Iakov Levi
THREE WOMEN: THE PENIS
Jan. 15, 2003
Modified on June 24, 2005
When young, a flowery cavern home - when
old, a dragon on the roam
(F.Nietzsche, "Seven Short Maxims About Women", in Beyond Good and
Evil, 237)
In all events, the denial of the infantile
observation, namely, that women have no penis, is unconsciously shared by all
men (Theodor Reik, The Need To
Be Loved, Bantam Book, New york 1964, p.170)
Freud has shown that the little child is convinced that females possess a penis
like his own.
When he firstly discovers that the member is missing - there where it should
be - the uncanny event activates his own castration anxiety ("An Infantile
Neurosis", 1918, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of
Sigmund Freud, Ed. and Trans. J. Strachey, Hogarth Press,
Freud has also shown that the number three is the symbol of the penis
("Symbolism in Dreams"; "Introductory Lectures on
Psychoanalysis" (1915-1917) in op.cit., Vol.XV, pp.163-4).
Therefore, three women = one penis
The scaring fantasy of the missing female member emerges from the unconscious
in mythology, tales and art as the representation of three women.
Hecate
[Metropolitan
Greek mythology
presents to us the most ancients divinities as three women, triads of
goddesses and phallic monsters.
The Moires, Moirai, "The Three Fates". The European
word for the name 'Mary', which is not, as wrongly assumed, from the Hebrew
name Miriam.
Indeed, in the Gospels, a product of Western civilization, there are Three
Maries.
They were the Greek Fates. According to Hesiod, the daughters of Zeus and
Themis. They were Atropos (the unbending, or the inevitable),Clotho (the
spinner), and Lachesis (the caster of lots). As determiners of fate, they had
supremacy even over the gods. Clotho spun out the thread of life, Lachesis
determined its length, and Atropos cut it, resulting in death. The tale of Briar
Rose - The Sleeping Beauty - who befalls to her sleep - death while she is
spinning a thread, which is an obvious symbol of the penis, retraces the same
pattern: A virgin manipulating her own penis, and the close association with
Death.
Moira means Greek divine personification of fate, to whom even the gods were
subject. Latin Fata, which came to mean Fairy.
Three is a complete penis.
If a Fairy comes alone, she will hold a magic stick as an alternative penis.
Can we imagine a sole fairy without a magic stick? Something will be indeed
missing.
If they come in triads, they dont need a stick because their very number
represents the missing member.
Hesiod gives the Greek Moirae as Atropos, Clotho and Lachesis ( Theogony,
905-6). Their Roman counterparts were Decima, Nona (goddesses of birth) and Morta
(goddess of death).
The Erinnyes
were "the Angry Ones", known as the Furies in Roman. They were the
feared avenging goddesses in Greek and Roman mythology who were born from the falling
drops of blood of Uranus (Sky) when he was mutilated by his son, the Titan
Cronus. The drops fell on Mother Earth (Gaea) and impregnated her.
"...and Cronus cut off his father's genitals and threw them into the sea;
and from the drops of the flowing blood were born Furies, to wit, Alecto,
Tisiphone, and Megaera." (Apollodorus, Library and Epitome)
Other versions of their birth claim that they were the daughters of Mother
Earth and Darkness, or of Nyx (Night), or the Titans Cronus and Eurynome (and
thus sisters to the Moerae, the Fates). One of their famous victims, Orestes,
gave them the name 'Eumenides', the 'Solemn Ones', or 'Kindly Ones'.
Their home was at the entrance to Tartarus, that infernal place deep in the
Underworld where the souls of the condemned were exiled, a gloomy place in
Hades as far distant from earth as earth is distant from the sky. Others call
their home Erebus, the darkest pit of the Underworld. There, the Erinnyes would
screen out those unfortunate doomed who had yet to atone for their sins,
relentlessly tormenting them.
No prayer, no sacrifice, and no tears could move them, or protect the hapless
object of their persecution; and if ever they felt that the criminal would
escape them, they called in the assistance of the goddess Dike (Justice). The
Erinnyes were closely connected to Dike, for the merciless maintenance of strict
justice was their utmost concern.
Often they were depicted as repulsive winged female creatures wearing black
robes. Other descriptions adorned them with snakes twined in their hair,
piercing red eyes dripping blood, pitch-black bodies with bat wings, and even
sporting the heads of dogs.
In works of art and on the stage, however, their fearful appearance was greatly
softened down, and they were represented as solemn and purposeful maidens,
wearing the richly adorned attire of huntresses, with a band of serpents around
their heads, and serpents or torches in their hands (For the serpent as a
symbol of the female missing penis, cf. Why Is the Lady so
Sexy? and Caravaggio and La Madonna del serpente).
Because nobody really wanted anything to do with these avenging creatures,
mortals rarely referred to the Erinnyes by name, in case they invoked their
wrath. Instead they were often euphemistically called the aforementioned
Eumenides, the 'Kindly Ones' or 'Solemn Ones', the term coined by their hapless
victim called Orestes.
