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Goddess Alive!
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MONICA SJÖÖRETROSPECTIVE ART EXHIBITION
February at |
Hag in the Iron Wood by Fiona Marron
Meetings with Remarkable
Sheela-na-Gigs
by Fiona Marron
I am not sure where I first heard the term ‘Sheela-na-gig’, but I do remember trying to find out what it meant. Most explanations I came across were colourful but derogatory towards women. My favourite was ‘a crazy hoor that might leap out at you showing her gee’, that last word being the slang in Ireland for the female genitals and not a million miles away from ‘gig’.
I was enthralled when I heard that there were actual stone carvings called Sheela-na-gigs, hidden away in the National Museum because they were regarded as the pornography of our ancestors. I was curious and determined to see ancient stone carvings of naked women exposing their genitalia.
It was in the early 1980s, when I was a student at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, that I started what the great archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, author of Language of the Goddess and Civilisation of the Goddess, called my ‘Sheela odyssey’. Along the route of that odyssey, I looked at, touched and painted stone carvings that inexplicably linked me to something greater than me. The Sheela-na-gigs inspired me to paint them. Even though much about the Sheela remains a mystery, I have come to enjoy and celebrate that mystery and my hope is that you do too.
Sheelas have been known by many different names in different parts of Ireland. They have been called the ‘idol’, the ‘evil eye stone’, the ‘devil stone’, the ‘witch on the wall’ and the ‘hag of the castle’. The earliest literary references come from John O’Donovan’s ordnance survey letters for Tipperary in 1840, where he mentions a carving at Kiltinan Church. (When the figure was stolen in January 1990, the publicity did much to popularise Sheelas again).
James O’Connor, who made a marvellous replica of the stolen figure, quotes O’Donovan’s description of the Sheela as “the figure of a woman in bas-relief, rudely done, but whose attitude and expression conspire to impress the grossest idea of immortality and licentiousness. (It) represents a woman who was known by the name Sile ni ghig”.
Sheela, as well as being a woman’s name, means femininity and also a special kind of woman: a wise woman, a spiritual woman. Some say the name originates from Macroom, County Cork, where it was used to describe old women. ‘Na-gig’ is more obscure. Barbara Walker speculates that the term means ‘vulva woman’, with ‘gig’ or ‘giggie’ meaning female genitals and related to the Irish ‘jig’, which in turn comes from the French ‘gigue’, which in pre-Christian times was an orgiastic dance. In ancient Erech (Iraq today) a ‘gig’ seems to have been something similar to a holy yoni (a symbol of the female genitals venerated by Hindus). The sacred harlots of the temple were known as ‘nu-gig’. Who can say if the word could have travelled so far?
Laurence Durdin-Robertson declares that ‘Sheela’ means the image of a woman and ‘gig’ is the name in Norse for a giantess - the oldest of the goddess races. He also suggests that Sheela-na-gigs are a derivative of the frog goddess, symbol of the vulva as opening to the underworld. Gimbutas said that my representations of Sheela fron Carn Castle, Westmeath, which I entitled The Hag in the Iron Wood [reproduced above] reminded her of the frog goddess of Çatal Höyük in Turkey.
Other squatting goddess figures, almost identical to the Sheelas, guarded the doors of the temples in India, where all who entered would touch the gaping yonis as an act of self blessing. Sheelas also have distinguished breastless rib cages similar to the Indian goddess Kali in her corpse aspect. Kali is the goddess of death and destruction but also the creator and giver of life. When I thought about this, I saw a connection between Kali and the Cailleach, the Irish crone or hag, known under many names and thought to have been a goddess who married a series of husbands and passed from youth to old age more than once. She still survives today as a lively figure in modern Irish folklore. I see her as the creator and devourer of the world, a symbol of the great mother in continuous cycles of life, death and rebirth.
Raising Her Voice from SeirkiernanEleanor Gadon remarks that Sheela-na-gig is remembered in Ireland as the old woman who gave birth to all races of people, and that her function as a decoration on the church was similar to the gorgon on Athena’s shield, to protect and to ward off evil.
The Sheelas that are still in situ today - many unfortunately badly damaged by being exposed to the elements for centuries - are placed over the entrance archways of medieval Christian churches, castles, gateways and bridges as symbols of protection and fertility. Indeed, I believe that the Sheelas served as a bridge between pagan and Christian cultures in Ireland, Scotland and Wales and even England and France.
How old are they really? How many have been lost, stolen or buried? Could they be the continuation of goddess imagery from 35,000 years ago that Marija
Gimbutas discovered? It is all a wonderful mystery. Jorgen Andersen in his magnificient book, The Witch on the Wall, writes about the recent evidence of a Sheela-type carving from the Neolithic period found in Grimes Graves (right) in Norfolk, England. This would suggest that the Sheelas as we know them today may be reproductions of older carvings.
For me, they are a celebration of life, the power of female regeneration, the cycle of life, death and re-birth. I’ll never forget the day one of my teachers arranged for me to have access to the crypt of the National Museum, where several examples of Sheelas were stored. I was accompanied by a security guard. He told me to walk quickly as I had only twenty minutes. I remember walking down a large stone stairway, at the bottom of which was a long corridor. The smell of antiquities filled me with anticipation and excitement. There were hundreds of artefacts stored there. I wanted to look at everything but knew I had to keep focused on the mission in hand. Eventually we came to the area where the Sheelas were. The guard pulled the string of the lone light bulb, and, as the light flicked on, at least twenty Sheela-na-gigs in all their vulva glory stared at me.
I gasped in awe and probably fear. It was the most incredible sight. I didn’t have time to be frightened, but I was. I remember a sort of buzz in my head. I attempted to start drawing, but my hand was shaking. There were so many carvings, all so different, carved out of various types of stone in various shapes and sizes. I decided to try to focus on just one at a time. It took longer to do some than others because their stones were eroded and the image unclear. My eyes kept being drawn to the vulvas, those dark secret caves.
