Sheelagh-na-Gig
Sheelagh-na-Gig.
Many roughly carved figurines of women, legs spread, vagina agape,
adorn the walls of early Christian churches in Wales and Ireland.
I thought they related to a previous set of beliefs, usurped somehow
by the religion that came later. I tend, now, to see them as rather forbidding
Medieval memento mori's. How youth, vitality, erotocism, love,
passion, desire and giving birth, all too quickly lead to dissolution,
decreptitude and death... rather than some worshiping of a 'Celtic'
goddess from a previous era.
In the same group
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