Winged Phallus
The Winged Phallus
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- The Phallus in Pompeii
- The Wings of the Phallus
- The phallus as a divine attribute
- The cult of the Phallus in the following centuries:
- Saint Augustine
- Malleus Maleficarum in the Witch Hunts 1482
- Lord Hamilton in 1781
- The horn
- Japanese Festival of the Iron Penis, Kanamara Matsuri (かなまら祭り
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The Winged Phallus in Pompeii
In the imagination of the Romans it was an object that we today would define as obscene, forgetting that this term, in the ancient world, it does not have the same meaning it has for us today. A Roman would never have called obscenus a winged phallus because in their world, this term indicated what was unlucky, and therefore the exact opposite of what instead identifies one of the best-known images from Pompeii, from Roman world and Roman art.
To call upon all its magical power, the winged phallus must be reproduced, immense, huge, propitiatory, capable of driving away evil spirits, capable of giving protection for the home and to work environments, force of nature against evil, scourging demons and the fascinum: the negative power of the dry eye.
Winged phalli, twisted phalli, phalli shaped like animals, phalli intertwined with phalli, phalli grafted onto phalli. And it really seems like an endless chase, a true mania, that of reproducing this protective symbol on a thousand objects, hung everywhere.
Religion and superstition intertwine in a world where everything seems to revolve around sex which, source of life and joy, is for the Romans a positive, magical phenomenon, sometimes endowed with a spiritual power that guides life and, through reproduction, transcends it.
We would define practical superstition or simple magic that desire to possess a amulet against that oculus malignus, always lurking and codified, in its essence already from Pliny the Elder; a centuries-old source of trouble for human beings, it must protect the weakest, the most fragile, and this is why, as Varrone recounts in De lingua latina, around children's necks is hung, against the evil eye, a bulla containing a phallic-shaped amulet.
The imagination of the Roman artisans was often inclined to take flight and the magical power of a symbol is also seen in the ability to give it enchanted or grotesque features, the wings, in this case.
Also included in Pompeian road signs, these images, bizarre to us, fluttering here and there, served to ward off the darker side of our humanity and through a stylistic mutation that will lead to the horn, they continue their reclamation work even in the age contemporary.
Laura Del Verme
archaeologist
For those who want to learn more:
Eva Björklund, Lena Hejll, Luisa Franchi dell’Orto, Stefano De Caro, Eugenio La Rocca (eds.), Reflections of Rome. Roman Empire and Baltic barbarians, exhibition catalog (Milan, AltriMusei at Porta Romana, from March 1 to June 1, 1997), L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1997.
Megan Cifarelli, Laura Gawlinski (eds.), What shall I say of clothes? Theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of dress in antiquity, American Institute of Archaeology, 2017.
Carla Conti, Diana Neri, Pierangelo Pancaldi (eds.), Pagans and Christians. Forms and attestations of religiosity in the ancient world in central Emilia, Aspasia editions, 2001.
Jacopo Ortalli, Diana Neri (eds.), Divine images. Devotion and divinity in the daily life of the Romans, archaeological evidence from Emilia Romagna, exhibition catalog (Castelfranco Emilia, Civic Museum, from December 15, 2007 to February 17, 2008), All’Insegna del Giglio, 2017.
Adam Parker, Stuart McKie (eds.), Material approaches to Roman magic. Occult objects and supernatural substances, Oxbow Books, 2018.
Varone, Pompeian Erotica (Love inscriptions on the walls of Pompeii, The Erma of Bretschneider, 2002.
The wings of the Phallus
The Phallus was depicted with wings to emphasize its divine qualities.
As winged, the Phallus could connect humans with the sky, the otherworldly, the divine.
The wings, and therefore the ability to take flight allowed leaving the earthly world to to access a foreign world, inaccessible, unknown. The Sky was imagined inhabited by the Gods, the place where the divine in general resides, the supernatural. Olympus, Paradise, the Christian God were all imagined in heaven.
In the most famous representation of the Christian God, the Michelangelo's Creation, God and Adam are in heaven, resting on the clouds.
Reaching the sky was impossible for most living beings on earth, until only 100 years ago. It is therefore clear how for much of cultures developed over the centuries the sky was seen as the place where what could only be imagined resided.
The only ones able to access the sky, this place considered supernatural, were the birds.
Birds, since the Bronze Age, were believed to be capable of connection with the divine. The divination of birds was their supposed ability to provide elements to foresee the future. The flight of birds, their appearance in dreams or at particular moments could contain omens and be interpreted for to make predictions.
The ability to fly gave birds a special character, otherworldly as it allowed them access to a inaccessible world to all other living beings on earth.
In the Greco-Roman religion we find the attribute of wings in the God Hermes/Mercury as messenger of the gods, the one who connected heaven with the real world. Cupid, the son of Venus, used wings to reach humans and make them fall in love by shooting his arrows. The Angels of Christian iconography are men endowed with wings. It is the archangel Gabriel informing Mary that was about to conceive the son of God. A bird, the owl was the sacred animal of Juno, the queen of the Gods. Even today the owl is found in many living rooms as a good luck ornament.
We today, we have lost that perception of the sky as an unknown, magical, divine, inaccessible place and thus a place to imagine the Gods of Olympus, paradise, the Christian God, the deceased. The expression “has flown to the sky” it is linked to the need to identify a place “other” than the earth, the daily life of all mortals.
