An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Phallic Worship

It is only in comparatively modern times that the real nature of much ancient religious symbolism has been able to be publicly discussed. The idea that people used the attributes of sexuality to represent something holy, was so shocking—to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in particular—that books which treated this subject, in however scholarly a manner, were sold from under the counter.

Nevertheless, it seems a very natural thing that the means of the transmission of life should represent, in the deeps of man’s mind, the unknown and divine source of that life.

This has been recognised in the East since time immemorial, and the Sacred Lingam, or phallus of Shiva, has been worshipped in India as the emblem of the Life Force, without any embarrassment or idea of ’obscenity’. Until, that is, the civilised white man arrived, and usually either sniggered or was horrified, according to his temperament.

In years long past (and in some places not so long past), however, Western Europe also revered the cult of the phallus and its female counterpart, the cteis or yoni. Indeed, it was the phallic element in the Old Religion of witchcraft, which the Christian Church found particularly abominable.

Old pictures and woodcuts of the Devil, either presiding over a dance of witches, or going about the countryside looking for mischief, nearly always represent him with huge sexual organs prominently displayed. It is notable also, how the interrogators of witches, usually clerics, were always very interested in getting a detailed description of the Devil’s sexual organs, from the person they were putting to the question. Nor would they be satisfied without an intimate account of what sexual relations the Devil had with his followers.

Most of this was the excited and prurient curiosity of enforced celibates; but perhaps not all of it. The more learned churchmen, who had read the classical authors’ accounts of pagan worship, may well have realised that the artificial phallus had a definite religious significance. They were looking for survivals of the old pagan fertility cults; and they well knew that witchcraft was a continuation of these cults.

The jumping dance that witches performed, with a broomstick between their legs, was an obviously phallic rite. It was done to make the crops grow taller; and it had the same idea behind it as that which caused the Greeks and Romans to place in their gardens a statue of Priapus, the phallic god, with an enormous genital member, as magic to make the garden grow.

The phallus was also a luck-bringer, and an averter of the Evil Eye. In the latter role it was sometimes called the fascinum, because it was supposed to exercise the power of fascinating the sight, and drawing all glances to it; which was not a bad piece of practical psychology. People cannot help being interested in sex. Even prudery is only an inverted form of being fascinated by sexual matters.

Many little amulets or charms in the form of phalli have been found. They were made to hang around the neck usually; though some are in the form of brooches. Two specimens, which I have in my own collection of magical objects, illustrate the antiquity and widespread nature of the phallic cult. One is from Ancient Egypt, and is made of green faience. It is the form of a little man with an enormous genital member; and this amulet is made to hang around the neck.

The other was obtained a few years ago in Italy. Also to hang around the neck as a lucky charm, it is a good replica of an old Etruscan original, a winged phallus. I was told that these definitely pagan amulets, while not on public sale, are nevertheless quite easily obtained, and very popular. Their power to bring good fortune and avert the Evil Eye is still very definitely believed in.

In Ancient Rome the consecrated effigy of a phallus was regarded as bestowing sanctification and fertility, in certain circumstances. Thus a Roman bride sacrificed her virginity upon the life-sized phallus of a statue of the god Mutinus. Also, in the ancient world, and particularly in Egypt, statues of the gods of fertility were often made with a removable phallus, which was used separately in rituals designed to invoke the powers of fertility.

We are reminded of these ancient rites of a simpler age, when we read the many stories of the ’Devil’ who presided over the witches’ Sabbat having intercourse, or simulating intercourse, with the many women present, by means of an artificial phallus, which was part of his ’grand array’, along with the horned mask and costume of animals’ skins.

This rite was not done simply for sexual gratification; and the inquisitors who examined suspected witches knew it was not. The reason for its performance goes back a very long way into ancient history.

Of course, the published accounts of it were deliberately made as repulsive and horrifying as possible; because the Sabbat had to be represented in the Church’s propaganda in such a way that people would not wish to go to it. However, the very repulsiveness of these accounts defeats its own ends; because if the witches’ Sabbat was really as vile, agonising, filthy and generally repellent as the Church propagandists alleged, why on earth would anyone attend it, when they might be safe and warm in their beds? Yet we are informed that many people, particularly women, did.

It is amusing to note, as Rossell Hope Robbins has pointed out in his Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology (Crown Publishers Inc., New York, 1959), that most of the earlier accounts of the Sabbat declare that it included a sexual orgy of the most voluptuous and satisfying kind. Women, it was said, enjoyed sexual relations with the Devil “maxima cum voluptate”. Then, in the latter part of the fifteenth century, someone in the Church’s propaganda seems to have realised that this was not the sort of public image of the Sabbat that helped the Church’s cause. So from that time on, the published stories of the Sabbat change. Intercourse with the Devil is said to be painful and horrible and only submitted to by force and with reluctance.

One feature in common, that nearly all the accounts possessed, was the statement that the Devil’s penis was unnaturally cold. It was this that caused Margaret Murray to speculate, in her writings about the witch cult, that an artificial phallus was used in many cases.

Montague Summers, in his History of Witchcraft and Demonology (Kegan Paul, London, 1926, reprinted 1969), agrees with Margaret Murray’s findings in this respect; though of course he goes on to hint that there were darker mysteries still, of demonic materialisation. However, he tells us significantly that the use of artificial phalli was well known to ’demonologists’, and regarded by the Catholic Church as a grave sin. It is frequently mentioned in old Penitentials.

Representations of the phallus may be seen in the curious round towers attached to certain Sussex churches, notably the one at Piddinghoe. These are reminiscent of the round towers of Ireland, which antiquaries have long considered to be phallic monuments. There are some seventy or eighty of these towers to be found in Ireland, and no one knows who built them, or what their purpose was, though their phallic shape is self-evident. Some of them are over 100 feet in height. All are of great antiquity; so old, in fact, that some are supposed to be sunk beneath the surface of Lough Neagh, becoming visible beneath the waters when the weather is calm. Some famous sites of round towers are those at Glendalough, Ardmore, and upon the Rock of Cashel.

The beauty and mystery of these strange old monuments is another link with that basic worship of life which lies at the root of all ancient faiths.

Other instances of phallic symbolism are the tall, solitary standing stones called menhirs. A number of these ancient sacred stones may still be seen in Britain. For instance, at Borobridge in Yorkshire is a huge phallic monolith called The Devil’s Arrow. In the same county at Rudston, one of the finest phallic menhirs still surviving may be seen standing next to a Christian church. The place-name of Rudston comes from the old Norse hrodr-steinn, ’the famous stone’. As the stone is much older than the church, the latter must have been deliberately built there, as a confrontation between the old faith and the new.