To those who may be receiving one of these post-notifications for the first time: This is not a blog; it’s actually part of a book, and will make little sense to you without knowledge of what has come before—which you can easily obtain, along with a goodly amount of satirical theatre as matters progress, by simply entering ttgftyri.org into your web browser, opening the menu, and starting at page one. J.J.
ACT SEVEN: in which men finally learn the truth about themselves—and soon stir up trouble.
Scene 1
“You mean it’s really we men who make the young?” Adum yelps, immediately leaping out of bed and turning upon Dawn in all of his sudden, naked embarrassment when he finally gets the news just as old Gaim is finally passing out of sight, “—and just how long have you known?”
“Oh, I’ve been pretty sure for some time now,” she admits.
Then he begins pacing back and forth in front of her, not quite knowing whether to strike her for nonetheless continuing to let men make fools of themselves, or just forget about it and yield to the exhilaration now surging throughout his soul.
“I should probably beat you,” he comes to a threatening stop above her—and actually raises his hand, if only to see what it felt like “—and I mean, it seems as though I’ve been wanting to beat one of you arrogant women all my life.
“But instead, I think I’ll just screw your brains out,” he helplessly reaches for her with all his newfound male pride, “and then try to figure out where we go from here.”
* * *
And afterward he dares to remark, “You know, from now on you women are going to have to put up with a lot of teasing about how you can’t keep a secret!”
“Oh, I’m afraid it’s going to get a lot worse than that,” she sighs, and snuggles a little closer to him. “I mean, what do you think is going to happen when my father gets back—and now how do you like that new word—only to find that we’ve just rendered his whole damn Garden obsolete?”
Scene 2
But of course, right is right.
And so Atum quickly dresses and tells her, “I’m going out to remake the world—and by the time that I get back, I want to find your breasts covered, lest we superior men still have to be reminded of how we don’t have any.”
And then walking right up to a group of older men out there, he told them, “Vis-à-vis every mother—from ordinary mothers clear to the Ultimate One—there has to be a conjugating male, or ‘father’ who is the true source of everything!”
And he waited for them to hoist him up on their shoulders as the new Hero.
But alas, they just called him disruptive and started throwing stones at him; until soon, he and Dawn found themselves forced to flee the whole city—eastward, of course—for their very life!
Scene 3
So then he tried a different approach.
Mounting a hillock near the first outlying village that they came to, he called all of its young men before him—exclusive of their elders—and not only told them about fatherhood, but urged them to take control of their own families immediately in accordance with this new knowledge.
“Oh, I realize that your women may resist,” he exhorted them on, “but Lord, if you’re real men, you’ll beat them into submission if necessary, and then confront this whole, outmoded Establishment eyeball to eyeball, and even sword to sword if that’s how they want it, until a Male—a god, as they’re now calling it—would finally be installed atop the Peak of all this!”
And behind him, Dawn quickly nodded her own approval of all that.
And in the ensuing battle, whole families and ultimately the entire village split into opposing camp—and in the end, became permanently sundered when the outnumbered traditionalists were duly sent packing.
Scene 4
And as the radical pair subsequently passed from village to village with their message, indeed the entire delta soon fell into chaos—until finally, it was rumored that old Gaim cursed the very knowledge of sexual creation, along with the day of his own daughter’s birth, and could hardly wait to get his hands on her consort in all this!
At which point, Atum decided that it would be prudent to flee the whole area—or at least, until they might get the rapidly changing world a little more together.
And naturally—just as they were entering the adjacent desert—Dawn announced that she was pregnant.
And so finally we come to people’s association of copulation with conception, or recognition of procreative sex—and the new Era of the Gods.
Oh, there almost certainly were gods before people became aware of the contribution of sex to procreation; but they would have been the ‘Culture Heroes’ who helped mold their people into a single society with not only a common language, but common customs, sometimes common clothing, patiently taught skills, strict personal morés and taboos, regular spiritual observances, celebrations and so forth—since upon death, they were often deified and associated with light, thunder, the sun and and whatnot, but never elevated to a status higher than that of the Great Mother, who in people’s mind remained the sole source of life itself.
That was what was about to change.
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Recovered from Different Excavations in France
In Old Stone Age art, we sometimes come upon phallic carvings—but only of the bare phallus, never one depicted as part of a man (‘ithy-phallic’) or in any way associated with a woman and procreation; notwithstanding that there are a handful of barely distinguishable cave-wall engravings from that period, which may or may not represent ithyphallic sorcerors or something of that sort.
