Phallicism
Unity and Duality For artists, poets, and philosophers, there is no end to the symbols, ranging from basic representitive art to very subtile literary, geometric and architectural forms that have been utilized to express the philosophical notions of Unity and Duality; many of them are sexual in nature. By that I mean that they employ or are based on the (visual and verbal) language of the male/female dichotomy that pervades our daily life. Unity is almost universally depicted as a circle, and as column shaped objects (derivative 3d circles, the circle is an abbreviation of the column) the number 1 and the letter I, masculine symbology, while duality is depicted as a divided circle, most noteably the yin/yang symbol, and division, the cause of multiplicity, is deemed to be female. [The Vesica Piscis symbolizes Unity of Equals.] Two Kingdoms The ceremonial headress that Tut is wearing below is the two kingdoms symbol from King Menes, the first egyptian king who is said to have united the two kingdoms, which are symbolized by a cobra and a vulture (serpent and bird). We are told that these represent the upper and lower kingdoms that had been at war with one another. Actually they represent the mind and the body at war. Menes takes command of both kingdoms. Note that this is what is called a transcendental symbol, one that bridges two different dimensions, like the earth and sky. Whne Zarathustra came down from the mountain he was accompanied by a serpent and an eagle. The feathered serpent and winged dragons combine the two elements into one entity. Mind over Matter The book "Sexual Metaphor"- points out how the values of male/female dichotomy are transfered to others. For instance: mind and body; the mind, spirit, deity etc are considered to be masculine while the body, the earth, and matter itself are seen as being female. If you consider the Masonic Compass and Square, you will find that the compass signifies circles and spheres as well as the heavens, and is considered to be a masculine symbol; the L-shaped square and the number 4 signify squares and cubes, matter, the earth, the 4 winds and directions, and is feminine. Union of the Sexes You should note that the compass and square also form a hexagram like the star of david made of two overlapping triangles, the universal symbol for the sexual union. Connecting the vertices of the hexagram produces a hexagon, while adding the pythagorean y produces three rhombus and a cube, symbol of incarnation. The sri yantra image, below, features the interlacing triangles as well as the circle and square motifs. The message here is that our physical existence is a result of a union of spirit and matter as well as a union of male and female energies. (Note that the base angle in the biggest triangle is 52 degrees like Giza.) The central point, called bindu, represents transcendental unity and the source of creation. The opposing sets of triangles represent the male and female principles which form creation, themselves being recognized as expressions of the polarity inherent in the creative force of the bindu. The surrounding geometries represent the realms of creation, entirely supported by the creative process, and which would have no reality whatsoever without the omnipresence of the transcendental source. [It was not always true that the shy was male and the earth female. Geb is the earth god father of Osiris and Nuit is the sky goddess mother. This rerlates to where J Frazer talks abotut ideas becoming reversed over time, in the Golden Bough. See the book "When God was a Woman".] Phallicism Phallicism is an anthropological term applied to that form of nature worship in which ritual adoration is paid to the generative power as symbolized by the sex organs or the act of sexual intercourse. That is, in it's purer form, phallicism refers to the worship of the generative principle in abstracto, and not the veneration of the male and female sex organs, or the physical act, per se; of the Creator and not the creation or creature. From Hargrave Jennings "Phallicism": xvii "The phallic ideas will be discovered to be the foundations of all religions." xx there is not a religion that does not spring from the sexual distinction, and the primitive worship of the creative principle. xix the modern times owe everything to the ancient, there is not a form, an idea in art which is not owing, in one form or another to the Phallicism. People have always been in awe of the ability of natural objects, vegetable and animal, to be able to reproduce themselves. An understanding of the mechanics of the reproductive processes in both plants and animals, which led to the ability to domesticate and selectively breed these, is what has made modern civil society possible, since the surplus which agriculture produces is what allows us leisure time. As agrarian civilization frees up labor power it allows for greater expression in the realms of art, architecture, philosophy and religion, and as you can well imagine, the themes that would have been dealt with initially would center around the sky, the yearly vegetation cycle, annual animal reproductive scheduels, the duality and the union of the sexes. The Celtic Green Man, Bacchus, Dionysus, and Pan are all abstract representations of the yearly vegetable and animal reproductive forces. Here we are getting into the Creation and the Creature. Lucifer and Prometheus are the fire bringers solar-phallic, The Devil and Baphomet rule matter. The Dialectic Hegel's thesis-antithesis-synthesis model is clearly analagous to the father-mother-child trinity; one is from the realm of ideas and one from nature. The Greeks saw the realm of ideas as being characterized by constancy and unity, while nature is characterized by change and division. Any constancy in the apparent change in nature, a law if you will, was seen as a reflection of the permanence of the realm of ideas. As Above So Below Some how space, like "out there", gets associated with the realm of ideas, and the notion of above and below begin to develop. The realm of ideas evolves into the heavens, via the notion of the axis mundi probably. Now the deity and the place of the soul's origin (home) is "above", and we are here "below". This designation parallels the mind/matter distinction, where the head is the