Quite often they were depicted as a large flock of flying creatures, with the
three named members leading the avenging pack.
Portrayed with and without wings, the Erinnyes in time became better known as
those responsible for avenging offenses by children against their mothers, and
not casually, because the erotic aggressive drive of the child is indeed
firstly directed toward the mother.
Orestes tormented by the Erinnyes because of his matricide
The Harpies, another triad of phallic monsters, who were filthy,
monstrous, vulture-like female beasts loathed by humans, often served the
Erinnyes in capturing or tormenting those unfortunate people who had displeased
them.
The Harpies were creatures who had characteristics of a bird and a woman,
similar to that of the Sirens. The Harpies had long claws and sharp beaks and
could fly as fast as a bolt of lightening. Their names were Aello, Ocypete, and
Celaeno; each as vicious as the other. They were also referred to as
"robbers," "snatchers," and "those who seize,"
meaning that they would steel anything that did not belong to them.
Three were the Gorgons , virgins phallic monsters, as the
Erynnies and the Harpies, and like them purely terrifying.
So frightening were the Gorgons that even other evil beings fled from the face of
Medusa, the most famous of them, so the Greeks used flat images of Gorgons'
faces for protection.
They are connected with Athene, for there is a myth about it, and Athene has
Medusa's head on her chest. Medusa's head is an apotropaic (mean of defense) against
genital penetration. Persephone too, the other virgin goddess, used it to scare
away uncalled visitors.
Only one Gorgon was ever killed by a male hero -- Medusa herself. And not
casually she was also the only one who lost her virginity, having been raped by
Poseidon.
The other two were immortal and could not be killed at all.
Therefore, losing virginity, i.e., the virginal penis, and dismembering
from the number three, meant death.
The three Graiae sisters, themselves sisters of the Gorgons, always stay
together because they have only one eye and one tooth to share among
themselves.
As Freud and Abraham have shown, the eye and the tooth are a phallic symbol.
Therefore one eye is one penis, and one tooth is the same. Again, three women =
one penis.
(bronze) (Blue/bronze Gypsumstone)
The Celtic Matronae are an elaboration of
the Mediterranean nursing goddess Iono Lucine. This threefold image shows the
Mothers holding Baby, napkins, and bath sponge. Throughout Celtic Gaul, Spain,
and
From Raffaello's Three Graces to the Judgement of
Caravaggio's Deposizione nel sepolcro: Three women
The Three Maries
Macbeth meets the three witches
Three are Macbeth's witches, seducing him into the regicide - patricide and
punishing him after the deed. Like the Moires, they are the symbol of Destiny,
which cannot be escaped. A seducing and menacing female member, which lures and
destroys.
It stands in his way, and Macbeth will be lured into
his Fate.
Three are The Ladies in the Magic Flute, the envoys of The Queen of Night,
symbol of the maternal womb. They bring Salvation to Tamino, as the three
witches of Macbeth had brought perdition.
In Mozart's Don Giovanni there
are three women: Donna Anna, Elvira, Zerlina
Three women persecute Don Giovanni, like the three Erinnyes persecuting Orestes
for his matricide.
And there are three women in "The Marriage of Figaro": The Countess,
Susanna and Marcellina.
...And three are The
Witches of Eastwick, in the marvelous film with Jack Nicholson:
The female penis is the symbol of the feminine, the beginning and the end, from
the genital level, back to the oral- sadistic and down to the intrauterine. As
such, it is unconsciously perceived as the substance of everything, life and
death, Eros and Tanatos.
In The
Theme Of The Three Caskets , Freud interpreted the three caskets as
three women, and the choice which the hero is compelled to make between them,
as the choice of Death. However, there is something more.
As he has shown, the third woman, the preferred one, symbolizes Death.
However, three is also the symbol of the penis. Therefore, choosing the third
woman means also an act of defloration - castration, which the male inflicts on
the woman (Cf. Caravaggio, Clitoridectomy
and the Talion of the Woman).
Freud writes:
We
might argue that what is represented here are the three inevitable relations
that a man has with a woman—the woman who bears him, the woman who is his mate
and the woman who destroys him; or that they are the three forms taken by the
figure of the mother in the course of a man’s life—the mother herself, the
beloved one who is chosen after her patterns, and lastly the Mother Earth who
receives him once more. But it is in vain that an old man yearns for the love
of woman as he had it first from his mother; the third of the Fates alone, the
silent God-dess of Death, will take him into her arms (op.cit.).
However, it seems to me that
the argument is a rationalization, an abstract overlay on the concrete material
from the deeper layers of our unconscious. The choice of Death is not the
choice of the inevitable, but the product of an instinctual drive (Trieb),
which is penetrating - castrating the female. In our unconscious, the genital
sadistic instinct of penetrating - castrating the female translates into
fantasies of death. The death of the female, and subsequently also the
inevitable retaliation, which translates in our own death ( Lex Talionis).
