Vagina Power and the History of Christian Symbols

I saw the symbol for vagina on the back of a car the other day. I also saw one on a business card, a necklace, a church bulletin, and even a Bible. Vaginas are everywhere! People in America must really love female sexuality.

Of course I’m talking about the fish symbol.

The vulva-shaped ichthys or “Jesus fish” was once a prominent pagan symbol representing almost every pre-Christian fertility goddess: from Atargatis, Aphrodite, and Artemis, to many others who do not follow my alliteration streak, so we’re just going to ignore them for right now.

Early Christian syncretism involved taking existing pagan symbols and giving them new meaning. One example of this is with the ancient goddess Asherah who was worshiped in the Holy Land during the time of the early Israelites. Karen Garst, editor of Women Beyond Belief, gives a brief history on Asherah, the ancient goddess of new life, and her symbol, the snake, who sheds its skin to demonstrate regeneration.

Snakes and female deities were often seen together. In fact, the Egyptian hieroglyph for the word “goddess” is a picture of a snake. Garst’s makes a good point: “What better way to put down this goddess worship than by portraying the devil using a classic symbol associated with her?” In fact, what better way to show that women are somehow evil?

Just like with the snake, Christianity took over the pagan ichthys fertility symbol and twisted it to represent a religion that ultimately promoted the subjugation of women and blamed them for everything wrong in the world. Lovely.

The Christian ichthys is a backronym, that is, an acronym applied to an already-existing word, like when Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes fame made the word “gross” stand for Get Rid Of Slimey girlS. In the same way, Christians twisted ichthys (ἸΧΘΥΣ) into Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ or Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.

But ichthys is also the Greek word for fish, which made a fitting name of the child of the fish-goddess, Atargatis. Since Atargatis worship obviously pre-dates Christianity, it holds the rights to the symbol. While ideas and language can be borrowed by other cultures, Christianity went a step further by taking goddess worshippers’ intellectual property and completely subverting the symbol into something antithetical to it.


Read the rest:
Vagina Power and the History of Christian Symbols - Removing the Fig Leaf