Though female gods often represented the earth, from the Neolithic period onward the gods responsible for creation were always male. Sometimes the penis of a god or ruler figured in his mythology. Penises of men and statues also might have ritual or magical properties.
MYTHS AND LEGENDS
In Greek mythology it was said that Chronos, son of the Titan Uranus, castrated his father and threw his penis into the sea. Although this was not a happy event for Uranus, it was good for humanity. Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, rose from the sea where Uranus's penis had fertilized the waters.
The Egyptian hero Osiris was slain in battle and cut into pieces by his enemy, Typhon. Typhon's followers took the pieces, with Typhon himself keeping the phallus. Then Isis, wife of Osiris, gained control of the government and rounded up the pieces of her husband. Only the penis could not be found—Typhon had apparently fled with it, and may have thrown it in the sea. In honor of Osiris, Isis ordered that the phallus be worshiped with solemnities and mysteries. Osiris's misfortune became the origin of phallus worship among the Egyptians.
The Chinese emperor Chou-hsin was said to be a sexual prodigy. His penis was supposedly so big and strong he could walk around a room with a naked woman perched on his erection. He lived by the precept of the Yellow Emperor, copulating with ten women every night without ejaculating (or "losing the Vital Essence," as it was called). Eventually he became impotent—at which point he beheaded the medical advisor who had counseled him to conduct himself in such a manner.
According to Plutarch, Rome was founded by the offspring of a disembodied phallus and a servant girl. The phallus appeared one day in the fireplace of the King of Albani. The king ordered his daughter to copulate with the phallus, but the princess sent her maidservant instead. The maidservant did as she was told, and the phallus impregnated her. Her two sons, Romulus and Remus, whom she abandoned in the forest to be fed by wolves, became the fathers of Rome.
KARNAK
The Egyptian god of creation was Amun, to whom the Temple at Karnak is dedicated. Built during the XVIII dynasty, which lasted from 1501 to 1342 B.C., and excavated in the nineteenth century by Napoleon's armies, the temple is still the largest columned building in the world, with two 330-ton obelisks out front, enormous statues, long corridors, rooms within rooms. It's also one of the world's major tourist attractions.
Ancient Egyptians believed Amun created the world each day out of watery chaos by masturbating and swallowing his own semen, then spitting it out. It's not entirely clear whether Amun used his hand for this task or performed autofellatio. There are many bas-reliefs on the temple walls of figures with big erect penises; in at least one of these a figure lying flat on his back with his legs folded over toward his head is about to take his own very long phallus into his mouth. But Amun's hand was certainly important.
Apparently each day, in the innermost temple, Amun's shrine, the original act of creation would be ritually reenacted. Nobody knows exactly what this means, but archaeologists are willing to imagine. Originally they thought a statue of the god standing up was used in the rituals, but now they think the ritual statue was the one where the god is sitting; he has a flail in his right hand and in his left he grips his big, erect dick. The walls are as high as men can see. This is obviously a holy place, but what does "holy" mean here?
When the priests performed their ceremonies, their whole bodies were first shaven, then bathed. They oiled and clothed the god. They brought him incense and dancing girls, anything to stimulate him to reenact creation one more time. Other than that we don't know what they did, exactly. It may have been something symbolic, but we'd all like to think it was something sexual. The high priestess probably had something to do with it, in her role as the wife of the god. The wife of the god had another title: God's Hand.
THEHERMS
Athens in the fifth century B.C. was a capital of phallic power, and one manifestation of the city's rampant phallicism was its high concentration of herms. Named for the god Hermes, herms were vertical stone slabs with sculptures of the bearded head of Hermes on top and protruding sculpted erections at penis level. The herms stood in front of private houses and at street corners; they marked boundaries between properties; they massed together in the marketplace, jutting out at each other and every passerby. Their presence was thought to protect the populace from evil, and individuals routinely touched the erections for good luck. Then one night in 415 B.C., as the men of Athens were preparing to sail to Sicily for a new foray against the Spartans in the continuing Peloponnesian War, someone chopped the dicks off all the herms. Bad luck ensued; Athens lost to Sparta. The herm- choppers were never found, and although this happened 2,500 years ago, for some strange reason it's still being discussed. In The Reign of the Phallus, Eva Keuls builds an elaborate case to show that it must have been the respectable women, confined to the women's quarters of the house, who castrated the herms in the dead of night, to make the point that phallicism had gone too far.
