There can be no question that of all symbolic motifs in the representation of the sacred mysteries of origins, in the religious-mystical traditions of human culture, the vagina symbol is the most feared, being the most mysterious, hidden, unknown as representation of dual passage to life(in birth) and to afterlife(in death)
The vagina as the birth-death passage symbol stands at the hardcore of our awestruck fear of the unknown. The vagina is the ascent to life as well as the "dark descent" in death. The womb into which the vagina opens is the symbol of pre-life as well as afterlife: the mystery of mysteries
The death-life antagonistic duality, in the symbol of the sacred vagina of God The Mother, stands at the center of man's ambivalent attitude towards the woman
In the beginning, the first man of whom we have documentary evidence as having practiced shamanic sorcery is shown (in the "Salle-du-Fond holies" of the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Paleolithic cave site mural) as crouched in apparent ambivalent reverence over the pubic triangle of the vagina in the anticipation of the magical "dark descent" into the sacred womb of all beginnings
Rankian psychoanalysis associates our worst unconscious psychoneurotic fears with the "dark passage"(the vagina) in the repressed Birth Trauma(the Primal Trauma)
Yet our fleeting visionary recollections of the intrauterine pre-life is of paradisaical pleasure. But the painful vaginal passage of the Birth Trauma stands guard like an angel with flaming sword at the entrance into womb-paradise
How shall we overcome our fear of the vaginal passage? That is the question central to our pre-occupation in religious life
Blessed, indeed, are those for whom the gods have provided ointment-grease to lubricate the vaginal passage. For such have been provided the vicarious sacrificial painful death of Jesus at Golgotha
And we have our first intimation of the possibility of an ecstatically pleasurable passage in the delectable pleasures of sexual union with a woman: our "love choice" as mother-substitute.
Anthropologists and archeologists who first visited the Paleolithic Cave site at Altamira reported(even with the benefit of modern equipment) the fearsome steepness of the "dark descent" into the "womb of the earth
