Mar 05 2025 35 mins 1
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OUR STORY
Did Saint Patrick have a wife? Irish folklore of the 18th and 19th centuries declared he did. Sheelah was celebrated on March 18, the day after Saint Paddy's Day.
KnotWork host Marisa Goudy imagines a one-sided bedtime conversation between the couple. The story also weaves in two other women of the Celtic Otherworld - Cailleach and Sheela Na Gig.
We released this story last year to offer an alternative narrative for Saint Patrick’s Day. This year, we ask this story to speak to International Women’s Day.
In 2025, it feels as if we need to mark a day that focuses attention on the unique needs of women, girls, and femmes as much as we ever have.
And, that means that we also need symbols that inspire and empower us to claim and protect more than 50% of the population. We need to source our energy in divine feminine power - like that of the mysterious Sheela Na Gig.
Who is Sheela Na Gig? We don’t really know, but hundreds of sculptures of a figure with a skeletal head holding her vulva open wide were set into the walls of churches and castles. Some claim she was apotropaic (intended to ward off evil spirits). Others decided she was a fertility charm. Now we see a sacred symbol of the twinned nature of death and rebirth.
Special thanks to past guest Dee Mulrooney whose Instagram post “Free Síle” inspired me to return to this story. You’ll also hear a clip from future KnotWork episode with Ali Isaac.
