Phallus Dictionary

Phallic, Phallicism, Phallus [from Greek phallos penis]

The phallus occurs frequently in Greek mythologic and mystical representation: it is carried by Pan; borne in Bacchic processions; carved on the pedestals of the Hermae in the streets of Athens. There is no reason, apart from appropriateness, for preferring or rejecting one part of the body rather than another as a symbol, so that the phallus of Pan may be quite on a par with the wings on the feet of Hermes.

But the symbol has gone through stages of degradation, from being an emblem of spiritual generation to one of mere physical procreation, when physical procreation itself, once thought of in purity and with reverence, acquired associations of profligacy, sin, and shame. The words are chiefly used in The Secret Doctrine in reference to the degeneration of ancient doctrine and ritual from their originally exalted form into a materialized form, whether in Hebraic systems, Dionysion or Bacchic rites, Hindu ceremonial, etc.

All archaic and ancient mankind was strongly addicted to expressing spiritual and abstract cosmic verities under the forms of things which were concrete and visible. Thus not only has the sun at various times been an emblem of the light of the cosmic spirit or Logos, shining throughout the entire time period of the universe; but the moon has always been the symbol of the lower mind, the brain-mind reflecting the light of the spirit, just as the moon reflects the light of the sun.

In this impersonal and abstract manner of representation did the ancients symbolize the formative, creative, or procreative forces or energies of nature under appropriate emblems drawn from the animal kingdom, and most commonly from man himself. Thus it was that the phallus in Classical antiquity stood as the emblem of the abstract creative forces of the universe, as well as the solar system, and even of earth; precisely as the linga in India has always expressed the identic cycle of thought.

Likewise the female organ has frequently been used to express the generative and maternally productive powers of nature. Modern European sophistication unwillingly recognizes this truth, and insists in giving to these symbols the most offensive of constructions. Yet even Western religious iconology has followed the same line of thought, and whether we refer to the lamb, or to the serpent or dove, we ascertain exactly the same thing.

(See also: Phallic, Phallicism, Phallus , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Phallus

The penis as a symbol.

(See also: Phallus , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

PHALLUS

It may be seen as an emblem of the present moment, whose worship is a denial of past and future. That's also why the "historical" west fears it so, but Carpe diem ("Seize the day!") was the classical rule. For Aleister Crowley, just as the Sun was the supreme deity whence all life derives, so on earth the phallus was its "vice-regent" and the supreme power as giver of life.

With the advent of monotheistic religions, the phallus became an object of taboo in an effort to disguise its "holiness." But this was not everywhere true. Until recently in Naples and other Italian cities, giant images of the phallus were carried in religious processions, along with the saints and other holy artifacts.

The God Priapus, attempted to rape the sleeping goddesses and mortal maidens after an Olympic feast. In punishment by Zeus he was banished to his bees and vines, to hide himself forever from the sight of men. Ever since, in revenge, winged phalloi have surreptitiously dominated historical erotic art. The wings portray the phalloi in their extremis as totally liberated and unconnected to any distracting mere person. The phallus is, in fact, the destroyer of ego and individualism bar none.

Of course the phallus remains an object of fascination and obsession for homosexual and savage alike. Even for the ordinary man, however, it engages him for life in an unconscious participation mystique with his brothers, from which he never really departs. It is symbolized by an endless parade of objects: the key, the wand, the baton, the scepter, the sword, the maypole, the battering ram, the Tibetan stupa, the Egyptian obelisk, the cathedral, the American skyscraper, the automobile, the airplane, the horse, the serpent, the bull, volcanoes, monoliths, trees, flowers of all kinds and even fire. In the modern American male's domain, also loom large the pistol and the rifle -- serving in countermeasure, as instruments capable of expelling the seeds of death, as the penis expels the seeds of life.

For the magician the phallus is much more than an organ of generation or a source of debauchery. It is a font of energy that can be channeled and funneled in a variety of ways. On the other hand, the power of the witch sometimes, though not as a general rule, derives from an astute understanding of how to subvert or divert this organ to her own purposes. The feminine mystique, however, is infinitely more complicated than males understand and finds its center far beyond the genital zone.

In our era of total damnation, however, since semen now carries death as well as life, the scientists who created the HIV plague have made a mockery of procreation. (See NIANTIEL.)

(See also: PHALLUS , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

Linga or Lingam (Sanskrit). A sign or a symbol of abstract creation. Force becomes the organ of procreation only on this earth. In India there are 12 great Lingams of Siva, some of which are on mountains and rocks, and also in temples.

Such is the Kedaresa in the Himalaya, a huge and shapeless mass of rock. In its origin the Lingam had never the gross meaning connected with the phallus, an idea which is altogether of a later date. The symbol in India has the same meaning which it had in Egypt, which is simply that the creative or procreative Force is divine. It also denotes who was the dual Creator - male and female, Siva and his Sakti.

