These divinities have a small role as part of a larger system, and that system must continue to operate correctly and unchanged for things to remain in balance. These are linked to (Solar) ideas like Chinese Confucianism and British feudalism: all people have their role for which they are best-suited, all things in their place, on earth under heaven as it is in the world of the gods, and through this all shall be well. This evokes ideas of co-creation and community, ecosystems as an every-part-working-together.

Solar entities are cyclical, often in a way which feels like a trap or confinement, or compulsion to play out eternally or repeatedly a certain ritual role. Guardians of the Green are intimately bound to the land that they protect and oversee, the two cannot be divided. We cannot imagine what Bombadil or the Old Forest would look like, were they separated, but there is a sense that one creates the other (without knowing, for sure, which came first). This creates a sort of “fool” aspect, where these spirits often seem unaware of what it is they are doing – doing it by instinct alone – or are performing a safe, Solar face where they are a wandering hedge-layer or a funny man singing poems and wearing yellow boots, masking their profound and terrifying power.

But nature all in its proper place is a comforting feeling, as well as a conservative one – a desire for things to remain as they have always been, unaltered by man, change or time. This is a Solar emotion.

Stellar aspects

These powers are often deeply mysterious, with uncertain lineages or forms. They coming out of the Landweird, given form by our knowledge that they must exist. There is the mystery of what they are (gods? presences? fairies? It can be unclear), their relationship to what it is they govern, and the processes through which they make change. Because we rarely have clear myths about them, this makes them ideal Mystery figures to revere wordlessly as their image and experience; they are, like many Stellar things, divinity as abstraction – in here, our reverence for the natural world as animist experience.

They often have cthonic qualities – of dying and returning, of going under the soil to be born again, having the ability to walk in both the human worlds and wild-woods and be a bridge between the two, or being depicted as part-man, part-beast. And linked with the wild, they are often the guardians of what stands outside the village – that which the village gradually consumes and destroys, that which the village most deeply fears – the rage of the woodlands, returning to uproot the foundations and return the land to when all was the green.

By Brian Froud

Some Deities

Worzel Gummidge, and its depiction of the Green Man

I can’t emphasise enough how moving and personally meaninfgul this was to me, as a depiction of the Green Man. I was in a very bad place when I watched it, and it’s so lovely. This is one of the most influential depictions of the Guardian to me; but Worzel himself is also a Guardian of the Green figure, overseeing the growth of the fields and behavior of birds.

Tom Bombadil and Goldberry

Described as the “spirit of Oxfordshire countryside”, close-reading the chapter you see Bombadil engaging in a number of mystical land-management tasks, from keeping check on the behavior of the Barrow Wights and Old Man Willow, to managing the autumn and the spring alongside his partner Goldberry, who may well have a similar role over the Old Forest’s waterways and perhaps (in Fencraft) also the weather. There are two types of people, those who think these chapters are the worst part of Lord of the Rings, and people like me for whom they are really the very best parts of it. Bombadil has a deep landweirdiness, because we are never sure quite what he is; but he expresses, wordlessly, a sense of connection and love of the land and its mysteries.

These Tolkien quotes are applicable to the Guardian more generally:

In response to a letter, Tolkien described Tom in The Lord of the Rings as “just an invention” and “not an important person – to the narrative”, even if “he represents something that I feel important, though I would not be prepared to analyse the feeling precisely. I would not, however, have left him in, if he did not have some kind of function.” In another letter, Tolkien writes that he does not think Tom is improved by philosophizing. Tolkien commented further that “even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally)”. In a letter to Tolkien called Tom Bombadil the spirit of the vanishing landscapes of Oxfordshire and Berkshire”

Bombadil’s evocation of the Guardian of the Green is so good that you had best have some quotations from my Commonplace Book:

He is, as you have seen him. He is the Master of wood, water and hill…{owning the land} would indeed be a burden. The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves. Tom Bombadil is the Master. No one has ever caught old Tom walking in the forest, wading in the water, leaping on the hill-tops under light and shadow. He has no fear. Tom Bombadil is master.”

