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Sunday, November 29, 2009

Eper - Kali - Sheila Na Gig = Divine Passage of Good Luck ???

Carved representation of a naked woman squatting with her knees apart, displaying her vulva, shown as a vesica piscis or double-pointed oval.

Sometimes the figure presented the vesica with both hands or drew it open with one.

Sheila-na-gig figures appeared all over old Irish churches before the 16th century.

Many were still in place during the 19th century, but Victorian prudery defaced or destroyed large numbers of them.

Some have been found buried near the churches they once embellished.
Sheila-na-gig figures closely resembled the yonic statues of Kali which still appear at the doorways of Hindu temples, where visitors lick a finger and touch the yoni "for luck."

Some of the older figures have deep holes worn in their yonis from much touching.
The protruding ribcage on many examples of the sheila-na-gig imitates the figures of Kali as the death-goddess, Kalika, evidently remembered in Ireland as the Caillech or "Old Woman," who was also the Creatress and gave birth to all the races of men. Celts generally protected doorways with some female-genital fetish, which is why they settled on the horseshoe, classic Omega-sign of the Kalika.

In India it stood for the feminine cosmos within which Shiva ever performed his creative sexual dance, although he was assimilated to the Kalika and given her title of Destroyer.
Derivation of the term sheila-na-gig is obscure.

It meant something like "vulva-woman."

Gig or giggie meant female genitals and may have been related to the Irish "jig," from French gigue, in pre-Christian times an orgiastic dance.

In ancient Erech a gig seems to have been a holy yoni; the sacred harlots of the temple were known as nu-gig.