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 THREE
Grammar:
Our Wicked Witches' Hammer
Just as the word spell immediately proclaims the connection between words and magic, so too does grammar. Be-Witching Grammarians therefore Spell out the magical meanings of Grammar.
These meanings are first suggested when Websters examine its etymological twin, glamour. The first meaning of the noun glamour given in Webster's is "a magic spell: BEWITCHMENT." The Word itself was formed simply as an alteration of grammar, a development which Webster's explains as the result of "the popular association of erudition with occult practices." Wickedary Websters proclaim that the ignorant "erudition" of the patriarchs has deliberately hidden the essence of Grammar, forcibly rendering it boring and "occult."
The usual definitions of grammar in patriarchally constructed contexts are indeed boring, suggesting the rote drills of "elementary" or "grammar" schools. It is said to mean "a branch of linguistic study that deals with the classes of words... as employed according to established usage...," et cetera. Glamour, too, is reversed and banalized; it is lowered to the level of Glamour Magazine.
The Elemental meanings of Glamour and Grammar are perversely hidden by patriarchal "glamour" and "grammar." The latter were examples of "elementary" products, in the sense that Paracelsus wrote of "elementaries." That is, they are artificial man-made beings, resulting from degeneration of faculties and powers which should be actualized in Other Ways.
Artificially separated from their Original, interconnected meanings and powers, these words are confined by "established usage." Grammar is reduced to the tidy arrangement of words in a sentence. Glamour is voided of life, made mindless and soulless as a made-up mannequin.
Seers See through these elementary usages to the Elemental powers they conceal. Sibyls Announce the resurgence of the Natural Order of Original Words, declaring that the word Grammar, freely and Wildly Spoken and Heard, suggests the Elemental Powers of Be-Witching.
One way of Be-Witching is Wording. The Wording of Websters twines meanings and rhythms, unleashing Original forces/sources. Arranging our words to convey their Archaic meanings, we release them from cells of conventional senses. Dis-covering their own natures, their Wildness, Words join in racing harmonies, breaking from patterns of flatness, combining in new and ancient ways, regrouping beyond paralyzing patterns, forming magical Metapatterns.
Releasing words to race together, Websters become Muses. We do not use words, we Muse words. Metapatterning women and words have magical powers, opening doorways of Memories, transforming spaces and times. Rhymes, alliterations, alterations of senses – all aid in the breaking of fatherland's fences. Thus liberation is the work of Wicked Grammar, which is our basic instrument, our Witches' Hammer.
Unfixing the fixations of phallogrammar
Under phallocracy, grammar is an instrument of social control. Consequently it must be controlled by the sadosociety's linguistic overseers. The author of the introductory essay in Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, entitled "The English Language and its History," wrote:The largest and most complicated vocabulary would be of little value without a grammar to control the ways in which words can be put together to make larger constructions.
At first glance, this statement may seem innocent enough. The fact is, however, that the author chose the word control to describe the role of grammar in putting words together. This opens the door to the question: Who, exactly, presumes to have the right to control the ways in which words are put together? This question is not really answered by the dictionary schoolmen, of course. Yet the use of the word control implies that there is a politics of language. There are, in fact, rulers who make up and enforce the rules/roles.
Readers who reflected upon the use of language as an instrument of oppression are aware of the problem of pseudogenerics, reflected in such obvious cases as the use of the pronoun he and the noun man when these are supposed to "include" women. On a more sophisticated level, this problem and many other issues of "syntactic exploitation" have been analyzed by feminist linguists, most notably by Julia Penelope. The point here is to remind ourSelves that the fixers of women and nature have always known that it is in their interest to fix grammar, assuring for themselves the maintenance of control.
The eighteenth century, a period of insufferable boredom, saw many attempts by bores to standardize, refine, and fix the English language. Jonathan Swift unselfconsciously revealed the true mentality and motivation of phallogrammatical fix-masters:
What I have most at Heart, is, that some Method should be thought on for ascertaining and fixing our Language for ever, after such Alterations are made init as shall be thought requisite. For I am of Opinion that it is better a Language should not be wholly perfect, than that it should be perpetually changing: and we must give over at one Time or another, or at length infallibly change for the worse.