place of the mind, while the body represents matter. Note bene that matter and the earth have been traditionally seen as being female. The essence of the Hermetic statement, "As above, so below", is that the order that we see in Nature, is a reflection of a (so-called) Higher Order, of the Ideas projected from the Mind of God. [Rationalists and psychologists claim that it actually means that the order that we see in the world, does not exist "in the world", but is projected onto the world by our own minds; that is, when we examine the world of our experience, what we are describing are features of Mind and not the world itself. The dialectic then, is not seen as a feature of nature, but of our way of organizing our perceptual experience.] Micro Macro For the poetic, myth-making mind, it is a small leap from the idea that man, the microcosmos, and God, or the macrocosmos, were analagous, (reflections of one another) to the notion that universal creation took place after the manner of human creation; ie., that the generative attributes of man and woman were also those of God and the Universe. Turning the tables. After all, man was said to have been created in God's image, and in Genisis we read: 1:26 Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: 1:27 So God created man in his own image; male and female he made them. He created them in his image, male and female. 5:1 In the likeness of God made he him; 5:2 Male and female he created them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam. He created them in the likeness of God, male and female, and called them Adam. This is the archetype, Adam Kadmon, the Measure of the World. It is said that knowledge of this Man (as the Template for the rest of Creation) is the beginning of the knowledge of God. Worshipping the creation/creature Reasoning from below to above (instead of above to below), we fall into the error of assigning attributes of physical human nature to the celestial beings and formative powers of the cosmos (anthropomorphizing). The result is the degradation of sacred symbols, from being emblems of spiritual generation to ones of physical procreation, while physical procreation itself, once thought of in purity and with reverence, acquires associations of sin, and shame. (Golden Bough) Otherwise no one today would think twice when reading the following: The absolute darkest part of the heart and soul of the Invisible, Inner Fraternity is Phallicism, worshipping the erect Male Sex Organ. The obelisk is the major symbol for this worship, which is why you see obelisks everywhere associated with Freemasonry! Note that they are invoking a narrow interpretation of phallicism. The reason that you see obelisks associated with Freemasonry is that they have embraced Egytian architecture as a a symbolic theme; you see pyramids associated with Freemasonry as well. Obelisks and Pyramids Looking at HJ's book "Phallicism" (p23) we see: "The two influences, Male and Female, are conspicuous in certain differences in the Phallic monuments... Obelisks, Towers and Steeples represent and figure forth the Male principle. Pyramids, Rhomboidal or Serpentine shapes denote the female power." Obelisks are male and pyramids are female symbols. "But all are alike Phallic, and mean the same thing, that is the natural motivated power which causes and directs the world, which is the world, in fact." Obelisks and Pyramid. So it seems that the masonic symbolism entails a bit more than just the erect male organ. Washington DC An obelisk is technically made from a single piece of stone, and the three most famous ones in the world were transplanted from Egypt to St Peter's in Rome, London and NYC; but a more famous structure based on the same design, including the 10:1 height to base ratio, is not a real obelisk. The Wash Mmt is not made of one piece of stone. The above image is taken looking north, up 16th street in DC. Note that the Mmt is not aligned with the street and the CL of the WH, but is 336 feet east of that. Curiously the mmt is more in line with the HOT, between th and th facing 16th street(1733). It is noteworthy that the House of the Temple features a pyramid on the top, the symbolic counter part of the obelisk. D'evil So we see a phallic coupling of sorts between 15th and 16th streets. Note the masonic fascination with numbers, and the fact that the street numbers start at the Capitol, increasing in number east and west. Recall the import of the number 32. The White House lies in the middle of 16th street, half way to 32. Because the Tarot Cards begin with number 0, the card numbered XV (15) is the sixteenth card. That is the card named the Devil. Here we see the forces of nature figured as limiting and binding. Note the use of the pentagram as a symbol of the microcosm. This is Pan. In the figure of Baphomet (below), the male female duality is represented by an androgynous figure instead of by a man and a woman, but the meaning is the same. Note that both figures feature a finished stone which represent "first matter", the world. The Pentagram Looking again at the DC map, we see that not only is the WH centered on 16th, but that there is a pentagram situated with on vertex at the WH. As we mentioned before, the pentagram is a symbol of the microcosm, the little world, which Hermes posited as a reflection of the macrocosm, Plato's realm of Ideas; the Big Picture. (Dan Brown readers need to re-read 35-46 in the DaVinci Code). The pentagram is associated with the goddess Venus, since the planet Venus traces pentagrams in the sky over an 8 year period. The pentagram is a symbol of the divine order in nature. If you cut an apple cross-wise it reveals a pentagram. The association between Venus and the apple derives from the story of the Wedding Ceremony when Chaos (who was not invited) throws a golden apple into the crowd. To the most beautiful. Jupiter chooses Paris to be the Judge, Venus promises him the most beautiful woman in the world, he picks her, and steals Helen and the Trojan War results. Paris gave Venus the apple. It is not about eve. Venus as you know, was the goddess of love, and was assoiciated with beauty and sexual love. All in all, she is pretty much the female Pan or Dionysus, the figure that has evolved into the Devil with it's association to the pentagram. Continue