SWEARING
Nowadays Western people swear on the Bible, but before there were Bibles, men used to swear on their penises, or on the penises of the men they were swearing to. In the Bible when men swear, the translators euphemistically refer to the penis as a thigh. Here are two examples from Genesis: Abraham asking his servant to swear to him: "Tut your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and of earth,'" (Gen. 24: 2-3). And Jacob on his deathbed: "He called his son Joseph and said to him, 'If now I have found favor in your sight, put your hand under my thigh, and promise to deal loyally and truly with me,'" (Gen. 47: 29).
It may be that "thigh" really means testicles, or penis and testicles. In any case the word "testify" comes from this practice.
DEFLOWERING VIRGINS
Christianity could banish all the penis gods, but it couldn't stamp out penis magic. In Europe throughout the Middle Ages people wore phallic amulets, drew phalluses on their churches and sought the protection of certain Christian saints who had inherited the phallic powers of the former gods—for example, St. Foutin, who was popular in the South of France, Provence, Languedoc and the Lyonnais. A medieval statue of St. Foutin was likely to be furnished with a large, erect wooden phallus. Barren women would scrape this phallus, steep the scrapings in water and drink the mixture in the hope it would make them fertile, or give it to their husbands to drink to improve their potency. Statues of other saints with prominent phalluses—Gilles, Arnaud, Guignole—were also appealed to with a scraping knife. The saintly penises, worn down by constant attention, would from time to time experience miraculous renewals. "The phallus consisted of a long staff of wood passed through a hole in the middle of the body," says Thomas Wright in his 1866 classic, The Worship of the Generative Powers, "and as the phallic end in front became shortened, a blow of a mallet from behind thrust it forward, so that it was restored to its original length." The practice of asking phallic statues of saints for help with fertility continued in some places well into the eighteenth century.
In another related practice in Medieval Europe certain statues of phallic saints were used during wedding ceremonies to deflower the brides. This custom originated in ancient times when a statue of Priapus would do the deed. The purpose in both cases was to insure good fortune and fertility. In The Worship of the Generative Powers, Wright says he believes that intercourse with statues of saints is what inspired women in the use of artificial phalluses for sexual gratification, "a vice which is understood to prevail especially in nunneries."
Using statues to deflower virgins was still common practice in the nineteenth century in India, Japan and the Pacific Islands. "Even today," Alain Danielou wrote in 1993 in The Phallus, "the young girls of Nepal have their hymens broken by means of a phallus-shaped fruit in a rite that grants to the god a sort of 'droit du seigneur.'"
THE DEVIL'S DICK
Witches' Sabbaths of the Middle Ages, which were described as large-scale orgies, probably descended from the phallic cults. Celebrants worshiped a horned god who, at least in the minds of the Inquisitors who brought the witches to trial, represented the devil. Like Priapus, the devil was often said to have a huge penis, and celebrants were said to have sex with him. His semen, they reported, was ice-cold. If nothing else the broomstick was a phallic symbol. Wright describes the way witches proceeded: "They took an ointment given to them by the devil, with which they anointed a wooden rod, at the same time rubbing the palms of their hands with it, and then, placing the rod between their legs, they were suddenly carried through the air to the place of assembly."
Beguiled by the devil's dick, witches were thought to have power over the penises of ordinary men.
During the Inquisition, people who were accused of witchcraft were often said to have made men impotent, or even caused their penises to disappear. (The spell a witch was said to cast to disappear a penis was called a "glamour"—the origin of our word for magical appeal.) The following is from a translation of Malleus Maleficarum, the fifteenth-century book on witchcraft that was a basic text of the Inquisition: "For a certain man tells that, when he had lost his member, he approached a known witch to ask her to restore it to him. She told the afflicted man to climb a certain tree, and that he might take which he liked out of a nest in which there were several members. And when he tried to take a big one, the witch said: 'You must not take that one'; adding, 'because it belonged to a parish priest.'"
