The C Word

Before I left for my summer ceremony, I had a few conversations and wrote a few posts in which I was being rather provocative in using the C word. Its not a word that I speak easily. In fact, I can’t remember last when the word passed my lips. I think it sometimes…those times when I feel the primitive levels of my sensuality clawing at me for attention.

And I want to point out that for me, that level of sexual expression is the gate to the deepest recesses of my heart and soul…That raw sensuality and need is the force that guards against the softer me emptying out of me…Its as if I require its expression to be whole and I need the safety of a joyful, respectful dance with this aspect of the woman in me. I frequently feel the drive to express this side of my nature…I think I need to have an unreserved revelry in her…I need her to be delighted in before I can share some parts of my heart. I’m not even sure I can name what’s in that heart space. It feels beyond words. I only know its a fragile, tender Self and out of her springs the creative force of Life…and she feels achingly lonely if there’s no one to dance with…I need to express her freely…and she is in fact a cunt in the fullest sense of the word…and not at all the dirty sense that we all think of that word as. let me expand on that more…

I grew up with teachings about the basic sinfulness of my own soul and body and about the sinfulness of sex, so my sex drive was always a source of profound shame for me…and it came early to me…very young by anyone’s standards, because I completed puberty at the age of ten. I was so confused by these teachings and the conflicting urges of my own body…not to mention the child’s innocence sense of truth about not being evil in my most basic essence. It was rather hard for a girl my age to cope with it all emotionally. I would feel so dirty when these urges consumed me.

I suppose that’s why the imagery of the Sheela-na-gigs have always fascinated me. For some reason these little figures are all over Christian edifices in Great Britain and Western Europe. The first image of one i ever saw was in a book in a bookshop. I was perhaps 13. I just stared at it for the longest time, feeling this sense of something primitive and holy open in my body…I felt ancient and yet young and nubile as I actually was…the conflicts I’d felt all along came to me at once…but not much of that sin stuff was in there. At least not at first. It wasn’t until my mother saw what I was looking at and remarked that it was ‘disgusting and why was this where children could see it?’ that I felt dirty again. She drew me out of the store. I knew better than to ask her any questions about it then. But I can tell you that I wandered off the next time we were in that book shop and tried to find the book. It took a long time to find it because it was in a section on non Christian spirituality. My mother would have had a heart attack if she’d caught me looking there. Luckily she was immersed in her magazine and soda at the cafe that was attached to the cafe there, which catered to the wealthy on Mount Dessert Island. I got at least 15 mnutes peace to discover they were put on churches!

Well I can tell you that put a bend in my brain. I just didn’t understand that at all.

it wasn’t until I was in my 30’s that the images became familiar again. I have not ever had one in my house hanging on a wall or anything. But I am still fascinated by the feelings i get when viewing one. They feel repellant and yet I can feel something inside me opening to the primal shape of it and all of the subliminal meaning behind holding one’s cunt open like that…as if it were an invitation to dance with Life and Change and Death at once.

For me…the word cunt and this sense of a dance with Life that the Sheela-na-gig so unusually illustrates are one and the same. It is how I feel about the word. It is not just a naughty word that falls from me for the shock value of it. To me, it is inviting a gritty, juicy experience of life…and warning of its innate death of Self in the union I demand as a natural part of that dance…the only outcome of such a union is change…because such a dance with the soul and heart…with the primal can and must be an experience that is liminal and full of change…the least of which is an opened heart.

Thinking about it now…and thinking about the times and the mind set that we think was a part of the centuries in which these structures were built…I think that these figures were set on buildings for similar reasons as angels and gargoyles were…to warn away the evils of lust and to protect those within from the distractions of sexual matters. *rolls eyes*

The conversation within comments after my use of the word pricked my sense of needing to evaluate my use of the word and to expand on my thinking with readers here…I wanted you to know the fullness of my use of it..and hopefully make room in others for another viewpoint of that word. I decided to do some research on the figure  because its true. There couldn’t be a dirtier would in the English language for that particular part of the female anatomy and to use it is considered the worst insult imaginable…. and yet, I feel as if there’s something much deeper within the word that we’ve been socialized and schooled religiously into fearing…that of surrendering to the feminine urge to rut, to the loss of control it implies. *smiles* Here’s something I found on a website called Aphrodite Wounded:

Did you know that ‘cunctipotent’ is an old word meaning “feminine power”, and comes from the same root word as ‘cunt’? Surprising and disappointing that the “c” word has come to describe offensive people…and that a woman’s most beautiful part has been taken over by much that is negative and offensive. For more about Baubo and vulva goddesses of several cultures, have a look at this delightful page.

Have a look at ancient Sheela-na-Gig on your left – I mean seriously, this is a lass with no inhibitions whatsoever about prideful displays of pudenda. If you’d like to know more about her, go to Tara’s Sheela-na-Gig Website.

Here’s another bit that I thought was interesting from another site that’s full of myth information:

Sheela-na-gig Theories

Sheela-na-gigs are female exhibitionist carvings found on walls, abbeys, convents, churches, pillars and other structures in Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, as well as in other parts of Europe. They come in many different shapes and sizes, but all share the same characteristic of a prominent and often enlarged genitals, often held open by the figure’s hands. Most date from the middle ages.

Unfortunately, no literature survives from medieval times to give us clues as to why these explicit figures were carved and why they were placed so often on religious edifices. We have only the musings of Victorian and modern scholars to guide us in deciphering sheela’s mysteries.

