Above the portals of churches and castles in Great Britain can be found the figurative carving of a Sheela na Gig--a naked woman spreading her legs to display an exaggerated vulva. M Esther Harding describes this image as “ . . . the psychic counterpart or image of the sexual instinct, which Jung called the archetype.”[i]
What is the Sheela na Gig showing us?
The vulva or yoni is associated with the mother archetype as a symbol of fertility and fruitfulness.[ii] The mother archetype was at the centre of ancient mythologies based on eternal cycles of change and renewal which guided cultures for millennia. These ancient mythologies were profoundly different from the resurrectionist philosophies of the patriarchal religious traditions. Edward Whitmont[iii] and others have convincingly argued that the cultural myth of a supreme male deity is losing its ability to guide humankind's collective fate. The myth of the eternal return with the immanence of the sacred in the everyday is more consistent with sustainable, renewable creative experience, personally and collectively.
The Sheela na Gig is a female figure wantonly exposing her vulva to remind visitors of the true meaning of the threshold--a crossing between the worlds. Her presence signals that it is no ordinary crossing; her open vulva defies conditioned beliefs, ideas, and creeds--the assumptions that determine how people live.
Any view of reality is filled with these assumptions. Canadian literary critic, Northrup Frye, uses the phrase "mythological conditioning" to describe how the myths by which we live are made up of unconscious beliefs that become regarded as facts.[iv] These “facts” then determine experience according to the prevailing mythological conditioning.
Edward Whitmont has described the current time as a low point of "scientific materialism, religious nihilism and spiritual impoverishment"[v]. CG Jung has warned us that:
Culturalphilosophers have emphasised the inherent difficulty of fully realising a possibility or consciousness beyond the prevailing “facts”.[vii] The difficultly lies in the tenacity with which human beings hold to their belief systems and assumptions.
Kurt Lewin, founder of social psychology, developed a practice he called "unfreezing", a process of disconfirming a person’s former belief system by examining fondly-held assumptions about self, others, and the world. Lewin, however, found that:
What is the Sheela na Gig showing us?
The vulva or yoni is associated with the mother archetype as a symbol of fertility and fruitfulness.[ii] The mother archetype was at the centre of ancient mythologies based on eternal cycles of change and renewal which guided cultures for millennia. These ancient mythologies were profoundly different from the resurrectionist philosophies of the patriarchal religious traditions. Edward Whitmont[iii] and others have convincingly argued that the cultural myth of a supreme male deity is losing its ability to guide humankind's collective fate. The myth of the eternal return with the immanence of the sacred in the everyday is more consistent with sustainable, renewable creative experience, personally and collectively.
The Sheela na Gig is a female figure wantonly exposing her vulva to remind visitors of the true meaning of the threshold--a crossing between the worlds. Her presence signals that it is no ordinary crossing; her open vulva defies conditioned beliefs, ideas, and creeds--the assumptions that determine how people live.
Any view of reality is filled with these assumptions. Canadian literary critic, Northrup Frye, uses the phrase "mythological conditioning" to describe how the myths by which we live are made up of unconscious beliefs that become regarded as facts.[iv] These “facts” then determine experience according to the prevailing mythological conditioning.
Edward Whitmont has described the current time as a low point of "scientific materialism, religious nihilism and spiritual impoverishment"[v]. CG Jung has warned us that:
“The world today hangs by a thin thread, and that thread is the psyche of man.”[vi]
Culturalphilosophers have emphasised the inherent difficulty of fully realising a possibility or consciousness beyond the prevailing “facts”.[vii] The difficultly lies in the tenacity with which human beings hold to their belief systems and assumptions.
Observations at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics have demonstrated that even the brightest students in the class have false ideas based on enduring misconceptions that traditional instructional methods cannot overcome. They concluded that“Until you confront your "private universe" you cannot develop true understanding…[viii]
Kurt Lewin, founder of social psychology, developed a practice he called "unfreezing", a process of disconfirming a person’s former belief system by examining fondly-held assumptions about self, others, and the world. Lewin, however, found that:
“Disconfirming information is not enough . . .because we can ignore the information, dismiss it as irrelevant, blame the undesired outcome on others or fate, or, as is most common, simply deny its validity. In order to become motivated to change, we must accept the information and connect it to something we care about.”[ix]But this is not easily done. As Jung says,
“the forms we use for assigning meaning are historical categories that reach back into the mists of time . . .”[x]
Even if it is possible to unravel the historical forms, there must also be a tolerance for new information and for the disorientation and discomfort that is inevitably stirred as existing personal, family, and cultural myths are challenged. It seems that human beings have a built in mechanism that defends against information that might disturb homeostasis (consider the futility of good intentions or New Year's resolutions).
