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 ONE
The Wickedary:
Its History/Metamystery
The work of the Wickedary is a process of freeing words from the cages and prisons of patriarchal patterns. Under the rule of snools, words are beaten down, banalized, reduced to serving the sentences of father time. They are made into ladies-in-waiting, wasted and worn in the service of thought-stopping grammar.
Websters unwind the bindings of mummified/numbified words. This process involves Hearing/Speaking through Other Time/Space. It implies unwinding the clocks of fathered time, which is tidy time. The Timing of the Wickedary deliberately counters the death march of patriarchal deadtime.
Websters Weave the Wickedary in the Thirteenth Hour. This Time is Moon-measured, Moon-Wise, beyond the reach of man-measured doomsday clocks, the tedious timers and ticking time bombs of clockocracy. It is the Time of Crone-logical innovation/creation.
The Wickedary is a declaration that words and women have served the fathers' sentences long enough. Websters ride the rhythms of Tidal Time, freeing words. Like birds uncaged, these Soundings rush and soar, seeking sister-vibrations. Wickedary words, when Heard, sound the signal that Tidal Time has come.
The Archaic History of the Wickedary
In a Weird sense, these Wicked Weavings originated some immeasurable Time ago. Indeed, the Wickedary's origins are Archaic. They are whenever/wherever women first began/begin Be-Speaking. The Wickedary's background is the Background.
Many of the Wickedary's threads were Originally caught in ordinary patriarchal dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary, American Heritage Dictionary, and, of course, Webster's. This has been possible and continues to be possible because such lexicons themselves contain countless hidden Webs. Websters/Wickedarians are familiar with the experience of "chasing through the dictionary," that is, of catching the thread of a word and following it (for example, by checking out synonyms, looking up words contained in the definition, following clues in the etymology or simply lighting upon another word on the page, for instance, a Guide Word). This following and chasing of words is a process of tracing a hidden Web and then Webs of Webs, threading/treading the way/ways through the Labyrinth of words buried in dictionaries.
Websters are aided in the Dis-covering of Webs in dictionaries by the fact that these lexicons still contain "archaic" and "obsolete" words and definitions. Our Web-finding is aided also by the fact that there are deep resonances even in currently used words, which carry in their wake ancestral Memories of hidden Elemental meanings. Such words – in contrast to mere elementary terms – can be Deeply heard by those whose Labyrinthine Sense has been awakened. That is, they can be Heard/Understood by the Internal Ear of a Wicked Webster – one who actively chooses her own Wildness. They can be Seen by a Spinster who chooses to Realize her Self and her own kind, that is to see with Real Eyes.
Wickedarians believe that one reason we can Dis-cover Webs of Wild Words in the ordinary dictionaries of patriarchy is that these were Archaically woven by Wild Women – by our own kind. Even when denied access to the written word and to the academented fraternities of Bearded Brother No-it-alls, women have always talked. Women have Be-Spoken logically, powerfully, magically, Elementally. The Race of Wild Women has always been a Race of Speakers, Spinners, Weavers. Weird Women have been Great Original Communicators, and with respect to these communications, the role of dictionary editors has essentially been merely to compile. The word compile is itself an A-mazing clue. Derived from Latin compilare, meaning "to plunder," it means "to collect into a volume" and "to compose out of materials from other documents" (Webster's Collegiate). The dryasdust pedants of patriarchy have plundered and pillaged women's Word-Weavings. They have collected and twisted the Wise Words of Crones in their tedious tomes. They have composed/decomposed documents from materials which are the Documents of Others' Lives.
The Wickedary's History, then, is interwoven with the History of the Race of Wild Women, and its Webs are comprised of Re-weavings as well as New Weavings of that History. Repairing and Dis-covering our own Archaic Webs, Websters create Archaic Futures. We Spin into Original Time and, from that perspective, wink at the pomposity of the "sacred" paternal pronouncement that "in the beginning was the word." Quite simply, "the word" of wasters/erasers of women's History is a colossal lie.
