Odd Little Fact About Our Vajayjay …
Sexuality
Did you know that in Latin “vagina” or “vaginae” means a sheath for a man’s sword? (I don’t speak Latin, but my sister does and she called me to tell me this odd bit of trivia because she thought I would find it interesting. Which I did.)
In case you don’t believe me, here’s the screenshot from Latin-dictionary.net : )
So our most private part, is in reality named as the sheath for a sword. I don’t know why but I find that hilarious and yet disturbing at the same time.
Hilarious because it is just like a man to name everything in relation to his penis.
Disturbing because our vagina wasn’t named as a stand along entity. It was named as the holder for someone else’s body.
In a way this is similar to the Chalice – a symbol for the sacred feminine – the container of life. Maybe it was meant to honor us – in that without us, men have no safe keeping for their sword? In some ways that ties into the early belief that through women, men could see and know God. That the act of intercourse was so sacred, that through it men could connect with God. (The assumption being women did not need to connect with God, as they were and are already and always connected to source energy i.e. God.)
But the thing is, that name, even if it is meant in an honoring way, still bothers me. Because we never allowed our most sacred place to have it’s own identity. We are not only a vessel for someone else to experience connection to source. We are our own connection. Our body is our own. It is not simply a vessel for someone else, it is also a vessel for our own connection to our partner, our own pleasure, our own oneness with source.
I wonder… what is the Latin word for that??
