Phallic processions - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Phallic processions, or Penis Parade, called phallika in ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

, were a common feature of Dionysiac celebrations; they were procession

Procession

A procession is an organized body of people advancing in a formal or ceremonial manner.-Procession elements:...

s that advanced to a cult center, and were characterized by obscenities and verbal abuse

Verbal abuse

Verbal abuse is best described as a negative defining statement told to you or about you; or by withholding any response thus defining the target as non-existant...

. The display of a fetishized phallus

Phallus

A phallus is an erect penis, a penis-shaped object such as a dildo, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. Any object that symbolically resembles a penis may also be referred to as a phallus; however, such objects are more often referred to as being phallic...

was a common feature. In a famous passage in chapter 4 of the Poetics, Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

formulated the hypothesis that the earliest forms of comedy

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

originated and evolved from "those who lead off the phallic processions", which were still common in many towns at his time.

The city of Tyrnavos

Tyrnavos

Tyrnavos is a municipality in the Larissa regional unit, of the Thessaly region of Greece. Tyrnavos is the prefecture's third largest community within the Larissa prefecture. The town is near the mountains and the Thessalian Plain. The river Titarisios, a tributary of the Pineios, flows through...

in Greece holds an annual Phallus festival, a traditional phallophoric event on the first days of Lent

Lent

In the Christian tradition, Lent is the period of the liturgical year from Ash Wednesday to Easter. The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer – through prayer, repentance, almsgiving and self-denial – for the annual commemoration during Holy Week of the Death and...

.

In August 2000, to promote a representation of Aristophanes

Aristophanes

Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...

' The Clouds

The Clouds

The Clouds is a comedy written by the celebrated playwright Aristophanes lampooning intellectual fashions in classical Athens. It was originally produced at the City Dionysia in 423 BC and it was not well received, coming last of the three plays competing at the festival that year. It was revised...

, a traditional Greek phallic procession had been organized, with a 25 feet (7.6 m) long phallus paraded by the cast with the accompaniment of Balkan music; the phallic device was banned by the staff of the Edinburgh Festival

Edinburgh Festival

The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...

.

Similar parades of Shinto

Shinto

or Shintoism, also kami-no-michi, is the indigenous spirituality of Japan and the Japanese people. It is a set of practices, to be carried out diligently, to establish a connection between present day Japan and its ancient past. Shinto practices were first recorded and codified in the written...

origin have long been carried out in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. Although the practice has been mostly eradicated in Japan, a few Kanamara Matsuri

Kanamara Matsuri

The Shinto is held each spring at the Kanayama shrine in Kawasaki, Japan. The exact dates vary: the main festivities fall on the first Sunday in April...

("phallic parades") continue to this day.

External links

The Origins of Comedy from the Central University of New York
THE RURAL DIONYSIA of Apollonius Sophistes
ARISTOPHANES CLOUDS

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See also

External links