Have you ever noticed all the phallic symbols in the world, the monuments, the figurines, the everything that pay homage to the penis, and wondered where the corresponding vulva tributes were? I know you have. And if you haven’t, perhaps you now will. Like most things pertaining to the divine feminine, they were hidden away. And while that can feel unfair and just plain wrong, it also makes a sort of senf because  the physicality of the vulva and vagina themselves are hidden inside of tissue folds. The vulva has been a mystery, a sacred mystery, since this is where life is birthed through. But the ancient “Sheela Na Gig” brings this mystery out in a very bold way.

We’re seeing the shadow side of the Catholic church, the side they want to hide but must be dealt with. Carl Jung popularized shadow work in the West and emphasized that we all have different parts of ourselves that have been exiled, that we try to repress or keep hidden. One of Jung’s most famous quotes is, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

From my point of view as a certified sexologist, the institution of religion (very different from spirituality, mind you) is fixated on the topic. The Catholic Church doesn’t teach comprehensive sexuality education and instead advocates abstinence only until marriage, which as we’ve seen over and over doesn’t work. In 2017, Columbia University published two studies on the topic and found “The weight of scientific evidence shows these programs do not help young people delay initiation of sexual intercourse.”