That our society has disintegrated is surely no longer a secret. We can observe it at all levels. Personal and social misery go hand in hand. To resist it is a superhuman task. So what to do? The historian A.Toynbee has shown us the way out of the madness. "If everything is in decay, there is only one way: going back to the Source in order to be renewed". Hence, the regeneration of the culture begins with a New Spirituality. The Revolution: The Origin has proved to be a Vacuum, a Cosmic Womb, a "Great Mother". Both the Divine Light ("God", Consciousness, BuddhaNature) as well as the universe are born out of "Her", while continuously returning.

In these most critical of times the Cosmic Mother "has sent Her Sons - Green Men - and Daughters - Wise Women - in order to save the earth"

The Vacuum is thus the Cauldron of Creation and Destruction. Everything is continuously drawn from the periphery to the bottomless Urground, while being reborn in the selfsame Eternal Moment. Everything is subordinated to it, from the "highest" level to the "lowest". Construction and demolition are maintained by Emptiness. There is a constant feedback, for example, between the earth and the Void, between our body and the Void and between our ego and the Void .....If we are (dynamically) balanced it will be reinforced by the Cosmos, if we are out of balance it will be repaired, in case we are "obstinate sinners", then it may be that the Cosmos is destroying us. Thus Emptiness - or the balance between creation and destruction - does not tolerate extreme accumulations. If they exceed a threshold, then they will be destroyed by the Primordial Ground. It is what we can observe today.

"Now, this has nothing to do with the "apokalypse". As we know this relies on the biblical Book of Revelation, where God ultimately destroys the world and saves the "good". Annihilation of the world as a (deliberate) "voluntary act" of a personal God is absurd. This can only be written by a confused and fear-obsessed man. Because the church ever since has used fear as a cornerstone of its strategy, the whole Christian world is poisoned with the idea of the apokalypse. The evangelist has simply put together different archetypes, without knowing their deeper meaning. He f.i. writes about the Cosmic Woman e.g. the archaic Mother Goddess. She plays (indeed) a key role! In reality She is embodying a law of nature, e.g. She symbolizes the neutral impersonal Cosmos, simply the dynamic equilibrium between creation and destruction. No punishing God, no revenge on the "infidels", no "chosen ones" that are rescued, but solely the law of the universe, that works like it works - creative and destructive - as it is, without intention.

The spiritual lesson? "Cooperating" with the Cosmos - letting your ego continuously die - you will be "saved", being continuously reborn as New Self. If, on the other hand, you cling to the ego, then you will perish (spiritually) .....

1.2  EMERGENCE AND EVOLUTION

Green Men and Wise Women have their origins in prehistory. The men identified themselves with their hunting animals, while the women embodied the All-Embracing Cosmic Mother. Man and beast were one, for only then the strength of the animal could be transferred. Think of the shamans. Boundaries between man and beast were often not very clear....The image of the "Lady with the (Her) beasts" is thus very ancient. She is especially worshipped by the Templars (see later), who took these images from the Middle East (Sumeria, Babylon, Canaan) back to Western Europe. The mix of man and animals are often seen in the apsises of old churches. One can thus estimate their age better. After that Green Men were mixed with existing Roman/Celtic notions, that were still everywhere. Especially the ("Garden") God Sylvanus has played a role here.

To the people of those times, everything without exception was embedded in the Cosmic Womb of the Primordial Mother. Later the Goddesses - daughters - and the Gods - sons emerged from Her. Because the Mother stands above all - the Cosmic above the Divine e.g. the Light that is born out of Darkness - Her children aren't ordinary, but Divine. Before they later seperated from the Mother, they had an intimate relationship with Her. The Goddesses and later the Gods embodied "death and resurrection" in order to guarantee the annual harvest. Each autumn he returned to the Dark Primordial Ground (Emptiness!) of the Mother in order to become reborn in spring. Osiris, Tammuz, Attis, Baal, Adonis, Dionysos and.....Jesus are all part of the same Original Tradition. The (very) small difference: while the vegetation Gods sacrificed themselves for the (biological) survival of the poeple, Jesus "died for their (spiritual) redemption". Above are thus the first appearences of the Green Man. The foliate heads confirm their early status as vegetation God. (PS. First stage BeastMan!, see above)

