Penises for Peace!

People do the most extraordinary things for world peace, not least because the most obvious things to do to attain this goal—like getting rid of national governments—are rather too difficult for the average well-intentioned citizen. In my time, I have marched, chanted slogans and mantras, attended music festivals ("Yeah, but when we did it we actually stood for something. I mean, remember Woodstock, Sharon?"), marched, stood up, sat down, got down, marched some more, chained a friend to a gate (Oh hang on, that was a BDSM convention an environmental protest), marched across the Pennines ... I think I might even, so help me God, have been in a drum circle. The latest unusual act for peace, and my favourite so far, took place in Pune in India, where Yogiraj Siddhanath has constructed a thirty-inch shivalingam out of solidified mercury. However much conservative Hindus try to gloss over the fact, a shivalingam (or shivling, for short) is basically a stylised penis, and mercury is well known in alchemical literature as a symbol of semen. But according to Siddhanath, the shivalingam is also a symbol of "earth peace".

Now I like this symbolic reversal. Penises, over the ages, have acquired a rather bad reputation, not least because of some men's habit of trying to stick them where they aren't welcome. Specifically, they have been associated with weapons, with whimsical epithets like "gun" or "pork sword"; in Tantrik literature the penis is even referred to as a "missile", which evokes a rather strange mental image ("Sorry dear, crashed on lift-off"). So it's nice to see this organ being symbolically rehabilitated.




[Thanks to Shivanath and Lal for putting me on to this one.]