1.9.1 The Great Goddess
Is there a deeper psychological meaning to the shape of the Guza dolls, whether purely penile (Fig. 1.7) or incorporating the testicles as well (Fig.1.2 & 1.3)? Part of the sales description for the latter pair read “Both erotic and phallic, they have a definitive feminine allure that is hard to describe.”289 Patricia Reis successfully articulates this elusive appeal, contextualizing it in terms of Paleolithic and Neolithic goddess culture:
[T]he Great Goddess with a phallic aspect continued […] for at least 30,000 years […] The image holds within it a concept of the possibility for self-fertilizing, for self- renewal, and regeneration. It is not merely […] a feminized male [, n]or is it the masculinized feminine. Rather, these are profound images of a religious nature that demonstrate an ancient concept of female wholeness consisting of a fully developed femaleness and a fully developed maleness. What does it mean for a woman to have her own sense of an inner phallus? In the figurines it is not the outer phallus – the probing, seeking, erection – so much as it is a sustaining, supportive inner core. In the images from the paleolithic and neolithic eras, the phallic element tends to be in the upper part of the body, the neck and the head providing an axis around which the rest of the body is organized. […] She is an image that is complete – unto herself.290
Stella Richards makes a related point, asserting that “the multitude and astonishing longevity of prehistoric images depicting a beautiful phallic female point to this person as being our primordial archetype. In other words, this foxy babe rocks as our oldest and most enduring image of divinity; as such she informs our deepest and probably widest collective streams of consciousness.”291 Richards is at pains to point out that “only the
female androgyne can embody both complete sets of genitalia. Male androgynes [i.e.,
castrated male gods] gain breasts, but at the expense of both womb and phallus. As a result, male androgynes are sterile whereas female androgynes are abundantly fertile, in an orgy of self-pollination.” Displacing the female androgyne of prehistory (i.e., the goddess whose figure is an embodied phallus), male androgynes (i.e., castrati such as the
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“sorrowful gods” or “year gods”) have provided the dominant archetype of divinity in literate cultures for the past 5000 years. In this way, Richards argues, the original
matriarchal consciousness of the earth as a place of pleasure and prolific abundance was supplanted by a patriarchal mindset of “scarcity, struggle and sacrifice.”292 In the
Abrahamic religions, this expulsion from the Garden of Eden to a life of toil and adversity (Genesis 3:14-19) resulted in a ritual focus on surrogate castration
(circumcision),293 dietary prohibition, blood sacrifice and collective atonement, and also in a practical emphasis on military conquest as the key to survival.
1.9.2 A scientific postscript
Moving forward several millennia, modern genetics has revealed that a human zygote with an XY genotype does not always develop into a male child. Mutations that impair the function of the sex-determining gene Sry on the Y-chromosome typically result in Swyer Syndrome.294 Here, the genetically male child appears externally to be a healthy daughter and grows through childhood as a normal girl; however, in common with Stella Richards’ male androgynes (Section 1.9.1), this outward female lacks ovaries and is therefore infertile. The analogy extends no further; an XXY genotype (Klinefelter Syndrome) results in a male with reduced or no fertility,295 rather than in a female androgyne with heightened fertility or parthenogenic powers.
What is interesting, though, is the recent discovery that it only takes a small decrease in the functionality of the Sry gene product to cause the sex reversal of Sweyer syndrome during gestation.296 True for both mice and men, this fragility forms a striking contrast with the robustness of other major developmental pathways. It may be that this sensitivity engenders behavioral variability that broadens the spectrum of social competencies in males, and that communities of social mammals with a diversity of gender styles possess a survival advantage.297 Whatever the reason, it means that human males invariably develop near the edge of sexual ambiguity. One can perhaps view the phallic female template as hinting towards this unexpected biological truth.
1.9.3 Lemba/Venda interpretation
Without feeling any need to invoke an ancient self-fertilizing goddess, Jean-Marie
Dederen of the University of Venda (“Vendaland,” Map 3) makes a claim related to those in Section 1.9.1; he believes that – at the extreme – the phallic female template redefines manhood as a mere tool for the realisation of female identity. In his own words, “The [Schroda H3] figurine stated tacitly what all women knew intuitively, and what men did not like to discuss, or refused to admit openly, namely that the phallus does not beget children, but the womb does: in the sphere of human procreation, female sexual potency rules supreme.”298 However, this feminist vision is not all that the world of the Venda has to offer in relation to our understanding of phallic female figurines.
