Sheela na gig
The dark Goddess of sacred power
Starr Goode
Published by Inner Traditions, 2016
For millennia, the human imagination has
been devoted to the Goddess, so it is hardly
a surprise to find images of supernatural
females like Sheela na gigs adorning sacred
and secular architecture throughout
Ireland, England, Wales, and Scotland.
Appearing on rural churches, castles,
bridges, holy wells, tombs, and standing
stones, these powerful images of a figure
fearlessly displaying her vulva embody the
power of the Dark Goddess over the mysteries
of sex, life, death, and rebirth.
Exploring the art and myth of the Sheela
na gig from Celtic and Classical times back
to Paleolithic cave art, Starr Goode shows
how the Sheela embraces a conundrum of
opposites: she clearly offers up her ripe sex
yet emanates a repelling menace from the
upper half of her hag-like body. Through
her 25 years of research and more than
150 photographs, the author establishes
how the Sheela is a goddess with the
power to renew, a folk deity used to help
women survive childbirth, and, as a guardian
of doorways and castle walls, a liminal
entity representing the gateway to the
divine. She explains how these powerful
images survived eradication during the rise
of Christianity and retained their preeminent
positions on sacred sites throughout
the British Isles and Ireland.
The author provides in-depth accounts
of the individual Sheelas she encountered
during her years of travel, allowing readers
to commune with these icons and feel
the power they emanate. Exploring comparable
figures such as Baubo, Medusa,
the Neolithic Frog Goddess, and depictions
of the vulva in cave art, she reveals the
female sacred display to be a universal
archetype, the most enduring image of
creativity throughout history. She also
illustrates how cultures from Africa, Asia, South
America, Australia, and Oceania possess
similar images depicting goddesses parting
their thighs to reveal sacred powers.
Explaining the role of the Sheela na gig
in restoring the Divine Feminine, the author
reveals the Sheela to be an icon that makes
visible the cycles of birth, death, and
regeneration that all humans experience. The
figure of the Sheela is a necessary antidote
to centuries of suppression of the primal
power of women, of nature, and of the
imagination.
Starr Goode, MA, teaches writing and
literature at Santa Monica College. An
award-winning writer, she has been profiled
in the LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, the
Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker.
She was the producer and moderator for
the cable TV series The Goddess in Art,
the episodes of which are now housed in the
permanent collection of the Getty Museum
as well as available on YouTube.
She lives in Santa Monica, California.
(The text above comes from the flaps inside the book)