“He told them many remarkable stories, sometimes half as if speaking to himself, sometimes looking at them suddenly with a bright blue eye under his deep brows. Often his voice would turn to song, and he would get out of his chair and dance about. He told them tales of bees and flowers, the ways of trees, and the strange creatures of the Forest, about the evil things and good things, things friendly and things unfriendly, cruel things and kind things, and secrets hidden under brambles.

As they listened, they began to understand the lives of the Forest, apart from themselves, indeed to feel themselves as the strangers where all other things were at home…it was not comfortable lore…Tom’s words lay bare the hearts of trees and their thoughts, which were often dark and strange, and filled with a hatred ofthings that go free upn the earth, gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning: destroyers and usurpers. It was not called the Old Forest without reason, for it was indeed ancient, a survivor of vast forgotten woods; and in it there lived yet, aging no quicker than the hills, the fathers of the fathers of trees, remembering times when they were lords.”

Treebeard & the ents

Ents are “the shepherds of the trees”, so clear examples of the Guardian of the Green archetype. Their revenge on the (solar-lunar) Saruman is an evocation of why these spirits are so feared.

The Green Man. The Oak King and the Holly King. Jack in the Green parades.

An important aspect one comes to understand about the Guardian of the Green is that they are often symbolic & silent in nature, and hence we see the myth of the two kings being sort of “imagined” into our culture as a myth to explain the cycles of nature, and reverence them in a less abstract form. My husband talks about this in his video-series on animism in the Heathen tradition: “when we are children and we draw the sun, it is natural for us to put a smiley face on it; and the world seems just a little bit brighter”

Cerunnos

Despite his popularity, there is very little actually known about Cerunnos archaologically, beyond this evocative image sometimes known as “master of the animals”. For this reason, we see one aspect of him here, as a god of the hunt who “manages” the wild animals, and whose favour must be sought to find and take one. The Guardians of the Green are not only associated with the landscape and ecosystems, but can be connected with animals too, mediating our relationship with them.

The mysterious figure on the Gundelstrap Cauldron

Other potential animal-guardian figures include Radagast the Brown and St Ciaran.

Robin Hood

In this aspect, he is imagined as a “teacher” of the woodland, showing us how to live at one with nature; allowing one to poach the king’s deer (which are really his deer) through his education and favour; allowing or preventing one from passing through the forest; and the way he represents man’s fear of things coming out of the woodland and fighting back. This is a slightly different vision of Robin than the Solar-Lunar Robin, who is primarily imagined as a revolutionary embodying mortal concerns.

In the series Robin of Sherwood, Herne is the Guardian of the Green from which other characters learn.

Pan

In Fencraft, we generally use Pan in a very different way than as exclusively a nature spirit. Nevertheless, his appearance in Wind in the Willows (among others) emphasises his role as an organiser and protector of the natural world. Like Tom Bombadil, the secrets learned from him must be forgotten as you leave his realm.

The Forest Spirit

In Princess Mononoke, developers seeking to destroy the forest try and hunt down its embodiment – a strange creature, haunting a secret glade. In this film, which draws from the Japanese shinto tradition, we also see Wolf and Boar spirits which are also Guardians for their kind.

Elementals

Mythic systems often contain creatures or gods who embody and control a certain element. Sometimes, they play a role as a teacher about the thing they guard. Sometimes they seem to be formed/of by it. In the Western Esoteric tradition, names like gnomes, salamanders and sylphs are given to such elemental creatures.

Carri Angel

And the Rest

As you will have seen from this list, in British lore, this figure is usually depicted as male, and associated with the Land element. Another example is the Swamp Thing in the DC superhero universe. But this is not the only depiction of the God of the Green.

Spirits of the abundance of the sea, spirits who trick and tempt you n the desert. In Greek mythology, Helios who drove the chariot of the sun and Aurora goddess of the dawn are divinities who rarely appear in myths as fully-characterised people, and seem bound to the cycle of maintaining this process. In Middle Earth, Tilion and Arien are the (again, rather faceless) Maiar who guide the sun and moon across the heavens.

