Symbols - What does heaven look like
Priapus
Long before Priapus became a figure of fun, it was a figure associated with the Mystery religions and represented the use of sexual stimulation to obtain spiritual experience. Included in this is the use of Peaking. In the figurine (right) we can see the use of the apron and fruit, as symbolic objects. I found the following quote, which I thought quite helpful............
Whatever the Greeks and Egyptians meant by the symbol in question, it was certainly nothing ludicrous or licentious; of which we need no other proof, than its having been carried in solemn procession at the celebration of those mysteries in which the first principles of their religion, the knowledge of the God of Nature, the First, the Supreme, the Intellectual, were preserved free from the vulgar superstitions, and communicated, under the strictest oaths of secrecy, to the iniated (initiated); who were obliged to purify themselves, prior to their initiation, by abstaining from venery, and all impure food.
In many of the earlier depictions Priapus is also shown as androgynous .
In time, Priapus has come to take on some of the symbolism of the Dark Moon, which appears to be at odds with the symbolism described above, but is not, it depends on the role you are here to achieve - your destiny.
Discourse on the Worship of Priapus AND ITS CONNECTION WITH THE MYSTIC THEOLOGY OF THE ANCIENTS BY RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT
Plutarch tells us, that the Egyptians represented Osiris with the organ of veneration erect, to show his generative and prolific power: he also tells us, that Osiris was the same Diety as the Bacchus of the Greek Mythology; who was also the same as the first begotten Love (πρωτογονος) of Orpheus and Hesiod. This deity is celebrated by the ancient poets as the creator of all things, the father of gods and men; and it appears, by the passage above referred to, that the organ of veneration was the symbol of his great characteristic attribute. This is perfectly consistent with the general practice of the Greek artists, who (as will be made appear hereafter) uniformly represented the attributes of the deity by the corresponding properties…..The organ of generation represented the generative or creative attribute, and in the language of painting and sculpture, signified the same as the epithet παλλενετωζ, in the Orphic litanies……………….There is naturally no impurity or licentiousness in the moderate and regular gratification of any natural appetite; the turpitude consisting wholly in the excess or perversion. Neither are organs of one species of enjoyment naturally to be considered as subjects of shame and concealment more than those of another; every refinement of modern manners on this head being derived from acquired habit, not from nature: