A Brief History of Phallic Worship
A history of men doing what men do best — worshipping the male member
Religion has always been one of humanity’s most curious phenomena. From the pious who deprive themselves of all sexual pleasures to the frantic and bizarre sex festivals of the ancients, sex and spirituality have always been profoundly intertwined.
Pornography and religion evolved side-by-side. The earliest forms of pornography, from Venus statues to cave art, were closely tied with religious rites, as early humanity stood in awe of the wonders of nature — fertility must’ve been mesmerizing to prehistoric humanity, peoples who didn’t understand scientific concepts like sperm and ovum, fertilization, and evolution.
Everything was cyclical. Menstrual periods came in cycles. Babies perceptively came in cycles. The seasons came in cycles. And even all life, from birth until death, was sensed as one grand cycle — the never-ending circle of creation and destruction.
Part of our need to worship sex and sexuality is baked right into the psychology of human existence. It speaks to our reverence and awe for the unspeakably beautiful processes that give rise to life.
In today's world, we chuckle at the notion that there might be a religion dedicated to the worship of women’s asses (adonitology). But we seem to forget, this is nothing new.
There’s also a long-standing human tradition, for better or worse, of worshipping the male penis. Penis-worship, called phallicism, has a long, rich history and can teach us much about humanity itself.
The unwavering nature of the history of phallic worship (and the worship of other sexualized body parts) speaks volumes about the collective psychology of humankind.
And by exploring that history, we may be able to elucidate some of our deepest motivations, making them transparent to us, so we can appreciate humanity, through its cultural expressions, as it is.
Why do we worship the penis or the ass? Because it’s ours. Because it’s a part of us — and by extension, it’s a part of our story. Bodies conjure up a world of feelings within us, good or bad.
The Phallic-Worship of Prehistory
Worshipping the penis probably began around the time when people first started worshipping statues like Venus of Willendorf, and people wore small, penis-looking charms to pay their respects and wish for fertility to the male member and its respective gods.
A penis carving that dates back to 6,000 years ago was discovered in Israel. But penis structures span a lot farther back into the human past than this.
The Beginnings of Subtle Phallic Worship
As humans tamed their surroundings and became more skilled at construction, they began to worship penises in some rather novel ways.
This moved from beyond the usual etchings, carvings, and castings to much larger and in-depth structures, ones that inspired both the awe and envy of onlookers — men have always wanted to make their penises as large as possible.
Most of us who live in modern cities don’t think of the skyscraper as a phallic object, but a phallic object it is. In fact, most of the first tall buildings of the pre-modern were erected as testaments to the various fertility gods. They bear an uncanny resemblance to penises, accordingly.
So at what point are we just copying old habits and at what point are we, consciously or not, continuing the practice of phallic worship in our structures?
From the Paleolithic to the Neolithic, to ancient times and even the sternly religious Middle Ages, then onward into modernity, we stare at phallus-inspired works of art every single day and never really think twice about it.
Buildings, especially in ancient history, didn’t need to be tall, but height often served the dual purpose of providing phallus worship in hope of obtaining the vitality believed to be delivered by the hands of the various phallic gods and as a display of power.
These structures don’t yield any additional defensive properties, so much as they intimidate nearby cultures into believing that you have the phallic gods on your side.
Egyptian Phallic Worship
The inhabitants of Ancient Egypt had a fascinating religion of many gods and goddesses, representing many aspects of daily life, and their lore spoke to the specifics of these deities which anthropomorphized the human experience, making concrete what we think, feel, sense, and experience in our lives.
Min was the name of the fertility god of Ancient Egypt and was also considered the Lord of the Eastern Desert. Min is almost invariably depicted with an erect penis, usually in one hand, with a flail in the other, suggesting he might have been thought to be into some kinky BDSM.
Min was the personification of the male penetrative act and male fertility and was worshipped as such. Min basically always had a hard-on and wasn’t afraid to show it, be it in art, sculptures, or inscriptions, as can be seen below.
