Paper short abstract:

A discussion of the Shiva Linga at the cross lines between form and formlessness and between fertility oriented popular religion and society oriented priestly religion.

Paper long abstract:

In many ways the Shiva Linga illustrates the contradictory nature of religious objects. It gives a specific form to a god whose nature is without form or extends to all forms, a form which is not like a human being but still has a face (or more faces) and which even may originally have represented one specific body part, the male organ, which was later given theological meanings as representing the god's union with his female consort in a cosmic act of creation. In this paper I will focus on two points in which the Shiva Linga is at the cross lines between opposites. One is the crossing between the anthropomorphic and the aniconic, the form and the formless; the other is the cross line between a fertility oriented popular religion and a society oriented priestly religion where the latter seems to have been influential in the gradual downplay - noticed by many scholars - of the Linga's phallic aesthetics.