This is a portion of an ongoing series which seeks to chronicle the occult, magickal and mystical alchemy roots of the transgender and postgender movements from secret societies and mystery religion sources. I have chronicled these in the Postgender Androgyny, Hermaphroditism & Beyond section.
Colonel Stanislas Marie César Famin (1799-1853 AD) made some interesting comments with regards to ancient works of art depicting hermaphrodites in The Royal Museum at Naples, Being Some Account of the Erotic Paintings, Bronzes, and Statues Contained in that Famous “Cabinet Secret” (1871 AD).
An Hermaphrodite and Faun. Painting Found at Resina. Plate XLI is commented upon thusly:
This painting is evidently allegorical. The old Silenus, seated on a rock, and seeking to enjoy a being who unites in himself the two senses, is the emblem of those old men, given up to debauchery, who endeavour to reanimate their deadened passions by excess and variety of enjoyment.
The taste of some old men for both sexes is a consequence of the impotency of their resources; they would fain rekindle, by the refinement and monstrosity of their pleasures, a spark of the sacred fire which animates Youth. Such, we think, was the idea which guided the capricious pencil of the author of this fresco.
An Hermaphrodite. Plate XL is commented upon thusly:
THIS figure represents an hermaphrodite full of grace, youth, and beauty…The hermaphrodite here represented gracefully raises the mantle in which he is enveloped, and reveals at one and the same time the organ of virility and a woman’s breast.
An attentive examination of this painting will show that such a being could not exist. The beauty which glows in every one of his limbs; the softness revealed by the rounded forms; everything, in this figure, betrays a sensible and passive being, created for resistance and defeat; there is nothing there, on the other hand, to indicate the vigour and boldness of character which is the birthright of the sex made to attack and to conquer.
A Satyr and Hermaphrodite. Fresco from Pompeii. Plate XLII is commented upon thusly:
A SATYR has surprised a nymph asleep in a solitary place. He prepares to violate her, and already having lifted up the veil that envelops her, he casts a profane look on her most secret charms; but imagine his confusion on perceiving that he has accosted a hermaphrodite! Full of shame and vexation, he seeks to fly; but the hermaphrodite, whose sleep was doubtless only a feint, tries to hold him, and seems himself to promise him pleasures of which he had not dreamt.
In order that nothing may be wanting to complete the obscenity of this painting, we observe in the background a Hermes, crowned with the petasus, bearing in one hand the pedum, or pastoral crook, and in the other the drinking-vessel, in the shape of a horn, called κρατὴρ.
As we have already remarked, these Hermes, with gigantic phalluses, were placed at the entrance of gardens to keep away robbers and sorcerers. They generally bore an inscription the idea of which was as pleasant as the expression was unseemly. We will quote two, taken at random from the collection entitled Priapeia:
Fœmina [Femina] si furtum faciet mihi virque puerque, Hæc cunnum, caput hic, præbeat ille nates.
The Latin quote is from “Priapeia: sive diversorum poetarum in Priapum lusus” meaning, “Sportive Epigrams on Priapus by divers poets in English verse and prose” (trans by Leonard C. Smithers and Sir Richard Burton, 1890 AD). Priapus 21 translated the Latin as:
An fro’ me woman shall thieve or plunder me man or a man-child, she shall pay me with coynte, that with his mouth, this with arse.
If a woman, man, or boy, thieve from me, let her coynte, his mouth, the latter’s buttocks, be submitted [to my mentule].
The second, above referenced quote is from Priapus 5:
Quod sim ligneus, ut vides, Priapus, et falx lignea, ligneusque penis: prendam te tamen et tenebo prensam: totamque hanc sine fraude, quantacumque est, Tormento, citharaque tensiorem, ad costam tibi septimam recondam.
Though I be wooden Priapus (as thou see’st), with wooden sickle and a prickle of wood, yet will I seize thee, girl! And hold thee seized and This, however gross, withouten fraud sStiffer than lyre-string or than twisted rope I’ll thrust and bury to thy seventh rib.
Such is the perversity of Pagan cultures.
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