Here Barbara Freitag examines all the literature on the subject since their discovery 160 years ago, highlighting the inconsistencies of the various interpretations in regard to origin, function and name. By considering the Sheela-na-gigs in their medieval social context, she suggests that they were folk deities with particular responsibility for assistance in childbirth. This fascinating survey sheds new light on a controversial phenomenon, and also contains a complete catalogue of all known Sheela-na-gigs, including hitherto unrecorded or unpublished figures.

Traces the origins of the Sheela na gig from Medieval times to Paleolithic cave art • Reveals the sacred display of the vulva to be a universal archetype and the most enduring image of creativity throughout the world • Provides meditations on the Sheelas the author encountered in Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales, allowing readers to commune with the power of these icons • Includes more than 150 photographs and illustrations from around the world 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 more than 150 photographs, the author shows 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, including medieval churches. The author provides meditations on the individual Sheelas she encountered during her 25 years of research, 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 vulva depictions in cave art, she reveals the female sacred display to be a universal archetype, the most enduring image of creativity throughout history, and illustrates how cultures from Africa and Ecuador to India and Australia 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 shows the Sheela to be an icon that makes visible the cycles of birth, death, and renewal all humans experience and a necessary antidote to centuries of suppression of the primal power of women, of nature, and of the imagination.

An illustrated and comprehensive account of the Sheela-na-gigs (carvings of female images) of Britain and Ireland.

Every human being is born and has gone through a process of birth. Yet the topic of birth remains deeply underrepresented in the humanities, overshadowed by a scholarly focus on death. This book explores how imagery is used ritualistically in religious, secular, and nonreligious ways during birth, through analysis of a wide variety of art, iconography, poetry, and material culture. Objects central to the book’s study include religious figurines, paintings about birth, and other items representative of pregnancy, crowning, or giving birth that have an historical or original meaning connected to religion. Contemporaryartists are also creating new art in which they represent birth and mothering as nonreligious events that are sacred or divine. Framed through the concept of social ontology, which examines the nature of the social world and studies how people create meaning out of the various objects, images, and processes that make up human social life, the book theorizes a social ontology of birth, focusing on how the meaning of imagery undergoes metamorphosis between the spheres of religion, secularity, nonreligion, and the sacred when used during birth as a rite of passage. Included in the study are more than thirty images of birth, some of which have never been written about before.

Witchcraft & Wicca.

The Healthy Coconut is a simple guide to incorporating the amazing benefits of coconut into your daily lifestyle. The Healthy Coconut features more than 100 whole food, plant-based and gluten-free recipes, bursting with coconut goodness and superfood nutrition. This book will show you how to use coconut, both internally and externally, to receive maximum health and beauty benefits, and toxin free-living. Just one scoop of virgin coconut oil delivers a wide-range of healing properties. Produced in it’s most natural state, coconut oil will benefit you, your children and your pets. Whether you have chronic fatigue, weight problems, digestive or skin issues, or just want to give your body a good cleanse and boost your energy, this book is your one-stop coconut bible! More than 100 whole food, plant-based and gluten-free recipes, bursting with coconut goodness and superfood nutrition Australian author well known within the health industry, expert in the field on coconut products and their benefits unique book on the holistic superfood uses of coconuts extending past the well known benefits of coconut oil through to recipes, body care and beauty.

A book devoted to studies of portable artefacts, the contents of which include: Early Celtic art on the continent ( O. H. Frey ); Knobbed spearbutts revisited ( Barry Raftery ); The oldest extant post-medieval table-fork ( L. Flanagan ) and An Iron Age lead pin from County Donegal ( Richard Warner ). There are lots of excellent illustrations in this wide-ranging and valuable work.

The intimate relationship of the study of law and the study of literature has never been clearer in Celtic studies. They help to elucidate each other, as well as to contextualise the study of history and society. This is the approach adopted in the studies collected in this volume of CSANA. Contents: Paul Russell (U Cambridge), Poets, power and possessions in medieval Ireland: Michael Meckler (Ohio State U), The assassination of Diarmait mac Cerbaill; Sara Elin Roberts (U Bangor), The Welsh law of women in the legal triads; Lahney Preston-Matto (Adelphi U), Derbforgaill's literary heritage; Karen Eileen Overbey (Tufts U), Ambivalence and anxiety at the Nun's Church; Timothy P. Bridgman (U Binghamton), Naming conventions concerning Celtic peoples.

Celebrating a long overlooked spiritual heritage, this unique resource explores stunning, easily accessible yet little known locations such as Hera's birthplace at Argos, Greece; the site where earth goddess Diana reigns in Nemi, Italy; the Temple of Isis at Szombathely in Hungary; and the great sanctuary of the goddess Brigid in Kildare, Ireland. Photographs, illustrations, maps.