Phallos: Sacred Image of the Masculine

What marks a man as masculine?  What is the difference between masculinity and patriarchy?  For generations the dominance of the masculine has been taken for granted, its “natural” superiority enshrined in social customs and cultural institutions.  But the old patriarchal values are no longer obviously true.  Just as it is no longer acceptable to equate femininity with motherhood or relatedness, so the essential characteristics of the masculine must be differentiated from the entrenched attitudes of the patriarchy.

Phallos, with its focus on the accepted emblem and standard of maleness, is concerned with the archetypal basis of masculinity.  Through close examination of the physical, mythological and psychological manifestations of phallos, the author discovers an autonomous inner god, coequal with the maternal principle as an originating force in the psyche.

Phallos emerges here as an essentially mysterious divine reality that is at once practical and numinous, object of fascination and religious devotion for both men and women – and signature of personal identity for half the human race.