White Light Black Light

This short book on ancient 'Phallic worship', as the Victorians called it, contains much which is covered in the other entries in this literature. Hudson has a compelling thesis about the role of sexuality in ancient religions and their modern successors which bears careful examination. There is also a lot of speculation, incorrect information, conclusion-leaping and questionable etymology.

Hudson places an inordinate amount of signficance on anything that is vaguely phallic looking or resembles a vagina. This includes pawn shop signage, tortise heads, arched doors, lozange-shaped design elements, and so on. While some of this is revealing and possibly valid, he finishes off by pegging a fairly standard native Californian mortar and pestle as a set of ritual phallic symbols. There are examples ad nauseum of these items in the anthropologicial and archeological literature of California, and none of them have ever been associated with sex-worship to my knowledge.

Sometimes a pestle is just a pestle....

// posted by Alice @ Friday, June 24, 2005