Phallic Worship / A description of the mysteries of the sex worship of the ancients, with the history of the masculine cross. An account of primitive symbolism, Hebrew phallicism, bacchic festivals, sexual rites, and the mysteries of the ancient faiths.

by Hargrave Jennings

VENUS-URANIA.—THE MOTHER GODDESS

The characteristic attribute of the passive generative power was expressed in symbolical writing, by different enigmatical representations of the most distinguished characteristic of the female sex: such as the shell or Concha Veneris, the fig-leaf, barley corn, and the letter Delta, all of which occur very frequently upon coins and other ancient monuments in this sense. The same attribute personified as the goddess of Love, or desire, is usually represented under the voluptuous form of a beautiful woman, frequently distinguished by one of these symbols, and called Venus, Kypris, or Aphrodite, names of rather uncertain mythology. She is said to be the daughter of Jupiter and Dione, that is of the male and female personifications of the all-pervading Spirit of the Universe; Dione being the female Dis or Zeus, and therefore associated with him in the most ancient oracular temple of Greece at Dodona. No other genealogy appears to have been known in the Homeric times; though a different one is employed to account for the name of Aphrodite in the “Theogony” attributed to Hesiod.

The Genelullides or Genoidai were the original and appropriate ministers or companions of Venus, who was however, afterwards attended by the Graces, the proper and original attendants of Juno; but as both these goddesses were occasionally united and represented in one image, the personifications of their respective subordinate attributes were on other occasions added: whence the symbolical statue of Venus at Paphos had a beard, and other appearances of virility, which seems to have been the most ancient mode of representing the celestial as distinguished from the popular goddess of that name—the one being a personification of a general procreative power, and the other only of animal desire or concupiscence. The refinement of Grecian art, however, when advanced to maturity, contrived more elegant modes of distinguishing them; and, in a celebrated work of Phidias, we find the former represented with her foot upon a tortoise; and in a no less celebrated one of Scopas, the latter sitting upon a goat. The tortoise, being an androgynous animal, was aptly chosen as a symbol of the double power; and the goat was equally appropriate to what was meant to be expressed in the other.

The same attribute was on other occasions signified by a dove or pigeon, by the sparrow, and perhaps by the polypus, which often appears upon coins with the head of the goddess, and which was accounted an aphrodisiac, though it is likewise of the androgynous class. The fig was a still more common symbol, the statue of Priapus being made of the tree, and the fruit being carried with the Phallus in the ancient processions in honour of Bacchus, and still continuing among the common people of Italy to be an emblem of what it anciently meant: whence we often see portraits of persons of that country painted with it in one hand, to signify their orthodox elevation to the fair sex. Hence, also arose the Italian expression far la fica, which was done by putting the thumb between the middle and fore-fingers, as it appears in many Priapic ornaments extant; or by putting the finger or thumb into the corner of the mouth and drawing it down, of which there is a representation in a small Priapic figure of exquisite sculpture, engraved among the Antiquities of Herculaneum.