Today is Sheela na Gig day, but I would rather bring her back to reign, rather than just for a day!
A lot has been written about these hags, naked, often skeletal, legs akimbo displaying their exaggerated and mythical vulvas!!!
Sheela’s are all about celebrating everything FEMALE, the ties between women, our communities, and the everyone-gets-looked-after, the-no-one-gets-left-out - kind of healing in all its multitude of forms.
Take Sheela as you meet her. She’s a symbol of life, death and rebirth. A reminder that we once lived lives rooted into the spiritual bedrock. When we die, we return to the embrace of the great mother. She’s a symbol of women, of physical birth and death and all the blood and rituals that go with these life portals. She’s about women’s ways, women’s wisdom, of welcoming the babies into the world and preparing the dead for their journey of midwifing at the end of life.
She’s our ancient connection to all that which has been taken away from us - the right of choice for our bodies, our power, our stories and voices, our rights, sisterhood and our connection to the sacred, our relationship to the land.
Sheela is a powerful figure to help us remember!
To me, Síle has become more than a relic; she is a powerful symbol of cultural remembrance and a living ancestor. She embodies the oppressed, the silenced, the hidden feminine that has been overlooked throughout history.
Síle is not merely an object; she is an icon steeped in memory. The stone that forms her bring holds the stories of those who came before us.
In these devastating times, where feminine sovereignty is under siege and the rights women fought so hard to achieve are being slashed and burned, the relevance of Síle’s existence grows ever more critical. The fragile gains we have made towards equality are at risk; nothing can be taken for granted. We must reclaim our narratives and those of our ancestors, remembering that each artefact carries a history that demands recognition and respect.
A Sheela na Gig altar - A ritual of protection for a young woman
Sheela na Gig - Kildonnan Church, Isle of Eigg
Walking the Road of Death to Meet Sheela
On the Gather the Keeners Retreat on the Isle of Eigg we walk an ancient coffin road, the route that the dead would have been carried, over the few miles to the cemetery at Kildonnan. In this ancient old roofless church sits a Sheela na Gig, protected from the elements by a glass plate as she looks out to a congregation of tall (healing) weeds swaying in the breeze as a chorus of bees and insects collecting pollen sing old hymns to the earth.
We walk this death road, walking towards her, walking to this ancient female who gives life and takes life. When we die we travel through the same portal we came into the world through. We return back into the place of beginning, the place of reforming - the great mystery, the womb of the goddess, the cosmos.
Some say this SHeela in the little ruined church isn’t actually a true Sheela at all, but for all the Sheela’s that were destroyed or sit on museum shelves in boxes, I reclaim this Sheela as a powerful image for reclaiming our stories, our rituals and our healing!
She’s our ancient connection to all that which has been taken away from us - the right of choice for our bodies, our power, our stories and voices, sisterhood and our connection to the sacred, our relationship to the land. She is with us in our holy rage, our love and our keening.
Check out our Gather the Keeners retreat - While our May retreat is now full our August retreat is open for registration. Come along to our Retreat overview/Q&A gathering on Sunday 6th April