Bygone Beliefs: Being a Series of Excursions in the Byways of Thought

by H. Stanley Redgrove

"The indecent ideas attached to the representation of the phallus were, though it seems a paradox to say so, the results of a more advanced civilization verging towards its decline, as we have evidence at Rome and Pompeii....

"To the primitive man (the reproductive force which pervades all nature) was the most mysterious of all manifestations. The visible physical powers of nature—the sun, the sky, the storm—naturally claimed his reverence, but to him the generative power was the most mysterious of all powers. In the vegetable world, the live seed placed in the ground, and hence germinating, sprouting up, and becoming a beautiful and umbrageous tree, was a mystery. In the animal world, as the cause of all life, by which all beings came into existence, this power was a mystery. In the view of primitive man generation was the action of the Deity itself. It was the mode in which He brought all things into existence, the sun, the moon, the stars, the world, man were generated by Him. To the productive power man was deeply indebted, for to it he owed the harvests and the flocks which supported his life; hence it naturally became an object of reverence and worship.

"Primitive man wants some object to worship, for an abstract idea is beyond his comprehension, hence a visible representation of the generative Deity was made, with the organs contributing to generation most prominent, and hence the organ itself became a symbol of the power."—H, M. WESTROPP: Primitive Symbolism as Illustrated in Phallic Worship, or the Reproductive Principle (1885), pp. 47, 48, and 57. {End of long footnote}

The Aruntas of Australia, I believe, when discovered by Europeans, had not yet observed the connection between sexual intercourse and birth. They believed that conception was occasioned by the woman passing near a churinga—a peculiarly shaped piece of wood or stone, in which a spirit-child was concealed, which entered into her. But archaeological research having established the fact that phallicism has, at one time or another, been common to nearly all races, it seems probable that the Arunta tribe represents a deviation from the normal line of mental evolution. At any rate, an isolated phenomenon, such as this, cannot be held to controvert the view that regards phallicism as in this normal line. Nor was the attitude of mind that not only accepts sex at face-value as an obvious fact, but uses the concept of it to explain other facts, a merely transitory one. We may, indeed, not difficultly trace it throughout the history of alchemy, giving rise to what I may term "The Phallic Element in Alchemical Doctrine".

In aiming to establish this, I may be thought to be endeavouring to establish a counter-thesis to that of the preceding essay on alchemy, but, in virtue of the alchemists' belief in the mystical unity of all things, in the analogical or correspondential relationship of all parts of the universe to each other, the mystical and the phallic views of the origin of alchemy are complementary, not antagonistic. Indeed, the assumption that the metals are the symbols of man almost necessitates the working out of physiological as well as mystical analogies, and these two series of analogies are themselves connected, because the principle "As above, so below" was held to be true of man himself. We might, therefore, expect to find a more or less complete harmony between the two series of symbols, though, as a matter of fact, contradictions will be encountered when we come to consider points of detail. The undoubtable antiquity of the phallic element in alchemical doctrine precludes the idea that this element was an adventitious one, that it was in any sense an afterthought; notwithstanding, however, the evidence, as will, I hope, become apparent as we proceed, indicates that mystical ideas played a much more fundamental part in the genesis of alchemical doctrine than purely phallic ones—mystical interpretations fit alchemical processes and theories far better than do sexual interpretations; in fact, sex has to be interpreted somewhat mystically in order to work out the analogies fully and satisfactorily.

As concerns Greek alchemy, I shall content myself with a passage from a work On the Sacred Art, attributed to OLYMPIODORUS (sixth century A.D.), followed by some quotations from and references to the Turba. In the former work it is stated on the authority of HORUS that "The proper end of the whole art is to obtain the semen of the male secretly, seeing that all things are male and female. Hence (we read further) Horus says in a certain place: Join the male and the female, and you will find that which is sought; as a fact, without this process of re-union, nothing can succeed, for Nature charms Nature," etc. The Turba insistently commands those who would succeed in the Art, to conjoin the male with the female,(1) and, in one place, the male is said to be lead and the female orpiment.(2) We also find the alchemical work symbolised by the growth of the embryo in the womb. "Know," we are told, "... that out of the elect things nothing becomes useful without conjunction and regimen, because sperma is generated out of blood and desire. For the man mingling with the woman, the sperm is nourished by the humour of the womb, and by the moistening blood, and by heat, and when forty nights have elapsed the sperm is formed.... God has constituted that heat and blood for the nourishment of the sperm until the foetus is brought forth. So long as it is little, it is nourished with milk, and in proportion as the vital heat is maintained, the bones are strengthened. Thus it behoves you also to act in this Art."(3)

(1) Vide pp. 60 92, 96 97, 134, 135 and elsewhere in Mr WAITE'S translation.

(2) Ibid., p. 57

(3) Ibid., pp. 179-181 (second recension); cf. pp. 103-104.

The use of the mystical symbols of death (putrefaction) and resurrection or rebirth to represent the consummation of the alchemical work, and that of the phallic symbols of the conjunction of the sexes and the development of the foetus, both of which we have found in the Turba, are current throughout the course of Latin alchemy. In The Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz, that extraordinary document of what is called "Rosicrucianism"—a symbolic romance of considerable ability, whoever its author was,(1)—an attempt is made to weld the two sets of symbols—the one of marriage, the other of death and resurrection unto glory—into one allegorical narrative; and it is to this fusion of seemingly disparate concepts that much of its fantasticality is due. Yet the concepts are not really disparate; for not only is the second birth like unto the first, and not only is the resurrection unto glory described as the Bridal Feast of the Lamb, but marriage is, in a manner, a form of death and rebirth. To justify this in a crude sense, I might say that, from the male standpoint at least, it is a giving of the life-substance to the beloved that life may be born anew and increase. But in a deeper sense it is, or rather should be, as an ideal, a mutual sacrifice of self for each other's good—a death of the self that it may arise with an enriched personality.