The gross and immodest idea connected with the phallus is not Indian but Greek and pre-eminently Jewish. The Biblical Bethels were real priapic stones, the " Beth-el" (phallus) wherein God dwells. The same symbol was concealed within the ark of the Covenant, the "Holy of Holies". Therefore the "Lingam" even as a phallus is not "a symbol of Siva" only, but that of every "Creator" or creative god in every nation, including the Israelites and their "God of Abraham and Jacob".

(See also: Linga, Lingam , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Siva, Shiva (Sanskrit) The third god of the Hindu Trimurti (trinity): Brahma the evolver; Vishnu the preserver; and Siva the regenerator or destroyer.

Siva is one of the three loftiest divinities of our solar system, and in his character of destroyer stands higher than Vishnu for he is "the destroying deity, evolution and PROGRESS personified, who is the regenerator at the same time; who destroys things under one form but to recall them to life under another more perfect type" (SD 2:182). As the destroyer of outward forms he is called Vamadeva. Endowed with so many powers and attributes, Siva possesses a great number of names, and is represented under a corresponding variety of forms. He corresponds to the Palestinian Ba`al or Moloch, Saturn, the Phoenician El, the Egyptian Seth, and the Biblical Chiun of Amos, and Greek Typhon.

"In the Rig Veda the name Siva is unknown, but the god is called Rudra, which is a word used for Agni, the fire god . . ."; "In the Vedas he is the divine Ego aspiring to return to its pure, deific state, and at the same time that divine ego imprisoned in earthly form, whose fierce passions make of him the 'roarer,' the 'terrible' " (SD 2:613, 548).

Siva is often spoken of as the patron deity of esotericists, occultists, and ascetics; he is called the Mahayogin (the great ascetic), from whom the highest spiritual knowledge is acquired, and union with the great spirit of the universe is eventually gained. Here he is "the howling and terrific destroyer of human passions and physical senses, which are ever in the way of the development of the higher spiritual perceptions and the growth of the inner eternal man -- mystically . . . Siva-Rudra is the Destroyer, as Vishnu is the preserver; and both are the regenerators of spiritual as well as of physical nature. To live as a plant, the seed must die. To live as a conscious entity in the Eternity, the passions and senses of man must first die before his body does. 'To live is to die and to die is to live,' has been too little understood in the West. Siva, the destroyer, is the creator and the Saviour of Spiritual man, as he is the good gardener of nature. He weeds out the plants, human and cosmic, and kills the passions of the physical, to call to life the perceptions of the spiritual, man" (SD 1:459&n).

Though Siva is often called Maha-kala (great time) which, while being the great formative factor in manvantara is also the great dissolving power, to the Hindu mind destruction implies reproduction; so Siva is also called Sankara (the auspicious), for he is the reproductive power which is perpetually restoring that which has been dissolved, and hence is also called Mahadeva (the great god). Under this character of restorer he was often represented by the symbol of the linga or phallus: "the Lingham and Yoni of Siva-worship stand too high philosophically, its modern degeneration notwithstanding, to be called a simple phallic worship" (SD 2:588). It is under the form of the linga, either alone or combined with the yoni (female organ, the representative of his sakti or female energy), that Siva is so often worshiped today in India.

In the Linga-Purana, Siva is said to take repeated births, in one kalpa possessing a white complexion, in another that of a black color, in still another that of a red color, after which he becomes four youths of a yellow color. This allegory is an ethnological account of the different races of mankind and their varying types and colors (cf SD 1:324).

Siva is known under more than a thousand names or titles and is represented under many different forms in Hindu writings. As the god of generation and of justice, he is represented riding a white bull; his own color, as well as that of the bull, is generally white, referring probably to the unsullied purity of abstract justice. He is sometimes seen with two hands, sometimes with four, eight, or ten; and with five faces, representing among other things his power over the five elements.

He has three eyes, one placed in the centre of his forehead, and shaped as a vertical oval. These three eyes are said to denote his view of the three divisions of time: past, present, and future. He holds a trident in his hand to denote his three great attributes of emanator, destroyer, and regenerator, thus combining all the usual qualities or functions attributed to the Trimurti. In his character of time, he not only presides over its beginning and its extinction, but also over its present functioning as represented in astronomical and astrological calculations.

A crescent or half-moon on his forehead indicates time measured by the phases of the moon; a serpent forms one of his necklaces to denote the measure of time by cycles, and a second necklace of human skulls signifies the extinction and succession of the races of mankind. He is often pictures as entirely covered with serpents, which are at once emblems of spiritual immortality and his standing as the patron of the nagas or initiates. He is often mystically personated by Mount Meru, which esoterically is both the cosmic and terrestrial axis with their respective poles.

