[expand]
When Christianity arrived, the forest deities were reinterpreted as demons, their power explained as Satanic deception, their worship condemned as devil-dealing. The sacred groves were cut down, the offerings prohibited, the entire system of forest relationships declared illegitimate.
But the powers did not disappear merely because the Church said they should. Peasants continued leaving offerings, avoiding sacred groves, teaching their children the old warnings. The deities were renamed—transformed into saints or devils depending on whether the Church could absorb or must condemn them. Holda became variously Saint Holle or a demon leading witches’ sabbaths. The Green Man appeared carved in church stonework, his older meaning half-hidden but not entirely erased.
The forest itself remained, and with it, the sense that something older dwelt within the shadows, something that predated Christianity and would persist after it, something that responded not to prayers or creeds but to proper offerings and respectful behavior.
[/expand]