Source: The Book of the Penis by Maggie Paley
MYTHS AND LEGENDS
In Greek mythology it was said that Chronos, son of the Titan Uranus, castrated his father and threw his penis into the sea. Although this was not a happy event for Uranus, it was good for humanity. Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, rose from the sea where Uranus's penis had fertilized the waters.
The Egyptian hero Osiris was slain in battle and cut into pieces by his enemy, Typhon. Typhon's followers took the pieces, with Typhon himself keeping the phallus. Then Isis, wife of Osiris, gained control of the government and rounded up the pieces of her husband. Only the penis could not be found—Typhon had apparently fled with it, and may have thrown it in the sea. In honor of Osiris, Isis ordered that the phallus be worshiped with solemnities and mysteries. Osiris's misfortune became the origin of phallus worship among the Egyptians.
The Chinese emperor Chou-hsin was said to be a sexual prodigy. His penis was supposedly so big and strong he could walk around a room with a naked woman perched on his erection. He lived by the precept of the Yellow Emperor, copulating with ten women every night without ejaculating (or "losing the Vital Essence," as it was called). Eventually he became impotent—at which point he beheaded the medical advisor who had counseled him to conduct himself in such a manner.
According to Plutarch, Rome was founded by the offspring of a disembodied phallus and a servant girl. The phallus appeared one day in the fireplace of the King of Albani. The king ordered his daughter to copulate with the phallus, but the princess sent her maidservant instead. The maidservant did as she was told, and the phallus impregnated her. Her two sons, Romulus and Remus, whom she abandoned in the forest to be fed by wolves, became the fathers of Rome.
KARNAK
The Egyptian god of creation was Amun, to whom the Temple at Karnak is dedicated. Built during the XVIII dynasty, which lasted from 1501 to 1342 B.C., and excavated in the nineteenth century by Napoleon's armies, the temple is still the largest columned building in the world, with two 330-ton obelisks out front, enormous statues, long corridors, rooms within rooms. It's also one of the world's major tourist attractions.
Ancient Egyptians believed Amun created the world each day out of watery chaos by masturbating and swallowing his own semen, then spitting it out. It's not entirely clear whether Amun used his hand for this task or performed autofellatio. There are many bas-reliefs on the temple walls of figures with big erect penises; in at least one of these a figure lying flat on his back with his legs folded over toward his head is about to take his own very long phallus into his mouth. But Amun's hand was certainly important.
Apparently each day, in the innermost temple, Amun's shrine, the original act of creation would be ritually reenacted. Nobody knows exactly what this means, but archaeologists are willing to imagine. Originally they thought a statue of the god standing up was used in the rituals, but now they think the ritual statue was the one where the god is sitting; he has a flail in his right hand and in his left he grips his big, erect dick. The walls are as high as men can see. This is obviously a holy place, but what does "holy" mean here?
When the priests performed their ceremonies, their whole bodies were first shaven, then bathed. They oiled and clothed the god. They brought him incense and dancing girls, anything to stimulate him to reenact creation one more time. Other than that we don't know what they did, exactly. It may have been something symbolic, but we'd all like to think it was something sexual. The high priestess probably had something to do with it, in her role as the wife of the god. The wife of the god had another title: God's Hand.
THEHERMS
Athens in the fifth century B.C. was a capital of phallic power, and one manifestation of the city's rampant phallicism was its high concentration of herms. Named for the god Hermes, herms were vertical stone slabs with sculptures of the bearded head of Hermes on top and protruding sculpted erections at penis level. The herms stood in front of private houses and at street corners; they marked boundaries between properties; they massed together in the marketplace, jutting out at each other and every passerby. Their presence was thought to protect the populace from evil, and individuals routinely touched the erections for good luck. Then one night in 415 B.C., as the men of Athens were preparing to sail to Sicily for a new foray against the Spartans in the continuing Peloponnesian War, someone chopped the dicks off all the herms. Bad luck ensued; Athens lost to Sparta. The herm- choppers were never found, and although this happened 2,500 years ago, for some strange reason it's still being discussed. In The Reign of the Phallus, Eva Keuls builds an elaborate case to show that it must have been the respectable women, confined to the women's quarters of the house, who castrated the herms in the dead of night, to make the point that phallicism had gone too far.
