more pics . a poem
from The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, by Barbara Walker
Carved representation of a naked woman squatting with her knees apart, displaying her vulva, shown as a vesica piscis or double-pointed oval. Sometimes the figure presented the vesica with both hands or drew it open with one. Sheila-na-gig figures appeared all over old Irish churches before the 16th century. Many were still in place during the 19th century, but Victorian prudery defaced or destroyed large numbers of them. Some have been found buried near the churches they once embellished.
Sheila-na-gig figures closely resembled the yonic statues of Kali which still appear at the doorways of Hindu temples, where visitors lick a finger and touch the yoni "for luck." Some of the older figures have deep holes worn in their yonis from much touching.
The protruding ribcage on many examples of the sheila-na-gig imitates the figures of Kali as the death-goddess, Kalika, evidently remembered in Ireland as the Caillech or "Old Woman," who was also the Creatress and gave birth to all the races of men. Celts generally protected doorways with some female-genital fetish, which is why they settled on the horseshoe, classic Omega-sign of the Kalika. In India it stood for the feminine cosmos within which Shiva ever performed his creative sexual dance, although he was assimilated to the Kalika and given her title of Destroyer.
Derivation of the term sheila-na-gig is obscure. It meant something like "vulva-woman." Gig or giggie meant female genitals and may have been related to the Irish "jig," from French gigue, in pre-Christian times an orgiastic dance. In ancient Erech a gig seems to have been a holy yoni; the sacred harlots of the temple were known as nu-gig.
Sheila-na-gig is a collective name for the many female figurines found as artifacts mainly in the region that today forms Ireland, yet in some cases also in England, Scotland, and Germany, the general area that has long been under Celtic influence. These sheelas are mostly cut from stone and show a squatting or standing female figure, legs spread, exhibiting her yoni. In most cases these women or deities are, by most standards, quite unpleasant to look at, resembling as they do underfed, half-dead skeletal creatures or half-smiling demons from someone's nightmare. What makes these figures especially interesting is the fact that most of them were found embedded (and some still are) in the walls of early monasteries and village churches, and we can imagine that they have given more than one abbot or priest his share of devilish headache. Nevertheless, most of these sheelas have meanwhilebeen dismantled -many first disfigured and damaged by soldiers and other good Christians --are hidden away in a cellar of the Dublin Museum. Little is known of the background andritual purpose of these sculptures, and we therefore have to approach this question withmythographical imagination and with the intuitive mind of a criminologist. As a possibleobject for meditation on the endless cycle of birth and death, they show an interesting relationto the woman in a Tantric stri "puja". If we consider them mainly as exhibitionist, they mayhave a connection to figures such as the Greek Baubo or the Japanese Ama-no-Uzume. Theirname, Sheela-na-gig, has always been a considerable puzzle to etymologists, since it fits intonone of the languages ever spoken in the British isles. In Mesopotamia, however, at thetemple of Erech, one did use the term nu-gug ("the poor and immaculate ones") to designatethe women who held the office of sacred harlot. It is therefore my suggestion that they are apre-Celtic version of the Oriental sacred prostitutes, and that they have been "imported" fromthe Mesopotamian region. This, of course, does not exclude the possibility and probabilitythat the were objects for meditation as well as figures demonstrating simple yoni magic -- thatis, keeping negative energies away.