Over time, the Green Man evolved Parsifal and the Grail as the "Cauldron of Abundance" play a role here. LINK: Alcobaça. Also, Jesus was judged by many to be part of the Green Man tradition. ""Hildegard of Bingen, Bernard of Clairvaux, the Cistercians LINK: Alcobaça and specially the Templars have promoted the arise of the "traditional" leaf masks. The latter symbolizes the unity of the Divine with nature. In particular in the Gothic period, they were installed everywhere. It is the form most widely known. ""The "English School" adheres to this form. ""Anything less "is not a Green Man." If you limit yourself to the form, you should not call him "Green Man", but "foliate mask".* While I am emphasizing the Essence of the Green Man. Because infinite Emptiness embraces many forms, the appearance of the Green Man is changing constantly ( "trickster"). It is his true nature! Also historically seen the Green Man existed far before his appearence as foliate head. Putting limits on him, is doing injustice! What is new: all above mentioned have a connection to each other. ""They form an independent, uniform and continuous (spiritual) culture, that recently has arisen, once again LINK: "The Original Tradition"

* With other words: the Foliate Head as we know him is part of a much more extensive tradition of the Green Man, which had its beginning in pre-history....To mention only one example: Osiris, egyptian God, was already called the "Green One"...

The connection to the Templars is essential. LINK: Tomar. So their fate can often be determined from the expressions of the masks. One can understand exactly where the Templars were suppressed, and where not. In Spain and Portugal LINK: Batalha (also in Scotland, but there I still have to go) they were protected by the rulers, so everywhere they can be admired as part of the elite. In the Renaissance the Green Man enjoyed his first liberation. LINK: Irache. He was given more playground as he was able to move freely in the leaves. They have been rehabilitated, first by the earlier and then by later French kings. Indeed, it were the secular rulers and the citizens who have maintained the tradition of the Green Man. LINK: Versailles, Paris, Santiago de Compostela, Leon, Konstanz, Mainz, etc., etc. There were also major setbacks. First of all the Thirty Years War, the Reformation. The Contra-Reformation used the "baroquesation", an attempt to remove all the unwanted or "dangerous" elements from the church. Many Green Men were then converted into sweet little angels. Link: Estella. The French Revolution and shortly afterward, Napoleon also contributed to the fact that much was destroyed. The two world wars did the rest According to estimates, there were originally in Germany, at least ten to twenty times more Green Men and Wise Women. They were present everywhere .....LINK: the town hall of Bremen, perhaps THE example of how it previously looked like..... In today's world his "death and rebirth" are spiritually interpreted. He shows us the way out of the ego-addiction towards a new beginning. We all must overcome our ego in order to become a new (wo)man ..... Only then can the world be saved i.e. a New Step in Evolution be made.....

1.3  EUROPEAN SACRED HERITAGE

Christianity is not a unique new beginning. It is however a link in a long tradition. It just did not want to recognize that. That is why it has taken everything that was useful from the old religions, in order to subsequently ruthlessly stamp out the latter. It wanted at all costs the absolute claim on autocratic rule. When one speaks of the Western Christian culture, a great question mark has to be set. Where today Christianity is losing its power position, it is time to return to the Truth. The miracle: physical evidence has survived for the existence of an unbroken pre-Christian tradition, and surprisingly (mainly but not solely) in the churches! They are the Green Men and the Wise Women! They are called "European Sacred Heritage" and deserve - because long suppressed, and therefore vulnerable - as opposed to the "European Religious Heritage" that is still omnipresent - our special attention and protection. Six months it took to search for Green Men everywhere in Europe. The amazing thing: they are everywhere, from Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Benelux, England to France, Spain and Portugal (other countries such as Austria, Switzerland and Italy, I have not been able to visit yet). Even more surprising: they are all the same i.e. show the same essence and manifestations. Conclusion: There was actually a single pre-Christian European tradition .....The discoveries are revolutionary, sensational and unsurpassed

The phenomenology of the Green Man reflects the various periods of time. Vegetation Gods from the Middle East (Sumeria) LINK: Berlin; the Greek i.e. Hellenistic God Dionysos, Roman heads with leaves, including Sylvanus the "garden God;  (LINK: i.e. Museum, Cologne); Celtic faces (LINK: Pfalzfeld), early "Christian" notions (LINK: Poitiers, St Hilaire / Trier), the Gothic masks with their typical leaf pattern in/out of the mouth, nose, eyes. Sign of the intimate connection with nature.(LINK: all Gothic churches) the Knights Templar importing from the Middle East Beast Men (cats and goats!) (LINK: Eunate and many other old churches), LINK: "The Lady with the beasts", original link between the Primal Mother and Her Sons; the Renaissance faces or figures freely in the leaves (sign of the development of individuality) (LINK: Cologne Cathedral), a little later the total liberation of all sorts of "Pagan" ideas (LINK: Irache for example), in the Baroque the transformation of the Green Men in harmless "decadent" golden angels (LINK: Estella)."Thereafter, until today "modern" ideas, often inspired by Classicism and Art Deco (LINK: Versailles, Amsterdam). In short,   through the typology the era can be determined. A valuable support for your voyage of discovery!