Lewin found that change requires taking in and responding to new information that produces an emotional response. This may be experienced as excitement, enthusiasm, or as passion for a cause, and it can also be felt as an uncomfortable dissonance or unease. Apparently most people tend to avoid the unease so that the critical threshold to new experience or understanding is not crossed.
Perhaps they have never encountered the Sheela na Gig; being confronted with a naked woman spreading her legs to expose an exaggerated vulva is almost certain to stir excitement, passion, unease, or uncomfortable dissonance. If the Sheela na Gig had to wear clothes and speak her truth in words rather than image, she might say: “shed the assumptions that you have inherited from centuries of rational thought and conditioning. Open to the possibility of new experience and meaning . . .”
The Sheela na Gig can help by shocking us out of the conditioning that perpetuates myths of duality and division between body and mind, spirit and matter, the above and the below. By seeing through the myths, symbols, and images which have guided humanity to the present time, it becomes possible to discern the portals to the sacred that await in dreams, body sensing, images and symbols.
If the Sheela na Gig is effective in her confrontation, a permeability opens between conscious experience and the unconscious, allowing a flow of images, emotions, thoughts and body sensations to emerge into awareness from within. A vast collection of images and impressions of human experience becomes accessible through self-reflection, attending to dreams, noticing body signals. Developing this symbolic intelligence builds the capacity to find meaning and connection with the deeper layers of the human experience--to discover the portals to the sacred.
In the shamanistic tradition, it is well understood that knowledge and insight come from beyond consciousness when the barriers between self and “nonself” become fluid[xi]. This is also familiar in the therapy process, when people have profound intellectual understanding of their life issues but experience no relief or resolution until something breaks through into consciousness via a dream or internal focusing or therapeutic intervention that facilitates the permeability between conscious and unconscious.
The shamanistic tradition originated in Paleolithic times and involved the wise ones we now call witchdoctors, medicine-men, folk healers, and witches[xii]. They knew about the different states of consciousness that are more or less accessible depending on certain contexts, and their practices were usually the result of many years of intensive training and commitment. There have, however, also been reports of spontaneous experiences of healing and discovery[xiii] which emerged from the permeability between conscious and unconscious. This occurs when one is prepared to shift from the habitual to find a place “between” where that which is familiar can meet with that which is not yet known--a liminal state.
The liminal state is named from Latin limen: boundary or threshold. Elaborated by anthropologist, Victor Turner, in his studies of pre-industrial rituals and rites of passage, the liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy[xiv]. It is a period of transition, during which normal limits are relaxed, opening the way to something new. It is also a time of disorientation, when one's sense of identity and identification with external structures dissolves to some extent. It makes sense that the Sheela na Gig was place above the threshold.
Liminality and permeability relate to immanence, that which is indwelling or inherent, "pervading the universe"[xv], incorporating the world of Nature. Conversely, transcendence is that which is beyond, "not realisable in experience" or "not subject to the limitations of the physical universe"[xvi]. How do immanence and transcendence coexist?
Four thousand years ago, in the great river valleys of the East, astronomers and mathematicians searched the Heavens for signs of change. Observing the cycles of the Moon and Venus's flirtatious dance with the Sun, they formulated a relationship between the above and the below. The nature of this relationship has occupied theologians, philosophers, artists, poets, farmers, sailors, and myriad star gazers ever since.
Two thousand years ago, at the commencement of the Piscean Age, an alchemical text called The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus appeared somewhere in the Middle East. A full translation of one line reads “What is the above is from the below and the below is from the above.”[xvii] From this comes the oft-quoted maxim: "As above, so below".
By deleting the balance, rational thought has split the above and the below, separating transcendence and immanence into opposites, dividing and scattering things that may not actually be separate at all. In Western culture this is evident in the division between mind and body (matter/mater and spirit), where mind is "higher" than body, and the centre of identity is located in the mind. The famous statement, “I think, therefore I am”, was made in the 17th century by a deeply religious young man who was attempting to describe an inner world of mind and soul. Although he was clearly making a distinction between his inner life and the external material world, even Descartes[xviii] may well be horrified by the total separation of mind and matter that has developed from his statement.
