Cunctipotence: Has Anyone Seen Mike Hunt?
All sacred things must have their place.
It could even be said that being in their place
is what makes them sacred.
— CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS ,
I am happy to report that “Cunctipotent” is a legitimate and bona fide word. Here is the definition as provided by the Oxford English Dictionary.
Cunctipotent — (rare) — cunctus, all and potens, potent-em, powerful after the classical omnipotens: All-powerful, omnipotent.
All powerful, almighty, possessing cunt-magic.
The earliest known use of the adjective cunctipotent is in the Middle English period (1150–1500). OED's earliest evidence for it is from around 1485, in Digby Mysteries.
Heart of Darkness: The Dynamic Hunt
I’ve recently written about the clitoris, so why not continue into the sacred heart of the matter? Let’s look at the history of the word “cunt” (Hint No. 1: say the title of this essay out loud. Hint No. 2: say the headings including the word “hunt” out loud — it will help you to become more comfortable with the word).
Here is a link to the previous essay:
Denise Choppin
What prompted this new essay was a recent Facebook post. The post said that only a “cunt” would have voted for a particular political candidate. Although I tended to agree with the sentiment behind the post, I absolutely did not agree with using the word “cunt” in this context. In fact, I find the modern use of the word offensive, but not the word itself.
Furthermore, for reasons outlined below, I strongly feel that we should reclaim this honourable and ancient term.
The Theatric Hunt: Much Ado About Nothing
To start off with a more erudite tone, let’s begin with the Immortal Bard.
There is some literature to the effect that in the title of his play, Shakespeare was making a bit of a naughty joke. According to linguists and experts on the bard, the word “nothing” was Elizabethan slang for a cunt. Even Hamlet and Ophelia get into it:
HAMLET: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
OPHELIA: No, my lord.
HAMLET: I mean, my head upon your lap?
OPHELIA: Ay, my lord.
HAMLET: Do you think I meant country matters?
OPHELIA: I think nothing, my lord.
HAMLET: That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.
OPHELIA: What is, my lord?
HAMLET: Nothing.
OPHELIA: You are merry, my lord.
Leaving Shakespeare in the rear-view mirror (apologies, puns just abound), it seems like a good place to start this essay by seeking the newer, sometimes polite — often not — terminology that has replaced the sacred and honourable “cunt”.
Cosmopolitan and Penthouse Magazines.
What better place than the magazine Cosmopolitan, a reliable source for all things feminine, with decades of publishing articles that are fluffy, vacuous, and oddly numerical?
Had she still been alive. I somehow would like to imagine Helen Gurley Brown weeping after reading a recent edition. There, nestled among riveting gems such as “6 Things that Happen When you’re on your Period” (itself a euphemism), an advertisement for vaginal probiotic gummies (!?!), another advertisement touting "Sliquid Splash Mango Passion pH Balanced Feminine Wash" (I don’t even know where to start with how many things are wrong with this), "How 20 Women Feel about having Large Labia" (I can’t resist: Do they talk about it I wonder?), "7 Things Your Vagina is Trying to Tell You", and finally, "13 Things You Can do to Soothe a Yeast Infection", I found:
- “A definitive Ranking of all the Weird (and funny) Words for Vagina”
And, in descending order, here is the Cosmo list:
Fanny (in England), pussy, vag, bits, Minky, Bajingo, Foof. Fufu/FooFoo, Thingy, Vajayjay. Kitty, Vagine, Bean, Mary-Ellen, Clunge, Downstairs, Twat, Hole, Box, Penis Fly Trap, Sex, Fandango, Flower, Beaver, Muff, Front-Bottom, DooDah, Tuppence. Whispering Eye, Coochie, Minge, Lady Garden, Minnie, Mini, Noo-Noo, Growler, Flange, Snatch, Pussoir, Foo Foo, Hoo Ha, Nonny, Pink Taco, Panty Hamster, C U Next Tuesday, Vertical Smile, Cha Cha, Cherry, Honey Pot, Slit, Nether Regions, Peach, Wee Wee, Cookie, Love Tunnel, Hairy Potter, Flaming Lips, Private Parts.
