Spring Equinox and the Midwife of the soul
Blessings on Sile Day – celebrating the Devine marriage, the Hieros Gamus, of the feminine and masculine aspects within ! This celebration comes so close to the ancient pre Christian festival of Spring equinox, when the first seeds were set for the incoming season of growth!
A time of coming into balance coincides with the beginning of the new astrological year, this year we also have it landing on the beginning of a new lunar cycle so wow that’s a lot of energy at this threshold of renewal, intent.
So as many put in their green yesterday to celebrate St Patrick, who we are told initiated the introduction of the Colonial Christian doctrine. Today is a day of fun where we get to celebrate the very ancient and somewhat tentative festival Féile Padraig agus Síle!
According to a written account in the 1800’s , we are told of a parade that occurred in WestPort, Co Mayo where the people paraded through the town carrying an effigy of Sile and Patrick, the newly weds, a reenactment of the Bainis Regis, the Heiros Gamus -the sacred marriage, amid great celebrations that continued for 3 days! This story was recounted by British soldiers, who were stationed in the town in the 1870’s.
In the folklore commission we also hear about Irish emigrants bringing the same tradition of Síle and Paddy’s day to New Foundland. How perfectly seasonally aware were our ancestors, who practiced the indigenous wisdom of our land!!! In these extreme times of out of control masculine energy, (that’s putting it mildly beyond words) it’s so essential for us to rise with the tide of voice of the feminine, silenced for so long!!! To bring these energies back into Balance. Most women in the western industrial societies have been more wired into their masculine aspect in order to compete with men in well paid jobs, especially in the corporate world. Predominantly operating through the thinking mind rather than the heart! So as nature moves into its own balance at this time of Spring equinox, with equal night and day, light and shadow we are invited to cross this threshold with awareness.
It’s time to explore these inner aspects of feminine and masculine. How can we balance the being and the doing, deep rest and positive action, uniting the head and the heart coming into intuitive intelligence.
Does this iconic figure Sile relate to the iconic figure Sile na Gig who is emerging from behind the Christian veil, and if so does she have something to teach us ?
I wrote an article about her a few years ago and I’m just up adding some of the ideas and questions discussed here in my blog.
The original article was written for an academic audience so although I’m rewriting it now in a less formal way it might at times sound a little academic but no harm to bridge these worlds.
When first encountered the intriguing Sheela Na Gig figures generally arrest and confound the modern mind which can’t quite compute what it is seeing …naked female figures exposing their genitals often on the walls of churches. This incongruous ‘marriage’ has sparked various responses in those who have encountered these iconic figures since they first came to academic attention in the 1840’s. Provoking reactions such as that seen in Thomas O’Connor’s account, the first to be put in writing. His notes from the ordnance survey letters tell of the Sheela figure on Kiltinan church (Fig. 1) ‘whose attitude and expression conspire to impress the grossest idea of immorality and licentiousness’. [1]The last few decades have seen a growing interest in these sculptured icons on the part of academics from different areas of interest. In the last 5 years I would say they have exploded onto the stage of women’s ‘rewilding’ with a incredible creative output from poets and visual artists and activists of various types.
I first came across these images while studying archaeology at UCC in Ireland and like so many before me I was hooked into the mystery
Encoded in these licentious lassies ! ,
For those who are not familiar with these intriguing stone carvings, generally they depict naked females usually standing or squatting, thighs often widely splayed, in an act of display, often with one or both hands pointing to, or touching the genitals. So says many academic who has paid attention to them in the past.
I would like to insist however that it is not genitals, although highly emphasized but rather the entrance to the birth canal, the cosmic portal, which is what cultures throughout time understood was the portal through which new souls could enter our world. Which of course cousins also result in the death of a soul coming through.
This slight change in understanding of
emphasis, broadens the concept from the licentious/sexual/erotic realm, to the more all-encompassing realm of life, death and regeneration, which has been a fundamental concern of peoples from the beginning of time.
In 1990, I began writing about this fascinating subject when I was completing my B.A. and gave several public lectures at the time to various historical and archaeological societies, much to the bemusement of rural Catholic Ireland at the time. Even in more recent years I given public lectures, and was met by the most surprising reaction – including a request that my talk should be followed by a talk by a man of the Christian fellowship community on how the power of the Cross could overpower these vial and sinful images !! That was in 2018 !!
Many publications have come into the public sphere in the intervening years.
Several writers have offered very interesting yet incomplete explanations of these iconic images.
One to note is Barbara Freitag’s publication ‘Sheela-Na-Gig unravelling an enigma’. This is a very thorough analysis of the subject, and includes much interesting material relating to all aspects of the topic, and is a necessary read for anyone interested in this fascinating subject.
