the magic wand

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Luigi Ontani, Cignoleda, 1975, courtesy of the artist

essay

by MARK ALIZART

artwork by LUIGI ONTANI

Writer and independent curator Mark Alizart explores contem­porary technology and cultural transformations. He has worked with art institutions such as the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. His latest books are Dark Tintin (published by Ner, 2023) and The Climate Coup (Polity Press, 2021).

In one of his early publications, Sigmund Freud compares psychoanalysis to magic. He writes in 1890 in Psychical (or Mental) Treatment that the fact that “pathological disorders of the body and mind can be eliminated by ‘mere’ words” of the physician makes it akin to a form of “watered-down magic.” More than 40 years later, Freud would use the same comparison between psychoanalysis and sorcery to denounce the burning of 20,000 books, including his own, in Berlin, ordered on May 10, 1933: “What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages, they would have burned me; nowadays they are content with burning my books.”

While it is true that psychoanalysis shares many common points with magic, one could argue that it lacks an essential tool in its panoply: the magic wand. Is psychoanalysis a form of magic that has discarded this somewhat ridiculous artifact upon its elevation to the status of a scientific discipline investigating the power of the unconscious? Or might we still find it hidden under the couch if we looked hard enough?

Ultimately, it depends on what we consider a magic wand. Freud, an avid cigar smoker, once said that “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” In this regard, it is possible that a magic wand is “just an enchanted piece of wood.” But more likely, like cigars themselves, it is a metaphor for something else. After all, we know another part of the human body that can become as hard as wood, seemingly by magic, and is of great interest to psychoanalysis. In fact, in ancient times, a certain anatomical appendage closely resembled a real wand: the baculum, or penile bone, and also the clitoral bone.

The baculum (meaning “stick” in Latin) refers to a small oblong bone inside the penis of almost all mammals, with the notable exception of Homo sapiens and large herbivores (horses, bulls, deer, as well as rabbits and hyenas). Biologists still do not fully understand its exact purpose, but it may facilitate sexual intercourse. Some believe it serves as a vestigial “lock-and-key” mechanism that ensured a good grip between partners during copulation: the baculum is sometimes spiny or hooked like a fishhook, and smaller bacula are also found in the clitoris, possibly to help latch on. Others think the baculum is linked to sexual competition. It tends to be larger in polygamous mammals, where it might assist in sperm delivery by keeping the phallus rigid or by stimulating the ovaries. For example, researchers have noted that the baculum decreases in size when mice are forced to be monogamous for several generations. However, this explanation is not universally accepted. Chimpanzees, for instance, are polygamous but possess a tiny baculum. It is also possible that the duration of coitus plays a role: the shorter it is, the smaller the baculum tends to be.

The reason why humans and large herbivores lack the baculum remains equally mysterious. One thing is certain: this singular bone has not gone unnoticed by our ancestors, at least regarding the penile bone — the clitoral bone being too small to have been observed before the development of scientific anatomy. Paleontologists have discovered bacula of bears on the chests of the deceased, from the late Paleolithic period (around 14,000 BC), adorned with carvings. Similarly, decorated dog bacula have been found in human graves from the early Iron Age (around 1000 BC), indicating a long-standing practice. Anthropologists believe these bones might have served as fertility or protective amulets. It’s also suggested that they could have been used as awls for working leather hides.

Clearly, the baculum has inspired numerous myths and legends. Its absence in humans sets them apart from other animals in a curious manner. Humans appeared as beings who both do not possess a baculum (unlike carnivores) and walk on two legs (unlike herbivores and almost all carnivores, except dogs and bears, which occasionally walk on two legs). This peculiar distinction tempts one to draw a parallel between these two traits to define the human animal: walking on two legs, without the aid of forelimbs, and achieving an erection without the aid of a bone. Could it be imagined that humans acquired this upright stance in ancient times by being the only carnivores to have consumed their baculum, thereby transferring its rigidity to their entire body, while herbivores, not consuming meat, saw their bacula devoured by others?