According to the belief of most Advaita-Vedantists, Sankaracharya, the great Indian philosopher and sage, is held to be an avatara of Siva.

See also Shiva, Siva

(See also: Siva, Shiva , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Crux Ansata (Latin). The handled cross,T; whereas the tau is T, in this form, and the oldest Egyptian cross or the tat is thus +. The crux ansata was the symbol of immortality, but the tat-cross was that of spirit-matter and had the significance of a sexual emblem.

The crux ansata was the foremost symbol in the Egyptian Masonry instituted by Count Cagliostro; and Masons must have indeed forgotten the primitive significance of their highest symbols, if some of their authorities still insist that the crux ansata is only a combination of the cteis (or yoni) and phallus (or lingham). Far from this. The handle or ansa had a double significance, but never a phallic one; as an attribute of Isis it was the mundane circle; as symbol of law on the breast of a mummy it was that of immortality, of an endless and beginningless eternity, that which descends upon and grows out of the plane of material nature, the horizontal feminine line, surmounting the vertical male line - the fructifying male principle in nature or spirit. Without the handle the crux ansata became the tau T, which, left by itself, is an androgyne symbol, and becomes purely phallic or sexual only when it takes the shape +.

(See also: Crux Ansata , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Sacr zachar (Hebrew) Also zakhar. Male, whether man or beast, as well as the masculine organ; and in connection with the Hebrew word for the feminine organ, neqebah (cavity), used whether of woman or beast, even from Hebrew times has been surrounded all too often with phallic significance.

These words, however, can have the same impersonal and abstract significance that have the linga and yoni in India. Zachar is generally rendered "male" in the English translation of the Bible: "It is the phallus which is the vehicle of the enunciation; and truly enough, as the sacr, or carrier of the germ, its use has passed down through ages to the sacr-factum of the Roman priest, and sacr-fice and sacr-ment of the English-speaking race" (Source of Measures 236).

Because of the function of the human organs of generation, even from ancient times these organs were considered with reverential awe as being the representatives of the creative or productive abstract forces of nature; and so greatly was the creative function held among the ancients that marriage and its functions were invariably considered to be a religious rite. Hence the presence of zachar or sacr in such words as sacrament and sacrifice, always with the religious meaning, has prevailed to our own days. The archaic symbology of the separation of the sexes was represented by a horizontal line, crossed by a perpendicular, surrounded by a circle: with the Hebrews, however, this became degraded into the purely phallic meaning of the sacr and n'cabvah (zachar and neqebah).

(See also: Sacr, zachar , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Bel (Greek, Latin) Ba`al (Chaldean) (from Semitic ba`al chief, lord)

Lord, chief; one of the supreme gods of the Chaldeo- or Assyro-Babylonian pantheon: the second of the triad composed of Anu, Bel, and Ea. Assyriologists have assumed that Bel was simply the title of a deity, which they have designated as En-lil (the mighty lord). In the division of the universe into heaven, earth, and water, Bel was considered as the lord of the land, and his temple at Nippur was called E-kur (the mountain house), just as Ea's was the watery house.

There have been many Bels, which may be one of the reasons that in The Secret Doctrine Bel is made equivalent to the Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury. As Bel or Ba`al means Lord, the title becomes applicable to any of the important celestial bodies.

According to one account, the creation of the world and especially of mankind is ascribed to Bel. He is also called father of the gods; and his consort, Belit, is called mother of the gods. His eldest son in Sin, god of the Moon. Bel also brings about the deluge which destroys humanity, showing his dual aspect of evolver and destroyer.

Bel has been associated with the Phoenician Baal, the supreme god of the Canaanites, conceived also as the protective power of generation and fertility, connected with the moon. His female counterpart, Ashtoreth (Astarte, Ishtar) was considered as the receptive goddess, also a lunar divinity. In later times the rites connected with these deities became degraded into licentious orgies; sacrifices were made, apparently even human sacrifices, but at one time Ba`al was worshiped as a sun god.

His various names in the Old and New Testaments demonstrate the various aspects in which he was regarded. Thus in Exodus he was named Ba`al-Tsephon, the god of the crypt. He was likewise named Seth or Sheth, signifying a pillar (phallus); and it was owing to these associations that he was considered a hid god, similar to Ammon of Egypt. Among the Ammonites, a people of East Palestine, he was known as Moloch (the king); at Tyre he was called Melcarth. The worship of Ba`al was introduced into Israel under Ahab, his wife being a Phoenician princess.

