I only just now learned where the symbols for male and female comes from. I thought I knew, but looking back I just kind of assumed things. I just looked at them and speculated on what they meant. Now, the correct answer seems to be that they are actually alchemical symnols. The male symbol is really the alchemical symbol for the planet Mars. The female symbol is really the alchemical symbol for the planet Venus.
All this time I had totally different ideas as to what those symbols meant. I thought that the female symbol was an ankh. I’d always heard that the ankh represented life. I know the meaning behind the ankh is more complicated than that, but hey I was still in elementary school at the time. I thought that, since women have kids, then it makes sense that women are assoiciated with the ankh.
It was much later that I came up with an explanation for the male symbol. Actually it was years later before I even knew the symbol existed, (My first exposure to the other symbol was the Women’s Suffrage wonder in the original Civilization. I didn’t even see the other one until later). For a while it just puzzled me, but eventually I concluded that it was an abstract representation of male genitalia.
Now that I know the actual origins of those symbols I can’t believe I could have thought those other things were the real origins. After all, I came up with those explanations myself and never shared them, so how would I know if it was right? I was surprised to discover they had other origins, but honestly, how could I be surprised?
Did anybody else have the wrong ideas about those things?
I always thought of them as extremely stylized representations of the defining features of male and female anatomy. Not that that was the whole origin, but I suspect it certainly had an influence.
Okay I just looked it up… apparently it’s used for both. Like the Astronomical symbol for Mars is also used in alchemy for both Mars and iron. It’s a bit more complicated than I thought.
I knew the symbols as a dedicated astronomy geek for several years before first seeing them used to represent sex. I found it odd: “Why are they using the symbol for the planet Mars for men and the planet Venus for women? Why those and not Mercury or Saturn or Jupiter or something?”
If you turn them both upside down they look like stylized representations of (christian) church and devil, respectively. Coincidental, but weird, huh?
Why do you no longer think so? That’s one interpretation of their origin, which was as has been mentioned from the astrological symbols for Mars and Venus. The symbol for Mars, the god of war, includes his shield and spear; that for Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, represents his mirror. This reference shows the astrological symbols as depicted in the early 1500s. On the following page Mars’ symbol is identified as including a spear.
The female symbol, same as the ankh, is a stylized rendition of a vagina. The male symbol is an erect phallus. They also happen to be the symbol for Venus (both goddess and planet) and Mars (both god an planet), because those two were the shagging goddess and god (even though pappy Jupiter wasn’t anybody’s idea of a blushing flower, just to mention one).
That is a modern distinction that never would have occurred to the folks who were using those symbols. “Alchemists” used “astrology” in their work – they consulted the positions of planets, etc. to determine when to start various alchemical procedures. To them, it was all interrelated – some metals, salts, processes, etc. are masculine, fiery, or whatever and thus relate to Mars.
Eh? I thought that the Ankh was a stylized rendition of a sandal?
The symbol for Mars represents both god, planet, and the metal iron. Venus: goddess, planet, copper. Jupiter’s symbol represents god, planet, tin, and is supposed to be a stylized lightning bolt. Mercury’s symbol is god, planet, mercury (quicksilver), and represents Hermes’ winged caduceus (not the staff of Asclepius).
In romance languages they use the Roman names, but in English we use the northern european equivalents, so Tiu=Mars, Freya=Venus, Thor=Jupiter, and Wotan=Mercury.
And as was mentioned, alchemy, metallurgy, astronomy, and mythology weren’t distinct disciplines. They thought they were on to something important when they linked planets and days and symbols and substances and gods.