In 1960, an eminent Lemba nanga or ritual specialist (Section 1.4.2) indicated his familiarity with the type of clay figurines that had been excavated by Summers and were on display in Bulawayo at the National Museum of Zimbabwe (then called Southern
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Rhodesia). He interpreted the phallic female figurines in the collection in terms of Venda
mwana, which we met previously in Section 1.7.3. A mwana is a fired-clay “child” that a
mother makes for her young daughter; when the girl reaches puberty, her grandmother teaches her the milayo (“laws”) of her mwana, i.e. short sayings that allude to the correct relationship between husband and wife, especially in regard to having children.299 When the girl marries, she takes her mwana with her to her husband’s house and requires him to buy the privilege of seeing the doll – at the cost of an ox that is eaten by her parents – before the marriage can be consummated. When she finally shows the mwana to her husband, she asks him to recite its milayo, which of course he is unable to do. She then tells him to take the mwana to the bride’s grandmother (or, if this is not possible, another female elder of her family) for instruction. By agreeing to learn the laws the husband consents to bind himself to the mwana, and thus by extension to his wife. He then returns to his bride and, if he can recite the milayo to her satisfaction, she can no longer refuse his sexual advances, other than to extract some small final gifts of bangles and clay pots. The mwana is kept by the couple in their bedroom until their first child is born,
whereupon it is returned to the elder woman who taught the milayo, and ultimately re- used for the wife’s younger sister or daughter.300
The milayo of the mwana include a detailed exposition of the doll’s symbolism, as follows.301
(a) The head belongs to the father who conceived the bride, which is why
the doll’s head is phallic in form. The wife’s head is only on loan to her husband, so all spiritual and ritual matters relating to her remain the domain of her family of origin. For example, when the woman dies, she must be buried by her father or another elder from his family, and not by her husband.
(b) The legs and the body of the bride belong to her husband; having paid
for his bride with the ox, he now owns her labour and any children that she produces (whether or not he is their biological father). The strict separation between the ownership of the woman’s head and the rest of her body is emphasized by the ridge or collar-like protrusion on the mwana between its head and its chest.
(c) The breasts are the earth, providing nourishment to raise a family. (d) The navel is a young menstruating girl; as we saw in Section 1.8.2, its
convex form can be associated with the budding breast of an adolescent girl.
(e) The legs of the mwana symbolize a mature woman who now has a lover;
this refers to the practice whereby Venda and Tsonga girls who have reached puberty are permitted to take boyfriends for limited types of foreplay. The short stumpy legs of the mwana form a chevron (inverted V- shape) which symbolizes the female sexual organ.
(f) Pubic hair must be hidden by wearing the shedu, a pubic apron which
only the woman’s husband can remove.
(g) The buttocks are things of pleasure; they are considered highly erotic
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part of the body, often adorned with skirts of multicoloured beads or colourful garlands. After the marriage is consummated, the groom makes his bride a tshirivha, or soft goatskin skirt, which covers her buttocks and is engraved with spiral designs as symbols of her procreative power.
(h) The knee is the first joint and belongs to the husband. Its conjunction of
hard bone and soft flesh symbolizes man and woman, respectively, in union. The Venda are considered to have guarded their traditions and rituals more zealously than other southern African groups and are thus likely to have best preserved ancient indigenous customs.302 The concepts underlying the milayo of the mwana seem to extend beyond the Venda to Shona-speaking groups as well.303 Indeed, the vulvar interpretation of the chevron (point e above) and the decoration of the goatskin tshirivha, which covers the buttocks, with spirals as symbols of procreative power (point g above), are of such great antiquity as to have direct counterparts in Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic statuary from Eurasia.304
It is clear that the Gudza dolls have many features in common with the Venda mwana. They possess the distinctive and symbolically important ridge that divides the head from the rest of the body (points a and b above). Their phallic torsos have breasts and convex navels (points c and d); these are sometimes highlighted by red ochre (right-hand dolls in Figs. 1.2 & 1.4), which may serve as a symbol of menstruation (point d, also Section 1.8.4.1). Like the mwana, the Gudza dolls have no arms (which are symbolically irrelevant)305 and have short stumpy legs (point e). They wear decorated and brightly coloured skirts which cover both the buttocks (point g) and the pubic area (point f).