The Moonspeaker:
Where Some Ideas Are Stranger Than Others...
Webster's First New intergalactic WICKEDARY of the English Language
Conjured by Mary Daly in cahoots with Jane Caputi
With an Experimental Webbing by Alexiares
PRELIMINARY WEB FOUR
Pronunciation:
Denouncing, Pronouncing,
Announcing
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, pronunciation means "the action of pronouncing authoritatively or proclaiming." The Wickedary definition of this word is "the action of Denouncing, Pronouncing, or Announcing authentically, or Naming." These three modes of Pronunciation will be examined in this Web.
Preliminary to the Weaving of this Web, it is helpful to ponder an important question posed in an essay entitled "The Spelling and Pronunciation of English," in the American Heritage Dictionary:
What is the nature and extent of correlation, in English, between spelling and pronunciation?
Hearing this question with our Labyrinthine Sense, our Third Ear, Websters Announce that there are many correlations between Spelling and Pronunciation. Witches cast Spells by means of Pronunciation, and we sometimes change spelling in order to Pronounce Spells. The threads of Spelling and Pronunciation are intricately intertwined. In this Web "the nature and extent of the correlation" will be Divined.
I. Denouncing
According to Webster's, the verb denounce means "to pronounce... to be blameworthy or evil." Websters Pronounce patriarchal ideologies, institutions, and practices to be blameworthy and evil. The power of our Denouncing is suggested by an "obsolete" definition of denounce: "to indicate by or as if by omen: PORTEND, AUGUR" (Webster's). Websters portend the end of phallocratic evil, Auguring Other realities.
The ideologies, institutions, and practices thus Denounced have as their common method usage. Websters Denounce both "good" usage and "bad" usage, proclaiming the termination of such usage.
The usual sense of usage is expressed in the following definition: "habitual use, established custom or practice" (O.E.D.). The patriarchs are perpetual users of women, nature, and words, according to "customs" and practices that are established, ruthlessly regulated, and legitimated by themselves, exclusively for their own benefit and much to the detriment of those whom they use.
Prudes note with Disgust that one definition of the noun use is "employment or maintenance for sexual purposes" and that the verb use can mean "to have sexual intercourse with" (O.E.D.). Moreover, Be-Witching women note that the same dictionary offers the following fascinating example of the verb use, from a text published in 1584: "Manie are so bewitched that they cannot use their owne wives."
Clearly, Websters oppose phallic usage. So also do Wicked words, especially Originally Wild Words that have been bound, gagged, and distorted, rendered unable to prevent the usage of their sister-words and women. Among such words are Amazon, Spinster, Virago, Angel, Archimage, Familiar, Fury, Muse. These words are freed when Websters summon the courage to Denounce their users/abusers.
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II. Pronouncing
We have seen that Spelling and Pronunciation are intricately interrelated. The Pronouncing of Wickedary words is Elemental Sounding of the spoken letters of the alphabet, as these combine to form the Primal Race of Words. Websters Pronounce cosmic sounds, meanings, rhythms, vibrations, Naming forth creation. This is possible when women Hear ourSelves and each other to speech.
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III. Announcing
According to Webster's, the verb announce means "to make known publicly." It also means "to give notice of the arrival, presence, or readiness of." Yet another definition is "to declare beforehand: FORETELL." The Wickedary Announces publicly the arrival, readiness, and Presence of women and words whose Time has come. It declares beforehand, foretelling triumphs of the Fates.
Announcing, then, is Oracular. The word oracle is derived from the Latin orare, meaning "to speak." One definition of oracle is "a medium by which a pagan god reveals hidden knowledge or makes known the divine purpose" (Webster's). The Announcements of Sibyls are Oracles which unveil the shamefully hidden ignorance of patriarchs and their gods and Divine publicly their deadly "divine" purposes. Such Announcements release women from mindbinding mystifications intended to stop our movement, to hide the Pixy-paths of our own Divining.
Announcing women make known publicly the fact that mysterious men and their gods have no power to Divine/Foretell the ways of Wild be-ing. We point out that this is why they are obsessed with reducing the world to a laboratory under their control, where they "predict" the responses of their victims. Announcing Mediums give notice of the Presence of unpredictable animals, words, and women, as well as Other Unpredictable Elements. These live in the Background, untamed and undomesticated.
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AUTHOR'S IN-TEXT FOOTNOTES
[*] See Word-Webs One and Two.
[*] The importance of rhythm and rhyme in the Pronunciation of Spells has long been recognized by Witches and even by the scholars of patriarchy. Robert Briffault gives numerous examples illustrating worldwide acknowledgement of these connections. Thus, he cites Sir John Rhys, who in 1901 wrote: "Verse-making appertained from the outset to magic, and it was magicians, medicine men [sic], or seers who for their own use first invented the aids of rhythm and meter." See Robert Briffault, The Mothers: A Study of the Origins of Sentiments and Institutions, 3 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1927), I, 18. Moreover, Giuseppe Ferraro in 1886 explained: "Incantations do not consist in words pronounced in a low voice, but in formulas uttered with solemnity, like the responses of an oracle. The mind of the common people, and not theirs alone, is impressed by words pronounced with a certain rhythm, cadence and emphasis, whatever be their actual meaning; the ear, rather than the brain, so to speak, is impressed." To this, Briffault adds the following information: "The Hindus and Arabs have a simple means of depriving a sorceress of the power to do her harm; they extract her front teeth, so that she is unable to sing or articulate distinctly." See The Mothers, I, 19.