The stagnation (in a Stag-nation) desired by Swift was, of course, in the basest sense, self-serving. He would gladly mummify words in order to preserve his own scribblings for posterity. Elemental Grammarians will not fail to note his phallogrammatical agent-deleting use of the passive voice. Reading in the passage cited above, we note that he proposes that "Alterations" shall be made in language "as it be thought requisite." Left unstated is the answer to the suppressed question: "thought requisite" by whom? Websters know that no woman's thoughts on the subject would be considered "requisite" by Swift and his ilk.
Even the sanctimonious scribbler Samuel Johnson described Swift's Proposal as "petty." Johnson, however, was himself a fidgety fixer. In The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language he droned:
One great end of this undertaking is to fix the English language.
Moreover, in his Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) Johnson intoned:
Tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language.
Elemental Grammarians will not fail to notice the typically snoolish usage of the pronouns we, our, us. Recalling the fixed condition of women under the constitution in eighteenth-century England (and in twentieth-century America), Crone-logical thinkers will immediately grasp the implications of this linkage of "our constitution" with "our language." Clearly, this phallogrammarian was aware of the necessary connection between the repression of language and the oppression which was he foundation of his constitutional provilege, and he was determined to maintain the fixed state in both arenas.
Johnson was filled with foreboding, however, and even gloomily prognosticated the defeat of fixed grammar:
The tropes of poetry will make hourly encroachments, and the metaphorical will become the current sense; pronunciation will be varied by levity or ignorance, and the pen must at length comply with the tongue; illiterate writers will at one time or another, by publick infatuation, rise into renown, who, not knowing the original import of words, will use them with colloquial licentiousness, confound distinction, and forget propriety.
Hearing these words, Websters cheer on the hourly encroachments of the tropes/troops of poetry and herald with joy the onslaughts of Metapatriarchal Metaphor. Prudes Announce New/Archaic Pronunciations with Lusty Levity. Shrewd Shrews revel in Studied Ignorance, and Pixies proclaim that the pen must indeed comply with the tongue. Laughing Soothsayers reclaim colloquial licentiousness, confounding the false distinctions of drones, Furiously forgetting propriety.
Wicked Grammarians, Unfixing words, revel in breaking the phallogrammatical taboos. Together with Virginia Woolf, Hags howl: "Words do not live in dictionaries; they live in minds." Indeed, the minds of Muses and Maenads are our Primary Sources. As a Mexican proverb states: "A woman is the best dictionary." Of course, books are also sources, but these live only in interaction with Living Minds. Moreover, words living in women's minds are not isolated from each Other. As Woolf explained: "A word is not a single and separate entity.... Words belong to each other."
It serves the interest of phallogrammarians to hinder such Be-Longing and Be-Friending of words and women. To achieve this end they employ phalloglamour. It is essential that Eye-Biting Grammarians examine this process.
The lies of the mysterical mediators
and the Eyes of Elemental Mediums
Patriarchal grammar blocks/blunts the Elemental Powers of Mediumship of words and women. The mysterical mediators attempt to stop the flow of communication by means of elementary magic or trickery. The method of stoppage/blockage consists primarily in the manufacture of illusions, which is phalloglamour. These illusions are debased substitutes for and replications of genuine means of communication. Phalloglamour, then, is implied in phallogrammar.
These twin strategies render women passive, de-formed and re-formed. Made fashionable, women are fashioned and re-fashioned by the fascist phallocrats. Not only the physical appearance but also the opinions and words of fashionable women are distorted by the depraved shape-shifters of snooldom/fooldom.
By means of such bad magic women are passivized, reduced to seeing everything with passive eyes. A women in this condition sees herself only as being seen. Regarding herself through men's eyes, she is a prisoner of the mirror. Wearing invisible blindfolds, she is tricked into "seeing," but does not See with Glamour Eyes, Real Eyes.
Passivized women frantically peer into mirrors, their passive eyes checking out innumerable defects and flaws, marks of failure to confirm to the norms designed to keep them in line. Nothing seems fine. Eye-shadowed, hookwinked women search their mirrors for signs of failed femininity. Too fat or too thin, encased in inevitably aging skin, mirror-peering women turn to bores for scores and for scores of directions, Thus, mummified made-up women forget their Original Selves.
Only our Witches' Hammer can crack the mirrors of phalloglamour. As the cracks become greater, the Magnetizing Eyes of Crones, radiating Elemental attraction, can rouse women out of the State of Possession. Wild Eyes can Wildize, Untame, Uncivilize – awakening the capacities of captive women to Hear and follow the Call of the Wild.
