Phallicism and Phallic Worship

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Black versus White Magic Series · 7 pages

Seven pages taken directly from the second volume of The Secret Doctrine, and the shortest of the three studies of phallicism in this section. It opens not on the subject of the title but on the qualifications for approaching it — addressed to the learner who would study the esoteric sciences with their double object: proving man identical in spiritual and physical essence with both the Absolute Principle and with God in Nature, and demonstrating in him the same potential powers that exist in the creative forces of Nature.

To such a student, Blavatsky writes, a perfect knowledge of the correspondences between colours, sounds and numbers is the first requisite — the same claim that opens The True Colours of Man in the Major Works series, and the reason the two should be read together. The bearing on phallic symbolism follows from it: the symbols are read as notation in that system of correspondence rather than as representations of what they appear to depict, which is the argument the companion pieces on the author of Phallicism and on the adoration of male gods make at greater length. Frontispiece by Michael Parkes, with an illustration by Lui Liu.

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