This might be the essence of one of humanity’s oldest stories: Kronos overthrows his father Uranus, the sky god, after cutting off his genitals with a sickle (Kronos’s name derives from the Indo-European root ker, meaning “to cut”). According to the original version of this myth in the Hittite civilization of the Middle East, found in the Song of Kumarbi (the name for Kronos) from the 15th century BC (the era when the first bacula appear in graves), Kronos (named Kumarbi) ingests the castrated genitals of Uranus (named Anu). This suggests that he overpowered his father by assimilating his penile rigidity, perhaps even standing erect against him, whereas Uranus was depicted as a deity who still walked on all fours.

The incorporation of the baculum reappears in another of humanity’s oldest myths: Adam and Eve. According to biologist Scott Gilbert and biblical scholar Ziony Zevit, Eve was created not from Adam’s “rib” but from his supposed baculum. The authors present three arguments to support this idea. The first is the Hebrew word used for “rib”: tzela. While it certainly denotes a rib bone, its original meaning is a supporting structure, the trunk of a tree, a lintel of a door, or a bearing beam. They argue that it also served as a euphemism for the penis, which has no direct counterpart in Biblical Hebrew. The translation of Hebrew Bibles into Greek (the Septuagint) rendered tzela as pleura (a Greek word with a clear anatomical meaning), thereby fixing the interpretation as “rib.” Their second argument is that the Genesis text specifies that “God closed up the flesh” of Adam after extracting the “rib.” According to the rabbi and the biologist, this describes the slight seam or scar visible along the middle of the scrotum, known as the raphe. The third argument is that the rib bone has no generative power, at least no more than any other part of the skeleton, whereas such a power could be attributed to a bone presumably located in the male reproductive organ.

It goes without saying that this hypothesis — that Eve was created from the penile bone — has been deemed scandalous by the Church. A fourth argument, which the authors do not mention but which ties together sorcery and psychoanalysis, is the fact that the Bible portrays Eve as a temptress immediately after her creation, succumbing to the serpent’s invitation to eat the forbidden fruit. It seems logical to think that if women were essentially defined as beings of desire (rather than as the ancient Paleolithic goddesses of fertility), it was because they were believed to possess a sort of supernatural power over the penis, being carved from the same “wood” as its baculum, a notion typical of ancient thought. Or, in Lacanian terms, that women were immediately endowed with the capacity “to be the phallus,” in the absence of “having” it.

The same serpent can be found on the caduceus of Hermes. Traditionally, the caduceus is a branch with leaves still attached, which the god uses to exercise his own form of magic. It’s not hard to see why: such a staff, like the golden bough of the Sibyls, is full of sap, akin to the penis. It symbolizes life, in contrast to the witch’s staff, which symbolizes death. In The Odyssey, Hermes intervenes between Circe and Odysseus, preventing the shipwrecked hero from being transformed into an animal and drained of his essence by the mandrake-laced wine that the succubus offers her guests. The division between white magic and black magic originates here, in the distinction between masculine and feminine magic.

One of the main accusations against witches was that they were man-stealers, particularly of male seed. As women could magically cause erections in men from a distance, through just a look (the origin of the “evil eye”), some believed that certain women, perhaps more skilled in this magic, had the power to drain men’s virility in their sleep and, more prosaically, to bear their children unbeknownst to them, thus disturbing their lineage and siphoning off their inheritance.

It’s no coincidence that witches are depicted riding broomsticks: these are essentially giant bacula or winged penises, similar to Roman magical amulets. In a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder titled Melancholia, a woman with angel wings is sharpening a long piece of wood that seems destined to become a similar broomstick. This makes sense because melancholy, also known as the “demon of noon” in the Middle Ages, was believed to incite vice. The ancient association between the magic wand and the penile baculum is also found in The Odyssey with Circe, who transforms men into pigs and dogs — animals notoriously associated with lust — by touching them with a wand.

Men needed to counter this feminine threat by developing their own magic, wielding a magic staff to master their baculum. In the Bible, the motif of the “patriarch’s staff” first appears in the story of Jacob. He wrestles all night with an angel who pinches a part of his body — a detail translators cannot agree upon, suggesting the hip or the sciatic nerve — but this results in Jacob limping and needing a staff to stand upright. Could it be that the angel actually pinched his baculum, extracting it and presenting it to him as a staff, which proves to be magical? After this encounter, it is with this baculum in hand that Jacob, now endowed with sacerdotal power, founds a people, Israel.