The name “sheela-na-gig” was most likely derived from the Irish language. The two most common translations are “Sile na gCioch” (“sheela of the breasts”) or “Sile-ina-Giob” (“sheela on her hunkers”). In the Encyclopedia of Sacred Sexuality, Rufus Camphausen notes that in Mesopotamia the term “nu-gug” (“the pure and immaculate ones”) referred to the sacred temple harlots, and he postulates that the name may somehow have had its origins there. Kathryn Price Theatana outlines an interesting etymological study of the name on her website– well worth a look.

Interpretations of the figures generally fall into four main categories: fertility icons, warnings against sins of the flesh, representations of a figure from the old Celtic goddess trinity, and protection from evil. I will touch very briefly on these theories below–for further reading please see Bibliography

Here you’ll find a very neat poem if you like poetry. I particularly enjoyed this poem by Bill Lewis.

In my research on this topic, I also found this wonderful site with vulva artwork. Its called the Vulva Museum. It just delighted me. I hope you’ll have a look.

There is a passage in Women Who Run With The Wolves, a book written by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, on the Dirty Goddesses. In this particular passage, Clarissa is relating the story of Baubo the belly goddess soothing and comforting Demeter who had lost her child in death:

So, She who had made everything grow in perpetuity, cursed all the fertile fields of the world, screaming in her grief, “Die! Die! Die!” Because of Demeter’s curse, no child could be born, no wheat could rise for bread, no flowers for feasts, no boughs for the dead. Everything lay withered and sucked that parched earth or dry breasts.

Demeter herself no longer bathed. Her robes were mud drenched, her hair hung in dreadlocks. Even though the pain in her heart was staggering, she would not surrender. After many askings, pleadings, and episodes, all leading to nothing, she finally slumped down at the side of a well in a village where she was unknown. And as she leaned her aching body against the cool stone of the well, along came a woman, or rather a sort of woman. And this woman danced up to Demeter wigglng her hips in a way suggesting sexual intercourse and shaking her breasts in her little dance. And when Demeter saw her, she could not help but smile just a little.

The dancing female was very magical indeed, for she had no head whatsoever, and her nipples were her eyes and her vulva was her mouth. It was through this lovely mouth that she began to regale Demeter with some juicy jokes. Demeter began to smile, and then chuckled and then gave a full belly laugh. And together the two women laughed, the little belly Goddess Baubo and the powerful Mother Earth Goddess Demeter.

And it was just this laughing that drew Demeter out of her depression and gave her the energy to continue her search for her daughter Persephone, which with the help of Baubo, and the crone Hekate and the sun Helios was ultimate successful. Persephone was restored to her mother. The world, the land, and the bellies of women thrived again.

This passage made me smile. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in a circle of women and listened to some gut wrenching story of woe…real life drama stuff. Makes your heart pour of you like acid…yanno? And then before we know it, we’ll have got to a place together of laughing our asses off about some story like this one, which is another passage from the same book further along in the same chapter:

I think the jokes that Baubo told to Demeter were women’s jokes about those beautifully shaped transmitters and recievers: genitalia. If so, perhaps Baubo told Demeter a story like this one, which I heard some years back from an old trailer park manager down in Nogales. His name was Old Red:

“Once upon a time there was Coyote Dick, and he was both the smartest and the dumbest creature you could ever hope to meet. He was always hungry for something, always playing tricks on people to get what he wanted, and any other time he was always sleeping.

“Well, one day while Coyote Dick was sleeping, his penis got really bored and decided to leave Coyote and have an adventure on its own. So the penis disattached itself from Coyote Dick and ran down the road. Actually it hopped down the road, having just one leg and all.

“So it hopped and it hopped and out into the woods, where-Oh No!- it hopped right into a grove of stinging nettles. ‘Ouch!’ it cried. ‘Ow, ow, ow!’ it screeched. ‘Help! Help!’

“The sound of all this crying woke Coyote Dick, and when he reached down to start his heart with the accustomed crank, it was gone! Coyote Dick ran down the road holding himself between teh legs, and finally came upon his penis in the worst trouble you can imagine. Gently Coyote Dick lifted his adventurous penis out of the nettles, patted him and soothed him down, and put him back where he belonged.”

Old red laughed like a maniac, coughing fit, eyes bulging and all. “And that is the story of Coyote Dick.”

Willodean, his wife, admonished him, “You forgot to tell her the ending.”

“What ending? I already told her the ending,” grumped old Red.

“You forgot to tell her the real ending to the story, you old tank of gas.”

“Well, if you remember it so well, you tell her.” The doorbell rang and he rose up from his creaky chair.

Willowdean looked at me straight and her eyes sparkled, “The end of the story is the moral.” At that moment, Baubo took hold of Willowdean, for she began to giggle, then guffaw, and finally belly laugh so long, and with tears even that it took her two minutes to say these last three sentences, what with repeating each word two or three times between gasps.

“The moral is that those nettles, even once Coyote Dick got out of them, made his cock itch like crazy forever after. And that’s why men are always sliding up to women, wanting to rub up against them with that ‘I’m so itchy’ look in their eyes. You know that universal cock has been itching ever since that first time it ever ran away.”

So, like Baubo,  to me, the cunt isn’t just about rutting…its also all about laughter…the sacred, dirty, belly laughing, tears rolling down the face kind that’s so life renewing…and heart healing.*grins*

The last two images came from the Vulva Museum website and the first three were finds from Google images found with a search for the key words ‘Sheela na gi’.