Usir was the ancient Egyptian Lord of the Underworld, the King of the Dead. We know him today by his Latinized name, Osiris, and this god was actually adopted by the ancient Egyptians, likely from Syria. While Osiris wasn’t often shown with a huge phallus that we might associate with a phallic or male fertility god, Osiris’ back-story definitely involved some unusual penis worship, and he was probably the Syrian fertility god.
Osiris had a brother named Set, and the two were always fighting. Set entrapped Osiris and ended up killing him, but, not so fast!…
Osiris’ wife located the body, dismembered it, and took the phallus of the corpse to have sex with herself; she conceived a son, and he was named Horus. While Osiris wasn’t exactly literally always pictured with a massive boner, like Min was, he was still a phallic deity in Egypt for a very, very long time.
Ancient Greece
The Ancient Greeks had Πρῐ́ᾱπος (Priapus) and Πάν (Pan), both gods of fertility who were rather well-endowed. They would eventually leave us with a plethora of art in the form of paintings, drawings, carvings, and more, featuring these two figures and their unusually large, cumbersome penises.
Priapus kind of looks, well, like you’d expect a Greek god to look, only with one conspicuous part of the body standing out and sticking up all the time…
Then there was Pan, who’s also often featured with a similarly large member. Pan was an interesting character, looking sort of like the Christian vision of Satan (which was heavily borrowed from Greek mythology) sporting a pair of horns, a nasty, snarling, beastly face, and goat legs, Pan looked like a character out of an adventure movie and was born of his father Hermes, who himself was an unusual god.
It is said that Hermes was just an infant when he decided to steal all of Apollo’s cattle and make the hoofs backward, so they couldn’t walk right, and thus couldn’t be tracked.
So, of course, Pan would be the bizarre offspring of this prankster.
Pan lived in the woods. He began as a god conceived as 100% goat, with no human pars, but the conception of him evolved over time. Eventually, the Greeks pinned a massive penis on him.
Both Pan and Hermes were phallic deities, and they were worshipped as such. Hermes was the original phallic god (imagine having that title). Among other things he was considered to lord over, the penis was a big one — pun intended.
Priapus, on the other hand, was the god of fertility, and he enjoyed a huge surge in popularity later on in history with the rise of the Roman Empire, a comparatively much more masculine culture than the Ancient Greeks.
Contemporary Phallic Worship
You may think we stopped worshipping the male member. But have we really? Just because we no longer erect huge statutes that obviously resemble penises, does that mean that we don’t incorporate phallic objects into our everyday lives?
I’m not so sure.
The fact that “big dick energy” is a common colloquialism speaks volumes about our lingering obsession with penises. It’s phallic worship for the postmodern era.
And don’t get me started on the weird pissing contest rocket ship battle between billionaires going on right now with the space race for consumerism.
Remember this?
And, without even looking, I’d venture to say that more than half of all the porn out there with a descriptive term for the penis are describing its size.
There’s “huge”, “massive”, “big”, “BBC”, and more.
Dildos may no longer be painstakingly carved out of wood or stone, but they’ve come to be mass-produced — and in much brighter colors. We make them move with electrically charged vibrations. We’ve made them into works of art, from glass to silicone, spanning the gamut from looking like natural penises of bizarre colors to alien penises that lay eggs inside women.
But this raises two questions…first, what will the cultures of tomorrow look back and reflect upon when observing our media and various forms of phallic worship?
Will they think we took porn actors seriously and worshipped them as deities?
Perhaps we’re taking the Greco-Roman culture of old a bit too seriously, now that I think about it.
And lastly, what will their (even unknowing) forms of phallic worship look like? Will they finally graduate to 100% safe cosmetic surgery that makes the male member swell to, quite literally, godlike proportions, and then perhaps retract to not be so cumbersome? Maybe.
If our obsession with penises continues along with our technology, I can’t see why not.
Something tells me that these are the technologies the likes of Pan or Osiris would have killed for.
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Three books I recommend checking out:
Tell Me What You Want: The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life
Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships
A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the Internet Tells Us About Sexual Relationships
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