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In 280, A. C. Porphyry, referring to crosses, asked why theologists give passions to the gods, erect Phalli and use shameful language; to which the Christian Iamblichus in the year 336 replied: "Because Phalli and crosses are signs of productive energy, and provocative to a continuance of the world."
It is in the family of the fungi, more especially in the clavariae, phalli, helvetiae, the merulii, and the small gymnopae which display themselves in a few hours after a storm of rain, that organic nature produces with most rapidity the greatest variety of chemical principles sugar, albumen, adipocire, acetate of potash, fat, ozmazome, the aromatic principles, etc.
Similar Phalli were to be found at Poligny, Vendre in the Bourbonnais, and at Auxerre. The inhabitants of Puy-en-Velay even to this day speak of their St.
The traveller remarked that the worship was most earnest and sincere. The same traveller observed that in some of the public roads of Japan are small hedged recesses where similar stone pillars are found. These large pillars unquestionably represent the male organ. The writer has observed priests in procession carrying similar huge phalli, painted in color as well.
This upright was worshipped especially by women, who left votive offerings, among them small phalli, elaborately wrought out of wood or other material. The traveller remarked that the worship was most earnest and sincere. The same traveller observed that in some of the public roads of Japan are small hedged recesses where similar stone pillars are found.
Some fragments of an ivory lyre, and some pipes pierced with three holes at equal distances, bear witness to their taste for music; a distaff, still full of charred wool, deserted by the spinner when she fled before the conflagration, tells of domestic industry and manual dexterity, while marble and stone phalli prove that the generative forces of nature were worshipped.
But, if they are phalli, their presence does not prove a phallic cult they may be votive objects, indicating that the phallus was regarded as in some sort sacred, not that it was worshiped. Decision of the question may be reserved till more material has been collected.
While the shape of some of these objects and their occurrence at shrines may be supposed to lend support to this view, its correctness is open to doubt. There is no documentary evidence as to the character of the objects in question, and they may be explained otherwise than as phalli.
In France, until comparatively recent times, there was a festival, "La Fête des Pinnes," in which palms were carried in procession, and with the palms were carried phalli of bread which had been blessed by the priests. Richard Payne Knight tells us that Pan was worshipped by the Shepherds under the form of the tall fir, and Bacchus "by sticking up the rude trunk of a tree."
Hierapolis had long been an important religious center in a region in which Asiatic and Greek worships were influential, and foreign elements might easily have become attached to the worship of a Semitic deity. Lucian's reference to a custom of emasculation suggests Asian features at Hierapolis. +400+. In Babylonia and Palestine stones, held by some to be phalli, have been found.
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