The invitation to the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla is adorned with a pagan image of the Green Man

At the centre of the invitation sits the head of the Green Man, a widely known motif of medieval architecture, art and folklore.
You will surely have seen, in medieval manuscripts or churches, male heads wholly covered in leaves, spewing vines from the mouth or sprouting shoots from every orifice of the face. That was the Green Man.

He is sometimes called the wild man or the man of the woods, a legendary creature associated since time immemorial with the forces of nature and the forest. The Green Man belongs not only to ancient English culture, though in England his cult is linked with Jack in the Green and with the person of the renowned knight Sir Gawain, and, by the boldest of researchers, even with Peter Pan.

Worship of the Green Man is held to have originated in Asia Minor at the beginning of the Common Era. The instantly recognisable and highly distinctive symbolism of the Green Man is found in the temple architecture of India, Lebanon, Iraq and Jerusalem of the 2nd to 11th centuries. Images of the Green Man are widespread in Germany, Northern Europe, Iceland and England.

In my view, this turn to ancient pagan cults in the symbolism of the greatest event in England's recent history is a most interesting sign. Who knows, perhaps the revival of the order of the Druids is not far off.