PHALLUS

A peculiar feature of Celtic religious imagery is the linking of the head and the phallus. The Celts venerated the human head, practised headhunting, and in their religious art often showed the human head on its own. The image was sometimes combined with the phallus as if to emphasize the connection of the human head with potency.

At Bremevaque, in south-western France, a Gaulish image was found roughly carved in stone. It shows a god with erect phallus, spear, snake, and swastika.

The phallic heads from Eype in Dorset and Broadway in Worcestershire were probably intended to represent local gods, as well as incorporating other ideas.

War gods were depicted naked, because warriors often fought naked (see Nudity). But they were also often depicted with erect phalluses. One suggested reason is that this was to demonstrate their virility, and by implication strength. There may have been a secondary intention to associate the war god with fertility and prosperity. A god who could ensure victory in battle would bring general prosperity to a tribe; a god who enabled cattle-rustlers to win skirmishes also enabled the tribe to acquire more cattle.

The phallus was an image that recurred, sometimes in forms that are less than obvious. The Pillar of Eliseg in Wales bears an inscription saying that it was raised by King Concenn of Powys to commemorate his great-grandfather. Concenn died in 854, yet the style of the pillar is Mercian-English and tenth or eleventh century rather than ninth, so there is something of an enigma even about its date. The columnar shape of the pillar, however, with a rimmed capital at the top and a flaring base, is phallic.

The Celts were fascinated by visual puzzles and riddles, and by shapeshifting, by things turning into other things. A remarkable stone phallic symbol found at Maryport shows a simple disk-shaped face carved into the ventral face of the erect phallus in such a way that the part of the glans remaining visible round the edge looks like two locks of hair. The Maryport Pillar or Serpent Stone, as it is known, is a clever piece of ambiguity.

This kind of visual pun is still to be seen in popular religious art; in tourist shops in the Mediterranean it is possible today to buy statuettes of the Virgin Mary which, when turned round, change into erect phalluses. It is a curious, instant switching between the sacred and the profane, and between the sublime and what today looks like a crude sexual joke. But perhaps putting these two faces of humanity side by side in this way is itself a statement of some weight about the nature of the human condition.

Perhaps the most blatant and explicit depiction is a pottery image made in the Nene Valley and probably intended for use by the Roman troops in Britain. A woman is bending forward and massaging a gigantic phallus while looking behind her and pointing at her own genitalia. A man is running toward her with a huge erection and having a premature ejaculation. But phallus images are rarely as explicitly sexual as this. The phallus is normally depicted as if it was religious icon its own right.

Other ambiguous phallic symbols include some of the Celtic crosses. A pillar at St. Buryan near Penzance in Cornwall is thought to be an ancient standing stone that has been Christianized by having its top shaped into a sun-wheel. Without the “limbs” of the cross extending outside the sun circle, the outline looks phallic—and of course the sun-wheel on its own could be a symbol of the Celtic god Taranis, and not a Christian symbol at all. The same applies to another Cornish cross: St. Piran’s Cross on Penhale Sands (see Exaggeration; Places: Cerne Abbas).

PURSE

Gods are sometimes shown holding a purse or moneybag, representing the worldly prosperity they can bring. The purse is a particular attribute of the Celtic god Mercury, who often has a purse in one hand and a caduceus or wand in the other. If Mercury is shown with a goat, the purse is frequently shown close to it, perhaps to emphasize that money comes from livestock. Sometimes goddesses carry purses, and the meaning is the same. In some images of couples, one partner carries the purse (implicitly for both), but sometimes they both carry purses, probably for emphasis.

The purse is often held, resting on one knee, if the god or goddess is seated. One statue of Rosmerta shows her holding the purse clasped to her breast, while a snake rests its head on the purse as if feeding from it (see Serpent).

The purse is often large, and always bulging with coins. A relief of Cernunnos shows him sitting cross-legged with a big bag of coins in his lap. Another image of Cernunnos shows the (possibly same) moneybag spilling a cascade of coins toward the greedy worshiper.

In some images the symbols seem to elide with one another. A snake feeds from a purse in one image, and from a dish in another. Some images clearly show the moneybag brimming with coins, and others show coins in a dish.