Look for similar Guardian of Nature roles in your tradition, or in the spirits you encounter.

In Fencraft, Guardians of the Green are usually seen as separate from spirits who have a role in the growth of crops and the weather, although there are clear parallels. These Guardians are before-man, and beyond him, and like all Stellar things, lack interest in man as their central concern.

It’s also important to distinguish this spirit from spirits who just happen to be in nature. The primary role of these spirits is to order and maintain the area under their power.

Governs

Unsurprisingly, interacting with the natural world through your Walk, and taking actions to protect and preserve it, are the two key practices associated with Guardians of the Green.

Correspondences

Colours, objects, symbols relating to the area of nature that they govern. As a landscape, an area brimming with their abundance and beauty.

The Retinue

The Guardian’s retinue is the personified spirits of the natural world, dryads and hamadryads and nymphs and such. Encountering the Guardian of the Sky, then their retinue may include spirits of birds, winds, clouds, weathers and so on.

By Domain

Solar

In the Solar phase, these powers are ordinary-seeming, often friendly or foolish people, wandering the landscape or relaxing in the natural world. They reveal their divinity slowly, acting as teachers, guardians and guides, and one slowly becomes aware of how mighty they perhaps are when their mask is removed. This aspect reminds us to take pleasure in the natural world, and not take ourselves or our magic too seriously.

Brothers Hildebrandt

Lunar

In the Lunar phase, these creatures can most easily be described as “fairies”. They claim dominion over their area, and their rules must be followed. As Morgan Daimler has pointed out, traditional fairies are NOT nature spirits – they are spirits that happen to live in nature. So do they fit this pattern? Certainly, depictions of nymphs and sylphs and naidas and hamadryads are the Lunar variant of this divinity.

British fairies, however, may not be. Still, they often do claim ownership and set the boundaries around a certain area of land, granting favour to those they like and causing ruin to the unwary or disrespectful. Jenny Greenteeth (who waits in pools), the haptalaon (who lies in long grass and snatches children by the ankles if they scrump apples from orchards), many stories of what happens to people who take down fairy-stones or fairy-trees: it is clear these creatures become very posessive about parts of the landscape in which they live, without exactly having a nature-guardian role. But by extension, they ultimately do perform a protection/maintanence role, through fear of their wrath if angered.

The water is especially thronged with such spirits, from mermaids in the sea, to the Nakki on Finnish docks, to Peg Powler, Nelly Longarms, Grindylows across the British isles – placed there by many a mother teaching her child caution of the waves. What about the Spirit of Dark and Lonely water? Him too.

If the Solar face of the Guardian is teaching man right-relationship with nature, then the Lunar face maintains it through respect and fear.

By Reinhold Max Eichler

Stellar

In the Stellar phase, these powers are encountered as the sheer presence of the natural world – be it awesome or terrifying – or as wordless animist experience, that cannot be characterised as a sort of man in a cloak with leaves in his beard. It can also be the image of nature’s power, particularly the forest reclaiming the realms of men.

The power/wrath of the natural world is, however, usually assigned to the Lunar-Stellar doman (say natural disasters and the inhospitability of mountains). The distinction seems to be, this spirit maintains natural rhythms as they have always been, whereas the Lunar-Stellar governs things which are specifically hostile and impassable to man. You cannot negotiate with a tidal wave, the death zone of Everest, or the way oxygen exchange functions in the depths of the ocean. In contrast, the Guardians of the Green watch over nature in the places where men are, a relationship which must constantly be negotiated to keep things in balance.

So the Stellar phase of this spirits is more usually a sense of increasing and overwhelming weird.

Reading List

Your weekly Walk. There’s basically nothing you can do better to understand and encounter the Guardian of the Green than spending as much time in the natural world, sinking into its rhythms, as possible.

This is also an important area for your Reading: finding in the pantheons you follow, or the folklore of your area, the names given to the guardians of the natural world, and especially any you may wish to ask permission of before walking through their dominion.

Beyond that, especially evocative examples include:

Return to Index