william_kent

Well-known member
schloss_moos-shulthaus.png

The detail isn't so clear on this one, but it's from Appiano, Alto Adige, Italy, around the start of the 15th century. It's on the walls of Schloss Moos-Shulthaus and was discovered under coats of whitewash..
 
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william_kent

Well-known member
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This one is a German ink drawing from the "late medieval" period which was found in Istanbul

An exceptional late medieval German ink drawing survived and was found in Istanbul, Turkey. The drawing shows a tree in a vase and the branches have two large phalluses (with a tail) and two small phalluses. There are also two little angels, putti, of which one nourishes a phallus in its arms, the other angel is in the process of plucking a phallus from the tree.

Stolen from this article: The Phallus Tree: A Medieval and Renaissance Phenomenon
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Interesting, seems (from the article) that it is a relatively little-known phenomenon. Certainly I'd never seen it before for what that is worth.

Chapter seven of the Malleus Maleficarum provides a description of how to cast a spell on a male member. When a young man ended his relationship with a girl, he “lost” his penis and his abdomen became devoid of all male distinguishing marks. At an inn, a woman asked him why he was so sad. She advised him to compel the girl, even using force if necessary, to return his penis. When the girl claimed to be innocent, the young man pretended to strangle her. Then she reached with her hand between his thighs and said “I herewith return your penis.” As of that moment, the young man had his penis again, all was back as it was before

Reminds me of the shrinking penis curse in Africa. Probably a universal fear I guess, just that I have specifically read about epidemics in Africa before - the below just from wikipedia I'm afraid.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, newspapers reported incidents of genital shrinking in Western Nigeria. Since late 1996, a small-scale epidemic of genital shrinking was reported in West African nations. Victims in the African outbreaks often interpreted the experience as genital theft, accusing someone with whom they had contact of "stealing" the organ and the spiritual essence, causing impotence. The perceived motive for theft was associated with local occult belief, the witchcraft of juju, to feed the spiritual agency or to hold the genital for ransom. Social representations about juju constitute consensual realities that propose both a means and motivation for genital-shrinking experience.[19]
The epidemic began in Nigeria and Cameroon, and spread to Ghana, Ivory Coast and Senegal by 1997.[19] Cases were reported in Cotonou, Benin where mobs attacked individuals accused of the penis theft and authorities ordered security forces to curb the violence, following the deaths of five people by vigilantes.[56] Later reports of outbreak suggest a spread beyond West Africa, including the coverage of episodes in Khartoum, Sudan in September 2003; Banjul, Gambia in October 2003;[19] and Kinshasa, DR Congo in 2008.[57]
Comparing West African genital-shrinking epidemics with koro in Southeast Asia, the latter has symptoms centered on genital retraction (instead of shrinkage) and fear of death (which is absent in African cases).[19] A study analyzing the West African epidemics from 1997 to 2003 concluded that rather than psychopathology, the episodes were product of normal psychological functioning in undisturbed individuals, who were influenced by the local cultural models or social representations
 

catalog

Well-known member
it's really cool that - got just enough abstraction within it that it could be a number of things. What's the thing no the left? An altar?
 

william_kent

Well-known member
it's really cool that - got just enough abstraction within it that it could be a number of things. What's the thing no the left? An altar?

I think the thing on the left is the "table with krater" - which is just an academic way of saying a table with a "mixing" vase which was used for watering down wine - the other side of the same vase shows a woman ( described as a "pygmy" or "dwarf" ) drinking from a vase:

Very often the figures on the two sides of the vase are to be conceived of as coming from the same scene, and the quality of drawing is consistently the same, indicating that one side was not more important than the other

Maybe the tree is replenishing the vase on the table?
 

catalog

Well-known member
OK, so the thing on the left is maybe some kind of vase, maybe cauldron?

and the branches are on eithe rside of the dick.

There's a clear wing at the base of the dick.

What's the thing on the top? could it be some kind of personification?
 

william_kent

Well-known member
OK, so the thing on the left is maybe some kind of vase, maybe cauldron?

and the branches are on eithe rside of the dick.

There's a clear wing at the base of the dick.

What's the thing on the top? could it be some kind of personification?

I've found this one reference to the same vase:

Some argue that Dionysus appears, juxtaposed to an offering table, on an Attic skyphos in the form of a large winged phallus with an eye on the glans

So, personification of Dionysus?
 

catalog

Well-known member
Nietzsche! meant to say, with the vikings thing, women as magicians and transgressors, that fits into the thing nietzsche said... but (oddly?) it posits the children of the mist as being more similar to the semites than to the aryans

He also has this interesting insight about foundational myths... he says that Semitic and Aryan (meaning Greek/Roman) founding myths are very similar, in that they both basically involve Gods as generally benevolent, but also as rule-setting. And the key kick off for any kind of story/drama is that the humans transgress in some way, go beyond what God has proscribed for them.

So the classic examples are the fall of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Evil, and in the Aryan world, Oedipus' solving of the Sphinx's riddle, or Prometheus' stealing of fire.

So this is interesting enough, but Nietzsche also says that there is a key difference between the Semitic/Aryan stories. In the Semitic world, the transgression is coded feminine, involving deception. Whereas the Aryan version codes the transgression as active/brave, masculine.
 

william_kent

Well-known member
The pine tree was (like the vine and the fig) a totem plant of Dionysus. It evokes a similitude with the androgynous castrated Phrygian god Attis, who was likewise strongly associated in myth with the pine tree. Attis was consort of the great mother goddess Cybele, identified with Kronos’ wife Rhea in Greek mythology. Kronos, of course, castrated his father Ouranos. The pine is both evergreen and erect in habitus so is a fine metaphor for the phallus – its sticky sap a metaphor for semen.

From this article which seems to suggest that the Christmas tree has its roots in the cult of Dionysus
 

william_kent

Well-known member
Something as simple as a search for Yggdrasil can take some odd and unexpected turns - phallus trees, medieval pilgrimage badges, Attic vases, and discovering a theory that Ezra Pound was into "dendrophilia":

But formally ‘Na Audiart’ is markedly original and, in its musical organization of themes, anticipates that of many Cantos. Some of the thematic motives also reappear in the Cantos, notably the dendrophilia, which makes a startling entry:

Where thy bodice laces start
As ivy fingers clutching through
Its crevices.. . .


Pound can’t look long at a girl without thinking of trees, and vice versa; of trees, flowers, grass, birds in flight or in song. Women merge into nature; but also into supernature— they ‘ pass through’ ; not, in this case,very happily. The scale of plant-human-goddess is one Pound runs up and down very easily; for him it is a way of expressing mythically or metaphorically certain perceptions of intimate importance to him, a nature mysticism that must antedate his acquaintance with Ovid’s Metamorphoses or any conscious neo-paganism.

Which lead me to search for 'Pound + dendrophilia' and the discovery of this niche interest page dedicated to 'Sexy Poems About Trees'
 
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Cat Malogen

catalog

Well-known member
re women coded as trees/nature....

the Apollo/Daphne story (he chases her, she’s not keen, she calls her father to help her, he turns her into a laurel tree) from Ovid is a big inspiration for renaissance and other artists...

The Master of the Judgement of Paris - The Metamorphosis of Daphne (Barber Institute) (c.1450)

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Apollo and Daphne by Veronese (c.1560-65)

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Carel van Mander (c.1588)

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Daphne by Wilhelm List (1899)


wilhelm-list-daphne.jpg
 
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