DERVENI

PAPYRUS
PHALLUS
THE PHALLUS THAT FIRST CREATED THE HEAVENS

"He ingested the phallus that first procreated the aether"

Central to this creation myth is the metaphor of the Nile as a river of semen
which by flooding its banks regularly fertilizes the fields. “That which, like a field,
was to receive the divine seed, he made round every way, and called that portion
of the marrow, brain, intending that, when an animal was perfected, the vessel
containing this substance should be the head; but that which was intended to
contain the remaining and mortal part of the soul...he called them all by the name
marrow”1

The marrow encased in its container formed of bone and running as a channel
through the centre of the body corresponds to this image of the Nile. The spinal
column connects at one end with the brain and the other is in the vicinity of the
sexual organs. “From the passage of egress for the drink, where it receives and
joins in discharging the fluid which has come through the lungs beneath the
kidneys into the bladder and has been compressed by the air, they bored a hole
into the condensed marrow which comes from the head down by the neck and
along the spine which marrow, in our previous account, we termed ‘seed.’ And
the marrow, inasmuch as it is animate and has been granted an outlet, has
endowed the part where its outlet lies with a love for generating therein a lively
desire for emission.”2

Semen was described as substance like brain matter that contained hot vapour.
From the hot aether in the semen the process of creation began. “But the wiser
of the priests call not only the Nile Osiris and the sea Typhon, but they simply
give the name of Osiris to the whole source and faculty creative of moisture,
believing this to be the cause of generation and the substance of life-producing
seed; and the name of Typhon they give to all that is dry, fiery and arid, in
general, and antagonistic to moisture.” 3

The foaming froth of the flooding Nile thus has a direct correlation with the warm
foamy substance of semen. From this foaming substance the human body would
be created. From the foaming flood waters of the Nile the seeds would
germinate. “In fact, the tale is annexed to the legend to the effect that Typhon
cast the male member of Osiris into the river, and Isis could not find it, but
constructed and shaped a replica of it, and ordained that it should be honoured
and borne in processions, plainly comes round to this doctrine, that the creative
and germinal power of the god, at the very first, acquired moisture as its
substance, and through moisture combined with whatever was by nature capable
of participating in generation.” 4

Thus semen contained the life-giving moisture as its substance infused with a hot
aether to provide the spark of creation. The Nile could be seen as containing the
semen of Osiris which was deposited over the soil. The body of Osiris had been
slashed into pieces, with his genital parts hacked off and thrown into the Nile.
The other parts of the body of Osiris were located and reassembled by Isis but
the genital parts remained lost in the river. The Nile thus embodied the genital
parts of Osiris and contained the divine semen. “As they regard the Nile as the
effusion of Osiris, so they hold and believe the earth to be the body of Isis, not all
of it, but so much of it as the Nile covers, fertilizing it and uniting with it.” 5

There is here the direct linkage of religion symbolized by Osiris, lord of the
underworld and the deity representing resurrection, and the life-giving secretion
of moisture and semen by the Nile. This was a divine water that contained the
code for all generation. The vital water was celebrated as containing the divine
essence involved in creation. “They think that Homer, like Thales, had gained his
knowledge from the Egyptians when he postulated water as the source and
origin of all things…”6

In this way the Egyptian myth of Osiris and Isis was transferred to the Greeks
and became the basis of the Pythagorean construct. The Nile became symbolic
of all rivers which all eventually flowed into Oceanus, the ocean stream that
encircled the earth. The moisture of semen and the moisture of water were the
source for all creation. “Not only the Nile, but every form of moisture they call
simply the effusion of Osiris; and in their holy rites the water jar in honour of the
god heads the procession…”7

Rain itself could be linked to a shower of semen fertilizing the earth. The duality
of the heavens and the earth was likened to the copulation of humans. The
central element was the moisture without which life could not exist. The moisture
was in the rain, fructifying the earth, and part of the substance of semen. “In fact,
the Greeks call emission apousia and coition synousia, and the son (hyios) from
water (hydor) and rain (hysai); Dionysus also they call Hyes since he is lord of
the nature; and he is no other that Osiris.”8