Websters Re-Weaving our own Heritage howl at the "history" of wantwits and windbags. As Gossips, we Gossip out (divine and communicate) the secrets of our own History, which have been smoldering among the Embers of the Fires in which Fore-Crones/Fore-Websters were burned alive as Witches. These secrets – hidden by "history" – empower us to Gossip wisdom from the stars.
Wickedarians Dis-covering Webs hidden in dictionaries and Other Sources participate in the creation of Terrible Tapestries and Live in Crone-Time. We Weave in the Presence of Other Gossips, that is, Boon-Companions. Crone-logically and Super Naturally we Gossip out the true nature of the history of man, encountering and exposing The Mystery of Man.
The Mystery of Man
According to Webster's, the word mystery is derived from the Greek myein, meaning "to initiate into religious rites," and also meaning "to close (used of the eyes and lips)." These etymological clues can lead Websters a long way in the complex process of unraveling the mystery of the word mystery. In the process of unraveling, we should consider the fact that the Greek etymology itself is fraught with mystery. Why, we might ask, should initiation involve an injunction to close the eyes and the lips? A miasma of mystification and murkiness is attached to the very word mystery. If we look steadily at this word, Seeing it with Real Eyes, we understand that it functions within a patriarchal contest as an archetypal elementary term, that is, as a mummy term. It serves to mummify Crones, to confuse, ensnare, and tame Terrible Women, and ultimately to block Elemental Journeyers.
Webster's serves up several definitions of mystery, each more unappetizing than the next. Thus, for example, we read that it means "a religious truth revealed by God that man cannot know by reason alone and that once it has been revealed cannot be completely understood... usu cap: a Christian religious rite or sacrament: as (1) EUCHARIST (2) mysteries pl. HOLY MYSTERIES (3) any of the 15 meditations on the events of the life of Christ forming the major part of the rosary devotion." It is Crone-logical to point out that one possible reason why a "religious truth" said to be revealed by god continues to be unintelligible is simply that it makes no sense. Mystified believers are of course commanded to deny their own intellectual integrity and blindly believe the babbling of men to whom god purportedly has revealed the nonsensical mystery.
Wicked Women, who notice that the "religious mysteries" of men make no sense, are enabled to gain Pyromantic perspective on other activities of mysterious men. In sum: Their academented speech makes no sense; their military science makes no sense; their -ologies (classified information) make no sense; their politics make no sense; their laws make no sense; their medicine makes no sense. Of course, Seers are ordered to keep our eyes closed to all of this mysteriousness/nonsense and to say nothing. Such Crone-logical, unclassifiable information is taboo.
A Bitchy, Be-Witching woman – a Soothsayer – is compelled to Notice and Denounce the universal lack of sense masked by mysterious men. Such Formal Denouncements by Furies could be grouped under several nonclassifications, such as "The Failure of Man"; "Flopocracy: A History of Man's Disasters"; "The Mysterical Man: A Critical Study in Male Psychology"; "The Eternal Mystery/Mistery/Misery of Man."
Many women, having frequently peeked behind the male veils and Gossiped out the facts, are able to Hear such Denouncements. Sensing and dreading imminent possibility of such exposure, man cloaks himself in ever murkier mysteries. He is constantly having mysterics/misterics. In his religious "revelations" especially, he mysterically reveals/re-veils himself. He withdraws into all-male clubs and secret societies – those manifold priesthoods of cockocracy marked by mumbojumbo, ridiculous rituals, and cockaludicrous costumes. Hoping to distract from his own stupendous senselessness and to prevent women from Seeing through and Naming his illusions/delusions, he requires/prescribes female "mysteriousness," pompously proclaiming that women's eyes and lips must be sealed.