AUTHOR'S FOOTNOTES
[1]. Wayne O'Neil, "The Spelling and Pronunciation of English," in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976), p. xxxv.
[2]. In the 1970s many women took on the epithet "Bitch" as a defiant affirmation of strength. See Joreen, "The Bitch Manifesto," in Radical Feminism, ed. by Anne Koedt, Ellen Levine, and Anita Rapone (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1973), pp. 50-59.
[3]. Animals have been major targets of patriarchal users. An example of such an experimenter is Professor Harry Harlow, who, together with his wife, M.K. Harlow, proclaimed: "Another excellent reason for using other species is that we can subject them to conditions that cannot be imposed on human beings. We can expose them to long periods of social or sensory deprivation.... We can also damage the brains of laboratory animals." Cited in Richard Ryder, "Experiments on Animals," in Animals, Men and Morals: An Enquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-Humans, ed. by Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch and John Harris (New York: Taplinger, 1972), p. 75. Harlow's experiments included trying to induce mental disorders in infant monkeys by putting them into complete isolation for up to twelve months. Working with his colleague Stephen Suomi, Harlow strove to induce depression in infant monkeys by attaching them to artificial surrogate mothers. These cloth and wire contraptions were both "mothers" and torture devices which could eject high-pressure compressed air, rock so violently that the babies' teeth would rattle, or (on the scientists' command) eject brass spikes into the babies' skin. Not content with the artificial "monster" mothers, Harlow and Suomi produced living ones by taking female monkeys who had been raised in isolation and therefore would not accept sexual relations with males and placing these on what they termed a "rape rack," so that they were forced to conceive. After the babies were born, the mothers were often lethally abusive to them. See also Harry F. Harlow, Learning to Love (San Francisco: Albion, 1971). See Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals (New York: Avon Books, 1975), pp. 41-44. Andrée Collard, in her forthcoming book Rape of the Wild (London: The Women's Press, 1988), analyzes these and other atrocities against animals from the perspective of Radical Feminism. See especially Chapter Three, "Animal Experimentation," and Chapter Four, "Life With Father."
[4]. Nelle Morton, "Beloved Image," in The Journey Is Home (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), pp. 128-29.
[5]. See J.C. Cooper. An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), p. 24. In his entry under "Book," Cooper states: "The book is connected with tree symbolism and the Tree and Book can represent the whole cosmos. In Grail symbolism the book can also typify the Quest, in this case for the lost Word."
[6]. The basic reason for the tedium of such terms as chronology and chronological is that the chroniclers erase all woman-identified and Elemental events. An example of Crone-ology can be found in Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), pp. 15-17. An example of Crone-logical writing is this Web/essay.
[7]. Woolf first wrote of the "processions of the sons of educated men" in Three Guineas (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1938; Harbinger Books, 1966), pp. 60-84. This idea is further developed in Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, pp. 30-105.
[8]. The concept of the Boundary is discussed in Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation, pp. 40-43.
[9]. Patriarchal myth reflects the dearth of prophetic powers in males and their subsequent attempts to associate themselves with oracular sites and powers. Robert Briffault reports that the Norse god Wotan, or Odin, "was, in spite of the exalted position he occupied, deficient in prophetic powers. When he wanted to know the future he was compelled to have recourse to goddesses, in the same manner as his earthly counterparts had to resort to prophetic women." See Robert Briffault, The Mothers: A Study of the Origins of Sentiments and Institutions, 3 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1927), III, 67-68. It is significant that in Greek myth the god Apollo took over the Oracle of Gaea at Delphi but retained the priestesses. It is also noteworthy that when women visit ancient holy shrines such as the cathedrals built to Mary in Europe, they often experience a Divining Presence. This can be attributed to the fact that such edifices where built over ancient "pagan," woman-centered, sacred places. Similarly, the Kaaba, shrine of the sacred stone in Mecca and now regarded as the holy center of patriarchal Islam, was formerly dedicated to the pre-Islamic Triple Goddess Manat, Al-Lat, and Al-Uzza, the "Old Woman." See Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983), p. 487.
[10]. This idea was developed at length by Joyce Contrucci in a lecture entitled "Women, Common Sense, and Psychology," in which she analyzed the reductionistic and materialistic world view at the core of the discipline of experimental psychology. Contrucci's talk, given on October 17, 1985, in Cambridge, Mass., was one of a series of lectures sponsored by W.I.T.C.H. (Wild Independent Thinking Crones and Hags).
[11]. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1929; Harbinger Books, 1957), pp. 35-36.
[12]. Ibid., p. 36.
[13]. As Ernest Schachtel points out: "...the memories of the majority of people come to resemble increasingly the stereotyped answers to a questionnaire, in wich life consists of time and place of birth, religious denomination, residence, educational degrees, job, marriage, number and birthdates of children, income, sickness, and death." See Ernest G. Schachtel, Metamorphosis: On the Development of Affect, Perception, Attention, and Memory (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1959), p. 287.
[14]. "One of the medieval names for the owl was 'night hag'; it was said to be a witch in bird form." See Walker, Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, p. 754.
[15]. Magpiety is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as a jocular word. The following example is given from 1845: "Not pious in its proper sense, But chattring like a bird, Of sin and grace – in such a case Mag-piety's the word."
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