I started the discussion yesterday when I came across the term lamiak in an article about the discovery of c. 25,000 year old cave paintings in Basque country, Spain. Before searching for information on the internet, I consulted my worn copy of The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara Walker and I found a wealth of information under its entry for Lamia. (Lamiak is the Basque plural for lamia). I then went on the hunt for further information online about lamia, but intend to wrap up the discussion by exploring the cryptic note at the end of Walker's entry on Lamia - see Vagina Dentata. I know it's strange to be reading Part 3 last in the series, but that's the way the blog is set up and generally I like the format where the most current information is presented first; it doesn't work well for "series" posts like this one. Please scroll down to read the prior two posts on the subject "What is a "Lamiak?" or click on the link above to take you to the prior posts.
Vagina Dentata
"Toothed vagina," the classic symbol of men's fear of sex, expressing the unconscious belief that a woman may eat or castrate her partner during intercourse. Freud said, "Probably no male human being is spared the terrifying shock of threatened castration at the sign of the female genitals."(1) But he had the reason wrong. The real reason for this "terryfying shock" is mouth-symbolism, now recognized universally in myth and fantasy: "It is well known in psychiatry that both males and females fantasize as a mouth the female's entranceway to the vagina."(2)
The more patriarchal the society, the more fear seems to be aroused by the fantasy. Men of Malekula, having overthrown their matriarchate, were haunted by a yonic spirit called "that which draws us to It so that It may devour us."(3) The Yanomamo said one of the first beings on earth was a woman whose vagina became a toothed mouth and bit off her consort's penis. Chinese patriarchs said women's genitals were not only gateways to immortality but also "executioners of men."(4) Moslem aphorisms said: "Three things are insatisable: the desert, the grave, and a woman's vulva."(5) Polynesians said the savior-god Maui tried to find eternal life by crawling into the mouth (or vagina) of his mother Hina, in effect trying to return to the womb of the Creatress; but she bit him in two and killed him.(6)
Stories of the devouring Mother are ubiquitous in myths, representing the death-fear which the male psyche often transformed into a sex-fear. Ancient writings describe the male sexual function not as "taking" or "possessing" the female, but rather "being taken," or "putting forth."(7) Ejaculation was viewed as a loss of a man's vital force, which was "eaten" by a woman. The Greek sema or "semen" meant both "seed" and "food." Sexual "consummation" was the same as "consuming" (the male). Many savages still have the same imagery. The Yanomamo word for pregnant also means satiated or full-fed; and "to eat" is the same as "to copulate."(8)
Distinction between mouths and female genitals was blurred by the Greek idea of the lamiae - lustful she-demons, born of the Libyan snake-goddess Lamia. Their name meant either "lecherous vaginas" or "gluttonous gullets."(9) Lamia was a Greek name for the divine female serpent called Kundalini in India, Uraeus or Per-Uatchet in Egypt, and Lamashtu in Babylon. Her Babylonian consort was Pazuzu, he of the serpent penis. Lamia's legend, with its notion that males are born to be eaten, led to Pliny's report on the sexual life of snakes that was widely believed throughout Europe even up to the 20th century: a male snake fertilizes the female snake by putting his head into her mouth and allowing himself to be eaten.(10)
Sioux Indians told a tale similar to that of the Lamia. A beautiful seductive woman accepted the love of a young warrior and united with him inside a cloud. When the cloud lifted, the woman stood alone. The man was a heap of bones being gnawed by snakes at her feet.(11)
Mouth and vulva were equated in many Egyptian myths. Ma-Nu, the western gate whereby the sun god daily re-entered his Mother, was sometimes a "cleft" (yoni), and sometimes a "mouth."(12) Priestesses of Bast, representing the Goddess, drew up their skirts to display their genitals during religious processions.(13) To the Greeks, such a display was frightening. Bellerophon fled in terror from Lycian women advancing on him with genitals exposed, and even the sea god Poseidon retreated, for fear they might swallow him.(14)
According to Philostratus, magical women "by arousing sexual desire seek to devour whom they wish."(15) To the patriarchal Persians and Moslems this seemed a distinct possibility. Viewing women's mouths as either obscene, dangerous, or overly seductive, they insisted on veiling them. Yet men's mouths, which look no different, were not viewed as threatening.
