W>hen was he first celebrated on Earth?

The simple answer to that is easy, since the Earth began and was first perceived by human. All remaining artifacts date as far back as 3,000BC by and the oldest ones that still exist are located in Rome. The first known sculptors to develop Greenman figures crated life-like intertwined vegetation (such as those in Nero’s Golden House in Rome). The close connections between nature and man were also celebrated in Roman architecture where they featured ornate leaf masks, which were often used to depict various God deities of mystery religions of those such as Dionysus, Pan & Bacchus etc. A perfect example of this is a statue of the wine and fertility God Dionysus located  in Naples, Italy, which dates back to around 420 BCE.

Another known ancient artifact of the Green Man can be found in Iraq (formally known as al-Hadr or Hatra) and could date back from as early as 300 BCE. The Mesopotamian Green Man carving found here could date from as early as 300 BCE and is worlds away from the art of the Romans.

Other examples of early Greenman insipred art can be found at the temple of Bacchus in the Lebanon at Baalbek,  where you can find a full leaf-mask that looks astonishingly similar to that of  a later medieval Green Man, of which dates back to the 2nd Century CE.

There are many more far reached areas of the world, such as Turkey, Borneo, India and Napal which all house fine examples of Greenman like leaf masks or heads. Some of these are in the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul), and also a head carving into a Jain Temple  which dates as far back as 8th Century AD in Rajasthan, India.

I>s Cernunnos as the Green Man?

Cernunnos, also known as the “Horned One” in Celtic religion, could be seen as a very early aspect of the Greenman from as far back as 40BC. Known as an archaic and powerful deity, he was widely worshipped as the lord of wild, and depicted often surrounded by all wild creatures. Cernunnos may have had a variety of names in different parts of the Celtic world, but his attributes were generally consistent. He wore stag antlers, held or wore a sacred torque and was sometimes accompanied by a stag, a serpent and other wild creatures. The earliest known depictions of Cernunnos can be clearly seen on the Gunderstrup Caldron, which was discovered in the first Century at Gundestrup in Jutland, Denmark.

The Greenman as an Elemental exists in all nature and can be felt as a shapeshifting consciousness to those sensitive to him and wish to tap in to the information they need to know. Elementals can easily transform in a fluid way into living forms, such as that of water, rock, animal, plant and tree. Cernunnos is generally described of having elements of animal and human kind, such as that of a fawn or elk like creature, very like the Greek God Pan. This is where they mis-understaniding of the visual representation of Cernunnos is often mistaken of being that of the devil or satan worshiped by those, such as most politicians, news media workers, pop stars and actors who manipulate the dark arks to their own gains.

Cernunnos is a very karmic elemental, as he teaches us the message of the fourth law ‘What you put out, you get back’. In this non-dualistic way the spirit of the Greenman can be an important moral teacher. This idea of the energy of Cernunnos is still played out as a story seed today in terms of the archetypal role of St Nicholas and Krampus during the Winter Yuletide holidays. St Nick or Santa Claus will deliver gifts to the ‘good’ and ‘well behaved’, where as the negative inverted version known as Krampus will only give punishment to those deemed as ‘bad’ or ‘naughty’. In Celtic times, the tribes people always had similar ceremonies during the Winter Solstice where they would leave offerings to Cernunnos in the way of food, wine and other gifts knowing that the Earth spirits always reward such sacrificial behavior and grant their survival  through the harsh winters.