In this week’s episode Starr Goode speaks with Joanna about: Sheela na gig, a mysterious female figure of sacred display; the healing and protection of Sheela na gig, from Medieval times to Paleolithic cave art; the primordial, revered symbol of the ever-renewing Life Force; the life-restoring, evil stopping powers of the displayed vulva in myth and history; the political and social reclamation of the word “pussy”; the contemporary emergence of feminist sacred art; sacred images for another order of being; the Dark Goddess and the renewal of life; reclaiming the sanctity of women’s bodies from the patriarchal mindset; seeding the foundation for a life-affirming culture.
Starr Goode, MA teaches writing and literature at Santa Monica College. She is producer and moderator for the cable TV series “The Goddess in Art” (available on YouTube). An award-winning writer, she has been profiled for her work as a cultural commentator in such publications as the L. A. Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker. Her previous work on the Sheelas was published in “ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation”, the “Irish Journal of Feminist Studies”, the three-volume encyclopedia “Goddesses in World Culture”, and in “About Place Journal”. A recent book, “The Art of Living: Falstaff, the Fool and Dino”, explores the power of wit and the importance of play. Her latest book is “Sheela na gig, the Dark Goddess of Sacred Power”.
“I Can’t Sit Still”, original music by Evarusnik
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe: RSS
“…one of the fundamental crises of our time is a lack of connection to images that come from the deepest parts of ourselves, we have a very passive relationship with our imagination, we’re bombarded with superficial images from the internet, and entertaining ourselves to death…but a really traditional and sacred function of an image is to build a bridge between the inner and outer world, that we have something from the inner world that we’ve never seen before that comes forward…that’s our imagination and that’s what a Sheela na-gig is, she’s an image a reconciling image between our inner world our spiritual world, because no woman who ever walked the Earth ever looked like a Sheel na-gig, so that’s what…she’s reclaiming the kind of sacred images that we need to overturn the outworn images of patriarchy that are causing such endless misery such wars, wars, wars, that’s why we need these images of the feminine to issue another order of being, again, cosmological images tie, social systems, anchor them, it’s not just brute force it’s the images that we have, god the father that gives permission to every man, y’know to be king, to brutalize this life, we know about the epidemic of violence against women, that’s why we need these images of the feminine it’s not just exchanging one image from another, but it’s a radiation of meanings, of wholeness, of sanctity……”
Can’t get enough of this Joanna, thanks to your guest Starr ~ fabulous, radical, purest truth…marvelously refreshing, deeply resonant…I so agree. pure connectivity, authentic magick “…the best resting place of the imagination, ever-renewing life force…” yes indeed, superb