Since yesterday’s DM, I kept musing about being sheltered/hidden inside the wounds of Jesus. A very strong image, but also quite a weird one from a modern perspective.
Historians point out that there was a turn toward bloody images of Jesus crucified in the 14th century, when death was omnipresent in society — around one-third of all of Europe’s population died in the Black Plague — and the religious guilds of flagellants increased in numbers. Beating oneself with whips until blood flows was done to imitate the tortures of Jesus. Such a practice has enjoyed popularity from the end of the 13th century to this very day. It is a form of spirituality that is hard to stomach for me. It is, however, only the context of the present writing, not its topic.
Historians has also observed another phenomenon of the 14th and 15h centuries: the representation of the breast wound of Jesus in the shape of a mandorla, which is a typical sacred shape for Christ in glory, but when used for his breast wound unmistakably recalls a vulva.
One finds in scholarly works the idea that people producing and using such sacred images could not possibly fail to see what we see, and conclude that Medieval people were far less prudish than modern people about sex and bodily parts.
However, I am much more interested in the spiritual aspect than in the sexuality aspect per se. Some point out, quite correctly, that Jesus was also seen as mother — most notably by Julian of Norwich. Connecting the dots, one gets a fluid and bi-gendered image of the Savior: a body that is both male and female, that gives birth to the faithful by means of the water and blood which flew out of his breast wound (Baptism and Eucharist, see John 19:34-35), and whose breast wound is indeed a birth-giving vagina.
I am not sure that all of this was conscious — partly because there is no trace of an explicit later criticism of it — but it could well have worked its effects, even if it was partly hidden in the subconscious layers of the psyche.
Many centuries earlier, a few years after the death of Christ, the Pauline communities were convinced to be members of the resurrected body of Christ, whether they were females or males (see Galatians 3:28). While the 14th century had a quite different understanding of the letters of Paul — as Christianity developed as a patriarchal religion — the original conviction could have been working in the background for all those centuries, contributing to create the late-Medieval spirituality which issued the image of the Christ-wound as a vulva.
If one juxtaposes the images of the two mandorlas — Christ in glory and the Christ wound — something quite powerful happens. Deep joy (via positiva) and deep suffering (via negativa) are conjoined. They are not mixed in ways that would dilute their power, nor is one more important than the other. But in their unmixed union or non-dual distinction, they spark creativity — as taught by Matthew Fox — which is in fact the process of individuation in Jungian terms.
The wound giving birth is a mind-boggling idea which, when taken literally, could give rise to perverted forms of spirituality. The vagina becomes a wound; harm and self-harm become positive; death and life are confused. And when minds are confused, power-hungry people rise up, and sadofascism in the spiritual community ensues.
Therefore, I understand very well those who would rather keep these Medieval images at rest. I tried to offer, however, an interpretation of the two mandorlas based on Creation Spirituality, as I keep exploring the topic of suffering.
Banner Image: Christ in glory in a mandorla above the Portail Royal at Chartres Cathedral. Photo by Vassil. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
What happens to you if you do an exercise of creative imagination, juxtaposing in your mind the two mandorlas, the Christ-in-glory and the Christ-wound?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic–and Beyond
Illuminations of Hildegard von Bingen
4 thoughts on “The Wound Giving Birth”
Yesterday I expressed the mystical paradox of the sacredness of the eternal present moment — both the dying/suffering/compassion with one another and the transformative rebirth of Divine Love Wisdom Peace Healing Beauty Joy Creativity Compassion Diverse Oneness with one another and All Our Co-Creation Evolving Sacred multidimensional/multiverse Cosmos….
Are the 13th century depictions of Jesus with a vulva somehow precursors of the English words
s/he, fe/male, and wo/man???
This reminds me of the images of Sheela na Gig, a Pagan Irish Goddess figure , naked and holding open her vagina. It found its way onto many medieval church entryways. Rubbing her was considered to bring good luck. I have heard there is one on the ruins of the nuns’ convent at Iona. Monks were forbidden to go there to avoid “impure thoughts”. It sounds like the Goddess has the last laugh.
I share your difficulty to “stomach” any form of bleeding dolorism (“difficulty” is, here, a euphemism). It is worth remembering that besides (and probably before) visual associations of the mandorla with the symbolism of Christ’s breast wound and of the life-giving vulva, the almond-shaped aureola of divine glory is the basic Vesica Piscis (fish bladder) of sacred geometry with its amazing geometrical fertility: many fundamental geometrical shapes can be drawn from it, including the divine proportion itself, phi, the golden number. Tilted horizontally, the Vesica Piscis generates Ichthys, the root symbol of Christian faith.