Moisture from the heavens was equivalent to a divine emission that fertilized the
earth. The sun or sky was considered the male, or active part; the earth was
represented as female and as the passive part. “The bright sky, “ Aeschylus says,
“loves to penetrate the earth; the earth on her part, aspires to the heavenly
marriage. Rain falling from the watery sky impregnates the earth, and she
produces for mortals pastures of the flocks, and the gifts of Ceres.” “The sky,“
Plutarch says, “appeared to perform the functions of a father, as the earth those
of a mother. The sky was the father, for it cast seed into the bosom of the earth,
which on receiving them became fruitful and brought forth, and was the mother.”
The primordial fire contains the hot breath, the pneuma of the semen, forged by
the Demiurge, Hephaestus. In the creation myth of Hephaestus and Athena the
semen from the gods in the heavens impregnates the earth (Gaia) below.
Hephaestus ejaculates hs fiery semen over Athena who casts it down upon
earth, so impregnating it. Human life is therefore formed by the Demiurge,
Hephaestus or Vulcan, moulding his creations from the fiery heat. “She (Athena)
founded your city a thousand years before ours, receiving from the Earth and
Hephaestus the seed of your race.”9

This primordial fire contains the hot breath, the pneuma of the semen, forged by
the Demiurge, Hephaestus. “Everywhere they point out statues of Osiris in
human form of the ithyphallic type, on account of his creative and fostering
power; and they clothe his statues in a flame-coloured garment, since they
regard the body of the sun as a visible manifestation of the perceptible substance
of the power for good. In the sacred hymns they call upon him who is hidden in
the arms of the Sun.”10

The primordial semen is the moisture contained in the hot aether from the fire of
creation. This celestial foam was envisaged as the shining emission of the gods
in the night sky. In the Derveni Papyrus the clusters of stars become the foaming
secretion of the deified phallus. The celestial phallus was consequently the
originator of the firmament of stars. “He (the deity) ingested the phallus that first
procreated the aether.”11

In this vision the stars become the semen of the gods filling the night sky with a
shining heavenly foam. Aphrodite Urania emerged from the foam surrounding the
severed genitals of Uranus. According to Hesiod this foam formed the heavenly
body of the goddess. “And so soon as had cut off the members with flint and cast
them from the land into the surging sea, they were swept away over the main a
long time; and a white foam spread around them from the immortal flesh, and in it
there grew a maiden...Her gods and men call Aphrodite and the foam-born
goddess and rich-crowned Cytherea, because she grew amid the foam…” 12

This vision extends to the central revelation of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The
condemnatory testament by the early Christian writer Tertullian nevertheless
reveals their secret. “As to the superstition of the Eleusinian Mysteries, what they
conceal is the shame of them. Therefore they make the admission tortuous, take
time in the initiation, set a seal on the tongue, and instruct the epoptae for five
years, to raise a high opinion of them by delay and expectation. But all the
divinity in the sacred domes, the whole of what they aspire to, what sealeth the
tongue, is this: simulacrum membri virilis revelatur. But for a cover of their
sacrilege, they pretend these figures are only a mystical representation of
venerable nature.”13

On the Day of Blood, during the rites of Attis, the Galli castrated themselves in a
frenzy of ecstasy and offered the severed parts to the goddess. This sacred ritual
is documented by Lucian in the context of his description of the temple at
Hierapolis. “As the Galli sing and celebrate their orgies, frenzy falls on many of
them and many who had come as mere spectators afterwards are found to have
committed the great act. I will narrate what they do. Any young man who has
resolved on this action, strips off his clothes, and with a loud shout bursts into the
midst of the crowd, and picks up a sword from a number of swords which I
suppose have been kept ready for many years for this purpose. He takes it and
castrates himself and then runs wild through the city, bearing in his hands what
he has cut off. He casts it into any house at will, and from this house he receives
women’s raiment and ornaments. Thus they act during their ceremonies of
castration.”14

