This is the eighth and final mystery reading in the Green Man series – brief texts that illuminate aspects of masculinity through nature while exploring the major masculine archetypes.

A central truth about the archetypes is that they all reside within each one of us. You may feel more drawn toward one than the others, but it’s important to be aware of them all in their particular relevance and resonance to you. You may cycle through them during different periods of your life or under different circumstances.

We can see this in the Green Man, the organizing principle for these posts. In him we can divine the five archetypes as outlined. He is the King of the Forest as well as its Father figure. He can protect and defend the forest as a Warrior. His secrets of growth, decay and renewal embody both the alchemy of the Wizard and the earthy sensuality and creativity of the Lover.

An image of the Green Man / Horned God / Cernunnos with an overlay of the chakras. Image source on right side.

The image above, of chakras overlaid onto the Green Man or Horned God, invites an assignment of archetypes to chakras. It’s a little off because of the numbering, but perhaps the following interpretation holds: The Warrior fits the root (red) chakra covering basic needs such as safety and stability, while the Lover fits the orange sacral chakra of creativity and reproduction. The Father encompasses both yellow (solar plexus) and green (heart) as a central, uniting archetype that builds on both responsibility and love from both Warrior and Lover. The Wizard resides in the blue throat chakra of speaking, singing and spellcasting. The King is centered in the purple or third-eye chakra of perception and wisdom, while the Green Man himself, at least in this image, grows organically right through the crown chakra into fruiting branches that are also antlers – an outreach beyond the self into the environment, into the universe.

In conclusion, and bringing this series back to the naturist Green Man Group that provided the original inspiration, these archetypes are nude. We may associate certain accoutrements with them, such as a staff for the Wizard, a sword for the Warrior, and a scepter for the King, but in their pure essence they are nude, just like the Green Man in the image above. They unite the body and soul with the universe, and as such they are unencumbered, unfettered, exposed and direct. We have but to meditate on their primal mysteries to call them into consciousness, to embody them into being, within us and among us.