CARNAL NATION

Happy Mother's Day! May is the month of the mother —and the Mother Goddess. It is named for Maia, the Virgin Goddess of Spring, and celebrated with fertility rites and ceremonies honoring mothers.

So, in honor of our mothers and the Great Mother, let's talk about one of the more embarrassing art motifs in the world: the Sheela-na-gig. OK, so it's not embarrassing to all of us, but to the prudes among us and within us, it is very disturbing.

The Sheela-na-gig is a figure of a squatting woman holding her oversized vulva open with both hands. Statues of the Sheela-na-gig abound across Europe on the outside walls of churches; varieties of it appear elsewhere as well. In Bali, on the sign of a birthing center, I saw a version that showed a baby's head coming out of the birth canal.

Related, for the sake of our discussion, are the Venus figurines found by archeologists, which have exaggerated female characteristics – breasts, vulva, hips, thighs, etc. These traits are highly valued by people of other cultures, such as Tonga and other Polynesian islands, for instance. When I was there about 25 years ago, I was told that a skinny woman – meaning any woman thin enough to play the romantic heroine in a typical Hollywood movie or even within 50 pounds of that weight – was not a suitable wife. She clearly wasn't a decent cook, and probably couldn't bear children. (My Tongan friends didn't discuss the ideal vulva with me.)

It's understandable that big, beautiful, voluptuous women would be appreciated so. Breasts feed the young, so the bigger the better. And it's true that women who are starvation-level skinny usually don't menstruate and can't bear children. It's nature's way of limiting production in “lean years.”

This way of thinking is consistent with the most common theory explaining both the Sheela-na-gig and the Venus figurines  – that they were icons of the Great Mother, the Mother from whom all creation came. The concept of Mother as Goddess is prevalent throughout prehistoric and indigenous cultures, and it's quite understandable. Giving birth is such a stunningly magical feat. To see a new life issue forth from a body is astounding.

Birthing is the ultimate act of creation available to a human. Birth infuses the physical with the spiritual, combining the two into one manifestation. Thus, religions used to be almost universally devoted to a Supreme Goddess rather than a God. It's hard to imagine a male figure giving birth to the Universe when you haven't seen a man give birth at all. Most creation myths involve a female Source.

The word “mother” comes from the root word mater, as do the words “material,” “matrix,” “measure” and others. Some creation myths describe a matrix from which all matter comes. Others describe a version of a Mother Earth who manifests all material objects. Until relatively recently (in the grand scope of things), humans hadn't recognized that some rocks were from asteroids rather than being indigenous to the Earth. All matter came from the Mother.

Ultimately the Goddess religions were about birth, growth, abundance, and death as evidenced by the cycle of life. Thus, the choice of May for the month of the Mother in the northern hemisphere: Seeds planted in May progressively sprout, leaf, flower and fruit. Finally the plant goes to seed, flinging seeds into the air in order to create future generations of itself.

So what has all this got to do with sex? Everything, of course! If giving birth is cosmic, then conception is too. Sex is the ultimate act of God-ness humans can do together. It's right up there with the actual birthing.

The hitch for us primates was figuring out that sex was involved in that amazing occurrence. There is disagreement on when and how prehistoric humans figured out the connection between sex and birth, but once we did -- well, its sacred nature and cosmic significance were obvious.

Many agriculture-based communities held fertility rites in early spring that included having sex. May Day, Beltane and other Spring celebrations all allowed or encouraged having sex -- fun, raucous, playing-in-the-fields sex. Often the practice was to find someone new to mate with. Though it may not have been the intention, this offered infertile couples a chance to have offspring. Children were important in agrarian societies as farmhands and caretakers of their elderly parents. Being childless was not just uncommon, it was also perilous. Any child who could be attributed to a fertility rite was considered an out-right gift of the Goddess.

For some traditions, the Hieros Gamos, or Sacred Marriage, was the highest ritual of the year. Usually celebrated at Beltane, it involved sexual intercourse between the High Priestess and High Priest or King. The Hieros Gamos and other early May rituals were intended to guarantee fertility for the land and the humans who lived there and tended it. Some descriptions tell of the ritual ending with the sacrifice of the King, because the complete cycle of life included the dying and composting of previous life. This practice was dropped in later centuries. 

Through all these practices, it was taken for granted that sex is a holy act of creation and that the enjoyment of it is an important aspect of the ritual. As a culture, we are regaining this appreciation for nature's processes, and therefore we are enjoying them more. Reports abound of the pleasure of breastfeeding, and some women even have an orgasm giving birth. Happy Mother's Day indeed!