Without turning this essay into a tome the length of War and Peace, I will only stop to comment on a few of these “euphemisms”. Oh, and by the way, has anyone else noticed the “fem” in euphemism? I know, I know, it’s not an etymologically sound observation…
- Animals: Pussy, kitty, beaver, Pussoir, Panty Hamster, Growler
- Food: Bean, Peach, Cookie, Cherry, Honey Pot, Pink Taco
- Girls’ Names: Minnie (as in Mouse?!? — must be on Disney +), Nonny, Mary-Ellen
- Dance Moves and Melodies: Fufu/FooFoo. (Does anyone else remember the children’s song “Little Rabbit FooFoo”? Somehow it will never be the same for me. Moving on…), Fandango, Coochie, DooDah, Hoo Ha, Cha Cha
All relatively innocent, but then Collins Dictionary weighs in:
- hole, crack, snatch, quim, yoni and punani
Other sources point to a more deep-seated (and the puns just keep in writing themselves) misogyny:
- gash, poontang, bearded clam, jimmy, debt collector, front butt, snatch, cooter, axe wound, ham sandwich, fur burger, whisker biscuit.
These last examples bring to mind a quote I read from none other than Bob Guccione, editor of Penthouse. Bob gets right into it by complaining that Viagra is so popular because:
"Feminism has emasculated the American male, and that emasculation has led to physical problems" (cited in Roof, 1999, 5).
In other words, male potency virtually requires female impotence.
Oh, that dreaded Cunctipotence! Can’t have that.
What’s in a Name? The Antic Hunt
It is only somewhat recently that “cunt” has been a derogatory term or one of abuse. In fact, it wasn’t considered vulgar until sometime in the 17th century, and dictionaries only began to omit it from the late 18th century until the 1960s.
According to the august Oxford English Dictionary, the first known and written use of the word referred to a place in about 1230: Gropecunt Lane or Gropecuntelane, London (now called Grove Passage or Magpie Lane — both new names strike me as rather amusing (a “passage” and Magpies being noisy birds, and “birds” being slang for women) and perhaps a touch transgressive given the history of the place(s), but let’s move on.
Interestingly, there are also several proper names that have been preserved in the records, with such women as Gunoka Cuntles (pronounced Cunt-less) (1219) and Bele Wydecunthe (1328). The men we can at least verbally pair with these remarkable ladies are Godwin Clawcuncte (1066) and Robert Clevecunt (1302).
What Gunoka, Bele, Godwin and Robert did in their lives is now lost to us, but at least we can remember their names fondly.
Etymologic Hunt
Like most truly ancient words, its linguistic path is debated and obscured by both time and uses. Rather than follow the word’s path backwards through time, I would prefer to start at the beginning — or at the various beginnings of the term.
Most serious sources believe that the English cunt (as opposed to other nationality’s cunts, which I will touch upon later), derived from a Proto-Germanic word kuntō, or kuntōn-), which appeared as kunta in Old Norse.
There is not much solid information on the Proto-Germanic form, but there are cognates in most Germanic languages, and most seem to mean the same as the English cunt such as the Swedish kunta; West Frisian and Middle Low German kunte; another Middle Low German kutte; Middle High German kotze (which means “prostitute”); modern German kott; Middle Dutch conte; modern Dutch words kut (same meaning) and kont ("butt", "arse"); and perhaps the Old English cot.
Despite the debate on the Proto-Germanic origin, there is general agreement that the more distant term from the Proto-Indo-European root “gen” or “gon” (leading to the modern words gonads, genitals, gamete, genetics, genes and so on) which means “create or become”.