"Mouth" comes from the same root as "mother" - Anglo-Saxon muth, also related to the Egyptian Goddess Mut. Vulvas have labiae, "lips," and many men have believed that behind the lips lie teeth. Christian authorities of the Middle Ages taught that certain witches, with the help of the moon and magic spells, could grow fangs in their vaginas. They likened women's genitals to the "yawning" mouth of hell, though this was hardly original; the underworld gate had always been the yoni of Mother Hel. It has always "yawned" - from Middle English, yonen, another derivative of "yoni." A German vulgarity meaning "cunt," Fotze, in parts of Bavaria meant simply "mouth."(16)
To Christian ascetics, Hell-mouth and the vagina drew upon the same ancient symbolism. Both were equated with the womb-symbol of the whale that swallowed Jonah; according to this "prophesy" the Hell-mouth swallowed Christ (as Hina swallowed her son Maui) and kept him for three days. Visionary trips to hell often read like "a description of the experience of being born, but in reverse, as if the child was being drawn into the womb and destroyed there, instead of being formed and given life." St. Teresa of Avila said her vision of a visit to hell was "an oppression, a suffocation, and an affliction so agonizing, and accompanied by such a hopeless and distressing misery that no words I could find would adequately describe it. To say that it was as if my soul were being continuously torn from my body is as nothing."(17)
The archetypal image of "devouring" female genitals seems undeniably alive even in the modern world. "Males in our culture are so afraid of direct contact with female genitalia, and are even afraid of referring to these genitalia themselves; they largely displace their feelings to the accessory sex organs - the hips, legs, breasts, buttocks, et cetera - and they give these accessory organs an exaggerated interest and desirability."(18) Even here, the male scholar inexplicably "displaces" the words sex organ onto structures that have nothing to do with sexual functioning.
Lookng into, touching, entering the female orifice seems fraught with hidden fears, signified by the confusion of sex with death in overwhelming numbers of male minds and myths. Psychiatrists say sex is perceived by the male unconscious as dying: "Every orgasm is a little death: the death of 'the little man,' the penis."(19) Here indeed is the root of ascetic religions that equated the denial of death with denial of sex.
Moslems attributed all kinds of dread powers to a vulva. It could "bite off" a man's eye-beam, resulting in blindness for any man who looked into its cavity. A sultan of Damascus was said to have lost his sight in this manner. Christian legend claimed he went to Sardina to be cured of his blindness by a miraculous idol of the Virgin Mary - who, beng eternally virgin, had her door-mouth permanently closed by a veil-hymen.(20)
Apparently Freud was wrong in assuming that men's fear of emale genitals was based on the idea that the female had been castrated. The fear was much less empathetic, and more personal: a fear of being devoured, of experiencing the birth trauma in reverse. A Catholic scholar's curious description of the Hell-mouth as a womb inadvertently reveals this idea: "When we think of man entering hell we think of him as establishing contact with the most intrinsic, unified, ultimate and deepest level of the reality of the world."(21)
Notes:
(1) Becker, D.D., 223.
(2) Farb, W.P., 93.
(3) Neumann, G.M., 174.
(4) Rawson, E.A., 260.
(5) Edwardes, 45.
(6) Briffault 2, 657-58.
(7) Assyr. & Bab. Lit., 338-39.
(8) Chagnon, 47.
(9) Graves, G.M. 1, 206.
(10) Briffault 2, 667.
(11) Campbell, F.W.G., 78.
(12) Mapern, 1x.
(13) Budge, G.E. 1, 448.
(14) Bachofen, 123.
(15) Wedeck, 153.
(16) Young, 47.
(17) Cavendish, P.E., 157-58.
(18) Ellis, 239-40.
(19) Lederer, 126.
(20) Giffird, 143.
(21) Cavendish, P.E., 160.
