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Sheela Na Gig, the Mother Goddess, guardian and gateway to the soul. An ancient image found on Irish and other European churches from their earliest beginnings. Art by Lucy Dolan.
Mary Magdeline expresses in the Christian tradition the flesh-and-blood woman who awakened to the paths of love and spirit, while still always connected with her basis in body and earth. She holds in her hand an egg, the source of new life.
These images, from a 16th century alchemical book called Splendor Solis, illustrate the symbolic process by which new life is generated. These two in the sequence, the king and the queen, are the opposing elements contributing to the emergence of the new.
This is a wall painting in a tiny church named Panagia Gorgona (Virgin Mary Mermaid) in the small port of Skala Sikaminias on the island of Lesbos. The local people took their Christianity and mixed it with more ancient traditions, in a way that closely connected with their lives.
The Greek at the bottom says "Y Panayia y Gorgona". Panayia is the holy virgin Mary... it expresses the mother, protector of people. Gorgona is an ancient word for sea creature, but also ancient mother. I remember it being associated with sea monsters, but here it obviously refers to the mermaid, a sea creature less threatening than a monster but in many stories still frightening.
The icon is an assimilation of the holy virgin mother, protector, and the mermaid, the creature of the sea and ancient mother. The little church is in a tiny seaport town on the harbor breakwater. This icon is the primary, dedicating icon of the church and the town. Men leaving in their fishing boats face the church and cross themselves as protection from the dangers of the sea. Women in the town visit frequently, keep the candles lit and leave gifts of food, oil and herbs.
This image is my own compilation, composed of two medieval images which have closely related themes, bound together by the omnipresent symbol of the "mandorla", the shape of the opening to the womb found in art from prehistoric times until the present. The two original images are also shown. The outside image is a medieval icon depicting the adoration of God the Father, appearing within the mandorla. The image inside the mandorla of the compiled picture is the Triumph of Venus, from a 16th century image depicting the adoration of Venus by six famous lovers throughout the ages.
Medusa was one of the Greek expressions of the "terrifying" woman, the dark relatedness to death of the feminine nature. While the male causes life and causes death, the woman contains both life creating and life ending force. In the Greek myth, Jason achieved mastery over Medusa by tricking her and slicing off her head, one of the many acts of violence by which the male has sought domination over the female element which he fears. The painting is by the 16th century artist Caravaggio.
"Day", a 19th century painting by the Symbolist painter Ferdinand Hodler. This ring below the dome of the Greek church has customarily shown the saints in reverence to the Holy Christ represented in the dome above.
In the typical Greek church the underside of the dome would be painted with an imposing image of "Christ Pantocrator", the Son of God represented as the stern judge who determines the eternal fate of every person, and under whose gaze the spiritual experience of the church activities happened. Here, instead, we see the mother and child.
The focal point of the Chapel of Women is this video which provides a reverential backdrop to a representation of the Holy Grail itself. The background of the video is a medieval Christian painting in a theme called "The Man of Sorrows", showing the Christ hovering over the tomb, not dead but also not yet triumphantly alive after the Resurrection. The Man of Sorrows is the Christ suffering the burdens of human-ness, hung from the cross and committed to the tomb, but with spirit greater than death.
The moving image in front is the Woman of Sorrows, hanging from the cross, but as with the man, achieving dominance over life and death, containing and merging the two. She is of course a current day expression of the female, merged here with an ancient expression of the male, both in tension and struggle and immersion in spirit.
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