The other theory traces a path from the Proto-Indo-European root “gwneh” or “guneh” which means simply “woman”. This path led to the Greek “gune” which we find in gynaecology). From there we take a turn into the Latin “cunnus” which means vulva and a closely related Latin term “cuneus”, meaning wedge. Moving into English, this path led to words such as coynte, cunte and queynte.
The first record in English where the modern, but not yet vulgar, meaning of the word is used was in 1325 in The Proverbs of Hendyng:
Ȝeue þi cunte to cunnig and craue affetir wedding.
(Give your cunt wisely and make [your] demands after the wedding.)
Interestingly, we did not really have another word for the area until around 1680, when the medical community decided upon using the word “vagina”, from the Latin for scabbard or sword sheath. Not to harp on the patriarchy, but it is indeed telling that a place to house a male weapon of war was chosen as a descriptor of a quintessentially female body part.
The ancient Latins did indeed use the word “vagina” in a sexual-joking sense, as in:
"… quom tu ibas simul, conveniebatne in vaginam tuum machaera militis?"
("… when you were going with him, did the soldier's sword fit in your scabbard?")
In the 14th century the more all-encompassing terms for female genitals and the womb — the “vulva” appears. The word hails directly from the same term in Latin with the identical meaning. But, again, interestingly, it is etymologically related to “wallow”. There is a whole other essay just waiting on this word convergence, but let us not digress too far.
Actually, no, let’s digress a little further and visit Italy.
The Italic Hunt: Don’t Go the Venice if Your Name is Mona
It seems fitting to include the history of the Venetian word for cunt.
The name Venice itself — or more properly, Venezia — originates from the female. According to Italian historians, the city’s name is older than that of Rome and goes back to the Etruscan. It is related to a canal (of water or blood) — vein (venala, vena-la, vena) — and to female divinities such as Venus, Minerva, and Artemis.
Other theories point to an Indo-European root pertaining to the weaving of canals. Lastly, another probable origin is from another Indo-European root word “wen”, which is related to desire, to the pursuit of sexual pleasure.
In Venice, or more precisely, in Venetian dialect, the cunt is called “mona”. Yes, just like the girl’s name and yes, in Italy the Mona Lisa is referred to as the “Gioconda”. If you refer to the painting as the “Mona Lisa” in Venice, everyone starts to giggle.
In addition to the core meaning of cunt, mona also means stupid.
Linguistically creative, the Venetians took their cunt-word, mona, and expanded it into a few other cognates such as:
- Monada (noun, meaning a stupid thing);
- Smona' (verb, past tense, meaning fed up, tired of something to the point of boredom).
In addition to the above cognates, Venetians use expressions like “te si mona”, meaning “you are stupid”. Or “Mandar tuto in mona” meaning turning everything upside down or making things stupidly confusing. Then there is the ubiquitous“Va in mona” meaning literally “go in a cunt”, similar to the English “fuck off”.
Some linguists believe that “mona” is related to “mea domina” or “mia signora”, which would seem far more respectful, but the likely origin is from the Venetian (and also Spanish) word for monkey: “mònes”. From here, the sense of “stupid” is not a great leap. This second derivation is the more accepted, stating that “mònes” derived from the old Arabic “maimun” which means monkey or cat, both symbols for sin and lust in that culture at that time. And from there we can see a crooked path to the French “chatte” and the English “pussy”.
You are What You Eat
Moving over to standard Italian, the word for cunt is “fica” (“fig”, often pronounced “figa”), and the official Italian language etymological dictionary defines it as “the shameful part of a woman” (oh my gawd, groan). The word "fica" is also another term for “crusca”, which means “bran”, as in oat bran or the husk of wheat. That seems a little odd, but returning to “vagina”, in addition to the meaning of “sword sheath” it also meant “bran”.
The symbol of the fig itself was a common one in the Indo-Iranian world and represented the Great Mother. The Babylonian goddess Ishtar also took the form of the divine fig tree Xikum (the primeval mother at the central place of the earth).