Vagina Dentata
"Toothed vagina," the classic symbol of men's fear of sex, expressing the unconscious belief that a woman may eat or castrate her partner during intercourse. Freud said, "Probably no male human being is spared the terrifying shock of threatened castration at the sign of the female genitals."(1) But he had the reason wrong. The real reason for this "terryfying shock" is mouth-symbolism, now recognized universally in myth and fantasy: "It is well known in psychiatry that both males and females fantasize as a mouth the female's entranceway to the vagina."(2)
The more patriarchal the society, the more fear seems to be aroused by the fantasy. Men of Malekula, having overthrown their matriarchate, were haunted by a yonic spirit called "that which draws us to It so that It may devour us."(3) The Yanomamo said one of the first beings on earth was a woman whose vagina became a toothed mouth and bit off her consort's penis. Chinese patriarchs said women's genitals were not only gateways to immortality but also "executioners of men."(4) Moslem aphorisms said: "Three things are insatisable: the desert, the grave, and a woman's vulva."(5) Polynesians said the savior-god Maui tried to find eternal life by crawling into the mouth (or vagina) of his mother Hina, in effect trying to return to the womb of the Creatress; but she bit him in two and killed him.(6)
Stories of the devouring Mother are ubiquitous in myths, representing the death-fear which the male psyche often transformed into a sex-fear. Ancient writings describe the male sexual function not as "taking" or "possessing" the female, but rather "being taken," or "putting forth."(7) Ejaculation was viewed as a loss of a man's vital force, which was "eaten" by a woman. The Greek sema or "semen" meant both "seed" and "food." Sexual "consummation" was the same as "consuming" (the male). Many savages still have the same imagery. The Yanomamo word for pregnant also means satiated or full-fed; and "to eat" is the same as "to copulate."(8)
Distinction between mouths and female genitals was blurred by the Greek idea of the lamiae - lustful she-demons, born of the Libyan snake-goddess Lamia. Their name meant either "lecherous vaginas" or "gluttonous gullets."(9) Lamia was a Greek name for the divine female serpent called Kundalini in India, Uraeus or Per-Uatchet in Egypt, and Lamashtu in Babylon. Her Babylonian consort was Pazuzu, he of the serpent penis. Lamia's legend, with its notion that males are born to be eaten, led to Pliny's report on the sexual life of snakes that was widely believed throughout Europe even up to the 20th century: a male snake fertilizes the female snake by putting his head into her mouth and allowing himself to be eaten.(10)
Sioux Indians told a tale similar to that of the Lamia. A beautiful seductive woman accepted the love of a young warrior and united with him inside a cloud. When the cloud lifted, the woman stood alone. The man was a heap of bones being gnawed by snakes at her feet.(11)
Mouth and vulva were equated in many Egyptian myths. Ma-Nu, the western gate whereby the sun god daily re-entered his Mother, was sometimes a "cleft" (yoni), and sometimes a "mouth."(12) Priestesses of Bast, representing the Goddess, drew up their skirts to display their genitals during religious processions.(13) To the Greeks, such a display was frightening. Bellerophon fled in terror from Lycian women advancing on him with genitals exposed, and even the sea god Poseidon retreated, for fear they might swallow him.(14)
According to Philostratus, magical women "by arousing sexual desire seek to devour whom they wish."(15) To the patriarchal Persians and Moslems this seemed a distinct possibility. Viewing women's mouths as either obscene, dangerous, or overly seductive, they insisted on veiling them. Yet men's mouths, which look no different, were not viewed as threatening.