In sum: The Eyes of Be-Witching Grammarians Overlook the mendacious mediators of women's experience, looking on and Naming their lies as evil. In the course of this process of exorcism, we evoke and employ our Shape-shifting Powers. Wielding these Wicked Powers, Grammarians turn to the topic of tactics.
Sin-Tactics: Wielding Our Witches' Hammer
The Grammar of Wicked Websters incudes not only Metamorphosing Morphology (already Spelled Out in the preceding Web) but also Spinning/Sinning Syntax/Syntactics, hereafter Named Sin-Tactics. The Sagacious Sin-Tactics of Terrible Women break the taboos against Be-Speaking that are imposed by the fathers of phallogrammar and phalloglamour. By such taboo-breaking we free words to Act Naturally in relation to each Other, forming their own Archaic arrangements without snoolish interruption and interference.
Wielding our Witches' Hammer, Websters Dis-close the Glamour of words, their magical/musical interplay as they Sound and Resound together in complex compositions. We Dis-cover connections, not only among words, but among the realities they Name.
Elemental Grammarians See with Glamour Eyes – the Eyes of Eye-biting Witches that dispel the delusions of Witch prickers, danglers, and other deadfellows. As we work for the liberation of our Selves and of words, we induce and communicate Glamourie, which has been described as "the state of mind in which witches beheld apparations and visions of many kinds."
Continuing the Haggard tradition of Glamourie requires the performance of brazen Sin-Tactical Acts. These include the feats of Gossips who Gossip Out Original meanings and arrangements of words, as well as the Singing of Sirens who Sound out such Metapatterning combinations for all to Hear. Our continuation/communication of Glamorie also demands the Scolding of Scolds and Shrews who, scoffing at the cult of the occult opt for Shouting Out Loud – openly Naming and exorcising the deceptive demons of phallocracy, Be-Laughingly reversing the reversals of mirrordom.
To conventional grammarians such Sin-Tactics seem/sound like disorder. Indeed, such Sinister strategies, by Touching and awakening the Powers of Terrible Women, do wreak Dreadful Dis-order. For this is a work of Tidal Weaving and Re-weaving, of breaking through the tidy order/orders of Boredom. Sinister Syntax implies Elemental disruption of tidydom's tyranny. It is musical Metapatterning that counters patriarchal patter by participating in the Natural Gossiping of words themSelves. As Gossip Gertrude Stein explained: "I like feeling the everlasting feeling of sentences as they diagram themselves."
Wicked Grammarians breaking fatherlands's rules are committing the Sin of Creative Dis-ordering, effecting Metamorphosis, Grammar-Hammering Hags, releasing words from male-ordered boxes and cages, enable these to Spin about freely. Spinning, whirling words swirl Wildly, winding/wending their ways in New directions.
Like fairy dancers/prancers, Pixilated words enjoin Spinsters and Websters to join the dance/prance and practice Gyromancy. Gyrophobic phallogrammarians, feeling the force of these Wordstorms/Weirdstorms, whine their usual line: "Follow the rules or go back to [snool] school!" Refusing to be bullied into "order" by the gods/rods of these foolish fraternities, words and women Spin beyond the schoolmen's syntax, phrasing Primordial Questions, Spinning sentences that Transverse the Trickers' traditional tracks. Such Sin-Tactics bring us in Touch with Other Words/ Worlds. Grammaar, then, is an essential and creative form of Elemental Mediumship.
To understand the wide implications of the creativity of Crone-logical Grammar we must Re-call the fact that the arrangement of words is not merely a matter of sterile "style" but of complex analysis – of Naming, that is, Truth-telling. This is the only adequate antidote for phallocracy's Biggest Lies. As Truth-telling Mediums, Wicked Grammarians break the brokenness of consciousness that is crushed under the rule/rules of the sadosociety.
Our Sin-Tactics, then, are designed to mend the broken connections within women's psyches, among our Selves, and between women and Other Wild creatures. As this healing progresses, as we experience ever more deeply the reality of our Natural connectnedness in the Background, we develop our abilities to detect patterns in the foreground – the male-centered, monodimensional arena where fabrication, objectification, and alienation take place. We begin to See and Name connections among apparently disparate phenomena. Such pattern-detecting is the basis of Gyn/Ecology, of Radical Feminist Metaethics, of Elemental Feminist Philosophy. It is also the basis of the work of the Wickedary, which is a Grammar of Elemental Communication.