The Weaving of the Wickedary requires Opening our eyes, particularly our Third Eye, emitting Eye-Beams/I-Beams – Radiant Glances of the Eye/I. It demands the Opening of Augurs' lips to Name Reality. Under phallocratic rule, the Eyes and Lips of women have been forcibly sealed by the stupendously stupefying weight of the omnipresent mysteries of phallicism. Fired and empowered by Fury, Labrys-wielding Amazons and Viragos rip the veils of male mysteries, especially the "supernatural" ones. We Announce the Arrival of the Super Natural, the Supremely Natural. We unveil and release the Powerful Witch within our Selves – the Great original Witch who is hidden by such manmade mysterious archetypes as the "eternal feminine."
Lacking Biophilic History, patriarchal males have needed to make up "mystery" to hide an abysmal absence of Presence. They have distracted Others from this rise by projecting and fixing the label "mysterious" not only onto women but also onto Wild be-ing, blocking Realization of Elemental Powers. Countering this ruse, the Wickedary participates in the work of exposing the sordid mysteries of sadosociety's priesthoods, which are contrived to confound their victims, to mute the Wicked Words of Moon-wise Weirds and Websters.
Wickedarians unfold the man-made blindfolds that are intended to block Visionary Powers and prevent the Unfolding of Be-ing. We tear away the gags intended to stop the Nagging of Nags and Hags. When we speak of such Unfolding/Ungagging as History we are saying that the Be-Speaking of our Selves as Seers is twined with the work of creation. Our task is nothing less than Dis-covering and creating Real History behind/beyond mystery, finding our Final Cause, participating in Realms of Metamystery.
Metamystery
The History that is Dis-covered and created by Websters is Metamystery, in dimensions that incorporate all of the senses of the prefix meta-. First, the breakthrough to Metamystery occurs only after a woman has refused to keep her eyes closed and remain silent about the Awesome Archaic Powers of her Self and all Elemental be-ing. Second, a woman rips open man's mystery by actualizing these Elemental Powers, thus Dis-covering what is behind the man-made veils that have clouded her Vision. She sees through the non-sense of phallocracy/fooldom and Touches her own Wild Reality, her Background.
The third dimension of Metamystery follows logically from such an experience – or series of experiences – of breakthrough to the Background. That is, there is a release of pent-up Gynergy which transforms a woman's ways of thinking, feeling, acting. The Fire of her Fury melts down the embedded man-made plastic passions and unpots the potted passions that marked/marred her former life as a patriarchally possessed "mysterious" woman. She sloughs off the pseudovirtues of victimhood that were enforced during long years in the State of Servitude and acquires the Volcanic Virtues/Vices of a Virago. Breaking out of bondage, she learns to bond with Others. Re-membering ancient connections, she enters Metamorphospheres.
This transformative activity brings a Metamorphosing women to the fourth dimension of Metamystery, which is movement beyond the mysteries of man into Original Time, that is, Creative Time – the Time of Metamemory and of Archaic Futures. Moved by Wonder at the absolutely Natural workings of Elemental Reality, Creative Crones transcend the mummified state that is legitimized and sustained by dead faith in man's mysteries.
The Concealment of Elemental
Communicating Powers
Female History/Metamystery actually happens when Wicked women refuse complicity in the patriarchs' concealment of our Powers, particularly our Metamysterious Elemental powers of Communication. By labeling women and nature "mysterious," the paternal propagandists have committed a colossal crime of reversal, negating/denying the Powers of Seers and Soothsayers. There is a major clue in this strategy of the mindbinders, spookers, and wasters who rule the Phallic State. By attempting to hide Elemental Powers of Communication they have indicated how strong these Powers are.
Indeed, Elemental Powers of Communication are at the root of those abilities which are readily attributed to women in the State of Mystery/Misery, such as aptitudes for nurturing, healing, teaching, social facilitating, organizing. The very attribution of these capabilities to women conveniently functions to hide the depth and scope of Wicked Communicating Powers. The phallocrats have worked feverishly to reduce these Powers and then have fetishized their stunted derivatives, which are allowed expression only under male control. These "gifts of women" that are acknowledged within patriarchy have been rendered shallow and disconnected from women's own deep purposefulness. They have been fashioned to suit the masters' dead ends, to support the agendas of popocracy.
