her•ma [hur-muh] n. pl. herms also her•mai
A rectangular, often tapering stone post bearing a carved head or bust, used as a boundary marker or for decorative purposes. Male genitals may also be carved at the appropriate height. This form was originated in ancient Greece, was then adopted by the Romans and brought back into fashion in the Renaissance.

To put that in more simple terms, a herma is a statue that features just the head and the cock-- nothing else but a rectangular stone holding them up. You'll have to forgive my phallocentric appreciation of the antiquities, but there's just not enough phallic worship these days (at least publicly). Which is why I think we should start a movement to bring back the herma.

Hermai (plural of herma) are associated with the god Hermes:

"Hermes is the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology. An Olympian god, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of road travelers, of orators and wit, of literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures, of invention, and of general commerce."

Hermes was a phallic god associated with fertility and luck. Hermai usually had the bust of Hermes, but the form was also used for portraits of public figures, writers and philosophers. That's what I'm really interested in-- we've all seen beautiful statues of naked gods, but I love the idea of public figures putting their genitalia on display for the masses. Why should we be so shy about our junk? The hermai were used as boundary markers on roads, but they were also placed in doorways of private houses and temples for good luck. They were extremely popular in Athens. To obtain good luck, one had to rub the genitals or anoint them with olive oil. Needless to say, with all that rubbing and anointing there aren't many hermai penises intact after 2,000 years.

There was a terrible event in Athens in 415 BC called "The Mutilation of the Hermai". From wikipedia:

"... the night before the Athenian fleet was about to set sail for Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War, all of the Athenian hermai were vandalized. This was a horribly impious act and many people believed it threatened the success of the expedition. Though it was never proven, the Athenians at the time believed it was the work of saboteurs, either from Syracuse or Spartan sympathizers from Athens itself. In fact, Alcibiades was accused of being the originator of the crime. He denied the accusations and offered to stand trial, but the Athenians did not want to disrupt the expedition any further. His opponents were eager to have Alcibiades' trial in his absence when he could not defend himself. Once he had left on the expedition, his political enemies had him charged and sentenced to death in absentia, both for the mutilation of the herms, and the supposedly related crime of profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries."

So, in my quest to bring back the herma, I pulled out a few slabs of marble, my hammer and chisel (or as the kids say these days, I opened photoshop) and I set to work. You can see the fruits of my labor here in these fine hermai of Ernest Hemingway, David Letterman and Sean Connery. I would personally love to put the herma of Sean Connery by our front door so that I could rub his genitalia on my way to work every morning. I think my husband might want someone like Viggo Mortensen or Daniel Craig so maybe we'll have to get two.

As a parting thought, I wanted to mention that in February 2007 a group of students at the University of Chicago snuck out in the middle of the night, carved a bunch of life size hermai out of ice and placed them around the campus. It's pretty cold in Chicago in February-- I wonder how long they lasted?