Oscar Wilde's proposition that favouring the colour green is a sign of creativity in individuals but of moral laxity and decadence in nations has made me think of a few green items that have both positive and negative aspects and associations.
Green shirts and green kirtles for example are worn by both good and bad people.
A few of John Buchan's books are relevant here, and so is one of C. S. Lewis's Narnian books.
John Buchan's fictional Evallonian Greenshirts, who appear in The House of the Four Winds, were described earlier.
There are some interesting connections here involving an unusual character called John Gordon Hargrave (1894 – 1982), who was an artist, a pagan cult leader, a Utopian thinker, a believer in both science and magic, and many other things. His life story is fascinating, but only a few elements are relevant here.
Hargrave was getting assignments to illustrate books by the age of 12, including some of John Buchan's works!
Hargrave founded various organisations for social change, including one called The Green Shirts. They were dedicated to smashing fascism and campaigning for a universal basic income in the UK.
They may also have been the inspiration for John Buchan's Greenshirts.
Rather ironically, Hargrave's anti-Fascist Greenshirts were balanced by the Irish Greenshirts, a small off-shoot of the Blueshirts, Ireland's largest fascism-inspired movement. Green was chosen because it was the colour of Irish nationalism.
John Hargrave and his militaristic Greenshirts:
Hargrave's Greenshirts are mentioned on his gravestone:
