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Pha(bu)llus: A Cultural History
Phallic symbolism is one of the oldest and most prevalent motifs in religion, culture and the earliest known representations go back to prehistoric times. Starting off as a symbol of fertility, the phallus has gone through numerous interpretations in the way it is perceived, and its symbolic significance varies across cultures as well. In the west, the erotic symbolism of the phallus is often emphasized, whereas in India, the most widely seen representation of the phallus is religious, in the form of the lingam, associated with Shiva. Pha(bu)llus draws on the intricate network of ideas and beliefs regarding the phallus to present a fascinating look at the most obsessed-with body part in human history.
- GenresNonfiction
240 pages, Hardcover
Published October 26, 2021
About the author
Alka Pande
46 books8 followersAlka Pande trained as an art historian and has written prolifically on Indology and Art History. She is the author of several books with a special interest in gender and sexuality; her PhD thesis was on the theme of Ardhanarisvara. She has written extensively on erotic Indian Literature and art as well. She was awarded the Chevalier dans l ordre des Art et des Lettres in 2006 by the French government. In 2009, she received the Australian Asia Council Special Award. Alka Pande is an independent curator and is currently working as an art consultant for India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. She lives in New Delhi with her husband and daughter.
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July 10, 2021
Title: Pha(bu)llus: A Cultural History
Author(s): Alka Pande, Amrita Narayanan, Johan Mattelaer
Publisher: HarperCollins India (15 June 2021)
Language: English
Hardcover: 240 pages
Item Weight: 650 g
Dimensions: 20 x 14 x 4 cm
Country of Origin: India
Price: 1299/-
“For me, the phallus becomes both an icon of pleasure and procreativity—literally a pleasure stick, the vortex and source of great pleasure during sexual intercourse and the carrier of semen, the seed from which the life-force emanates. The phallus and the vagina come together in sexual intercourse, in which often the phallus, or the lingam, is considered the presiding deity of pleasure; while the dark and cavernous vagina, or yoni, is the holder or receptacle. In Indian culture, the overriding emotion generated as a result of the meeting of the yoni and the lingam is pure orgasmic delight—the French call it ‘la petite mort’ and Indians call it ‘sambhoga ananda’…” – Alka Pande
The phallus is the most revered organ in the history of humanity. Appreciating the foundation of this venerability is indispensable for appreciating the psychosocial insinuations of penile distortions and their surgical correction. Since inestimable antiquity man’s attention has been disproportionately drawn towards this tiny appendage. Impulsiveness of erections and the consequent gratification must have drawn the approbation of mankind and swayed its unwarranted interest in this organ.
From the beginnings of Western civilization the phallus was more than a body part. It was an inspiration, an intangible but flesh-and-blood measurement of man’s place in the world.
That men have a phallus is a scientific actuality; how they feel about it, consider about it, and use it is not. Ideas of the phallus show a discrepancy from culture to culture and from one epoch to the next. It is feasible to recognize the key moments in Western history when a new idea of the phallus addressed the larger inscrutability of man’s relationship with it and changed forever the way that organ was conceived of and put to use.
Evidence of one of the oldest of those ideas was found in the ruins of the Sumerian city of Eridu, in the south of modern Iraq, where archaeologists unearthed cuneiform tablets more than five thousand years old. The phallus symbolized both irrational nature and divine intelligence in this ancient civilization. It was a mystery, the unknowable god within, and this idea was expressed in core religious beliefs.
Much of the literature found in Eridu, composed in the world’s first written language celebrates the exploits of the god Enki. Typically drawn as a large bearded man wearing a cap with many horns, Enki was mankind’s great benefactor, the “Determiner of Destinies” and “Organizer of the Universe,” who, in the Gilgamesh epic, helps to save man from the flood sent by other gods.
Because Sumeria was (and Iraq still is) an arid region between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, two waterways prone to flooding, water was both a precious and, at times, dangerous substance in this “cradle of civilization.”
In the Indian context, the phallus took on a different form, one closely associated with religion, spirituality and sexuality, all at the same time—the lingam. Associated with Shiva, the Hindu god of ascetism, eroticism, time, space, destruction, yoga, dance, and the primordial parent with his partner Parvati; in Hindu temples the lingam rests on the yoni, which represents the female aspect, and together they symbolize divine creation. In the Hindu trinity of gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh (Shiva), with the third regarded as the destroyer of the universe—in this context, destruction leads to regeneration of life. Shiva’s lingam represents the creative power of the phallus.
The erect position of the lingam suggests that it harbours the power to create life within it, the seed being contained inside and not discharged yet.
The book Pha(bu)llus attempts to bring all the multiple levels of interpretation regarding the phallus together into one comprehensive book. The purpose is to understand the enigma behind phallic representation through the lens of culture, religion, history, art, literature, psychology and many such disciplines. It can be quite complicated, almost impossible in fact, to form a completely singular theory that explains why the phallus is the sensation that it is. One must peel away each onion-like layer before reaching some kind of nucleus.
This book is not just an interdisciplinary one but also explores significant timelines that depict the evolution of phallic symbolism. The various ways in which the phallus has been considered relevant, even though quite distinct from each other, come together to contribute in the constantly transforming notion of the phallus.
Most of these are interrelated.
One has to know that none of these interpretations can exist in vacuum. In quite subtle ways, or at times direct, each has an impact on the other. This book is an attempt to interrogate and reflect upon the phallus and it’s potent depiction in art thought, literature, philosophy and cultural symbolism. In a way it is a compendium of multivocal interpretations of the phallus.
In a section entitled Symbols, the author makes the following observations:
1) The obvious connection between the physical and symbolic ensured the phallus featured heavily in cultures -- though the ways of representation are quite distinct between the East and the West, even though in the western part of the world the erotic symbolism of the phallus is emphasized upon whereas in the eastern part of the world, religious symbolism holds dominance.
2) In ancient times, religion played a vital role in phallic imagery, while in the more modern age art and culture have taken over the space of phallic imagery and interpretation. In pre-modern societies, the penis was a tool of magic, potent charms and fecund rituals—from castration to circumcision, from ornamentation to mutilations.
3) As society started evolving, the cult of the penis underwent transformation as well. In medieval societies, male patriarchy reigned supreme, and the penis became a tool of both power and shame, with this reaching the zenith during the second- half of the 19th century when Victorian prudish attitudes came into being.
4) Michel Foucault commented on this in his trail blazing work, History of Sexuality, writing about how notions of male patriarchy came into form against the onset of the undercurrents of female subversive sexuality, like covering piano legs and sandwiches because of how the angles of the piano and the cutoff parts of the sandwiches appeared to resemble the female vulva.
5) By the advent of modern society, the phallus was taken to another level—it became a symbol of pleasure. Today, the erotic and sexual nature of the phallus has given way to many subcultures that celebrate its sexuality. The modern male became a predator, a man about town, a broad-shouldered, lean-hipped hunter of his own pleasure.
6) At the same time, the penis turned into a dildo—seen as emasculating male power, where new-age feminists rejected and went beyond the male member using a rubber form to simulate the same pleasure earlier only drawn via the penis.
The book is divided into five sections, each dealing with a specific aspect of the socio-cultural dynamics of the phallus. Every particular unit has been penned by an expert. The sections are as follows:
Section 1, entitled, ‘The phallus across eastern Asia’ has been scripted by Johan Mattelaer. This section looks at the historical-cultural development of concepts surrounding the phallus fron places such as Bhutan, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia to China, Mongolia and South Korea, Indonesia and Japan
Section 2, entitled, ‘Worship of the phallus in indigenous societies’ has been penned by Philip Van Kerrebroeck. Conventionally, a native society or an indigenous ethnic group refers to a group of people who classify with each other based on similarities such as common ancestry, language, society, culture or nation. Individuals are often bound together through different aspects such as an inherited status and history; a shared cultural heritage, ancestry, origin myth, history, homeland, language or dialect; symbolic systems such as religion, mythology and ritual, cuisine, dressing style, art, and even physical appearance. This section lays its focus specifically on Africa, North and South America and Oceania.
Section 3, entitled, ‘The phallus in psychoanalysis: definitions, fantasies and the role of geography’ by Amrita Narayanan, deals with the in-depth definitions and the representative supremacy of the phallus. The phallus and the penis are not co-equal. A penis is a bodily certainty, but a phallus is a figurative manufacture common to many civilizations and cultures. As a body part, a penis may be alternately hard and soft, full and empty, but as an allegorical depiction of extensiveness, the phallus is eternally engorged. The symbol of the phallus commands a power in the human imagination far in excess of the reality of a penis.
To explore the human fixation with the symbolic power of the phallus, Amrita uses principles from the field of study known as psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis plumbs the human imagination for unconscious meanings and fantasies underlying human thoughts and behaviour. Arguing that human beings’ interest in pleasure and fulfillment goes far beyond what is possible in reality, psychoanalysts are interested in how humans unconsciously use fantasy to supplement reality. Contemporary psychoanalysis associates the phallus with fantasies of wholeness, completion, power and self-sufficiency.
There is a second part to this third section, entitled ‘The phallus in Europe’. It has been written by Johan Mattelaer. The author, here, deals specifically with Phallic stones, objects and paintings in prehistoric Europe.
Section 4, a collection of six assorted articles is perhaps the best enriched sectionof the book. The articles contained in this section are:
i. Phallic worship in ancient Egypt and the Middle East
ii. The phallus and Priapus in Ancient Greece and Rome
iii. The phallus and Priapus in Scandinavian and Celtic cultures medieval Europe
iv. Witches, male impotence, cats and phallic trees
v. Forbidden and taboo: the anti-phallic culture
vi. The phallus in erotic and modern art
The concluding section 5, entitled, ‘Power and ecstasy: the cult of the lingam’ has been penned by Alka Pande. In the Indian storytelling tradition, the lingam with its many metaphors and many allegories is a treasure trove of celebration in its many forms across literature, visual and performing arts. There is hardly any aspect of Indian thought which is not touched by the myth of the lingam or unaware of the simple strong cylindrical phallic shapes that are spread all over the countryside. This three part chapter has been headed under: a) The lingayats
b) Lingam temples: Panchabhootas and c) The shivalingam in living cultures.
The human phallus is not only the organ that a man holds in his hand a couple of times everyday to urinate but also the organ of procreation. It is an instrument of pleasure for the man and his partner. From the prehistoric to the present, the phallus, thus, has been a recurring motif in visual culture and religious thoughts of nations and civilizations across the world.
As the reader finds in this book, in many cultures and societies, the human ‘phallus’ has been regarded as a symbol of power, veneration and sex.
Every time a man experiences an orgasm the phallus explodes, then dies, then returns to life, time and again. This is the origin of the term ‘phallic resurrection’, as coined by the Jungian analyst Eugene Monick. The phallic resurrection cycle is a recurrent cycle of tumescence after detumescence.
The all-encompassing and often expansively crude sexual phallic worship can also be read through this concept.
This book is every bit worth your money and time.
Author(s): Alka Pande, Amrita Narayanan, Johan Mattelaer
Publisher: HarperCollins India (15 June 2021)
Language: English
Hardcover: 240 pages
Item Weight: 650 g
Dimensions: 20 x 14 x 4 cm
Country of Origin: India
Price: 1299/-
“For me, the phallus becomes both an icon of pleasure and procreativity—literally a pleasure stick, the vortex and source of great pleasure during sexual intercourse and the carrier of semen, the seed from which the life-force emanates. The phallus and the vagina come together in sexual intercourse, in which often the phallus, or the lingam, is considered the presiding deity of pleasure; while the dark and cavernous vagina, or yoni, is the holder or receptacle. In Indian culture, the overriding emotion generated as a result of the meeting of the yoni and the lingam is pure orgasmic delight—the French call it ‘la petite mort’ and Indians call it ‘sambhoga ananda’…” – Alka Pande
The phallus is the most revered organ in the history of humanity. Appreciating the foundation of this venerability is indispensable for appreciating the psychosocial insinuations of penile distortions and their surgical correction. Since inestimable antiquity man’s attention has been disproportionately drawn towards this tiny appendage. Impulsiveness of erections and the consequent gratification must have drawn the approbation of mankind and swayed its unwarranted interest in this organ.
From the beginnings of Western civilization the phallus was more than a body part. It was an inspiration, an intangible but flesh-and-blood measurement of man’s place in the world.
That men have a phallus is a scientific actuality; how they feel about it, consider about it, and use it is not. Ideas of the phallus show a discrepancy from culture to culture and from one epoch to the next. It is feasible to recognize the key moments in Western history when a new idea of the phallus addressed the larger inscrutability of man’s relationship with it and changed forever the way that organ was conceived of and put to use.
Evidence of one of the oldest of those ideas was found in the ruins of the Sumerian city of Eridu, in the south of modern Iraq, where archaeologists unearthed cuneiform tablets more than five thousand years old. The phallus symbolized both irrational nature and divine intelligence in this ancient civilization. It was a mystery, the unknowable god within, and this idea was expressed in core religious beliefs.
Much of the literature found in Eridu, composed in the world’s first written language celebrates the exploits of the god Enki. Typically drawn as a large bearded man wearing a cap with many horns, Enki was mankind’s great benefactor, the “Determiner of Destinies” and “Organizer of the Universe,” who, in the Gilgamesh epic, helps to save man from the flood sent by other gods.
Because Sumeria was (and Iraq still is) an arid region between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, two waterways prone to flooding, water was both a precious and, at times, dangerous substance in this “cradle of civilization.”
In the Indian context, the phallus took on a different form, one closely associated with religion, spirituality and sexuality, all at the same time—the lingam. Associated with Shiva, the Hindu god of ascetism, eroticism, time, space, destruction, yoga, dance, and the primordial parent with his partner Parvati; in Hindu temples the lingam rests on the yoni, which represents the female aspect, and together they symbolize divine creation. In the Hindu trinity of gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh (Shiva), with the third regarded as the destroyer of the universe—in this context, destruction leads to regeneration of life. Shiva’s lingam represents the creative power of the phallus.
The erect position of the lingam suggests that it harbours the power to create life within it, the seed being contained inside and not discharged yet.
The book Pha(bu)llus attempts to bring all the multiple levels of interpretation regarding the phallus together into one comprehensive book. The purpose is to understand the enigma behind phallic representation through the lens of culture, religion, history, art, literature, psychology and many such disciplines. It can be quite complicated, almost impossible in fact, to form a completely singular theory that explains why the phallus is the sensation that it is. One must peel away each onion-like layer before reaching some kind of nucleus.
This book is not just an interdisciplinary one but also explores significant timelines that depict the evolution of phallic symbolism. The various ways in which the phallus has been considered relevant, even though quite distinct from each other, come together to contribute in the constantly transforming notion of the phallus.
Most of these are interrelated.
One has to know that none of these interpretations can exist in vacuum. In quite subtle ways, or at times direct, each has an impact on the other. This book is an attempt to interrogate and reflect upon the phallus and it’s potent depiction in art thought, literature, philosophy and cultural symbolism. In a way it is a compendium of multivocal interpretations of the phallus.
In a section entitled Symbols, the author makes the following observations:
1) The obvious connection between the physical and symbolic ensured the phallus featured heavily in cultures -- though the ways of representation are quite distinct between the East and the West, even though in the western part of the world the erotic symbolism of the phallus is emphasized upon whereas in the eastern part of the world, religious symbolism holds dominance.
2) In ancient times, religion played a vital role in phallic imagery, while in the more modern age art and culture have taken over the space of phallic imagery and interpretation. In pre-modern societies, the penis was a tool of magic, potent charms and fecund rituals—from castration to circumcision, from ornamentation to mutilations.
3) As society started evolving, the cult of the penis underwent transformation as well. In medieval societies, male patriarchy reigned supreme, and the penis became a tool of both power and shame, with this reaching the zenith during the second- half of the 19th century when Victorian prudish attitudes came into being.
4) Michel Foucault commented on this in his trail blazing work, History of Sexuality, writing about how notions of male patriarchy came into form against the onset of the undercurrents of female subversive sexuality, like covering piano legs and sandwiches because of how the angles of the piano and the cutoff parts of the sandwiches appeared to resemble the female vulva.
5) By the advent of modern society, the phallus was taken to another level—it became a symbol of pleasure. Today, the erotic and sexual nature of the phallus has given way to many subcultures that celebrate its sexuality. The modern male became a predator, a man about town, a broad-shouldered, lean-hipped hunter of his own pleasure.
6) At the same time, the penis turned into a dildo—seen as emasculating male power, where new-age feminists rejected and went beyond the male member using a rubber form to simulate the same pleasure earlier only drawn via the penis.
The book is divided into five sections, each dealing with a specific aspect of the socio-cultural dynamics of the phallus. Every particular unit has been penned by an expert. The sections are as follows:
Section 1, entitled, ‘The phallus across eastern Asia’ has been scripted by Johan Mattelaer. This section looks at the historical-cultural development of concepts surrounding the phallus fron places such as Bhutan, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia to China, Mongolia and South Korea, Indonesia and Japan
Section 2, entitled, ‘Worship of the phallus in indigenous societies’ has been penned by Philip Van Kerrebroeck. Conventionally, a native society or an indigenous ethnic group refers to a group of people who classify with each other based on similarities such as common ancestry, language, society, culture or nation. Individuals are often bound together through different aspects such as an inherited status and history; a shared cultural heritage, ancestry, origin myth, history, homeland, language or dialect; symbolic systems such as religion, mythology and ritual, cuisine, dressing style, art, and even physical appearance. This section lays its focus specifically on Africa, North and South America and Oceania.
Section 3, entitled, ‘The phallus in psychoanalysis: definitions, fantasies and the role of geography’ by Amrita Narayanan, deals with the in-depth definitions and the representative supremacy of the phallus. The phallus and the penis are not co-equal. A penis is a bodily certainty, but a phallus is a figurative manufacture common to many civilizations and cultures. As a body part, a penis may be alternately hard and soft, full and empty, but as an allegorical depiction of extensiveness, the phallus is eternally engorged. The symbol of the phallus commands a power in the human imagination far in excess of the reality of a penis.
To explore the human fixation with the symbolic power of the phallus, Amrita uses principles from the field of study known as psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis plumbs the human imagination for unconscious meanings and fantasies underlying human thoughts and behaviour. Arguing that human beings’ interest in pleasure and fulfillment goes far beyond what is possible in reality, psychoanalysts are interested in how humans unconsciously use fantasy to supplement reality. Contemporary psychoanalysis associates the phallus with fantasies of wholeness, completion, power and self-sufficiency.
There is a second part to this third section, entitled ‘The phallus in Europe’. It has been written by Johan Mattelaer. The author, here, deals specifically with Phallic stones, objects and paintings in prehistoric Europe.
Section 4, a collection of six assorted articles is perhaps the best enriched sectionof the book. The articles contained in this section are:
i. Phallic worship in ancient Egypt and the Middle East
ii. The phallus and Priapus in Ancient Greece and Rome
iii. The phallus and Priapus in Scandinavian and Celtic cultures medieval Europe
iv. Witches, male impotence, cats and phallic trees
v. Forbidden and taboo: the anti-phallic culture
vi. The phallus in erotic and modern art
The concluding section 5, entitled, ‘Power and ecstasy: the cult of the lingam’ has been penned by Alka Pande. In the Indian storytelling tradition, the lingam with its many metaphors and many allegories is a treasure trove of celebration in its many forms across literature, visual and performing arts. There is hardly any aspect of Indian thought which is not touched by the myth of the lingam or unaware of the simple strong cylindrical phallic shapes that are spread all over the countryside. This three part chapter has been headed under: a) The lingayats
b) Lingam temples: Panchabhootas and c) The shivalingam in living cultures.
The human phallus is not only the organ that a man holds in his hand a couple of times everyday to urinate but also the organ of procreation. It is an instrument of pleasure for the man and his partner. From the prehistoric to the present, the phallus, thus, has been a recurring motif in visual culture and religious thoughts of nations and civilizations across the world.
As the reader finds in this book, in many cultures and societies, the human ‘phallus’ has been regarded as a symbol of power, veneration and sex.
Every time a man experiences an orgasm the phallus explodes, then dies, then returns to life, time and again. This is the origin of the term ‘phallic resurrection’, as coined by the Jungian analyst Eugene Monick. The phallic resurrection cycle is a recurrent cycle of tumescence after detumescence.
The all-encompassing and often expansively crude sexual phallic worship can also be read through this concept.
This book is every bit worth your money and time.
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