The Christian gospels tell us that Jesus cursed the fig tree and made it forever barren. This because he was a little pouty over the tree not giving him fruit out of season (Mark 11:13-22). This happened just before he pitched a fit at the Temple, so he was probably feeling a touch cranky, putting him in the mood to express hostility towards a well-known Goddess symbol.
Jesus’ rival, Mithra — an Iranian deity — also had connections to the fig tree. Right after Mithra was born and was coincidentally discovered by shepherds, he was adopted by a fig tree that provided him with nourishment and clothing (figs and leaves). In the Christian origin story, Adam and Eve clothed themselves in fig leaves once they had partaken of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
There were also Gaulish gods called Dusii, who were known as “fig-eaters”. This is no different than the Homeric “lotus eaters” — and we all know what that refers to.
Not so very long ago, angry Italians might form a vulgar hand gesture called “fare la figa” or “mano in fica”, where the thumb is made to protrude from between the index and middle fingers of a closed fist. This is a very old gesture and symbol, originating from the Orient and indicative of the Yoni (more on the Yoni later).
Shock and Awe
Returning to cunt: It is one of the few words today that can still inspire genuine shock when used. That level of shock and awe used to be exclusive to oaths such as “by God’s bones” or other religiously inspired outcries.
If we go further back to ancient Rome, swearing and shocking words were sometimes rather different from English. In English (at the moment), we have the “Big 6”: cunt, fuck, cock, ass, shit and piss. In Ancient Latin there were the “Big 10”: cunnus (cunt), futuo (to fuck), mentula (cock), verpa (an erect or circumcised penis — sounds rather like a small moped, doesn’t it?), landica (clit), cuius (ass), pedico (to bugger), caco (to shit), irrumo and fello (to suck and to fellate).
In the past, many linguists believed that cunnus and cunt had the same meaning, both offensive. But while etymologically they share similar origins, current thinking doesn’t share that view. The old English cwithe (womb) or cynd (nature, essence), led to the Proto-Germanic kunton (mentioned above).
If we travel down the Latin path, cunnus has a pedigree. The Romans had conquered Britain by 45 CE and stayed there for about four hundred years. The argument in this case is that conquered people, in order to effectively interact with their new rulers, would have moved their speech closer to that of the newcomers. If that were the case, then cunnus could have found its way into the English mouth, just as it did in France (con) and Spanish (cono) and Sardinia (cunnu). This scenario would make cunt even older than good old Anglo-Saxon shit and arse (the Germanic tribes invaded after the Romans left).
Generally speaking, once the Romans left for good, Latin for the most part disappeared and was replaced by the languages of the Germanic tribes. For this reason, although cunnus and cunt appear related, it isn’t very likely.
The Writing on the Wall: The Graphic Hunt
Still, cunnus was indeed used in Rome as a basic clear term, just the way it was found in graffiti from Pompeii:
- “Corus cunnum lingit” (“Corus licks cunt”);
- “Jucundus cunum lingit Rusticae” (“Jucundus licks the cunt of Rustica”).
These epigrams were etched onto the walls of apartment buildings. Of course, without context, it’s hard to decide whether the comments were a criticism, words of praise, or braggadocio.
On the subject of Roman graffiti, some were quite detailed.
Futuitur cunnus pilossus multo Melius quam glaber / eadem continet vaporem et eadem verrot mentulam
(“It is much better to fuck a hairy cunt than one which is smooth; it holds in the steam and stimulates the cock”)
Granted, these quotes are vulgar and obscene, but not necessarily insulting or derogatory. They are simply direct and using “common” words.
On the other hand, Ancient Rome was hardly a female-oriented society, and they did use the power of words to insult and degrade. The famous and oft quoted Roman poet Martial wrote a piece about an older woman who plucked out her public hair. Although the previous graffito praised the unshaven cunt, it wasn’t uncommon for women to either shave their pubic hair or even to singe it with an oil lamp. Very wealthy and sybaritic women would even employ a picatrix. This was a young female slave whose function was to arrange her mistress’s pubic hair.