This detecting of connections is possible for Websters insofar as we are in Touch with our Final Cause, the indwelling, always unfolding goal or purpose, perceived as Good and attracting one to Act, to Realize her own participation in Be-ing. In Other words, Wicked Grammar is possible because of the Glamour of the Good as Verb.
The Glamour of the Good as Verb
Wicked Websters proclaim that our Direction is toward the Good. This proclamation is a Paradox. According to Webster's, paradox means "a tenet or proposition contrary to received opinion." Since the opinions forcibly "received" by women under the control of phallogrammar are fabrications, the Propositions/Proclamations of Proud Prudes are indeed Paradoxical. They are entirely against the "going logic."
According to that ill-logic, only evil is attractive and exciting, whereas the good is boring. This assumption/tenet is upheld not only by those who openly flaunt their practice of patriarchally defined "evil," but also – subliminally at least – by those who pontificate and sermonize in support of patriarchally defined "good." For their droning, grinding, mind-binding insistence upon "goodness" convincingly conveys this is not very interesting. The good-peddlars are proficient propagandists for its opposite, and indeed they require this opposition of opposites to keep the snoolish sadosystem going. Such "good" and "evil" are essential contents in the phalloglamour boys' bags of dirty tricks.
As Grammar of Elemental Communication, the Wickedary is designed for dispelling such tricks and enabling Websters to Dis-cover the potency of the Good as Verb. This Verb inspires us to Realize Be-Witching Powers, becoming ever more Wicked, free from the rules of sadosnools, Dis-closing Original Integrity.
Originally Sinful Websters/Grammarians actively participate in the Unfolding of Be-ing as Good. In Touch with our own Focusing, Spinning Powers, we communicate Glamour, most explicitly by our Grammar, which is marked by the prevailing influence of the Good as Verb.
This Verb is the attracting force that draws Wild women further into the vortex of Be-ing, inducing Vertigo. Derived from the Latin vertigo, this word, meaning "action of whirling" (Webster's), clearly has relevance for the Spinning/Spiraling of Spinsters.
Spinning and Weaving further into Vertigo, Spinsters/Websters enter Metamorphospheres, where Whirling Dervishes live and learn the Grammar of the Good as Verb. Bidding good-bye to goody-good Boredome, Magnetized women voice New Senses of the Verbal Tenses. Present, Past, and Future are experienced Crone-logically, unfettered by the flatland's tidy tenses/fences. Our Past lives in the changing Present that is the swirling movement of the Good as Verb.
Wicked Grammarians Presentiate the Good by be-ing actively Present to ourSelves and Others, reclaiming our Past, Weaving our Future. In this Grammatical work we are aided by the Weird Sisters, the Fates, the Norns, as we Spin and Weave around and among the Tenses of our Re-membering Time.
The Glamour of the Good invigorates, inviting Volcanic Dis-coverings. As these are Realized, Grammarians overcome the bad magic of phalloglamour. Scolds and Viragos counter the badland's bad news by Announcing News of the Good, practising the Volcanic Virtue of Shouting Out Loud. This brings us to the subject of the following Web, which is Pronunciation.
AUTHOR'S IN-TEXT FOOTNOTES
[*] The most "authoritative" textbook for Witch-hunters and Witch-burners was the fifteenth-century work by the Dominican priests Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, entitled Malleus Maleficarum – The Hammer of Witches. The work was intended to be a hammer for destroying Witches and their heresy. In the Wickedary, Websters take up our own Hammer – the Labrys/double ax which is our Grammar, to Destroy the illusions (phalloglamour) propagated by patriarchs to destroy women.
[*] Jane Caputi uncovered the etymological connections between grammar and glamour in her article "The Glamour of Grammar," Chrysalis: A Magazine of Women's Culture, no. 4 (1977), pp. 35-43. Caputi's analysis shows how the Original meaning of glamour has been reversed and how this word has been used, along with patriarchal grammar, to conceal the Presence of women.
[*] The word sin is derived from the Indo-European root es-, meaning "to be" (American Heritage*. When Websters affirm who we truly are, we break the basic taboo of gynocidal patriarchy and all of its religions and thus Sin in the most Positively Revolting Way. Our Courage to Be/Sin enables us to reclaim our Witches' Hammer, our Grammar, and to wield this Sin-Tactically – that is, to affirm Be-ing Sinfully, over and against the lies of phallogrammar. Moreover, our tactics are tactile. Touching Spiritual Powers, the Grammar of Wicked Websters affirms our participation in Be-ing and invites Others to Be-Speak such Sinful Self-Realization.