1.4  DEATH AND REBIRTH

The Church has not kept its promises, because is it not true that because "Christ died for us", people could continue with "business as usual?". Exactly the opposite also. It all just did not work out. The sacrifice of the one paved the way to unsurpassed egoism of the many. For a long time this was the basis for the existence of the Church. Today, people accept "facts" as the original sin no more, and thus don't need a savior to redeem them from it. The core problem has moved from the exterior to the interior though. Now it's our turn. Therefore, today's Green Man is a leap forward in evolution: it symbolizes the realization that - in order to survive - every (wo)man must give up his/her ego (to "die" in order to become reborn). Instead of an idealized divine person - whose perfection (was) is unattainable for us, leaving us forever dependent and imperfectly e.g. irresponsible! - the Green Men are thus our real friends. They are everywhere, close to us, approachable at any time. They suffer with us, are happy with us. In short, they embody a reality with which we can identify ourselves. This realization made Hildegard of Bingen call Jesus a "Green Man"

"Life is suffering," said the Buddha. Since he came from a sheltered environment, he was totally shocked by the experience of a sick man. From that moment on he has found his mission: to rid the world of suffering. LINK: Realize Your Maitreya Mind. Christianity has a very ambiguous attitude towards suffering. On the one hand it defines God as "good" and is then surprised that there is suffering in the world. On the other hand, humanity can only be redeemed by the suffering of Jesus Christ..... Unfortunately, it must be said that the Church is not interested in THE Truth, but only in their truth. Like other religions or businesses, she tries to increase her "market share" all the time*. This has nothing to do with true religiosity..... Did it contribute to the fact, that  the problem of theodicee ("How can God allow suffering in the world?") for the theologians has been an invincible hurdle for many centuries? The simplest solution is to realize that this problem is self-generated. It is a victim - not of the "whims of God" - but of our own definitions. It has nothing to do with "theodicee" as such. If we drop conclusions like "God is good, love, all-mighty" etc., then the problem is solved.

* "Papa" Joseph Ratzinger (once again) has condemned the egoism of the people. However, it is corporate i.e.structural egoism - of which the Church is a part - that is first of all destroying the earth

So it is all about knowledge of God. Apparently the Church doesn't know who (What) God is. Almost all Christians admit that they do not really know God or even doubt whether there is any. The utterance of "Papa" Joseph Ratzinger, "that we can not define God" makes no difference in this regard. It is just an attempt to keep everything vague so that the church can continue to strengthen her position. The church has deliberately marginalized or destroyed all those who experienced i.e. realized the Divine: Gnostics, Mystics, "Heretics" ....But they are there, everywhere. And more and more people are aware of their existence. I also can speak from my own Threefold Realization. How simple it would be for the Church to let herself advised by these Godpeople (after the principle: everyone is a potential Buddha). Then it would receive the information first hand! It turns out that the Ultimate indeed cannot be defined. Thus, the discussion can actually be closed. For the answer to the question "How can God allow suffering in the world," can be answered with a simple "I do not know". For theologians, this is of course unacceptable, because they justify their existence by having to explain everything. Hence, I'll give them some food rightnow....

It's about the Ultimate, the Ultimate Cause or the Primordial Ground of existence..... The shocking thing is that not only a definition of God ("God is good") can be questioned, but his very existence, as well i.e. the assumption that he is the Ultimate. If He is not, then the whole discussion is pointless. With such jokes you do not need to come to me .... you will probably say. However, from the depths of my insight I can confirm that God as the churches see him, is not the Ultimate. Because this is so, we thus need not take him too seriously..... That does not mean that there is no God. Oh, no, IT exists, for sure. It just looks a bit different. F.i. he is not a "he", therefore he has no personal characteristics. Like "good" for example. What is called "God" is impersonal, because he (IT) embraces the whole universe. Second, He is not the Ultimate. He (IT) is on the other hand "the Light that is born out of Darkness". The Bible has deliberately distorted the "God created the world out of nothingnes". In reality, the reverse is true: "God is (permanently) born out of Nothingness". Because it is a birth, the Void (or Emptiness, Darkness) is also called "Cosmic Womb". Hence, "God" is not the "Father", but the (Her) Son ....

