VAGINA IDOLS!!!!!!!!!!

I know you people have heard of "The Vagina Monologues", the Broadway show that kind of took post-feminist feminists by storm. I for one thought it was a little weird for women to all want to be in a show that is about ahem vaginas. Ew. I don't care about your creepy vagina.

Anyway, I was reading up on something today....ooopss....I can't remember what...and I found out about Sheila-na-Gigs. Here is what they are, courtesy of some ol history site.

http://askelm.com/doctrine/d980928.htm
Early Irish Churches Blatantly Show Female Genitalia

The Christian men in Ireland who were in authority over their flocks had churches built in order to perform the liturgies and rituals associated with their sacred duties. And what did the church authorities place at the entrances to many of their churches just before and after the time of the Crusades? In full view of the congregations that attended the various Catholic Churches then in Ireland, the priests and monks placed a statue carved out of stone (usually) showing a squatting woman with her legs apart and the genitalia of the woman held open with her hands. Such images were widespread in Ireland and each one was known as a Shiela-Na-Gig (probably meaning, the "Woman of the Vulva"). This naked woman was prominently displayed for all the churchgoers at the keystone spot of an arched doorway leading into the church (or sometimes over a pointed arch of a window that was also apart of the church).

It may be difficult for us of modern times to believe that such things happened in a Catholic Christian environment, but the fact is, they did indeed take place. In the prestigious "Encyclopedia of Religion," edited by Mercia Eliade and published by Macmillian Publishing Company for the University of Chicago, there are references to these Sheila-Na-Gigs (sometimes spelled Sheelagh-na-gig). Notice what the encyclopedia tells us about them.

"Aside from the transformative religious mysteries of sacrifice and initiation, the obvious life-giving and growth-promoting powers of the vulva and its secretions have given rise to a widespread use of representations of the female genitalia as apotropaic devices. The custom of plowing a furrow for magical protection around a town was practiced all over Europe by peasants. It was still observed in the twentieth century in Russia, where villages were thus annually 'purified.' The practice was exclusively carried out by women, who, while plowing, called on the moon goddess. A similar apotropaic function seems to have prompted the placing of squatting female figures prominently exposing their open vulvas on the key of arches at church entrances in Ireland, Great Britain, and German Switzerland. In Ireland these figures are called Sheelagh-na-gigs. Some of these figures represent emaciated old women. These images are illustrations of myths concerning the territorial Celtic goddess who was the granter of royalty. When the goddess wished to test the king-elect, she came to him in the form of an old hag, soliciting sexual intercourse. If the king-elect accepted, she transformed herself into a radiantly beautiful young woman and conferred on him royalty and blessed his reign. Most such figures were removed from churches in the nineteenth century.

And a little farther down in the same article:

"A remarkable parallel to the Celtic Sheelagh-na-gig is found in the Palauan archipelago. The wooden figure of a nude woman, prominently exposing her vulva by sitting with legs wide apart and extended to either side of the body, is placed on the eastern gable of each village's chiefly meeting house. Such figures are called dilugai. Interestingly, the yoni [the female genitalia] is in the shape of a cleft downward-pointing triangle. These female figures protect the villagers' health and ward off all evil spirits as well. They are constructed by ritual specialists according to strict rules, which if broken would result in the specialist's as well as the chiefs death. It is not coincidental that each example of signs representing the female genitalia used as apotropaic devices are found on gates. The vulva is the primordial gate, the mysterious divide between nonlife and life" (Encyclopedia of Religion, article YONI, Vol.15, p.534).

There is a great deal of information about these Sheila-Na-Gigs that were found in many places in Ireland (until the Protestant Reformation when many of them were destroyed by the reformers) and in various places of Northern Europe within Christian times (indeed, these images were found in the most prominent places carved on Catholic Christian churches). They were even found on Cathedrals (the seat of a bishopric). The highest authorities in the Christian Church allowed them to exist at the time.
In the famous "Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics," edited by James Hastings, we read the following.

"Nor are such female effigies confined to the pagan natives of tropical wilds. They were frequently carved on churches in the Middle Ages. Many have been preserved until recently in Ireland, as, e.g. on a doorway of Cloyne Cathedral, Co. Cork. The Royal Irish Academy in Dublin possesses a very good specimen removed from a church. They are known to Irish antiquaries by the name Sheila-Na-Gig. Most of them, however, have now been destroyed" (vol. IX, p.8~7).

Barbara Walker in her book "The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects," states under the subject Sheila-Na-Gig:

"Female figures prominently displaying the yoni [female genitalia] as a vesica piscus [Mandorla] were once common ornaments of Irish churches built before the sixteenth century. As a rule the sheila-na-gig was carved into the keystone of a window or doorway arch. Undoubtedly it was a protective sign left over from pre-Christian Goddess worship. Figures of the same type were found throughout Europe as cathedral decorations, on the capitals of columns, at the ends of ceiling beams, and so forth. Squatting Goddess figures almost identical to the Sheila-Na-Gig guarded the doors of temples in India" (p.104).

It should be recalled that the depiction of these women blatantly showing their genitalia in the most prominent places of a Cathedral or church were sanctioned and ordained by the Christian ecclesiastical authorities with the approval and approbation of the papacy in Rome (after all, some of them were found on churches as late as the nineteenth century). A few of these images approved by the priests and monks are shown below. These few represent the hundreds that must have existed on other churches.

Many symbols and signs on churches and cathedrals in Europe were not as blatant as the Sheila-Na-Gigs, but the so-called benign symbols that the female and male genitalia represented only the initiated into the "church mysteries" would know what they meant. Many windows were given various designs that to the uninitiated looked like pretty decorations to make the church appear attractive to the eye. Yes, it did that, but the architects of Ten had much more in mind when they painted (or constructed) their rose windows or carvings in walls, on columns, at the top of columns, or at the end of beams. As a point in fact, at the Church of San Fedele in France there were discovered some medals dating from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries that had on one side the "benign" symbol in the form of a cross with other decorations with what the symbol actually entailed on the reverse side (which was a phallic symbol). Some signs were "male" and others were "female" and were identified by the respective genitalia found on the reverse side. The Plate IX below was taken from the book "A History of Phallic Worship," by Thomas Wright and published as a reprint by Dorset Press, 1992.



WELL WELL WELL.
So you men have really been worshipping the pus&y for an eon or so, haven'tcha? Ew. Get a grip.