The severed genital parts were symbolized by the pomegranate with its blood-
red flesh that encased the multiple seeds. “These broken instruments of fertility
were afterwards wrapt up and buried in the earth or in subterranean chambers
sacred to Cybele, where, like the offering of blood, they may have been deemed
instrumental in recalling Attis to life and hastening the general resurrection of
nature, which was then bursting into leaf and blossom in the vernal sunshine.
Some confirmation of this conjecture is furnished by the savage story that the
mother of Attis conceived by putting in her bosom a pomegranate sprung from
the severed genitals of a man-monster named Agdestis, a sort of double Attis.” 15

The vernal equinox of spring marked the resurrection of Attis from the
underworld. Human fertility and immortality is linked with the process of nature’s
cycle of decay and rebirth. This is the basis for human resurrection in the rites
that were performed in Eleusis.

The pomegranate formed a central part of the Eleusinian Mysteries where the
concept of natural mortality is followed by resurrection in the spring. In these
myths Persephone consumes pomegranate seed and is compelled to inhabit the
underworld for the duration of the gestation of the seed. In the archaic ‘Hymn to
Demeter’ the goddess demands to know if Persephone has tasted the food of the
underworld during her imprisonment there:

“...but if you have tasted food, you must go back again beneath the secret places
of the earth, there to dwell a third part of the seasons every year; yet for the two
parts you shall be with me and the other deathless gods. But when the earth
shall bloom with the fragrant flowers of spring in every kind, then from the realm
of darkness and gloom thou shalt come up once more to be a wonder for gods
and mortal men...Then beautiful Persephone answered her thus...he secretly put
in my mouth sweet food, a pomegranate seed, and forced me to taste against my
will.”

Thus in the Eleusinian Mysteries the pomegranate is equated with human fertility
and represents the vial containing human seed. The concepts of violent
castration and resurrection also formed part of the myths of Dionysus. These
relate that, in similar fashion to Osiris, the body of the god was brutally torn apart.
From the blood shed by the act pomegranates spring to life.

The pomegranate came to symbolize the rituals of Attis and Dionysus and
pomegranate seeds formed the core of the Eleusinian Mysteries. “Pomegranates
were supposed to have sprung from the blood of Adonis and violets from the
blood of Attis: hence women refrained from eating seeds of pomegranates at the
festival of Thesmophoria.”16

At Hierapolis the castration rituals were performed before the monumental phallic
pillars that stood in front of the temple. Their dual presence linked the
monumental phallic forms to the castration rituals of the eunuch priests. The two
giant phalli framed the entrance to the temple.

“In the temple at Hierapolis the active powers imparted to her (the goddess) by
the Creator were represented by immense images of the male organs of
generation placed on each side of the door. The measures of these must
necessarily be corrupt in the present text of Lucian; but that they were of an
enormous size we may conclude from what is related of a man’s going to the top
of one of them every year, and residing there days, in order to have a more
intimate communication with the deity, while praying for the prosperity of Syria.” 17

In the ‘Syrian Goddess’ Lucian describes their presence. “In this entrance those
phalli stand which Dionysus erected; they stand thirty fathoms high. Onto one of
these a man mounts twice every year, and he abides on the summit of the
phallus for the space of seven days. The reason of this ascent is given as
follows: the people believe that the man who is aloft holds converse with the
gods, and prays for good fortune for the whole of Syria, and that the gods from
their neighbourhood hear his prayers.”18
These monumental phallic forms can be compared to Egyptian temple columns.
Many of these exhibit lily-shaped capitals which, like the pomegranate,
symbolically encase the human seed. Likewise the twin columns of Solomon’s
temple had lily-shaped capitals and in addition were wrapped around with
pomegranate motifs. “The capitals on top of the pillars in the portico were in the
shape of lilies, four cubits high. On the capitals of both pillars, above the bowl-
shaped part next to the network, were the two hundred pomegranates in rows all
around.”19

