mans erection

[paul]

i know this may seem a strange topic, but its of nature was created of God, so what is it's significance?

if circumicision has it's importance, then why not the erection, which is natural.

i could see in Christianity, as Christ represents the husband, and the Church the wife.
what then of mans erection, the one thing that stands out to me is the erection of the cross, and this shows God's loving desire for His Church, which is to be united with Him as a wife to husband.
in their love there is a seed implanted from the husband to the wife, this brings forth in the wife a new creation, implanted by the husband,but nurtured and grown, fed, suckled by the wife.

although i've heard the explanation of the husband and wife being a sign of Christ and His Church, i've never heard mans erection ever mentioned.

Is mans erection mentioned in any other world religions, and what is it's significance to the religion?

[Tao_Equus]

Wikkipedia has a good selection on this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallic

If you dont like explicit images tho you might find it a little hard on the eyes tho.



david

[flowperson]

The ancient Greeks and the Celts, and also I believe ancient Hindu precursor sects, had the habit of "erecting" phallic stones, called "omphallos", in the earth that sometimes carried inscriptions. I believe that the Hindu variety commemorated the G-d Ram or Shiva and were often black in color.

My recollection of the images is that they were modest in size and not generally anatomically correctly sculpted, but then, there is variation, eh?

I've never run across a learned explanation of this symbolic practice among those cultures, other than to perhaps represent the fecundity and virility of the masculine, much as the ancient voluptuous statuettes that were found in ancient cro-magnon sites likely represented the symbolism of the fertile female torso.

flow...

[Tao_Equus]

Thinking about it through the day it strikes me as some how significant that in this modern era, with so much explicit sexuality in our faces, that religions almost totaly ignore the subject except to condemn it. Meanwhile priests are convicted of abhorrant sexual depravity on children, society suffers the terrible consequences of sexual promiscuity,(how many people globaly now carry the HIV virus?), and the age old institutions of marraige are cast aside in favour of a spurious freedom that few find any satisfaction in.
I know none of this has anything to do with the question, but it strikes me as a little odd that none of these subjects have i seen raised on these threads.


Tao

[RubySera_Martin]

I can't document where I came across it but I read somewhere that the "groves" in the Old Testament were actually phallic pillars. They were, of course, condemned by the time the OT was written but obviously they were part of the earlier folk religion.

[Quahom1]

Originally Posted by paul

i know this may seem a strange topic, but its of nature was created of God, so what is it's significance?

if circumicision has it's importance, then why not the erection, which is natural.

i could see in Christianity, as Christ represents the husband, and the Church the wife.
what then of mans erection, the one thing that stands out to me is the erection of the cross, and this shows God's loving desire for His Church, which is to be united with Him as a wife to husband.
in their love there is a seed implanted from the husband to the wife, this brings forth in the wife a new creation, implanted by the husband,but nurtured and grown, fed, suckled by the wife.

although i've heard the explanation of the husband and wife being a sign of Christ and His Church, i've never heard mans erection ever mentioned.

Is mans erection mentioned in any other world religions, and what is it's significance to the religion?

What is the actual purpose of a penile erection? To enter the womb in order to mix one half of a genome strand with another half, resulting in a new life form (to propogate the species). I don't think Christ intends to literally create more little god/men with His human composite "bride".

Nor do I believe Christ is looking for sexual extasy...

A marriage goes much deeper than sexual union. In fact, that physical union is simply one result of a marriage between man and woman...The union of a marriage also makes clear that the two become on flesh (a new life all its own).

my thoughts

v/r

Q

[flowperson]

Originally Posted by RubySera_Martin

I can't document where I came across it but I read somewhere that the "groves" in the Old Testament were actually phallic pillars. They were, of course, condemned by the time the OT was written but obviously they were part of the earlier folk religion.

You are right about this to an extent, but they were representative of the "universal tree" of which we are all a part. This is a carryover from pagan beliefs that involved the actions of the shaman of a community to "symbolically" climb the tree" in order to commune with G-d/gods, where He/they dwelled in the sky, on behalf of the community. The story of Jacob's ladder may be a part of this surviving mythical theme.

This was traditionally done in "high" places, and, if memory serves, was outlawed as ritual under the reforms of King Hezzikiah and the law-giver Ezra around 600 bce. These rituals, in form, all date back to pre-historic times among the nomadic tribes of the Eurasian land mass.

flow....

[flowperson]

The symbolic importance of the erect penis can be found in many ancient cultures aside from those I specifically mentioned above.
On the asian subcontinent, the union of the male and female "connection" was symbolized through the adoption and use of "lingam" and "yoni" totemic objects. But the symbolism of these objects extended beyond the understanding of the physical attributes of human reproductive equipment.

From time immemorial, fire starting was accomplished by spinning a straight stick (lingam) in a socket (yoni) in a dry piece of wood, which was arranged so that moss/bark near the socket might be ignited when the temperatures generated by the spinning column were sufficient for ignition. The symbolic intent of making both fires and human life through the same sorts of physical unions, be it with sticks/ blocks of wood, of parts of the human male and female anatomy, was obvious to the ancients; and, was the origin of a highly revered set of beliefs that continue to this day, as pointed out above by Q.