Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Sex and Sex Worship (Phallic Worship): A Scientific Treatise on Sex, Its Nature and Function, and Its Influence on Art, Science, Architecture, and Religionwith Special Reference to Sex Worship and Symbolism
When "Psychopathia Sexualis" by Krafft-Ebing, and similar works by Moll, Lombroso, etc., appeared in print, I, at the request of some of my professional friends prepared a series of lectures for them, showing that sexual "perversions," described in these works as insanities, were in reality deliberate vices, the results of vicious teachings which had come to us by transmission and teachings from the Greek and Roman schools in which slaves were trained in libidinous arts, to make them more valuable to luxury-loving purchasers, their masters and mistresses. But of this matter little or none is used in this book, which does not pretend to treat of that phase of sexual life and sexual practices.
Recently I was asked to write my studies on sex for publication, in order that the work might not be lost. As the views on these subjects have materially changed among the learned among the public since the time when the collection of this information was first begun, I consented, and this book is the result.
The facts gathered about phallic religion led me to doubt whether this was ever a religion from all other religions apart; it appeared to me to be merely a phase in the evolution of all religions. Nor was it a real worship of the generative organs, but rather a use of representations of the phallus and yoni as symbols for certain religious ideas which were embodied in nature-worship.
Mankind, when it gave expression to its first dawnings of religious thoughts, wove a fabric of myths and theories about religion, the warp of which ran through from earliest historical times to our own days as threads of the warp of philosophies and theories about sex, male, female, love, passion, lust, desire, procreation, offspring, etc.; while the succeeding ages and civilizations wove into this warp the woof of the individual religions, the myths and fables of gods and goddesses, so that the whole fabric of beliefs, though at first coarse and poor, became more refined as mankind itself advanced, by a process of revelation which consisted in a gradual unfolding of truths in the consciousness and consciences of innumerable thinkers, until our present religions were produced, and which process of revelation is still going on and will continue until all that is fantastic, irrational, unbelievable, is eradicated from our faiths.
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