In these temples the phallic columnar forms based on the water lily contained in
their bulbous capitals the seeds of creative generation. “...from under the body of
the serpent springs the lotus or water lily...The figures of Isis, upon the Isiac
Table, hold the stem of this plant, surmounted by the seed-vessel in one hand,
and the cross, representing the male organs of generation, in the other; thus
signifying the universal power, both active and passive, attributed to that
goddess. On the same Isiac Table is also a representation of an Egyptian temple,
the columns of which are exactly like the plant which Isis holds in her hand,
except that the stem is made larger, in order to give it that stability which is
necessary to support a roof and entablature. Columns and capitals of the same
kind are still existing in great numbers, among the ruins of Thebes, in Egypt…” 20

These monumental images of the phallus relate back to Osiris and the myth of
his death and resurrection. In Egyptian myth Typhon divided the body of Osiris
into multiple parts and scattered them. Plutarch explains why the phallus of Osiris
became the object of veneration. “Of the parts of Osiris’s body the only one
which Isis did not find was the male member...But Isis made a replica of the
member to take its place, and consecrated the phallus, in honour of which the
Egyptians even at the present day celebrate a festival.” 21

Isis had commanded that the image of the recreated phallus of Osiris be set up in
the temples and venerated as a god. This was the concept that informed the
Eleusinian Mysteries and was eventually incorporated into the Christian religion.
The genital parts of Osiris had been hacked off and thrown into the waters of the
Nile that inundated the fields. The other parts of the body of Osiris were
recovered but the phallus remained lost in the foaming waters.

“Yet Isis thought them as worthy of divine honours as the other parts, for,
fashioning a likeness of them, she set it up in the temples, commanded that it be
honoured, and made it the object of the highest regards and reverence in the
rites and sacrifices according to the god. Consequently the Greeks too, inasmuch
as they received from Egypt the celebrations of the orgies and the festivals
connected with Dionysus, honour this member in both the mysteries and the
initiatory rites and sacrifices of this god, giving it the name ‘phallus.’” 22

Plutarch states that everywhere the Egyptians worshipped the phallus of Osiris
and that this veneration was associated with the power of the sun. “Everywhere
they point out statues of Osiris in human form of the ithyphallic type, on account
of his creative and fostering power; and they clothe his statues in a flame-
coloured garment, since they regard the body of the Sun as a visible
manifestation of the perceptible substance of the power for good. In the sacred
hymns they call upon him who is hidden in the arms of the Sun.” 23

This concept of the phalli as the arms of the sun is contained in the oil lamps that
have been excavated from Pompeii. These display a phallic form with the flame
arising from the head of the phallus. In the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii the
images are interpreted as illustrating a Dionysian ceremony and potentially
referring to the Eleusinian Mysteries. The revelation depicted in these mysteries
revolves around the unveiling of the phallus.

Also revealed is the mystica vannus, the winnowing fan or basket, that formed
part of the Eleusinian Mysteries. This separated the corn from the chaff and
functioned as a metaphor for the capture of human seed. “It was from producing
this separation, that the universal Bacchus, or double Apollo, the creator and
destroyer, whose essence was fire, was also called the purifier, by a metaphor
taken from the winnow, which purified the corn from the dust and chaff, as fire
purified the soul from its terrestrial pollutions. Hence this instrument is called by
Virgil the mystic winnow of Bacchus.”24

The unveiling of the phallus is the central depiction at the end of the series of
images in the Villa of the Mysteries. The generating and purifying power of the
sun is contained in the body of the phallus. Its erect form is the pure expression
of the element of fire.