"Mouth" comes from the same root as "mother" - Anglo-Saxon muth, also related to the Egyptian Goddess Mut. Vulvas have labiae, "lips," and many men have believed that behind the lips lie teeth. Christian authorities of the Middle Ages taught that certain witches, with the help of the moon and magic spells, could grow fangs in their vaginas. They likened women's genitals to the "yawning" mouth of hell, though this was hardly original; the underworld gate had always been the yoni of Mother Hel. It has always "yawned" - from Middle English, yonen, another derivative of "yoni." A German vulgarity meaning "cunt," Fotze, in parts of Bavaria meant simply "mouth."(16)
To Christian ascetics, Hell-mouth and the vagina drew upon the same ancient symbolism. Both were equated with the womb-symbol of the whale that swallowed Jonah; according to this "prophesy" the Hell-mouth swallowed Christ (as Hina swallowed her son Maui) and kept him for three days. Visionary trips to hell often read like "a description of the experience of being born, but in reverse, as if the child was being drawn into the womb and destroyed there, instead of being formed and given life." St. Teresa of Avila said her vision of a visit to hell was "an oppression, a suffocation, and an affliction so agonizing, and accompanied by such a hopeless and distressing misery that no words I could find would adequately describe it. To say that it was as if my soul were being continuously torn from my body is as nothing."(17)
The archetypal image of "devouring" female genitals seems undeniably alive even in the modern world. "Males in our culture are so afraid of direct contact with female genitalia, and are even afraid of referring to these genitalia themselves; they largely displace their feelings to the accessory sex organs - the hips, legs, breasts, buttocks, et cetera - and they give these accessory organs an exaggerated interest and desirability."(18) Even here, the male scholar inexplicably "displaces" the words sex organ onto structures that have nothing to do with sexual functioning.
Lookng into, touching, entering the female orifice seems fraught with hidden fears, signified by the confusion of sex with death in overwhelming numbers of male minds and myths. Psychiatrists say sex is perceived by the male unconscious as dying: "Every orgasm is a little death: the death of 'the little man,' the penis."(19) Here indeed is the root of ascetic religions that equated the denial of death with denial of sex.
Moslems attributed all kinds of dread powers to a vulva. It could "bite off" a man's eye-beam, resulting in blindness for any man who looked into its cavity. A sultan of Damascus was said to have lost his sight in this manner. Christian legend claimed he went to Sardina to be cured of his blindness by a miraculous idol of the Virgin Mary - who, beng eternally virgin, had her door-mouth permanently closed by a veil-hymen.(20)
Apparently Freud was wrong in assuming that men's fear of emale genitals was based on the idea that the female had been castrated. The fear was much less empathetic, and more personal: a fear of being devoured, of experiencing the birth trauma in reverse. A Catholic scholar's curious description of the Hell-mouth as a womb inadvertently reveals this idea: "When we think of man entering hell we think of him as establishing contact with the most intrinsic, unified, ultimate and deepest level of the reality of the world."(21)
Notes:
(1) Becker, D.D., 223.
(2) Farb, W.P., 93.
(3) Neumann, G.M., 174.
(4) Rawson, E.A., 260.
(5) Edwardes, 45.
(6) Briffault 2, 657-58.
(7) Assyr. & Bab. Lit., 338-39.
(8) Chagnon, 47.
(9) Graves, G.M. 1, 206.
(10) Briffault 2, 667.
(11) Campbell, F.W.G., 78.
(12) Mapern, 1x.
(13) Budge, G.E. 1, 448.
(14) Bachofen, 123.
(15) Wedeck, 153.
(16) Young, 47.
(17) Cavendish, P.E., 157-58.
(18) Ellis, 239-40.
(19) Lederer, 126.
(20) Giffird, 143.
(21) Cavendish, P.E., 160.
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I didn't realize how right-on I was about that Star Wars symbolism until I read this. Here's a photo shot of the "mouth of the beast" from that Star Wars movie I mentioned in Post 1:
And I know it's really bad manners to put up such a image after typing up Walker's encyclopedia entry on the Vagina Dentata. The Devil made me do it. I feely admit it - I'm a demon woman. Particularly after realizing that the sheer ignorance and stupidity of the fears represented by thousands of years of customs designed to "ward off" being castratred by some woman's vagina are much alive and well today, and responsible for all sorts of evil in the world: continual suppression and repression of women in the Moslem world and elsewhere, veiling in the name of "modesty," the perversion of child prostitution and pornography, the perversion of Moslem "dancing boys," female "circumcision" (an attempt to remove the vagina's alleged "teeth?"), "honor" killings of females, acid attacks, gang rapes administered as "justice" by sharia courts, and on and on and on.
We're still living in the Dark Ages, people. The Dark Ages.
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