The poet, DH Lawrence, was playing with this in Demiurge:
Lewin found that change requires taking in and responding to new information that produces an emotional response. This may be experienced as excitement, enthusiasm, or as passion for a cause, and it can also be felt as an uncomfortable dissonance or unease. Apparently most people tend to avoid the unease so that the critical threshold to new experience or understanding is not crossed.
Perhaps they have never encountered the Sheela na Gig; being confronted with a naked woman spreading her legs to expose an exaggerated vulva is almost certain to stir excitement, passion, unease, or uncomfortable dissonance. If the Sheela na Gig had to wear clothes and speak her truth in words rather than image, she might say: “shed the assumptions that you have inherited from centuries of rational thought and conditioning. Open to the possibility of new experience and meaning . . .”
The Sheela na Gig can help by shocking us out of the conditioning that perpetuates myths of duality and division between body and mind, spirit and matter, the above and the below. By seeing through the myths, symbols, and images which have guided humanity to the present time, it becomes possible to discern the portals to the sacred that await in dreams, body sensing, images and symbols.
If the Sheela na Gig is effective in her confrontation, a permeability opens between conscious experience and the unconscious, allowing a flow of images, emotions, thoughts and body sensations to emerge into awareness from within. A vast collection of images and impressions of human experience becomes accessible through self-reflection, attending to dreams, noticing body signals. Developing this symbolic intelligence builds the capacity to find meaning and connection with the deeper layers of the human experience--to discover the portals to the sacred.
In the shamanistic tradition, it is well understood that knowledge and insight come from beyond consciousness when the barriers between self and “nonself” become fluid[xi]. This is also familiar in the therapy process, when people have profound intellectual understanding of their life issues but experience no relief or resolution until something breaks through into consciousness via a dream or internal focusing or therapeutic intervention that facilitates the permeability between conscious and unconscious.
The shamanistic tradition originated in Paleolithic times and involved the wise ones we now call witchdoctors, medicine-men, folk healers, and witches[xii]. They knew about the different states of consciousness that are more or less accessible depending on certain contexts, and their practices were usually the result of many years of intensive training and commitment. There have, however, also been reports of spontaneous experiences of healing and discovery[xiii] which emerged from the permeability between conscious and unconscious. This occurs when one is prepared to shift from the habitual to find a place “between” where that which is familiar can meet with that which is not yet known--a liminal state.
The liminal state is named from Latin limen: boundary or threshold. Elaborated by anthropologist, Victor Turner, in his studies of pre-industrial rituals and rites of passage, the liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy[xiv]. It is a period of transition, during which normal limits are relaxed, opening the way to something new. It is also a time of disorientation, when one's sense of identity and identification with external structures dissolves to some extent. It makes sense that the Sheela na Gig was place above the threshold.
Liminality and permeability relate to immanence, that which is indwelling or inherent, "pervading the universe"[xv], incorporating the world of Nature. Conversely, transcendence is that which is beyond, "not realisable in experience" or "not subject to the limitations of the physical universe"[xvi]. How do immanence and transcendence coexist?
Four thousand years ago, in the great river valleys of the East, astronomers and mathematicians searched the Heavens for signs of change. Observing the cycles of the Moon and Venus's flirtatious dance with the Sun, they formulated a relationship between the above and the below. The nature of this relationship has occupied theologians, philosophers, artists, poets, farmers, sailors, and myriad star gazers ever since.
Two thousand years ago, at the commencement of the Piscean Age, an alchemical text called The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus appeared somewhere in the Middle East. A full translation of one line reads “What is the above is from the below and the below is from the above.”[xvii] From this comes the oft-quoted maxim: "As above, so below".
By deleting the balance, rational thought has split the above and the below, separating transcendence and immanence into opposites, dividing and scattering things that may not actually be separate at all. In Western culture this is evident in the division between mind and body (matter/mater and spirit), where mind is "higher" than body, and the centre of identity is located in the mind. The famous statement, “I think, therefore I am”, was made in the 17th century by a deeply religious young man who was attempting to describe an inner world of mind and soul. Although he was clearly making a distinction between his inner life and the external material world, even Descartes[xviii] may well be horrified by the total separation of mind and matter that has developed from his statement.