Fire is emblematic of the sun and infuses the form of the phallus. The shape-
shifting chimerical nature of the phallus was equivalent to the path of the sun as it
rose and set in the heavens. “On the waning of the month Phaophi they conduct
the birthday of the Staff of the Sun following upon the autumnal equinox, and by
this they declare, as it were, that he is in need of support and strength, since he
becomes lacking in warmth and light, and undergoes decline, and is carried away
from us to one side.”25
Fire from the sun was therefore contained in the body of the phallus which fused
it to the deity. The phallus formed of blood and fire forms the central pillar of the
Eleusinian Mysteries. The fire of the sun represented the generative energy of
the universe. This energy infused the earth in the spring as described in the
‘Hymn to Demeter’ and the entombment of Persephone.

Thus according to Iamblichus “we remark that the planting of ‘phallic images’ is a
special representing of the procreative power by conventional symbols, and that
we regard this practise as an invocation to the generative energy of the universe.
On this account many of these images are consecrated in the spring, when all
the world is receiving from the gods the prolific force of the whole creation.” 26

Therefore in the Eleusinian Mysteries, as in those of Vesta, the celestial phallus

is the central component of the revelation. The foaming clusters of stars are the
source of all creation. “Some, moreover, are of the opinion that nothing but this
perpetual fire is guarded by the sacred virgins; while some say that Numa built
the temple of Vesta, where the perpetual fire was kept, of a circular form, not in
imitation of the shape of the earth, believing Vesta to be the earth, but of the
entire universe, at the centre of which the Pythagoreans place the element of fire,
and call it Vesta and Unit. And they hold that the earth is neither motionless nor
situated in the centre of surrounding space, but that it revolves in a circle around
the central fire, not being one of the most important, nor even one of the primary
elements of the universe.”27

Plutarch describes the tearing away of heavenly bodies from the revolving aether
of the heavens. He further describes the plunge of these bodies to the earth as
they separate from the central fire. “...for according to the common belief, a stone
of vast size had fallen from heaven at Aegospotami, and it is shown to this day by
dwellers in the Chersonese, who hold it in reverence. Anaxagoras is said to have
predicted that if the heavenly bodies should be loosened by some slip or shake,
one of them might be torn away, and might plunge and fall down to earth; and he
said that none of the stars was in its original position; for being of stone, and
heavy, their shining light is caused by friction with the revolving aether, and they
are forced along in fixed orbits by the whirling impulse which gave them their
circular motion, and this was what prevented them from falling to our earth in the
first place, when cold and heavy bodies were separated from universal matter.” 28

In reference to the shrine of Astarte at Byblos, and her cult there, Philo of Byblos
states that “Astarte set the head of a bull upon her head as a mark of royalty; and
in travelling round the world she found a star that had fallen from the sky, which
she took up and consecrated in the holy island of Tyre. And the Phoenicians say
that Astarte is Aphrodite.”29

The fallen stars were termed ‘baetyli’ and by being formed from the body of a star
they enclosed the spirit of the deity. Pliny describes the baetyls, or meteorites, as
sacred objects with supernatural powers. “Sotacus mentions also two other
varieties of ceraunia, one black and the other red; and he says that they
resemble axes in shape. Those which are black and round, he says, are looked
upon as sacred, and by their assistance cities and fleets are attacked and taken:
the name given to them is baetyli, those of an elongated form being known as
cerauniae.”30

These sacred objects functioned as a medium between the gods and humans
and contained the living gods. The stones were thus animated by the spirits of
the gods and were seen as a type of extraterrestrial relic that contained magical
powers. The Phoenicians believed that the god Uranus devised the baetyls and
contrived to put life into the stones.

Uranus, the god of the vault of the heavens, sent the meteorites or baetyls as
gifts to humans on earth. Urania, the daughter of Uranus, also symbolized these
sacred stones. She was combined with Aphrodite to form a deity that
encapsulated the qualities of the fallen stars.

