Hidden in Plain Sight
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about hidden meanings.
Not in a “conspiracy” way, but in a quiet, curious way. The kind where you start looking at stories and images you’ve seen your whole life and suddenly think… hang on. There’s more going on here.
I recently read The Lost Gospel, which looks at early Christian texts like the Didache, written in the first century AD. What really stayed with me was the idea that teachings weren’t always meant to be obvious. Stories carried messages inside them. You had to sit with them. Read them slowly. Let them open over time.
Around the same time, I reread The Da Vinci Code. I know it’s a novel, but there’s something in it that keeps tugging at me — the idea that Mary Magdalene was the Holy Grail. Not a cup. Not an object. But a woman. A body. A womb. A living vessel.
Whether that’s historically accurate or not isn’t really the point for me. What interests me is why that idea feels so powerful… and so threatening.
Because once you start seeing the sacred as something that lives in the body — especially the female body — you start to understand why so much of it had to be hidden.
I keep coming back to the thought that when certain spiritual ideas became unacceptable, they didn’t disappear. They adapted.
They softened.
They changed names.
They slipped into stories and images instead.
Goddesses became saints.
The Great Mother became something more “acceptable.”
The body became symbolic rather than spoken about directly.
And this is where I start looking at Mary differently.
She’s usually shown robed, elongated, hands together in prayer. So familiar we almost stop seeing her. But when I really look at her shape, I can’t help noticing how much it resembles something much older — the form of the vulva. Enclosing. Protective. Life-giving.
I don’t know if this was intentional. I can’t prove it. But I wonder if this was how ancient people kept something alive that couldn’t be openly worshipped anymore. If the image of Mary became a safe place for devotion to the Great Mother to continue, quietly, right under the nose of religious authority.
Historically, the vulva wasn’t hidden or shameful. It was powerful. It was worn as an amulet for protection. It was carved into buildings to ward off harm. It represented creation, the threshold between worlds, the place life comes through.
That meaning didn’t just vanish overnight.
I feel like a bit of a detective when I think about this — not trying to solve anything once and for all, but following threads and seeing where they lead. Human spirituality feels less like a straight line and more like a spiral. Things disappear, then return. Change form. Wait to be remembered.
At Casa Vulva, I don’t feel like I’m creating something new. It feels more like remembering something very old. An image that once held power and protection, and maybe never fully left us — just waited until we were ready to see it again.
Maybe the sacred feminine was never erased.
Maybe she was hidden in plain sight.
And maybe every time we start asking these questions, we take part in that remembering.
Notes & References
The Didache — an early Christian text dating to the 1st century AD, often described as a teaching manual for early communities.
The Lost Gospel — explores symbolic storytelling and hidden meanings within early Christian writings.
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown — a fictional work that draws on older ideas about Mary Magdalene, the Holy Grail, and sacred feminine symbolism.
Vulva imagery as protective amulets appears across many ancient cultures, including Roman, Celtic, and Near Eastern traditions.