Clay idol representing an ithyphallic seated man
This seven thousand year old (at most) clay depiction of a seated man found in Thessaly is one of the earliest examples of distinctly ithyphallic art found to date. Unfortunately, the phallus itself has been shattered, so that only the testicles remain.
Swedish History Museum, Stockholm
A god who represented fertility, among other things, his erect phallus is included in the artwork above as the very badge of his divinity.
Harpocrates with Phallus Bearers
Egypt Museum
Sometimes the creators of these things could get a little carried away.
Temple of Ramses
One can hardly turn around in Egyptian art without bumping into this ancient god of fertility.
British Museum, London
This ancient papyrus portrays the aroused Egyptian Earth-god Geb trying to reach his sister/consort the Sky-goddess Nut, after they’d been forcibly separated by the Air-goddess Shu in Egyptian mythology.
Louvre, Paris
This unnamed figure, probably a fertility god, looks out upon us from a small household shrine.
from Siphnos Island, Greece
These items, known to archaeologists as ‘Herms’, are found all over Greece, especially at crossroads, where they’re supposed to have something to do with fortune.
National Museum of Anthropology and Archeology, Lima, Peru
Yes, the artist may have gotten a little carried away here too; but then, he/she does establish the responsibility of this divinity most prominently.
Cameroon
He was a wise old god, too. He’s said to have once told his people, “Beware of half-truths; you may have heard the wrong half.”
Outside Falo Fertility Temple, Kawasaki, Japan
In Shinto Japan and some other lands, the Divine Phallus itself is commonly worshipped as the fount of all creation. Note the pile of surrounding prayer-cards.
Every spring, whole Japanese families pour into the streets of their city to celebrate sex, fertility, and ultimately the creation of life by parading a giant phallus down their main thoroughfare. Above, such a scene in Tokyo.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
In Hindu India, the Divine Phallus, called the lingam, represents the divine power of the god Shiva who necessarily destroys the old in the process of creating the new—which in Brahmanic Hinduism, can mean anything from destroying the hymen in the process of creating new life to destroying what’s merely illusory in the process of being awakened to spiritual reality. The lingam appears in all Shaivite temples and in private, household shrines throughout India.
The female counterpart of the lingam is the yoni; here portrayed round, it may also be depicted in other geometric shapes, such as a square. The united, or joined lingam and yoni, as depicted above, is one of Hinduism’s most common symbols. Not quite, say, the signature of the circular, half-dark, half-light symbol of Chinese Taoism’s yin and yang, but in principle the same; and if you happen to hear the word ‘yin’ in ‘yoni’ and surmise that the concept represented by both probably goes back a long way in history—certainly longer than ‘yang’ and ‘lingam’, words that must have been coined separately since they sound nothing alike—give yourself a star.
Upper left: http://www.millenniumpost.in/mahashivratri-the-night-of-shiva-worship-197422
Upper right: https://blog.srisankaramatrimony.com/significance-of-using-cows-milk-for-abhishekam/
Lower left: https://www.ohofeed.com/why-do-people-worship-shiva-linga/
Lower right: https://magikindia.com/shivalingam/
Every morning, some of Shiva’s worshippers bring his ubiquitous lingam offerings of flowers, fruit, or maybe a few coins; while prior to their their arrival, his priests will have carefully bathed it, coated it with fresh milk or sometimes honey, and otherwise prepared it to receive the day’s visitors, along with their various entreaties.
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Photo Credits
1: EAU16: http://eaumunich2016.uroweb.org/paleolithic-legacy-from-genital-decoration-to-penile-mutilation/
2: Art History http://www.all-art.org/history16.html
3: Pinterest 1bqAeAXUrsY9EmuLmcxgG3VRrzinDvdi1Iix1Hzs5ANFp0QwXLvKpulwi
7: Ipernity http://www.ipernity.com/doc/laurieannie/4592313
8: Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/mkandelaki/phallus/
9: Twitter https://mobile.twitter.com/rosebudlia/status/1031545446056058881
10: Yagbe Onilu https://yagbeonilu.com/eshu-elegbara-aflakete/
11: Flikr https://www.flickr.com/photos/shinda-seishin/444133301
12: The Culture Trip https://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan/articles/how-to-celebrate-kanamara-matsuri-tokyos-penis-festival/
14: Wikiwand https://www.wikiwand.com/ca/Lingam
15: See composite photo caption for URLs.
Two thousand generations, or forty thousand years of religious imagery 