Phallicism

Unity and Duality
For artists, poets, and philosophers, there is no end to the symbols, ranging from basic representitive art to very subtile literary, geometric and architectural forms that have been utilized to express the philosophical notions of Unity and Duality; many of them are sexual in nature. By that I mean that they employ or are based on the (visual and verbal) language of the male/female dichotomy that pervades our daily life.

Unity is almost universally depicted as a circle, and as column shaped objects (derivative 3d circles, the circle is an abbreviation of the column) the number 1 and the letter I, masculine symbology, while duality is depicted as a divided circle, most noteably the yin/yang symbol, and division, the cause of multiplicity, is deemed to be female. [The Vesica Piscis symbolizes Unity of Equals.]

Two Kingdoms
The ceremonial headress that Tut is wearing below is the two kingdoms symbol from King Menes, the first egyptian king who is said to have united the two kingdoms, which are symbolized by a cobra and a vulture (serpent and bird). We are told that these represent the upper and lower kingdoms that had been at war with one another. Actually they represent the mind and the body at war. Menes takes command of both kingdoms.
Note that this is what is called a transcendental symbol, one that bridges two different dimensions, like the earth and sky. Whne Zarathustra came down from the mountain he was accompanied by a serpent and an eagle. The feathered serpent and winged dragons combine the two elements into one entity.

Mind over Matter
The book "Sexual Metaphor"- points out how the values of male/female dichotomy are transfered to others. For instance: mind and body; the mind, spirit, deity etc are considered to be masculine while the body, the earth, and matter itself are seen as being female.

If you consider the Masonic Compass and Square, you will find that the compass signifies circles and spheres as well as the heavens, and is considered to be a masculine symbol; the L-shaped square and the number 4 signify squares and cubes, matter, the earth, the 4 winds and directions, and is feminine.

Union of the Sexes
You should note that the compass and square also form a hexagram like the star of david made of two overlapping triangles, the universal symbol for the sexual union.

Connecting the vertices of the hexagram produces a hexagon, while adding the pythagorean y produces three rhombus and a cube, symbol of incarnation.