The poet, DH Lawrence, was playing with this in Demiurge:
Even the mind of God can only imagineIt is not just poets who have described mind and body, spirit and matter, as two aspects of a single, inter-connected reality[xix]. Bio-medical research has revisioned the mindbody relationship as reciprocally interconnecting systems operating with their own intelligences[xx]. Anthropologist, Gregory Bateson[xxi], clearly describes the fundamental epistemological error of rational consciousness: attempting to understand human processes according to simple causal, mechanistic models. In a similar vein, biological scientist, Gerald Edelman[xxii], describes "mind" as the selective coordination of patterns of interconnections between neuronal groups, forming a dynamic loop reminiscent of "entangled" quantum states. In Bateson's words,
those things that have become themselves;
bodies and presences, here and now, creatures with a foothold in creation …Religion knows that Jesus never was Jesus
till he was born from a womb, and ate soup and bread
and grew up, and became, in the wonder of creation, Jesus,
with a body and with needs, and a lovely spirit.
"the total system is a sort of a ladder, interlocking settings which are calibrations, which are qualitative, discontinuous, fixed, structural sort of things"[xxiii].
Echoes of the spiral markings on the pavements of Irish grave barrows . . .
Just as mind and body can be experienced as reciprocally connected parts of one system, immanence and transcendence can also be approached as two aspects of a single, inter-connected reality. This is not a blurring of distinctions, but a recognition of the profound interconnectedness of spirit and matter: "What is the above is from the below AND the below is from the above".
The key to this recognition lies in the mystery of perception. Using sight as an example: what one sees is not determined just by what is out there; what one sees is not determined just by the signals that reach the retina of the eye, or the visual cortex in the brain; what one sees is determined by the complex interaction or relationship between the physical environment, the neuronal, muscular and biochemical responses of the body, and the meaning making parts of the mindbody system. In the same way, the experience of immanence and transcendence involves a complex relationship between matter and spirit, with neither being privileged over the other. Human beings do not have to subscribe to a disembodied, transcendent spirituality to experience a sense of the sacred. Nor does a focus on the everyday stuff of life inevitably lead to an experience of "nothing but" matter.
The Sheela na Gig is there to remind us that rational, cognitive processing is not more important than imagination or dreaming or desire. She is there to remind us that the profane and the sacred exist alongside each other in cyclical interconnectedness. She is there to locate human experience in the eternal cycles of change that have guided cultures since the beginning of time. She is there to lead us through the portals to the sacred so we can restore something of the original dream of the mother of us all, the Earth.
[i] M E Harding, 1973. Psychic Energy: Its Source and its Transformation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p 126.
[ii] CG Jung, 1990. The Mother Archetype in Archetype and the Collective Unconscious, CW Vol 9, Part 1. Para 156. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] N Frye, 1982. The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, p. xviii.
[v] EC Whitmont, 1982. Return of the Goddess, Guernsey, GB, The Guernsey Press. p. vii.
[vi] CG Jung (1973). Psychological Reflections: A New Anthoology of His Writings. RFC Hull & J Jacobi, Eds. Princeton University Press, p. 14.
[vii] Ibid., p. 153.
[viii] "A Private Universe" was created and produced by Matthew H. Schneps and Philip M. Sadler, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Partial funding for "A Private Universe" was provided by the National Science Foundation. http://www.learner.org/teacherslab/pup/ URL accessed 10/5/06.
[ix] E H Schein (2002-4) Kurt Lewin's Change Theory in the Field and in the Classroom: Notes Toward a Model of Managed Learning
http://www.a2zpsychology.com/ARTICLES/kurt_lewin's_change_theory_page7.htm
[x] CG Jung, 1990. The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. Translated by RFC Hull. Bollingen Series XX. The Collected Works of CG Jung, Vol 9, part 1, para 67.
[xi] J Achterberg, 1985. Imagery in Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications
[xii] J Halifax, 1982. Shaman: The Wounded Healer. London: Thames and Hudson.
[xiii] Achterberg, 1985, op. cit.
[xiv] B Trubshaw, 1995. The metaphors and rituals of place and time - an introduction to liminality or Why Christopher Robin wouldn't walk on the cracks. Mercian Mysteries, No.22, February. http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/liminal.htm
[xv] The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English. 1987. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. p. 353.
[xvi] Ibid., p. 1207.
[xviii] AR Damasio, 2000. Descarte’s Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. New York, Quill.
[xix] C G Jung, CW - The Collected Works of CG Jung, 1953-1979, trans. RFC Hull, ed. H Read, M Fordham, G Adler, W McGuire, Bollingen Series XX. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, vols. 1-17.
[xx] C B Pert, 1997. Molecules of Emotion: Why You Feel the Way You Feel. New York, Scribner.
[xxi] G Bateson, 1978a. The pattern which connects. Coevolution Quarterly, 18, pp. 4-15.
[xxii] G Edelman, 1987. Neural Darwinism: The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. New York, Basic Books.