SWEARING
Nowadays Western people swear on the Bible, but before there were Bibles, men used to swear on their penises, or on the penises of the men they were swearing to. In the Bible when men swear, the translators euphemistically refer to the penis as a thigh. Here are two examples from Genesis: Abraham asking his servant to swear to him: "Tut your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and of earth,'" (Gen. 24: 2-3). And Jacob on his deathbed: "He called his son Joseph and said to him, 'If now I have found favor in your sight, put your hand under my thigh, and promise to deal loyally and truly with me,'" (Gen. 47: 29).
It may be that "thigh" really means testicles, or penis and testicles. In any case the word "testify" comes from this practice.
DEFLOWERING VIRGINS
Christianity could banish all the penis gods, but it couldn't stamp out penis magic. In Europe throughout the Middle Ages people wore phallic amulets, drew phalluses on their churches and sought the protection of certain Christian saints who had inherited the phallic powers of the former gods—for example, St. Foutin, who was popular in the South of France, Provence, Languedoc and the Lyonnais. A medieval statue of St. Foutin was likely to be furnished with a large, erect wooden phallus. Barren women would scrape this phallus, steep the scrapings in water and drink the mixture in the hope it would make them fertile, or give it to their husbands to drink to improve their potency. Statues of other saints with prominent phalluses—Gilles, Arnaud, Guignole—were also appealed to with a scraping knife. The saintly penises, worn down by constant attention, would from time to time experience miraculous renewals. "The phallus consisted of a long staff of wood passed through a hole in the middle of the body," says Thomas Wright in his 1866 classic, The Worship of the Generative Powers, "and as the phallic end in front became shortened, a blow of a mallet from behind thrust it forward, so that it was restored to its original length." The practice of asking phallic statues of saints for help with fertility continued in some places well into the eighteenth century.
In another related practice in Medieval Europe certain statues of phallic saints were used during wedding ceremonies to deflower the brides. This custom originated in ancient times when a statue of Priapus would do the deed. The purpose in both cases was to insure good fortune and fertility. In The Worship of the Generative Powers, Wright says he believes that intercourse with statues of saints is what inspired women in the use of artificial phalluses for sexual gratification, "a vice which is understood to prevail especially in nunneries."
Using statues to deflower virgins was still common practice in the nineteenth century in India, Japan and the Pacific Islands. "Even today," Alain Danielou wrote in 1993 in The Phallus, "the young girls of Nepal have their hymens broken by means of a phallus-shaped fruit in a rite that grants to the god a sort of 'droit du seigneur.'"
THE DEVIL'S DICK
Witches' Sabbaths of the Middle Ages, which were described as large-scale orgies, probably descended from the phallic cults. Celebrants worshiped a horned god who, at least in the minds of the Inquisitors who brought the witches to trial, represented the devil. Like Priapus, the devil was often said to have a huge penis, and celebrants were said to have sex with him. His semen, they reported, was ice-cold. If nothing else the broomstick was a phallic symbol. Wright describes the way witches proceeded: "They took an ointment given to them by the devil, with which they anointed a wooden rod, at the same time rubbing the palms of their hands with it, and then, placing the rod between their legs, they were suddenly carried through the air to the place of assembly."
Beguiled by the devil's dick, witches were thought to have power over the penises of ordinary men.
During the Inquisition, people who were accused of witchcraft were often said to have made men impotent, or even caused their penises to disappear. (The spell a witch was said to cast to disappear a penis was called a "glamour"—the origin of our word for magical appeal.) The following is from a translation of Malleus Maleficarum, the fifteenth-century book on witchcraft that was a basic text of the Inquisition: "For a certain man tells that, when he had lost his member, he approached a known witch to ask her to restore it to him. She told the afflicted man to climb a certain tree, and that he might take which he liked out of a nest in which there were several members. And when he tried to take a big one, the witch said: 'You must not take that one'; adding, 'because it belonged to a parish priest.'"
Source: The Book of the Penis by Maggie Paley
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