Moses wields an even more distinctly magical staff, known as Nehushtan, “a piece of brass.” With it, he unleashes hail, brings forth water from rocks, turns the Nile into blood, and more. Rabbinic commentaries suggest this staff was created in the Garden of Eden, passed from Adam to Noah, then to Abraham, and finally to Moses. As a reminder of Adam’s misadventure and its penile origin, Moses’s staff has the ability to transform into a (flaccid) serpent and regain its rigidity at will.

Royal scepters also trace their lineage back to this original staff. Zeus’s scepter, crowned with a bird, reappears with Roman emperors (as the eagle) and English kings (as a dove). Again, the metaphor of the winged phallus is evident. The scepter (from the Greek skepto, meaning “support,” like the Biblical tzela), sometimes accompanied by the aptly named “rod” (virga, a short scepter), is an emancipated baculum, flying on its own wings. Jacques Lacan would later suggest that it symbolizes both the impotence and the power of the monarch. The scepter is a clear example of “symbolic castration”: demonstrating that the king’s power lies in something he does not possess, as it can be detached from him and wielded by another.

Finally, one could argue that the magic words a magician utters while waving his wand or brewing potions should be understood in this light. Since language is another key marker distinguishing humans from other carnivorous mammals, along with bipedalism and the absence of a baculum, it is plausible that our ancestors viewed the acquisition of language as another consequence of consuming the baculum, much like acquiring the upright stance.

It is tempting to think that the earliest alphabetic scripts — particularly Sumerian cuneiform — might owe their sharp, pointed stick-like appearance to the baculum, which also has a similar shape. What is even more intriguing is that alongside the scepter, “talking sticks” were used by Native American communities to manage the turn-taking in their discussions, as if speaking and holding a baculum were synonymous, or that scepters were used to authenticate speech in ancient Greece. Homer recounts in The Iliad that Agamemnon hands his scepter to Odysseus, granting him the authority to speak on his behalf. This scepter, moreover, was received from Hermes, the messenger god with a magic wand and the patron of orators, as well as of thieves and magicians. Closer to our time, in the Epistles of Paul, speech is compared to another kind of staff: the sword (“the sword of the Spirit,” Ephesians 6:17). In the Gospels, it is endowed with a nourishing power, akin to the male sex (“Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God,” says Jesus in Matthew 4:4). In the Old Testament, it has a seminal power: God creates the world by speaking it into existence.

Etymologically, the “Word” or verbum derives from the Sanskrit root vrata, meaning “law, promise.” Similarly, the Greek eiros, found in the French orateur (orator) and also sorcier (sorcerer), descends from the Indo-European root ser, meaning “to bind” (like ormos in Greek) and “to support” (as in erma). Again, the notion of “support” expressed in Adam’s tzela reappears. Speech is like a supporting beam, like a baculum. It is thus unsurprising that speech was endowed with the same powers as a magic wand. Abracadabra, as far as we can ascertain its meaning, might translate to: “Let my words be creative” (evra kedebra in Aramaic), essentially, “Let my will be done,” or equally “Let my words be strong.”

Jacques Derrida once spoke of “phallogocentrism” to critique the dominance of the phallus in psychoanalytic discourse on psychic life. However, he did not go so far as to consider that the logos (“word”) was the phallus itself, or more precisely its baculum, its magic wand. Let us hypothesize that this is indeed the nexus, the central point of this phallic preeminence and the hidden mechanism of what we could call its “spell.” How can we deconstruct the baculum, how can we remove the “support” that secretly underpins the structure of phallogocentric civilization without causing it to collapse entirely? This question preoccupied Lacan throughout his life, trying to distinguish the phallus from the penis. It is easy to understand why philosophers like Judith Butler and, following her, gender theorists and LGBTQ thinkers who seek to dephallicize thought, are seen as a threat and are attacked and denigrated as “woke,” and why they are the targets of new witch hunts.

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