After the invention of airplanes, this identification of the sky as the seat of the divine is harder to understand but remains in some expressions or symbols such as the winged phallus.
In Italian the penis is called “bird”, just as in English “cock”, in American “canary”, in Spanish “polla”.
The Phallus as a divine attribute
As it was considered the source of life, capable of pro-creating therefore to create, possesses a common divine attribute of the gods.
Precisely to emphasize his fertility and creative power, an enormous phallus is an attribute of Priapus, God of fields and harvests of the Greco-Roman religion, .
Phallic symbols or depictions of Priapus were placed at the field entrances both to win his favor but also because with his an enormous phallus would instill fear keeping thieves and ill-intentioned people away.
In agriculture, as it was strongly influenced by unpredictable weather events, there was great attention to the effects of good or bad luck. For this reason theattribute of the God of crops and harvests assumed a very important role in promoting good harvests. Phallic symbols were mandatory at the entrances of fields in Roman times. Aeven today it is common to see huge horns protecting the fields, direct descendants of Priapus's phallus.
The cult of the Phallus in the following centuries
Saint Augustine
Saint Augustine (354 AD-430 AD) bishop of Hippo Regius (in present-day Algeria), recounts these pagan celebrations [1] , describing the ancient fertility processions with a Christian prejudice of strong disapproval::
“Varro says that in Italy certain rites of Liber (the Italic god of fertility and fields) were celebrated * ) that were of such unrestrained wickedness that the shameful parts of the male were worshiped in his honor at crossroads. [...] In fact, on the days of the Liber festival, this obscene member, placed on a little cart, was first displayed with great honor at the crossroads of the countryside, and then carried into the city itself. [...] In this way, it seems, the god Liber was to be propitiated, to ensure the growth of seeds and repel the enchantment (fascinatio) of the fields.” [2]
At that time, although considered obscene by the Christian clergy, the fascinum continued to be used to ward off evil. They were worn as amulets of protection, especially for children and soldiers, (at the time the categories with the highest mortality).
Purinega tie duro ( from Latin: “Difficult to punish” ) 1470-1480 (approx.). British Museum
Malleus Maleficarum for the Witch hunt - 1482
In 1484, the Pope officially started the witch hunts. A hunt that lasted two centuries leading to over 60,000 death sentences, mostly women.
To guide the persecutors, the church commissioned a manual by two Benedictine friars, the Malleus Maleficarum.. An official manual of great success that the Catholic Church used for two centuries.
The association between bird and phallus is also found in this manual which explains: “finally, what should we think of witches who they collect virile members, sometimes even in considerable numbers, even twenty or thirty, and they put them in bird nests eating oats or other things as has been seen done by many and as commonly rumored? A man in fact reported that he had lost his member and that to recover his integrity he went to a witch. She ordered him to climb a tree and allowed him to take what he wanted from a nest where many members were found. And since he had his hands on a large one, the witch told him: “do not take that! and added that it belonged to someone from the people”
Lord Hamilton letter from Naples – 1781
Even at the end of the 18th century in Italy the ancient cult of the Phallus persisted. In a letter from Naples dated December 31, 1781, William Hamilton describes the custom in Naples among children and women of popular classes to wear amulets with phallic symbols clearly derived from the cult of Priapus of ancient Rome. The function of these amulets was naturally to protect against spells and the evil eye
These were amulets in silver, ivory, coral very similar to those found among the excavations of Herculaneum. Hamilton collected many amulets both modern and from the archaeological excavations of Herculaneum to send them to the British Museum.
In the same letter Hamilton testifies to the survival at the end of the 18th century of Cult of Priapus in the city of Isernia and its fusion with the Christian cult. During the annual festival of the holy doctors Cosimo and Damiano, they were sold in large quantities phallic symbols of various shapes and sizes. Such objects had a propitiatory and good luck function especially for women who participated in the festival, often to remedy their sterility.
Women with flying phalluses, illustration from the tourist album of Pompeii, c. 1880. Image courtesy of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. Click to enlarge.
The Horn
In Southern Italy and particularly in Naples, the horn has replaced the phallus as a good luck amulet. The Catholic religion and common morality have led to the disappearance of the phallus as a pagan symbol and good luck amulet and its replacement with the horn. Just as in ancient times farmers placed a large phallus, symbol of the god Priapus, to protect their fields, so even today large horns are indispensable in modern farms in Southern Italy.
The horn is given and worn as an amulet for protection against bad luck and the evil eye, that is, envy, jealousy, and malice. It is very common and frequent both in Neapolitan homes and in shops and restaurants.
The belief is that if the horn breaks means that it has neutralized the evil eye or bad luck, in short, it has had an effect.
5.The Iron Phallus Kanamara Matsuri (かなまら祭り
In Japan, every year in April, the "Iron Phallus" festival is held. A religious festival dating back to very ancient times during which processions take place carts with enormous phalluses and prayers to promote fertility, luck, family harmony.
A somewhat macabre curiosity ( * ):
Phallus tattoo with wings on preserved human skin, dated 1904-5. From the collection of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (MNHN), Paris. Image © MNHN, Paris. ( * )