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There is no evidence to show that the animals connected with phallic gods were selected on account of their salacious dispositions or their sexual power. +420+. Phallicistic cults, attenuated by advance of refinement, survived long, even into Christian times, under modified forms. In such cases they become merely devices of ignorant piety.
On Plate CLXXIII. we see in group 19 various objects discovered in ancient graves; one bearing several ordinary crosses and also several Svastika crosses, one bearing a Svastika cross of the other variety, and a third bearing Svastika crosses of both kinds. Upon Plate CXCII. are cuts of various Cyprian coins, the phallic symbol of the circle and cross occurring upon Nos. 1, 9, and 10.
The favourite legends are Venus Victrix, Venus Felix, and Venus Genetrix, and of phallic import; and in one instance the Goddess of Love holds an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes as well as the phallic apple. Other coins of Marcus Aurelius or his wife have upon them representations of Eternity as a female figure holding a round object. In some cases the round object is surmounted by a Phoenix.
She was originally only virginal in the sense that she rejected marriage, being the goddess of a nomadic and matriarchal hunting people who had not yet adopted marriage, and she was the goddess of childbirth, worshipped with orgiastic dances and phallic emblems. See, e.g., Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. iii, Ch. De Civitate Dei, lib. xv, cap. Summa, Migne's edition, vol. iii, qu. 154, art.
PHALLUS. A representation of the virile member, which was venerated as a religious symbol very universally, and without the slightest lasciviousness, by the ancients. It was one of the modifications of sun worship, and was a symbol of the fecundating power of that luminary. The masonic point within a circle is undoubtedly of phallic origin.
In no case does the sacredness of an object necessarily involve its worship; whether or not it shall receive a true cult depends on general social considerations. +391+. Though phallic cults proper cannot be shown to be universal among men, they have played a not inconsiderable part in religious history.
Such is, of course, the popular assumption; based upon what we are taught in school books and in standard works of reference. But, as a matter of fact, in many cases the round object admittedly signified an apple; the Golden Apple of the Hesperides: a well known phallic symbol.
It is plain that at the time of their bondage in Egypt the Jews had become the grossest phallic worshippers, adoring the emblems of generation, with no thought of their earlier significance as pure symbols of creative force in mortals.
Still, I must not rely too greatly on that. For virginity is an insidious bed fellow for a maiden. Forefingers and phallic shadows have ravished her in dreams. And if she is a virgin in spirit as well as body, she is still a woman and therefore dangerous. "Ah, what loathsome and lecherous mouths women are! Offering their urine ducts as a mystic Paradise!
He states: "We have thus seen in how many various forms the old phallic, or priapic worship presented itself in the middle ages, and how pertinaciously it held its ground through all the changes and development of society, until at length we find all the circumstances of the ancient priapic orgies, as well as the mediaeval additions combined in that great and extensive superstition, witchcraft.
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