The sri yantra image, below, features the interlacing triangles as well as the circle and square motifs. The message here is that our physical existence is a result of a union of spirit and matter as well as a union of male and female energies. (Note that the base angle in the biggest triangle is 52 degrees like Giza.)

The central point, called bindu, represents transcendental unity and the source of creation. The opposing sets of triangles represent the male and female principles which form creation, themselves being recognized as expressions of the polarity inherent in the creative force of the bindu. The surrounding geometries represent the realms of creation, entirely supported by the creative process, and which would have no reality whatsoever without the omnipresence of the transcendental source.
[It was not always true that the shy was male and the earth female. Geb is the earth god father of Osiris and Nuit is the sky goddess mother. This rerlates to where J Frazer talks abotut ideas becoming reversed over time, in the Golden Bough. See the book "When God was a Woman".]

Phallicism
Phallicism is an anthropological term applied to that form of nature worship in which ritual adoration is paid to the generative power as symbolized by the sex organs or the act of sexual intercourse. That is, in it's purer form, phallicism refers to the worship of the generative principle in abstracto, and not the veneration of the male and female sex organs, or the physical act, per se; of the Creator and not the creation or creature.
From Hargrave Jennings "Phallicism":
xvii "The phallic ideas will be discovered to be the foundations of all religions."
xx there is not a religion that does not spring from the sexual distinction, and the primitive worship of the creative principle.
xix the modern times owe everything to the ancient, there is not a form, an idea in art which is not owing, in one form or another to the Phallicism.
People have always been in awe of the ability of natural objects, vegetable and animal, to be able to reproduce themselves. An understanding of the mechanics of the reproductive processes in both plants and animals, which led to the ability to domesticate and selectively breed these, is what has made modern civil society possible, since the surplus which agriculture produces is what allows us leisure time.
As agrarian civilization frees up labor power it allows for greater expression in the realms of art, architecture, philosophy and religion, and as you can well imagine, the themes that would have been dealt with initially would center around the sky, the yearly vegetation cycle, annual animal reproductive scheduels, the duality and the union of the sexes.
The Celtic Green Man, Bacchus, Dionysus, and Pan are all abstract representations of the yearly vegetable and animal reproductive forces. Here we are getting into the Creation and the Creature. Lucifer and Prometheus are the fire bringers solar-phallic, The Devil and Baphomet rule matter.

The Dialectic
Hegel's thesis-antithesis-synthesis model is clearly analagous to the father-mother-child trinity; one is from the realm of ideas and one from nature. The Greeks saw the realm of ideas as being characterized by constancy and unity, while nature is characterized by change and division. Any constancy in the apparent change in nature, a law if you will, was seen as a reflection of the permanence of the realm of ideas.

As Above So Below
Some how space, like "out there", gets associated with the realm of ideas, and the notion of above and below begin to develop. The realm of ideas evolves into the heavens, via the notion of the axis mundi probably. Now the deity and the place of the soul's origin (home) is "above", and we are here "below". This designation parallels the mind/matter distinction, where the head is the place of the mind, while the body represents matter. Note bene that matter and the earth have been traditionally seen as being female.
The essence of the Hermetic statement, "As above, so below", is that the order that we see in Nature, is a reflection of a (so-called) Higher Order, of the Ideas projected from the Mind of God. [Rationalists and psychologists claim that it actually means that the order that we see in the world, does not exist "in the world", but is projected onto the world by our own minds; that is, when we examine the world of our experience, what we are describing are features of Mind and not the world itself. The dialectic then, is not seen as a feature of nature, but of our way of organizing our perceptual experience.]

Micro Macro
For the poetic, myth-making mind, it is a small leap from the idea that man, the microcosmos, and God, or the macrocosmos, were analagous, (reflections of one another) to the notion that universal creation took place after the manner of human creation; ie., that the generative attributes of man and woman were also those of God and the Universe. Turning the tables.
After all, man was said to have been created in God's image, and in Genisis we read:
1:26 Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:
1:27 So God created man in his own image; male and female he made them.
He created them in his image, male and female.
5:1 In the likeness of God made he him;
5:2 Male and female he created them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam.
He created them in the likeness of God, male and female, and called them Adam. This is the archetype, Adam Kadmon, the Measure of the World. It is said that knowledge of this Man (as the Template for the rest of Creation) is the beginning of the knowledge of God.

