Adoration of Male Gods Led to Phallicism and Black Magic

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Black versus White Magic Series · 10 pages

The argument here is historical and pointed. Buddhism, Blavatsky writes, is the first religious system in history to have arisen with the determinate object of putting an end to all the male gods, and to the degrading notion of a sexual personal deity as the generator of mankind and the father of men. It was, in her phrase, a passionate reactionary protest against the phallic worship that led every nation first to the adoration of a personal god and finally to black magic — and the same object, she adds, was aimed at by the Nazarene Initiate and prophet.

The essay first appeared in Lucifer in July 1896 and was gathered into the Collected Writings under the title "Buddhism, Christianity, and Phallicism". Its running head in this edition is blunter still: on the pernicious profanity of Christianity. The piece belongs with two others in the same series — Madame Blavatsky on the Author of Phallicism, and the study of phallic worship itself — and reading it beside them shows how consistently she treated the sexualised personal deity as the point at which religion turns into sorcery. The frontispiece is by Francesco Hayez.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.6 MB, 10 pages)