The sadosocietal system fixes and freezes women's Elemental Powers of Communication, confining their expression to "appropriate" stereotypic activities, such as those assigned to wives and mothers, nurses, schoolmarms, hostesses, and efficient do-gooders. Thus enslaved by the snoolish rules and rulers, women become complicit in the stunting and fragmentation of our Selves. A phallically fixed wife and mother keeps pop on his pedestal and nurtures future faithful followers of fatherland's rules/roles. A nurse whose loyalty is to physicians and patriarchal medicine is a servant of disease-causing agents. A female teacher, whether she works in a nursery school or in a Ph.D. program, who uncritically transmits the dogmas of doublethink is an agent of maledom's mindbinding.
In order to free the Metamysterious Elemental Communicating Powers of women that have been tied down by the spiritbindings of sadospiritual fixers, it is essential to begin adequately to Name the complex and interwoven meanings and dimensions of these Powers. This brings us to the Strange and Sinister Subject of Mediumship.
Metamystery and Mediumship
Dictionaries offer clues concerning Metamysterious Powers through the medium of definitions, for example, definitions of the word medium. Among the meanings of this word are "something intermediate in position" and "an intermediate agency, means, instrument, or channel" (O.E.D.). These definitions can aid Websters in the process of locating the Place/Time where/when we Touch and transmit Metamysterious Powers. This ever moving Labyrinthine Location is on the Boundary between the elementary/restored/plastic world which is the State of Possession and the Wild Realms of Metabeing.
As Journeyers become Wilder, the location of the Boundary shifts further away from the centers of patriarchal possession and deeper into the Otherworld. As this happens, the man-made "mysteries" lose their power to conceal from Journeyers the Realms of our own Reality. Be-Wildering Websters Unweave the veils designed to hide our Selves from ourSelves and Weave further into the Background. With Eye-Biting Powers, Be-Witching women snap the blinding/binding ties that have kept us from Seeing and Be-Speaking. Breaking these evil ties, we See with Truly Wicked Eyes. The shimmering splendor of Sister-Voyagers is Realized, further revealing the foolishness of snools. Unveiled, these mysterical men evoke our Wholly Hysterical Laughter. With every Laugh, Lusty Leapers Leap further, bounding to Other Boundaries.
With each Leap and Bound, each shifting of Boundaries, more mindbindings/spiritbindings come undone. Our Mediumship springs, spirals, and soars. Our Space-Craft moves outside all hitherto known directions. We Spin beyond the compass of every compass.
Mediums are Sylph-satisfied with the clues provided in Webster's definition of medium as "something through or by which something is accomplished, conveyed, or carried on." A Metamysterious Medium experiences her Self as someone through or by whom something is accomplished and conveyed. As for carrying on, Happy Mediums do indeed carry on about the Wonders of our Mediumship, Announcing that a Sylph-identified Medium is, like the Air, a conveyer of Words, and that a Salamandrous Medium is. like Fire, a conveyer of Light and Warmth.
Also pleasing to Happy Mediums is Webster's definition of medium as "a condition, atmosphere, or environment in which something may function or flourish." We note that by choosing our Mediumship we participate in the creation of a condition, atmosphere, or environment – that is, a Gyn/Ecological environment – in which Biophilic be-ing can function and flourish.
Sylph-affirming Mediums/Muses join in the chorus of Others, creating an atmosphere in which New Words can be spoken and sung, participating in the Cosmic Concento – the Crone-logically simultaneous sounding of the tones of Accord among all Biophilic beings. Moreover, New Words themselves are Mediums, carriers of messages, and their Soundings break through man's mysteries. They Weave together, forming magic tapestries/carpets, carrying Muses/Mediums further into Metamysterious Realms.