For instance with regards to the origins of the term Sheela-na-gig/Síle-na-gig, Freitag draws attention to a letter by Nóra Ní Shúilliobháin to the Irish Times in 1977 in which the latter informs us of a British Navy vessel named Sheilanagig, cited in relation to the career of a certain Home Popham, later Rear-Admiral Sir Home Rigges Popham, who according to the dictionary of National Biography was transferred to the ‘Sheilanagig’ in 1781. Here, the name is interpreted as ’Sheela na Guig’ meaning Irish female sprite. This is interesting on two points. Firstly, it is the earliest published reference to the use of this term Sheila-na-gig, long before it
was recorded as a term for these extraordinary sculptures by the ordnance survey in the 1840’s. Secondly, the translation of the term is interesting. Generally, the name Sheela is said to be a translation into Irish of the French name Cecilia, brought into Ireland by the Normans, but here we see its association with the term sí or sídh meaning sprite, fairy, otherworld being. This suggests the possibility that the name Sheela/Síle had an indigenous association with a fairy woman or at least ‘otherworld’ female force.
So I would suggest that these figures are in fact misnamed.
When antiquarians’discovered these figures they heard them referred colloquially as Sile na gig, which is highly likely a modern slang attached to them, others called them the witch on the wall, again a colloquial reference to them.
So I find it really quite amusing that people now describe Síle na gig as a Goddess but I would suggest that this is an accuracy that needs to be corrected. These iconic images are the representation of the mother goddess and her life giving and taking properties! She is the great mother who brings us safely into this world or can take life just as easily. She expresses such a profundity that I feel we need to step back and really take in what she is telling us.
In Freitags book she scoffs at this idea of the tribal/mother goddess idea, which has been proposed in the past by some of who I would say have the most progressive opinions on the meaning behind these intriguing sculptures. These opinions by writers such as Jack Roberts, Maureen Colcannon, Star Goode are generally variations on a theme that centre around the core idea of a Pagan/Celtic mother goddess background for the origins of Síle Na Gigs. In particular, it is the ‘loathesome’ hag who features in our early Irish myths, namely ‘The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel and The Adventure of the Sons of Muigmedóin. This figure has been suggested as representing the inspiration for the origins of these figures. The Hag of course representing the goddess of sovereignty who might appear as a young maiden of startling beauty or an old hag of ‘revolting ugliness’. This is reflected in the duality of the depiction of these figures with almost cadaver like hag features (emaciated ribs, drooping breasts, protruding eyes, tattooing on the face and or body) and yet strongly emphasising the life-giving potential of the birthing canal. In the first story the hag is admitted into the king’s hostel, breaking one of the king’s gessa or taboos, which ultimately leads to his downfall. After insulting the hag, she curses him while ‘standing on one leg with one hand held up in the air’.
Interestingly, the now stolen figure from Kiltinan church was depicted in such a position (Fig.1).
In the second story, we hear of the encounter of Niall of the nine hostages fame (eponymous leader to be) with a ‘loathsome’ hag who by embracing or ’taking to his bosom’ transforms her into the most beautiful stately maiden deeming him the true and just king, completing the hiros gamos, the sacred marriage uniting territory and its eternal sovereignty principle with the male, mortal ruler.
What is interesting here with regard to our subject is this ability to shapeshift or transform from haggered crone to young maiden which in the folkloric sense fulfills the symbolic process. The goddess symbolises or personifies the land and is inextricably linked with sovereignty and the fertility of the land. It is through the ritual union with her, by the rite of the sacral marriage that the rightful king can institute his legal title to Kingship. When the rightful king becomes apparent as in the story of The Sons of Muigmedóin, in his ritual union with the sovereignty goddess, the kingdom should enjoy great peace, prosperity and health of its crops, animals and people.
The possible association of the Celtic sovereignty goddess with these iconic stone carvings is completely dismissed by Barbara Frietag mainly on the grounds that the descriptions of the physical attributes of the ‘Hag figures’ in the early mythology, do not literally match features or characteristics of the carvings themselves. She goes into great detail telling us about inaccuracies in the translation of certain words referring to specific anatomical features, when in fact what is being described is an archetypal force.
It must also be stated that one of the main characteristics of these early writings is exaggeration and hyperbolae. The carvings themselves often appear to have been executed by almost untrained hands in that they are very crude, almost non-human, each one idiosyncratic and totally unique while conveying similar characteristics deployed to depict a concept rather than a personality. Ithe bean feasa/ bean leighis healer/wise woman that I got the title for my paper because these wise women/healers were exactly the midwives of the soul who administered to those as they came into and as they left the world.
The great retired professor of folklore at UCD Gearóid O’ Crualaoich in his impressive study of the Cailleach, The Irish shape shifting Magna Mather, has suggested that these evocative figures represent a shared inherited meaning calling on an ‘archetypal condensation’ of the original figures of the Cailleach and the wise woman, themselves distillations of the ancient Magna Mater, the great Mother Goddess who would intercede for her people, in such pivotal, vulnerable moments of their lives such as birthing and dying acting as ‘midwife of the soul’.
Today with the rise of the voice of the feminine these figure represents many things to many people,
the bean feasa/ bean leighis healer/wise woman, these wise women/healers theses were the midwives of the soul who administered to those as they came into and as they left the world.
As Maureen Concannon suggests, the re-emergence in western consciousness of the Síle na gigs is a signal that the human psyche is responding to an urgent need to restore the repressed feminine. Perhaps also as an urgent reminder of our need to regard the earth as the sacred source of life itself. Especially in these times of uber crisis and hopefully paradigm shift !