return to Home Page
or move on to Goddess Sashti, next chronologically,
or use Her Cyclopedia Index

Sighle-Na-Gcioch, Blind-One-of-the-Breasts.
$EL1-N1-GYG
Alternate meanings: Celia-of-the-Breasts.
[to Whom the seventeenth day of June, day 168, is dedicated]


Geography/Culture: [Perhaps Celtic]: Britain.
Her image -- see iconography -- is to be found on many Saxon and Norman churches, such as Kilpeck, in Herefordshsire and Whittlesford in Cambridgeshire; there are presently over 70 known in Ireland, and 23 in Great Britain.
Linguistic Note: The language of Her name is Irish. In the alternate meaning Celia is a form of Cecilia, (from which the name Sheila is derived), with a usual meaning of 'blind', or 'dim-sighted'. The name is applied to the images, and may have it's origin as a descriptive joke, (whether coined by the folk whose churches She embellished, or by archeologists is unknown), after the loss of Her original name.
Description: Great Goddess of {the moon}, fertility and human sexuality; Ever fertile Earth Mother of creation and destruction; She upon Whom brides are encouraged to look on their way to the church for the wedding; She of the enlarged twat; She Who ensures fertility in field and farm.
Perhaps She was the moon drawn down to inhabit the body of Her high priestess in ancient wicca ceremonies.
Iconography: She takes the form of a Woman with an enormous, roundish head, no breasts, and a grotesquely enlarged quim usually held open with one or both hands. {The large roundish quality of Her head may signify the moon.} She was evidently held in great reverence since Christianity was obliged to adorn its churches with Her image.
Male Associate: at Whittlesford Her image is accompanied by a supporter with an animal head and naked man's body, penis erect. Source: Branston LGE 131, 152-155, 192. Images: Branston 153; Sharkey CM pl 6.
worked on: May 1995; July 30, 1991.
Return to the top of this document.