----1989. The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness. New York, Basic Books.
----1992. Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of Mind. New York, Basic Books.
[xxiii] G Bateson, 1981. Paradigmatic conservatism, in G Wider-Mott & JH Weakland, eds.,
Rigor and Imagination: Essays from the Legacy of Gregory Bateson. New York, Praeger Publishers, p. 43.
Just as mind and body can be experienced as reciprocally connected parts of one system, immanence and transcendence can also be approached as two aspects of a single, inter-connected reality. This is not a blurring of distinctions, but a recognition of the profound interconnectedness of spirit and matter: "What is the above is from the below AND the below is from the above".
The key to this recognition lies in the mystery of perception. Using sight as an example: what one sees is not determined just by what is out there; what one sees is not determined just by the signals that reach the retina of the eye, or the visual cortex in the brain; what one sees is determined by the complex interaction or relationship between the physical environment, the neuronal, muscular and biochemical responses of the body, and the meaning making parts of the mindbody system. In the same way, the experience of immanence and transcendence involves a complex relationship between matter and spirit, with neither being privileged over the other. Human beings do not have to subscribe to a disembodied, transcendent spirituality to experience a sense of the sacred. Nor does a focus on the everyday stuff of life inevitably lead to an experience of "nothing but" matter.
The Sheela na Gig is there to remind us that rational, cognitive processing is not more important than imagination or dreaming or desire. She is there to remind us that the profane and the sacred exist alongside each other in cyclical interconnectedness. She is there to locate human experience in the eternal cycles of change that have guided cultures since the beginning of time. She is there to lead us through the portals to the sacred so we can restore something of the original dream of the mother of us all, the Earth.
[i] M E Harding, 1973. Psychic Energy: Its Source and its Transformation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p 126.
[ii] CG Jung, 1990. The Mother Archetype in Archetype and the Collective Unconscious, CW Vol 9, Part 1. Para 156. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] N Frye, 1982. The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, p. xviii.
[v] EC Whitmont, 1982. Return of the Goddess, Guernsey, GB, The Guernsey Press. p. vii.
[vi] CG Jung (1973). Psychological Reflections: A New Anthoology of His Writings. RFC Hull & J Jacobi, Eds. Princeton University Press, p. 14.
[vii] Ibid., p. 153.
[viii] "A Private Universe" was created and produced by Matthew H. Schneps and Philip M. Sadler, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Partial funding for "A Private Universe" was provided by the National Science Foundation. http://www.learner.org/teacherslab/pup/ URL accessed 10/5/06.
[ix] E H Schein (2002-4) Kurt Lewin's Change Theory in the Field and in the Classroom: Notes Toward a Model of Managed Learning
http://www.a2zpsychology.com/ARTICLES/kurt_lewin's_change_theory_page7.htm
[x] CG Jung, 1990. The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. Translated by RFC Hull. Bollingen Series XX. The Collected Works of CG Jung, Vol 9, part 1, para 67.
[xi] J Achterberg, 1985. Imagery in Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications
[xii] J Halifax, 1982. Shaman: The Wounded Healer. London: Thames and Hudson.
[xiii] Achterberg, 1985, op. cit.
[xiv] B Trubshaw, 1995. The metaphors and rituals of place and time - an introduction to liminality or Why Christopher Robin wouldn't walk on the cracks. Mercian Mysteries, No.22, February. http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/liminal.htm
[xv] The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English. 1987. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. p. 353.
[xvi] Ibid., p. 1207.
[xviii] AR Damasio, 2000. Descarte’s Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. New York, Quill.
[xix] C G Jung, CW - The Collected Works of CG Jung, 1953-1979, trans. RFC Hull, ed. H Read, M Fordham, G Adler, W McGuire, Bollingen Series XX. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, vols. 1-17.
[xx] C B Pert, 1997. Molecules of Emotion: Why You Feel the Way You Feel. New York, Scribner.
[xxi] G Bateson, 1978a. The pattern which connects. Coevolution Quarterly, 18, pp. 4-15.
[xxii] G Edelman, 1987. Neural Darwinism: The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. New York, Basic Books.
----1989. The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness. New York, Basic Books.
----1992. Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of Mind. New York, Basic Books.
[xxiii] G Bateson, 1981. Paradigmatic conservatism, in G Wider-Mott & JH Weakland, eds.,
Rigor and Imagination: Essays from the Legacy of Gregory Bateson. New York, Praeger Publishers, p. 43.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments and discussion always welcome . . .