Phallus is the name given to the erect penis as a symbol; most people associate the term penis with something or someone else, for example their bearded biology teacher from school or sex education manuals. This is not to say that the sex education manuals of, say, the 1960s were bad books — on the contrary, they preserved some of the mystery surrounding the adolescent penis. Their modern counterparts are so intrusive that little is left to the imagination. One of the nicest things about puberty is surely discovering things for yourself and making your own mind up. Fortunately for most young children the discovery of the differences between the male and female external sex organs is still a very exciting business. Who has never played ‘doctors and nurses’? In such situations the differences are discussed at length, something that most adults no longer do or dare to do. In his fascinating novel The Year of Cancer (1972) the Flemish writer Hugo Claus shows that it can sometimes still happen.
‘You’ve got the nicest pussy I’ve ever seen,’ he whispered.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It used to be nice. But when I had the baby they stitched me up wrong. And afterwards I got piles. It often hurts really badly.’
‘I love you,’ said Pierre.
‘I love you,’ she said. ‘And you’ve got the nicest one I’ve ever seen too. I don’t usually look at them with men.’
‘But if you’ve never looked, how do you know mine’s nicer?’
‘Well, I have sneaked a look. Most of them are red or bluish. Ugh!’
The girl in this story emphasizes a common female view of the penis. With the phallus it is a different story, for men too. In many ancient cultures the phallus was the symbol of immortality, of vitality eternally renewing itself. It was no accident that at the end of his life the celebrated English writer D. H. Lawrence was fascinated by the Etruscans, who placed a phallus on every grave. As an outwardly visible biological feature the phallus came in the course of history to bear a heavy religious and moral burden. Consequently the study of the phallus led to the study of theology, of the phallus that rises and when the party is over dies again, and that as an ‘immortal’ can repeat this feat again and again: the eternal resurrection of the flesh.
The phallus cult was a striking feature of Ancient Greek religion, and the impotent man was more mocked than pitied. For the Greeks a
small phallus was preferable, since a large one was associated with barbarians and satyrs. That may have been connected with Aristotle’s view that a shorter penis enhanced fertility. He thought that ‘sperm cools down less the shorter the distance to be travelled’.
Both in front of temples and at the doors of Athenian homes there stood a herm, a square column with a man’s head and an erect penis at the front, but without limbs. Herms stood not only in front of homes, but also at city gates, outside citadels, in markets and in gymnasiums. In short, they were everywhere in Ancient Greece. The herm was wreathed in green and had olive oil poured over it. During worship people put their hand on its head, or took hold of it by the beard or the phallus. The latter action particularly would not be possible nowadays. But wait a minute! In Piazza Signoria in Florence there is a Neptune in the middle of a pool, around which are a number of seated bronze fauns all naked and with erect penises. Although for the most part the bronze of the fauns has the familiar oxidized colour, the phalluses are like brass, due to the countless hands that have taken them by that part of the body and stroked them. Florentine women believe that this increases their chances of becoming pregnant. But what a difference: while the touching in Florence takes place in secret, in Ancient Greek it happened freely and publicly. Sexuality and religious observance were inseparable. Of course, the symbolic significance of the phallus embraced much more than sex alone. At Dionysian celebrations its religious importance was stressed, and huge phalluses were borne in procession. Dionysus was the god of intoxication, of the ecstatic rapture brought about by wine, the blood of the earth, the god of passion and of the rowdy exuberance that characterized these autumnal festivities.
In the drama Acharnes the Greek comic playwright Aristophanes (c. 446-c. 386 bc) tells the story of the procession marking the private Dionysian celebration held by the good Dikaiopolis together with his daughter and his slave Xanthius on the occasion of the armistice between Athens and Sparta. In advance of the procession he instructs Xanthius to hold the phallus pole straight in front of him, and then sings the following phallic hymn:
Oh, Phales, companion of Bacchus, life of the party, old goat, lover of women and boys, with peace in my hands I greet you and rejoicing return to my village.
The great city festivals of Dionysus were important civic events. They were accompanied by much pomp and ceremony and drew spectators from miles around. Not only were countless phallic images carried in procession, but the participants also tied on large artificial penises.
However, it was precisely the Greeks who drew a sharp line between the phallus in its symbolic meaning and the same organ as an anatomical component. The phallus was used only symbolically and ritually.
An Egyptian creation story tells of the primordial god Atum, who created the world by masturbating while standing in the primeval sea, encouraged by Hathor, the goddess of love: from his phallus he spewed Shu and Tefnet, the god of air and the goddess of liquid, brother and sister, and with that creation was complete. Moreover, in Egyptian mythology there was a god of male sexual power. His name was Min and he was of some importance. He is usually depicted with his left hand round his phallus and his right hand raised in an inverted v — shaped structure, supposedly representing coitus.
In the Hindu creation myth a phallus is also described. In 1959 Paul Thomas devoted a book to the subject: on the day of their creation, when the gods Brahma and Vishi appeared out of nowhere, they were bewildered, but ‘soon they saw a dazzling lingam of huge proportions, whose extremities reached vast distances’.
The phallus also played an important role in the religion of other ancient peoples. Not only in Baal worship (Baal was the phallic god of the Canaanites), but in Islam and Judaism too the circumcision of the foreskin became a sign of the link between the man and Baal, Allah and Jahweh respectively.
It is worth mentioning that in chapter 20 of the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, which concerns those who shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord, there is mention of ‘he that is wounded in the stones [testicles], or hath his privy member cut off’. Obviously such injuries were a problem even then.
According to the etymologist G. R. Scott the Bible translators deliberately replaced the word ‘penis’ with the euphemism ‘hip’ and later ‘loin’ or ‘thigh’. An obvious example is found in Genesis 24:2-3, where Abraham addresses his eldest servant: ‘Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh: and I will make thee swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son. . .’ In Abraham’s time it was simply the custom when swearing an oath to touch one’s own penis or the penis of the person most closely involved. The circumcised member, after all, was the sign of the bond between man and Jehovah.
In Christianity the penis gradually faded into the background as a religious symbol, although traditionally, especially in France, powers for the cure of impotence were attributed to certain saints down to the
end of the nineteenth century. In one’s hour of need one could address one’s prayers to them.
Until 1805, when the village was buried by an earthquake, a picturesque pilgrimage took place annually on 17 September in Isernia (near Naples). In the cathedral the relics of St Damien were displayed. On the great day these were carried in procession to the local fair. Wax phalluses of every shape and size were on sale, and worshippers were required to hang one in the chapel while intoning a particular prayer. The proceeds of course went to the church. There were many other places where the Catholic Church sanctioned phallus worship, more details may be found in A History of Phallic Worship by R. Payne Knight and T. Wright.