All Elemental beings are Mediums, conveyers of knowledge and power. Searchers can find countless affirmations of this fact in studies of folklore and magic. The following passage is a typical Eye-opening Example:
Among the Celtic races we observe divination, or forecasting the future, by means of omens and auspices, through the media of the flight and motions of birds, by the casting of bones, or omen-sticks, the movements or direction taken by animals, by dreams and crystal-gazing, almost precisely as we find these several methods employed by many other races.
As this passage illustrates, Mediumship implies participation in Tidal Time, movement into Archaic Future. It is therefore prophetic.
The Elements, as Metamysterious Mediums, communicate with Crones engaged in the work of prophecy/divination. This is suggested by such words as Aeromancy, Geomancy, Hydromancy, Pyromancy. The Air, Earth, Water, and Fire Be-Speak to those whose Senses are alive. It is evident also that the stars have been known as Mediums by astrologers for millennia, together with the moon, sun, and other planets. The word Angel, since it is derived from the Latin angelus, meaning "messenger," points to the fact that Elemental Spirits, too, are Mediums.
The Call of the Elemental Mediums
The Call of the Elemental Mediums is the Call of the Wild, summoning us beyond the foreground, the elementary world, It is an unremitting Howl, warning those muted and stranded in the State of Possession and mystified by its media to leave the land of the dead. Thus Elemental Mediums Scold mesmerized Seers who are glued to television sets, dead mind-sets, and dis-spiriting social sets, urgently urging them to break set and reclaim their Eyes/I's. They Nag tone-deafened Augurs who are trapped in babblespheres to close their ears to the mindrapists' musak and creeds, and listen again to the Music of Birds and of Be-Witching Words.
Elemental Mediums Howl to silenced Soothsayers to shout down the lies of "authorities." They call to housebound/housebroken Gossips to get off the phone, get away from the phoneys, and once again Gossip Wisdom from the stars. They admonish those Sibyls who are trapped in the State of Appeasement to refuse "adultery of the brain." They remind these compromised Sages that in the science of logic the meaning of medium is "middle term," or the connecting link that makes possible the drawing of a logical conclusion. They Plead with these muted Mediums to Re-call their Powers of Knowing and of Proclaiming the Crone-logical connecting links and conclusions that can make Sense for women's lives.
Wicked Women, who Hear this Call of the Wild, Re-call our Primal Powers and Finally reclaim for our Selves the word Mysterious. This word makes Sense when wrenched from its patriarchal context and Heard in a Metamysterious way. It Names a necessary attribute of Journeyers, who choose to close our eyes to the barrage of illusions intended by trickers and frauds to delude us and who refuse to recite the framers' party lines. When Heard and Be-Spoken in this Sense, Mysterious is a New Word and it describes the Creative Caution of Boundary-living women.
Metamysteriously Mysterious women are positively entrancing and entranced. Indeed, Websters sometimes experience be-ing in a trance, in the sense of "a state of profound abstraction or absorption accompanied by exaltation" (Webster's). Moreover, unshackled from the mindbindings of snooldom, we are enabled to trance, meaning "to move briskly: PRANCE" (Webster's). Whereas the masters' media fix/attach women to all that is dead, dis-spirited, and deadly, the Mediumship of trancing, prancing Websters enables us to Con-Quest, Con-Question, Consort, and Cavort with the Living. Among our lively Boon-Companions are Fore-Familiars and Fore-Crones who Live in Archaic Time.
As a Work of Entrancement, the Wickedary is a multiwebbed record and map as well as a book of clues for those who choose to Prance. It is a Hope-full History of, by, and for Happy Mediums deciding that Mediumship is our vessel/vehicle. In Other Words, the Wickedary is a Word-Webbed Wonderbook for Boundary-Bounders, for Hopping/Hoping Wonderers who are Leaving Boredom and Leaping toward Somewhere – the Time and Space of those who Spin and Weave.
AUTHOR'S IN-TEXT FOOTNOTES
[*] See doomsday clock (Word-Web Three).
[*] For an explanation and some examples of "mummy terms," see Appendicular Web One.