"Typhon, called Set, who was a great god in Egypt during the early dynasties, is an aspect of Baal and Ammon as also of Siva, Jehovah and other gods. Baal is the all-devouring Sun, in one sense, the fiery Moloch" (TG 47). As to the leaping of the prophets of Ba`al, mentioned in the Bible (1 Kings 18:26), Blavatsky writes: "It was simply a characteristic of the Sabean worship, for it denoted the motion of the planets round the sun. That the dance was a Bacchic frenzy is apparent. Sistra were used on the occasion" (IU 2:45).

Bel is also the name for the sun with the Gauls.

(See also: Bel , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

A dictionary with common spiritual words from Hinduism and Sanskrit. Also see these links: Hinduism, Spirituality, Enlightenment, Spiritual Dictionary and Hinduism Dictionary.

N'cabvah neqebah (Hebrew) [from naqab to hollow out, excavate]

Cavity, pipe, or even a cavern, a phallic term applicable to the female, whether of beast or man, hence often used for woman or womb, equivalent to the Sanskrit yoni. Generally rendered female in English translations of the Bible, as in "God created man in his own image . . . male and female created he them" (Genesis 1:27).

The words sacr together with n'cabvah comprise together a reference to the bipolarity in manifested nature, particularly as applicable to this globe; and in the phallic thought of a certain school of ancient Judaism intimately connected with an occult meaning of Jehovah as the so-called creator or bipolar producer; for the two words of which Jehovah itself is composed contain direct reference to original ideas of male-female, as birth-originator [jah or jod phallus + hawwah, havvah Eve, yoni]

(cf SD 2:467).

(See also: N'cabvah, neqebah , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

A dictionary Of Commonly Used Sanskrit terms. From Tada to Yukta.

Please note that all words in grey, like "yoga", "enlightenment" or "kundalini" are hyperlinked to archives further explaining the term. At the corresponding archive you will also find articles related to the term.

Beltane is celebrated on May 1st and is one of the original Celtic festivals. Beltane or May Day is also known as the Lover's holiday. Beltane is one of the four Celtic Fire festivals, and is probably the second most important festival next to Samhain. Beltane is primarily a sun festival and was performed during the day. The most important part of Beltane was the kindling of the fires. The Irish Celts would extinguish their fires the night before and would eat a cold meal to insure that all fires were out. Then they would attend the ceremony, returning with an ember to once more start their fires.

Read more here: » Beltane: Beltane - May 1 or May Day

Linga (Sanskrit) The phallus; in ancient India, the symbol of abstract creation. Force becomes the linga or organ of creation only on this earth. With the ancient Aryans the significance was grand, sublime, and poetical -- and these views of this symbol were those of the whole archaic pagan world.

The idea of creative power or force was divine, and much of this same spirit of abstract reverence prevails even today in India. It was the sacred symbol of cosmic productive and regenerative power, whose multimyriad activities are manifest in universal nature and thus it was that in the small or concrete, as well as in the great or abstract, the idea was discovered and the spiritual aspect of the matter was dominant. Hence, the linga was made a symbol of Siva, and of every other creative god.

The linga (symbol of creative activity) and yoni (symbol of generative or productive activity) of Siva worship, stand too high philosophically in their original significance, its modern degeneration notwithstanding, in any wise to be called phallic worship, where the spiritual has been dragged down to become the animal, the sublime into the grossness of the terrestrial.

(See also: Linga , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

A dictionary Of Commonly Used Sanskrit terms. From Lac to Omkarasana.

Please note that all words in grey, like "yoga", "enlightenment" or "kundalini" are hyperlinked to archives further explaining the term. At the corresponding archive you will also find articles related to the term.

apadravya:

Artificial phallus.

(See also: apadravya , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

lingam:

lingam - the phallus

(See also: lingam , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

 Utthita Lingamasana:

the balancing on the phallus posture

(See also:  Utthita Lingamasana , Body Mind and Soul)

Baal (Chald. Heb.). Baal or Adon (Adonai) was a phallic god. "Who shall ascend unto the hill (the high place) of the Lord; who shall stand in the place of his Kadushu (q.v.) ? " (Psalms XX1V. 3.) The "circle dance" performed by King David round the ark, was the dance prescribed by the Amazons in the Mysteries, the dance of the daughters of Shiloh (Judges xxi., et seq.) and the same as the leaping of the prophets of Baal (I. Kings xviii).

 He was named Baal-Tzephon, or god of the crypt (Exodus) and Seth, or the pillar (phallus), because he was the same as Ammon (or Baal-Hammon) of Egypt, called "the hidden god". Typhon, called Set, who was a great god in Egypt during the early dynasties, is an aspect of Baal and Ammon as also of Siva, Jehovah and other gods. Baal is the all devouring Sun, in one sense, the fiery Moloch.

(See also: Baal , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

 Lingam:

the phallus

(See also:  Lingam , Body Mind and Soul)

Apadravya:

Apadravya Artificial phallus.

(See also: Apadravya , Tantra, Tantra Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)