Passage An Untamed but Generative Masculine Spirit, Ubiquitous Though Often Elusive

Passage
An untamed but generative masculine spirit, ubiquitous though often elusive, haunts the interconnection of humans with nature.  Among its most prominent images are the carved faces, formed from leaves or sprouting them, that peer out from medieval church ceilings and walls.  At once comic and forbidding, this foliate head is neither a gargoyle nor a merely decorative motif, but an archetype whose history stretches as deeply into the mists of time and myth as the roots of a tree.  Nevertheless, it was only as recently as 1939 that British scholar Julia Hamilton Somerset, better known as Lady Raglan, noting a carved face of entwined leaves in a church in southeast Wales, initiated a study of similar images and christened this mysterious male presence the "Green Man."Like many mythological figures, the Green Man is syncretic, interweaving several images and themes or variations on a pattern.  He is, as writer John Matthews claims, "far larger than any simple attempt to define him."  Chiefly, the Green Man symbolizes the union of humans and nature.  Indissolubly linked with the vegetative cycle and the agricultural year, he exudes vitality and fertility and signals both material and spiritual abundance.  Whether as the foliage-covered King of the May Day, also called Jack-in-the-Green, or as the King of the Harvest, John Barleycorn, the Green Man has been an indispensable element of traditional European village celebrations.  He is Keeper of the Forest as well as woodwose, the wild man of the woods, and is sometimes recognized as the consort of Mother Nature.Green Man images can be found in mosaics and carvings from the early Roman Empire.  Originally a pagan icon, the Green Man was incorporated into early Christian iconography, reaching a zenith of architectural popularity in Europe from the eleventh through the fifteenth century.  Notably, Chartres Cathedral in France, built in 1194, features 70 foliate heads, while in Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, constructed in 1446, no fewer than 103 such heads can be counted.  The Green Man was also known farther east; for instance, near Hatra in present-day Iraq, an imposing leafy countenance stares out from the façade of an ancient temple.The Green Man's lineage is multifaceted.  In the West he is a variant of Dionysus, the god of the vine who dies and is reborn.  Indeed, the fifth-century BCE statue of a leaf-clad Dionysus or Bacchus in Naples, Italy, is perhaps his oldest surviving image, although Dionysus may himself descend from the green-skinned Egyptian god Osiris who likewise dies and rises.  The Green Man is thought to be related to the rustic Greco-Roman deities Pan and Silvanus, and, more speculatively, to Cernunnos, the Celtic horned god of the hunt and lord of the animals.  In the East this mythic being manifests in the figure of Al-Khidir, the Verdant or Green One who is a spiritual guide of heroes in the Koran.Green Man figures also pervade Western literature, which was influenced at its origin by the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh and its character of Enkidu, a wild, shaggy nature man fashioned by the gods as a counterpart to the young King Gilgamesh.  Later the medieval tales of King Arthur feature the baffling Green Knight, who, like the eastern Al-Khidir, is a warrior guide.  In the fifteenth century, the Green Man reemerges as Robin Hood; in the twentieth century, J. M. Barrie's eternally youthful Peter Pan is tellingly "clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that flow from trees."In Matthews' view, the Green Man is the embodiment of "unvanquishable greenness."  This perspective might explain the recurrence of his image and its recent adoption by environmental awareness movements as an assurance of ecological renewal.
-The author's central point in discussing the examples of the Turkana and Samburu tribes is that those who research other cultures should:

A) keep in mind the cultural effects caused by the prevalence or rarity of literacy.
B) strike a balance between intellectual openness and rigid thinking.
C) be receptive to the idea that obvious interpretations may indeed be correct.
D) avoid closed-mindedness in interpreting cultural practices.