Ithyphallic; Wanking in Egyptian Mythology

The Egyptian god Min shows off his mighty dude.

The importance of the Egyptian skin flute in its mythological narrative is one that cannot be avoided, and the amateur historian, when tackling Egypt, is forced to either squeamishly quit their exploration or stare on helplessly at images of the mighty celestial bobby dangler so prevalent in her chiseled story. Due to their mostly phallocentric worldview and rich imagination, the Egyptians were fond of envisioning their very existence as the result of a good old fashioned wank of the gods, an idea so ingrained in the Egyptian psyche that it saw their Pharaohs mimic the story of creation by knocking one off into the Nile.

For the Egyptians, human reproduction and the inception of reality were intertwined, ejaculation itself was viewed as a microcosm of universal origin, and this connection informs many of Egypt's most important myths. So whereas you may be apathetic or repulsed by the sight of your everyday Jabari pulling the disco stick, the act of godly masturbation was something to be worshiped for its sorcerous properties. This suggests that masturbation holds a ritual importance for the Egyptians and is likely why royalty were encouraged to do battle with the schmekel in public.

According to some interpretations, the great creator, Atum, materializing into a vast nothingness, sought to relive his loneliness by pulling the pudding, and in doing so spewed forth from his immortal wang the first two major elemental deities in Egyptian lore, Shu and Tefnut, thus creating the universe with a flick of the wrist. The story is indicative of the phallocentric attitudes of the time, whereby all things material and immaterial are a result of male fertility. Even flooding of the river Nile itself was said to come from the johnson of the fertility god, Min, whose image was always engraved to include his colossal erection with one hand either pointed to the east or placed firmly around it.

The Egyptian view of masturbation was a conflicted one. In one hand, it was seen as a magical or ritual act, while in the other, it was wasteful and tasteless. This dispute is best exemplified in a myth wherein the gods Set and Horus were thoroughly engaged in a mutual hand shandy that didn't best please the goddess Isis, who chopped off Horus' hand as punishment, before reattaching it and pulling his dangle herself in order to revitalize him. Besides the obviously incestuous connotations to this tale, and the fact that Isis may have been a bit upset that her son was jobbing off he who murdered her husband, this tale says a lot about the casual nature of Egyptian sexuality. Masturbation can be something distasteful for the ancient Egyptians, when the act is performed in a certain unsavoury manner, but it is also something that can create or rejuvenate.

The ancient Egyptians weren't a shy bunch and reveled in all things flesh, from ritual masturbation to necrophilia, little was forbidden in the Egyptian bed room. So while chronic masturbation might not be the most heroic of undertakings from a Westernized standpoint, it played a major role in ancient Egyptian folklore, which brimmed with the sex magick that would become so vital to both Eastern and Western occultism throughout history.

So while you might not draw very much approval in publicly frying the lovewurst, be sedate in the notion that somewhere across the vast cosmos, behind endless curtains of dream and reality, through celestial vistas unfathomable to the inferior human mind, a glimmering entity of the divine is waging a red-faced war on his who-who-dilly, forever.