Martial wrote:
“Why do you pluck your aged cunt, Ligeia? Why stir up the ashes in your tomb? Such elegance befits girls; but you cannot even be reckoned an old woman anymore. Believe me, Ligeia, that is a pretty thing for Hector’s wife to do, not his mother. You are mistaken if you think this is a cunt when it no longer has anything to do with a cock. So, Ligeia, for very shame don’t pluck the beard of a dead lion.”
Ouch.
It bears mentioning that Martial clearly disapproves of an older woman not “acting her age” and one who clearly still feels desire and acts upon those desires. Horrific double dipping, misogyny and ageism.
Just to give another example of Martial’s distaste for women, here is another bit he composed:
"Rumor tells, Chiona, that you are a virgin,
and that nothing is purer than your fleshy delights.
Nevertheless, you do not bathe with the correct part covered:
if you have the decency, move your panties onto your face.”
Most historians agree that Martial was unmarried — no surprise there.
It would also seem that there was something of an “incel” movement in ancient Pompeii. A graffito found at an inn reads:
“Here I bugger Rufus, dear to… despair you girls. Arrogant cunt, farewell!”
Alas Pompeiian women, poor ladies! The author of this scribble has given up on women and has turned to boys or men. The last line is what gives us a clue that some woman (perhaps one of many) has turned him down and he’s calling her a cunt because he’s been rejected.
But not all Romans had such a dim view of womankind. The poet Catullus is talking to his friend Fabullus and tells him that he can come over and have a good time provided he brings his own food and drinks. Fabullus is wondering what Catullus will provide and the latter replies:
In exchange you will receive pure love
Or whatever is more sweet or elegant
For I will give an ointment that to my girl
Venus and Cupid have given
Which, when you smell it, you will ask the gods
To make you, Fabullus, all nose.
Two thousand years later, I believe we all understand what he is referring to.
Which brings us to the olfactory aspect of a healthy cunt.
The Garden of Earthy (not Earthly) Delights: The Aromatic Hunt
Medical literature refers to this as the vaginal flora (what a lovely term!), and a healthy woman with a healthy vaginal microbiome will harbour several “keystone” species of lactobacillus (iners, crispatis, gasseri and ensenii, for those of you who wish to know). These lactobacilli produce lactic acid and hydrogen peroxide, both of which discourage the overgrowth of other harmful bacteria, yeasts, and pathogens. Additionally, this busy little factory also produces bacteriocins and antimicrobial peptides.
Although taken in their purest chemical form, all these products have either very little or no odour, once a specific cocktail is produced, every woman will have her own distinct fragrance.
These healthy aromas have been likened to yoghurt, sourdough bread, beer, molasses, gingerbread and tangy fermented foods. Sometimes there is a hint of a coppery smell, like a penny. This is usually caused by the presence of blood, either from menstruation or from small abrasions in the vaginal lining caused by friction during intercourse. And, contact with semen can generate a metallic aroma.
Sometimes a women can smell sweet — not like candy, but more in an robust and earthy sense. Sometimes it can be described as herbal, not unlike cannabis.
Perhaps this is what Catullus was getting at.
An interesting side note: A fascinating scientist from Philadelphia named George Preti worked at the Monell Chemical Sense Center. In 1971 his focus was on vaginal odour. In an interview he is quoted as saying:
“My wife is very fond of telling people that when we first got married, we used to drive around town to women’s apartments to pick up tampons in which were collected vaginal secretions”.
According to Preti, he asked his wife to join him in order to put women more at ease when donating their secretions to science. Seems prudent.
In any case, much of the literature on the vaginal flora is based on the tireless dedication of Dr. Preti.
