Phallism
the worship of the fertilizing power of nature under the symbol of the phallus. The idea that natural productions were engendered in a manner akin to the propagation of man and the lower animals is poetically expressed by Vergil and Lucretius. Phallism appears to have been at first an independent cult, but was afterward adopted into other forms of worship. The Phœnicians ascribed its introduction into their worship to Adonis; the Egyptians to Osiris, the Phrygians to Atys, and the Greeks to Dionysos.