AUTHOR'S FOOTNOTES
[1]. Tidal Time, which is Archaic Time, is Original Creative Time, Measurable only by Qualitative Leaps of Wicked Inspiration and Courage. It cannot be measured by the clocks of father time.
[2]. This expression was first Realized by Denise D. Connors (Conversation, Leverett, Mass., January 1983).
[3]. Not only dictionaries but all sorts of masculine inventions and "masterpieces" are in reality the products of plunderers/exploiters. Victims of such exploitation include Rosalind Franklin, Zelda Fitzgerald, Mary Leakey, Fanny Mendelsohn, Dorothy Wordsworth, and countless other wives, sisters, daughters, helpers, researchers, editors, etc., who have actually supplied many or most of the creative ideas and done much of the hard work. See Anne Sayre, Rosalind Franklin and DNA (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975); Nancy Milford, Zelda (New York: Avon, 1970); and Tillie Olsen, Silences (New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1965, 1972, 1978), esp. pp. 177-258.
[4]. It can be argued that the Eleusinian mysteries of ancient Greece were woman-centered. However, we hear of these as existing within the context of a patriarchal culture. It seems highly unlikely that such "mysteries" would be necessary in a truly Gynocentric/Gynocratic society.
[5]. One sterling, strident, and stunning example of such a Notice and Announcement is the historically momentous SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas, first published in New York (Olympia Press, 1967, 1968, 1970). See Valerie Solanas, Scum Manifesto (London: The Matriarchy Study Group, 1983). This edition can be obtained by writing to The Matriarchy Study Group, c/o 190 Upper St., London, N.1.
[6]. For example, the mysterious men of the Vatican continually re-veil their inherent evil, hypocrisy, and cynical exploitativeness. A number of exposés of Vatican intrigue have appeared in the 1980s, for example, Richard Hammer, The Vatican Connection (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982); Paul I. Murphy with R. René Arlington, La Popessa (New York: Warner Books, 1983). An interesting point revealed in La Popessa concerns the Vatican's economic interest in birth control products, beginning in the 1930s, "specifically, the Vatican's purchase of controlling stock in a drug company, Institutio Farmacologico Serono di Roma, Italy's largest manufacture of birth control products" (p. 99). Decades later, pope Pius XII "appointed his nephew, Giulio Pacelli, chairman of the board of the drug company making birth-control pills" (p. 109).
[7]. For a wonderfully Be-Laughing exposé of ridiculous ritualism, see Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1938; Harbinger Books, 1966), especially pp. 19-21.
[8]. For an excellent feminist analysis of the patriarchal degradation of nature, see Andrée Collard, "Rape of the Wild," Trivia: A Journal of Ideas, no. 2 (Spring 1983), pp. 64-86. These ideas are further expanded in Collard's forthcoming book, Rape of the Wild (London: The Women's Press, 1988).
[9]. Of course, not all nurses participate in the mysteries of patriarchal medicine. Rather than protecting doctors' silences, some nurses Name their games. For example, see Denise Donnell Connors, "Sickness Unto Death: Medicine as Mythic, Necrophilic, and Iatrogenic," Advances in Nursing Science, vol. 2, no. 3 (April 1980), pp. 39-51, for an explanation and discussion of doctor-caused disease. Connors further develops this analysis in "Women's Sickness: A Case of Secondary Gains or Primary Losses," Advances in Nursing Science, vol. 1, no. 3 (April 1985), pp. 1-17. An organization of radical nurses who work to unveil male medical mystery and move on to Re-member their own healing power is Cassandra: Radical Feminist Nurses Network. To receive their newsjournal, which provides informative articles, important announcements, and lists of contact women, write to Cassandra, P.O. Box 341, Williamsville, N.Y. 14221.
[10]. Lewis Spence, The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain (New York: Rider and Co., n.d.), p. 102.
[11]. This expression was invented by Virginia Woolf. See Three Guineas, pp. 93-97.
|