Then there were the botanists who documented a type of boxwood or rue called “stinking goosefoot”. This plant is native to Europe and Asis and is related to quinoa and spinach. It has a fishy, ammonia-like smell because it contains trimethylamine. This chemical is often part of the vaginal flora.
I wonder if Preti ever traipsed while vacationing in Europea with his wife at his side — through a field of stinking goosefoot — properly known as Chenopodium vulvaria.
Endangered Cunts
A further digression: I would like to take a moment to mention the plant Festuca Vaginalis. Mostly because I can’t imagine when I’ll have another opportunity to mention it. Festuca Vaginalis is a grass, is a threatened species and is only found in Ecuador. The name sounds rather “festive” but “festuca” only refers to it being a grass. And this grass looks a little “sheath-like”, maybe, but I have no idea if that is why it is called Vaginalis.
Learning their Letters: The Alphabetic Hunt and Being Cute
Leaving Rome behind, and moving into the Medieval world, “cunt” was not obscene. Earlier we read about street and personal names using cunt. They weren’t derogatory — they were merely descriptive. Even dictionaries meant to teach children how to speak Latin listed words of this nature. The Ortis Vocabulorum from 1500 defined the Latin word “vulva” as the English “cunt”. No blushing or girlish vapourings there.
A science text from 1400, Science of Cirurgie, states “in women the neck of the bladder is short and made fast to the cunt.”
And, of course, we mustn’t omit the revered Chaucer, who, in “the Wife of Bath’s Tale” calls her body part a queynte (a quaint). Some believe that this was the forerunner of cunt. What is rather amusing is that the Wife of Bath wants to sound posh, and so uses a French-style word, queynte. She wasn’t talking like a sailor, she was talking like Sailor Moon — in other words, trying to be posh and cute.
So, continuing with all things cute and quaint, let’s look at the queynte path. From around 1200 we find coiunte (or cwointe) — meaning cunning, artful, ingenious, proud, knowledgeable, clever, elegant, and gracious.
Then, for some reason, around 1300, the word quaint (along with its various cognates) departs its honourable path, deviating from “wisdom and knowledge” to “guile, cunning and deceit”. By 1350 it now denotes things “strange, fanciful, clever and oddly whimsical”.
By the 1780s it swings back to charming and agreeable.
Oh Noble Gwen
Returning to earlier times, and returning to the clear and specific cunt, Proto-Indo European roots also cite “geu” (hollow place) and “gwen” (woman). There is further debate that the root word referred to a gash or slit, or something hidden.
Gwen is the Proto-Indo European root word for Woman and the path to “Queen” is clear.
What About Quim and Queme?
Certainly an alternate word for cunt, quim has many variations and origin stories, but one of the more intriguing is that or the Welsh meaning a valley, dale or glen.
On the other hand, there is the theory that quim mutated to cwm.
And then there is queme. This means “to please” or “to satisfy”, and is related to similar words meaning pleasant, agreeable, acceptable, satisfaction, mitigation, to “come” (not sexually, but literally to arrive).
Antique Hunt
In the truly ancient world, prior to Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece, the words for “cunt” were synonymous with woman.
The Oriental Great Goddess known as Kunti or Kunda was considered the Yoni of the Universe. We’ll get to Yoni shortly.
Cunt, as a root word, is related to kin, kind, cyn and to the Latin cunnus which we’ve already discussed.
Several other cunt-cognates exist:
- Cunabula: the cradle, our earliest shelter;
- Cunina: a Roman Goddess who protected babies while sleeping;
- Cunicle: a hole or passageway;
- Cuniculate: to penetrate into a passageway;
- Cundy: a covered culvert;
- Cunnit or Kunnt: a river in Britain (now called Kennet);
- Cunning, Kenning, Ken: as in knowledge, learning, insight, wisdom;
and my absolute favourite, as in the title of this Essay:
- Cunctipotent: all powerful, almighty. possessing cunt-magic
* The earliest known use of the adjective cunctipotent is in the Middle English period (1150—1500);
* OED's earliest evidence for cunctipotent is from around 1485, in Digby Mysteries.
