copperbadge:

iamshadow21:

I have to admit, at first glance, that statue in the grotto looked like it was of… something different, let’s just say.

OH MY GOD I was like “I’m not….seeing it” and then I SAW IT. 

I know, right? There’s a really grey area between how much is deliberate and how much is just your brain seeing other shapes in things, like burnt toast or wood grain, for example, but given that Christianity appropriated and absorbed a LOT of pagan/goddess-centric religions on its way, I tend to think that often, it was actually deliberate originally, but the icon itself has been mass produced over and over so much that the original intent of the artist was lost. There’s a lot of phallic and vulvic iconography on really old churches – sheela na gigs and green men along side the crucifixes – and I think the early religious artists did it on purpose, particularly when the congregation needed that iconography of the old ways to accept the yoke of Christianity that their rulers and/or the missionaries wanted them to submit to. Most of the stuff that I’ve read has been based around the Celts, but I have no doubt that a city like Nola with a diverse mix of non-white cultures, traditions and religions would have its fair share of intersection between Christianity and other systems of belief.