Worshipping the creation/creature
Reasoning from below to above (instead of above to below), we fall into the error of assigning attributes of physical human nature to the celestial beings and formative powers of the cosmos (anthropomorphizing). The result is the degradation of sacred symbols, from being emblems of spiritual generation to ones of physical procreation, while physical procreation itself, once thought of in purity and with reverence, acquires associations of sin, and shame. (Golden Bough)

Otherwise no one today would think twice when reading the following:
The absolute darkest part of the heart and soul of the Invisible, Inner Fraternity is Phallicism, worshipping the erect Male Sex Organ.
The obelisk is the major symbol for this worship, which is why you see obelisks everywhere associated with Freemasonry!
Note that they are invoking a narrow interpretation of phallicism. The reason that you see obelisks associated with Freemasonry is that they have embraced Egytian architecture as a a symbolic theme; you see pyramids associated with Freemasonry as well.

Obelisks and Pyramids
Looking at HJ's book "Phallicism" (p23) we see:
"The two influences, Male and Female, are conspicuous in certain differences in the Phallic monuments... Obelisks, Towers and Steeples represent and figure forth the Male principle. Pyramids, Rhomboidal or Serpentine shapes denote the female power."
Obelisks are male and pyramids are female symbols.
"But all are alike Phallic, and mean the same thing, that is the natural motivated power which causes and directs the world, which is the world, in fact."
Obelisks and Pyramid. So it seems that the masonic symbolism entails a bit more than just the erect male organ.
Washington DC
An obelisk is technically made from a single piece of stone, and the three most famous ones in the world were transplanted from Egypt to St Peter's in Rome, London and NYC; but a more famous structure based on the same design, including the 10:1 height to base ratio, is not a real obelisk. The Wash Mmt is not made of one piece of stone.

The above image is taken looking north, up 16th street in DC. Note that the Mmt is not aligned with the street and the CL of the WH, but is 336 feet east of that. Curiously the mmt is more in line with the HOT, between th and th facing 16th street(1733).

It is noteworthy that the House of the Temple features a pyramid on the top, the symbolic counter part of the obelisk.

D'evil
So we see a phallic coupling of sorts between 15th and 16th streets. Note the masonic fascination with numbers, and the fact that the street numbers start at the Capitol, increasing in number east and west. Recall the import of the number 32. The White House lies in the middle of 16th street, half way to 32.
Because the Tarot Cards begin with number 0, the card numbered XV (15) is the sixteenth card. That is the card named the Devil. Here we see the forces of nature figured as limiting and binding. Note the use of the pentagram as a symbol of the microcosm. This is Pan.

In the figure of Baphomet (below), the male female duality is represented by an androgynous figure instead of by a man and a woman, but the meaning is the same. Note that both figures feature a finished stone which represent "first matter", the world.

The Pentagram
Looking again at the DC map, we see that not only is the WH centered on 16th, but that there is a pentagram situated with on vertex at the WH.

As we mentioned before, the pentagram is a symbol of the microcosm, the little world, which Hermes posited as a reflection of the macrocosm, Plato's realm of Ideas; the Big Picture. (Dan Brown readers need to re-read 35-46 in the DaVinci Code). The pentagram is associated with the goddess Venus, since the planet Venus traces pentagrams in the sky over an 8 year period. The pentagram is a symbol of the divine order in nature.

If you cut an apple cross-wise it reveals a pentagram.

The association between Venus and the apple derives from the story of the Wedding Ceremony when Chaos (who was not invited) throws a golden apple into the crowd. To the most beautiful. Jupiter chooses Paris to be the Judge, Venus promises him the most beautiful woman in the world, he picks her, and steals Helen and the Trojan War results. Paris gave Venus the apple. It is not about eve.
Venus as you know, was the goddess of love, and was assoiciated with beauty and sexual love. All in all, she is pretty much the female Pan or Dionysus, the figure that has evolved into the Devil with it's association to the pentagram.

Continue