What does this have to do with the justice of God ("Theodicee"), indeed, with suffering? Patience, the declaration will come in short notice. I've found that without access to i.e. insight in the Ultimate the question of suffering cannot be answered. The former, it turns out, can be equated with (Absolute) Nothingness or Emptiness. In this Cosmic Vacuum all wore out, diseased, old, accumulated is broken down, while at the same time everything is reborn. It explains the ancient quest after the fountain of youth, the "Cauldron of Abundance". But this is only one aspect: The other is destruction..... The whole universe is ruled by "Death and Rebirth", including humans. Instead of "God is good," one rather says, "The Ultimate gives birth and destroys". She - the Cosmic Womb "does not do this because it is fun - like the "Father" does, who had his Son murdered on earth, being powerless to redeem mankind himself - but because She is transpersonal, but because it is simply the Law of the Universe. It is like it is. There's nothing behind it. So - even though the Divine exists - the buck stops here i.e. we cannot give him a responsibility, he does not possess....*

So far I have done nothing more than to explain how the Ultimate looks like. With the intent to make clear how much we are enmeshed in our own definitions. There are no supernatural explanations for Auschwitz or Third World hunger.* The danger is a new misunderstanding, namely, "is suffering is to be destroyed by the impersonal Cosmos, so it is in the nature of things". Answer: "It depends on what kind of suffering you mean". The climate crisis has certainly to do with it. For extreme accumulation on the one hand and plunder on the other, has derailed the ecological equilibrium. The earth is not alone, but is part of the Cosmos with its balance between creation and destruction. Derailments on one level may provoke those on the other levels. In this case one can indeed speak of destruction by Nothingness. Spiritually, this means that if we cling to our ego, it will also (spiritually) be destroyed. However, if we are cooperating with the Cosmos by dropping our egos, we will be reborn as a New Self. Horrors such as Auschwitz and the Third World arise from the fact that people are not willing to give up their ego. Power and greed - crystallized into a global system of exploitation - of some are causing suffering to many. You really do not need to be religious to understand this .....

* I purposely stop here. For I hope that I have stirred many questions. Try to live with these issues, rather than dismissing them through one of your convictions...

1.5 UNITY IN DIVERSITY (IMMANENCE)

Some say the Green Man and the Wise Woman are the beginning of modern polytheism. Or some comparable "horror". It is not. Because the emphasis of 2000 years was laid on God as the "wholly other" - i.e. the Transcendence - the Immanence - the Divine as the Essence of the world - was neglected. This theology was not very "popular" because of the "danger" that the people would awake i.e. would recognize the Divine as their innermost Core. So every step in the direction of mysticism was accompanied by the threat of pantheism. And this was presented as the worst ever. Any theologian will confirm, however, that God is both "Transcendent and Immanent - i.e. panentheistic. The emphasis on Transcendence creates a God who has no contact with creation. "He" is unattainable, and therefore we "need" the Church as a mediator. If we place the emphasis on Immanence, however, then everything is fundamentally changed.

Until this very day, the idea that we are Divine in the Depth of our Being, is not easy to accept. Despite the fact that Jesus himself said: "The Kingdom of Heaven is WITHIN you". The Reality is that we and the whole of creation with us are content of the Divine.  The Divine is Infinite Space, and we live in it. Therefore, it penetrates us, and not only us but the entire universe. Tranzendence is Immanence! The Essence is One and the same, only the forms are different. Green Men and Wise Women embody this reality: the Unity which manifests Itself in diversity. This goes even further than Buddhism, where Buddha represents "only" the Wholly Other - that is Enlightenment - while Green Men and Wise Women represent the Light IN this world. In the Middle Ages, therefore, the efficacy of God was called "greening"

It also sheds light on the Christian dogma of a personal God. "God is personal" it says. Wrong. The reality is that in order to be "personal" to each of the individuals that constitute the limitless diversity of creation, "God" has to be impersonal.  Otherwise, turning to one creature would mean turning away from others. As He (It) is manifested in us is "personal" because He (It) is within us, He (It) itself, however, rises infinitely beyond us, because He (It) rests in the infinity of its undefined Nature. It is precisely this Truth that is embodied by  Green Men and Wise Women......

Not to mention the fact that in the authentic God-experience one (your I) totally and unrecognizebly dissolves into the Eternal Godhead. If one is One, then there is no "meeting" anymore, because it takes two for a meeting. God is so overwhelming that if we really are coming closer, our ego will not hold up. It's like a moth too close to the lamp. If he comes too close he will be burned. The whole topic of whether God is "personal" or "impersonal" will become irrelevant. It proves to be an artificial problem of those who have never experienced IT.....