This theme also reconnects to what Freud himself has said on castration being
equivalent to Death ("The
Uncanny," in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological
Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. & trs. James Strachey, vol. XVII (London:
Hogarth, 1953), pp. 219-252).
Choosing one female between three means deflowering, and only by
extension means also Death. As evidence, I can bring Shakespeare's The
Taming of the Shrew, in which only one woman in three (the shrew) is tamed
= chosen = deflowered, and the context is not within Death, but within a happy
end = marriage. Petrucchio, the Hero, tames ( = deflowers) the hardest point of
the three women (the female penis). Henceforth, he wins, like Perseus
who castrates - deflowers Medusa, one of the three Gorgons.
See: Marino Marini and “The Coachmaker’s Three
Daughters” (Le tre figlie del carrozziere)
Marino Marini: Scenario
The Tripartite Medusa
The repetition of the same concept. Three = penis. Serpents
= penis
I should like, however, to devote a few words to one symbol, which , as it were, falls outside this class -- the number 3. Whether this number owes its sacred character to this symbolic connection remains undecided. But what seems certain is that a number of tripartite things that occur in nature- the clover leaf, for instance - owe their use for coats of arms and emblems to this symbolic meaning. Similarly, the tripartite lily - the so called fleur de lis and the remarkable heraldic device of two islands so far apart as Sicily and the Isle of Man - the triskeles (three bent legs radiating from a center) - seem to be the stylized versions of the male genitals (S.Freud,"Symbolism in Dreams", in op.cit., pp.163-4).
Witches...Witches...Witches
...And riding three women,
Postscript
It is very interesting to notice that whereas
three women are represented naked, at least one of them is shown with her back
turned to the spectator, concealing her genital and exposing her buttocks to
the viewer’s glance.
Are they the same?
Representations in art work like dreams: by condensation. The women who expose
their genital show that there is no penis there. However, the little child,
when he discovers the lack of penis in the woman, he firstly search it in other
parts of her body, mainly in the rear. At some stage he even makes an
interpretation that the fecal column is a substitute for the missing member.
Hence, in some men the libido, which was fixated on this early fantasy,
translates into a preference for anal penetration. They uncosciously fantasize
to meet in the anus the female penis they did not find in the woman's genital.
The representation of three naked women, and one or two of them exposing the
buttocks - and sometimes also the hip - instead of the front, means: “You see
we have no penis in the genital, nor in the rear, nor in any other part of our
body. Hence we are three in order to represent the materialization of one whole
penis”.
The child’s curiosity is satisfied and our unconscious tension is relieved.
The Three Graces (A Roman sculpture dating to the first century
A.D.) (Kolo Moser: Three
Women - 1914)
Canova in S. Petroburg
Gaugin
Martial Raysse
In Gaugin's painting we can see that even if the three women are not naked, the
painter's unconscious intention was of displaying them in a tri - dimensional
position. In this work of art, too, the repressed malaise emerges to the
surface. The same is true for Pop artist Martial Raysse in his Paysage
Champêtre en Quinze Tons (1963).
On the migration and displacement of the fantasized femal penis to the rear,
and then to the tress, see: Rapunzel and Other Stories
of Beautiful Hair
Botticelli's Primavera
Zero sum
In the famous Renaissance painting, we can
see that the Three Graces make with their hands the symbol of the female
genital. The meaning is clear: we are three, therefore we are a penis.
Henceforth there is a penis in our genital. This artistic representation is
equivalent to the dream of one of Abraham's patients. The patient dreamed of a
spider with a thread, and Abraham interpreted the patient's dream as the
representation of a female genital (the spider) with a penis (the thread)
("The Spider as a Dream Symbol" (1922), in Selected Papers of Karl
Abraham, Hogarth Press,
In the advertising's representation we see the same unconscious meaning: We are
zero, namely a female genital, which is rounded (like a Zero) and which is
lacking (like Zero). However we are three, namely we are a penis. The
representation condenses the same message.
Gerard David: Christus am Creuz, 1515
(Gemalde Galerie -
Cf. Hands. From Rodin's Sublimation of an Instinctual Need
to Hitler's Perversion
An icecream in Vienna Capogrossi in Rome (Le Tre Pere)
Death - Castration
(Francalancia: "Beccacce")
Links:
Caravaggio and the Deposizione nel sepolcro
Duccio and La Madonna dei Francescani
Caravaggio, Clitorectomy and the Talion of the Woman
Caravaggio and La Madonna del serpente
Truth Is a Woman: Bernini - Giorgione - Manet
Medusa, the Female Genital and the Nazis
Mikis Theodorakis, Anti - Semitism, and Castration Anxiety
The Three Little Pigs and Bruno Bettelheim. How not to Make an Interpretation
Cinderella and "The Puss with the Boots"