The path of the falling stars across the heavens left a trail of shining celestial
foam. Hesiod states that Aphrodite Urania was born in this foam that spread from
the castration of Uranus.

“And so soon as he had cut off the members with flint and cast them from the
land into the surging sea, and they were swept away over the main a long time;
and a white foam spread around them from the immortal flesh, and in it there
grew a maiden...Her gods and men call Aphrodite and the foam-born goddess
and rich-crowned Cytherea, because she grew amid the foam…” 31

Therefore this shining aetherial foam represented the ejaculatory trace of the
gods in the night sky. This is the vision contained in the Derveni Papyrus where it
states that the deity “ingested the phallus that first procreated the aether.” The
ancients believed, as is still the contemporary belief, that the genesis of human
life lay in the foaming clusters of stars that they perceived in the heavens. The
phallus of the deity that first created this foaming starry aether was related to the
human phallus through its magical creative power.
An image of this celestial phallus comes to the present day from the Derveni
Papyrus. This phallus formed of the foaming aetherial clouds at the centre of the
universe was replicated by the human phallus which contains a fiery fragment
from the original creation. “This was the real meaning of the enormous figures at
Hierapolis - they were the generative organs of the creator personified, with
which he was supposed to have impregnated the heavens, the earth, and the
waters. Within the temple were many small statues of men with these organs
disproportionately large. These were the angels or attendants of the goddess,
who acted as her ministers of creation in peopling and fructifying the earth.” 32

“But Daimachus, in his treatise ‘On Religion,’ supports the view of Anaxagoras.
He says that before the stone fell, for seventy-five days continually, there was
seen in the heavens a fiery body of vast size, as if it had been a flaming cloud,
not resting in one place, but moving along with intricate and irregular motions, so
that fiery fragments, broken from it by its plunging and erratic course, were
carried in all directions and flashed fire, just as shooting stars do.” 33

“This, then, is the explanation: whether the allotment be to certain parts of the
universe, as to heaven or earth, whether to holy cities and regions, whether to
certain temple-precincts or sacred images, the divine irradiation shines upon
them all from the outside, just as the sun illuminates every object from without
with his rays. Hence, as the light encompasses the objects that it illuminates, so
also the power of the gods comprehends from without those that participate of it.
In like manner, also, as the light of the sun is present in the air without being
combined with it...so also the light of the gods shines while entirely separate from
the objects illuminated, and, being firmly established in itself, makes its way
through all existing things.”34
1. Plato - Timaeus 73
2. Ibid. 91
3. Plutarch - Isis and Osiris 33
4. Ibid. 36
5. Ibid. 38
6. Ibid. 34
7. Ibid. 36
8. Ibid. 34
9. Plato - Timaeus 23
10. Plutarch - Isis and Osiris 51
11. Derveni Papyrus 13
12. Hesiod - Theogony 176-180
13. Tertullian
14. Lucian of Samosata - De Dea Syria
15. James Frazer - The Golden Bough
16. Ibid.
17. Richard Payne Knight - Discourse on the Worship of Priapus
18. Lucian of Samosata - De Dea Syria
19. 1 Kings 7:19-20
20. Richard Payne Knight - Discourse on the Worship of Priapus
21. Plutarch - Isis and Osiris 18
22. Diodorus Siculus - Library of History 1.22
23. Plutarch - Isis and Osiris 51
24. Richard Payne Knight - Discourse on the Worship of Priapus
25. Plutarch - Isis and Osiris 52
26. Iamblichus - Theurgia 1.4
27. Plutarch - Life of Numa
28. Plutarch - Lysander 12.1-2
29. Philo of Byblos
30. Pliny - Natural History 37.51
31. Hesiod - Theogony 176-180
32. Richard Payne Knight - Discourse on the Worship of Priapus
33. Plutarch - Lysander 12.4
34. Iamblichus - Theurgia 1.3