Powerful word, powerful imagery.
Other than the Cunnit River, there are other cunt place names and some of them embarrassed Victorian scholars who didn’t quite recognize them for what they were. An amusing example is that of Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861), who was a poet, a devotee of Florence Nightingale and, ironically, the brother of suffragist Anne Clough. In 1848, he published a long pastoral poem called The Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich, afterwards renamed Tober-na-Vuolich. He may have chosen to rename the work because the original title, in Gaelic, meant “The Bearded Well”, a cunt shrine.
Good thing he didn’t have it tattooed on his forearm before he knew what it meant.
Another notable literary faux-pas involved the word “twat” as used by none other than the revered poet Robert Browning. At the end of his work “Pippa Passes” he writes:
“Then, owls and bats, Cowls and twats. Monks and nuns in a cloister’s moods, Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry”
With some trepidation, his editors asked him where “twat” had come from. He replied that he had run across a broadside written in 1659 that read “They talked of his having a Cadinal’s Hat, they’d send him as soon as an Old Nun’s Twat”. Browning said he believed that a “twat” was a wimple or head covering as it rhymed with “hat”.
Sure, we all believe you.
But let us return to ancient history.
According to the Epic of Gilgamesh, there is a plant of eternal life that grew in the deep womb of the world and this place could only be reached through a narrow passage. This passageway is often translated as a water pipe. The imagery couldn’t be clearer, and yet we see that the patriarchy is already becoming a little queasy with overt vaginal symbols.
Water pipe, indeed.
There are many other examples of cunt-fear. The vagina dentata is worth an entirely separate essay as is the talking vagina (hopefully I will get around to writing about them soon), but for now I would like to mention a 16th century Arab manuscript that warns men not to look into a woman’s vagina because to do so will cause blindness. The author further bolsters his case by citing how this actually happened to a sultan of Damascus. A little different take on the usual "play with yourself and you'll go blind" theory.
Yoni
Time to explore the Sanskit tem “Yoni”. Over the years, male scholars have gingerly translated the term as the “womb of the world”, rather than distinguish between the womb and the vulva. The sign of the Yoni is clearly in the shape of a vulva and the ancients held it to be the seat of female sexual power. Unlike moderns who view female sexuality as passive, the ancients saw it as the energizing principle of the universe.
Sometime called “vesica piscis” (vessel of fish), pre-patriarchal society viewed a joining in this place something like plugging into power.
The ancient mother was associated with fish, seashells, seawater, salt, ships and fishermen. She often appeared as a mermaid with a fish tail. Fish was eaten on Friday in her honour, on her official day (Freya’s Day, Friday or Venus’ Day in Latin languages). Eating fish was also considered aphrodisiac.
Some Christian art conflated the Yoni sign with the Mandorla, using the latter to show holiness and sometimes a cloud that accepts Jesus into Heaven, the cloud being in the form of a vesica piscis. Some artworks go so far at to show Jesus entering headfirst and his feet dangling behind him.
The Comedic Hunt
Coming back to the 20th century, comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested in 1966 for using the word “cunt” in a comedy routine. In 1972, George Carlin performed his popular stand-up “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”, which included “cunt”. And he too was arrested.
Carlin however has a different take on the power of words. He said:
“It's a notion that they have and it's superstitious. These words have no power. We give them this power by refusing to be free and easy with them. We give them great power over us. They really, in themselves, have no power. It's the thrust of the sentence that makes them either good or bad.”
Do I agree with Carlin? Partially. Just like the Magritte painting “The Treachery of Images” or “Ceci n'est pas une pipe”, he does have a point. But even the Bible says:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”.
If we choose to paraphrase, what power indeed!
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