Sheela na gig
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A sheela na gig is a figurative carving of a naked woman displaying an exaggerated vulva. These carvings, from the Middle Ages, are architectural grotesques found throughout most of Europe on cathedra
A 12th-century sheela na gig on the church at Kilpeck, Herefordshire, England
Sheela na gig from Ireland in the British Museum (12th century)
Sheela na gig on the south-west pillar of the presbytery in St. Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney, ca. 12th to 13th centuries, Norman and Romanesque.
Sheela na gig on town wall in Fethard, County Tipperary, Ireland
Anasyrma
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Anasyrma, also called anasyrmos, is the gesture of lifting the skirt or kilt. It is used in connection with certain religious rituals, eroticism, and lewd jokes. The term is used in describing corresp
Sheela na gig
…to ward off evil. In Ireland, some of the figures were called "The Evil Eye Stones", which supported their theory. Some folkloric evidence is known of anasyrma (skirt-lifting) being used by women to ward off evil spirits. Andersen reproduces an 18th-century illustration by Charles Eisen from La Fontaine's…
Copy of a Hellenistic Aphrodite Kallipygos at The Hermitage in St. Petersburg
Hermaphrodite anasyromenos sketch by Peter Paul Rubens
La Fontaine's "The Devil of Pope-Fig Island", illustrated by Charles Eisen (c. 1762)