[*] For examples of such Sin-Tactical analysis, see deadly sins of the fathers; Sado-Ritual Syndrome; Sadospiritual Syndrome (Word-Web One).
AUTHOR'S FOOTNOTES
[1]. W. Nelson Francis, "The English Language and Its History," Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1975, p. 22a.
[2]. Julia Penelope (Stanley) has most clearly identified "syntactic exploitation" of women by patriarchal authors. This is deceptive manipulation of grammatical constructs and sentence structure. A common form of syntactic exploitation is "agent deletion," which involves suppressing information about the identity of the agent of an action – information that is required by the reader or hearer for understanding the message or meaning of a sentence. Agent deletion is often accomplished through the use of the passive voice, as in the sentence "Many women are battered." Agent (and victim) deletion often involves the use of pseudogenerics. This is exemplified in sentences such as "Many children are victims of incestuous abuse by their parents." See Julia P. Stanley, "Passive Motivation," Foundations of Language, vol. 13, pp. 25-39. See also Julia P. Stanley and Susan W. Robbins, "Truncated Passives: Some of Our Agents Are Missing," Linguistic Theory and the Real World, vol. 1, no. 2 (September 1976), pp. 33-37. Julia Penelope has developed her ideas in numerous papers and articles.
[3]. Many pedants idealized Latin, since it was a dead language, and saw this idealized corpse as a model for fixed English. The forgotten "poet" Waller bemoaned living language in the following words:
But who can hope his lines should long
Last, in a daily changing tongue?
While they are new, Envy prevails;
And as that dies, our language fails....
Poets that Lasting Marble seek,
Must carve in Latin or in Greek;
We write in Sand....
Cited in Albert C. Baugh, A History of the English Language (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc., 1935), p. 322.
[4]. Jonathan Swift, A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue, 1712 (Menston, England: The Scolar Press, 1969), p. 31.
[5]. Samuel Johnson, Preface, 1755, in Johnson's Dictionary: A Modern Selection, ed. by E.L. McAdam, Jr., and George Milne (New York: Pantheon, 1963), p. 26.
[6]. Samuel Johnson, The Plan of a Dictionary, 1747 (Menston, England: The Scolar Press, 1970), p. 11.
[7]. Johnson, Preface, 1755, p. 27.
[8]. Ibid., p. 26.
[9]. Virginia Woolf, BBC radio broadcast, late 1930s.
[10]. Otis Tufton Mason, Woman's Share in Primitive Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1895), p. 190.
[11]. Virginia Woolf, BBC Radio broadcast, late 1930s.
[12]. Monique Wittig describes tamed women as "prisoners of the mirror." See her book Les Guérillères, trans. by David Le Vay (New York: The Viking Press, 1969, 1971), p. 31.
[13]. According to popular belief, breaking a mirror is bad luck (and so also are encounters with black cats and the number thirteen). Wicked women, smashing mirrors, crossing paths with cats, and adopting Thirteen as our lucky number, declare these events auspicious/fortunate.
[14]. Lewis Spence, Encyclopedia of Occultism (New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1960), p. 184.
[15]. Gertrude Stein, "Poetry and Grammar," in Gertrude Stein: Writings and Lectures, 1909-1945, ed. by Patricia Meyerowitz (Baltimore: Penguin Books, Inc., 1967), p. 126.
[16]. It is interesting to note that the Middle English word gramary (also, more archaically, gramarye) meant "1) Grammar; hence, learning in general; erudition, and 2) Magic; enchantment." In both of these senses the Wickedary is a book of gramary. See Sherman Kuhn and John Reidy, eds., Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963), p. 2594. It is also fascinating to find that gramarye (or gramary) is derived from Middle French gramaire, meaning "grammar, grammar book, book of sorcery" (Webster's). An alternative form of gramaire is grimoire, meaning "a book of conjuring or magic" (Middle English Dictionary).
[17]. For a historical and philosophical analysis of this concept, see Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation, pp. 179-98.
[18]. This expression is used by Nelle Morton to describe the prevailing "reasoning" of patriarchy, characterized by the assumption that words (male words) precede and authenticate all female experience. See Nelle Morton, "Beloved Image," The Journey is Home (Boston: Bacon Press, 1985), p. 127.
[19]. Women tricked by these trickers are sometimes mesmerized into believing that pornography is "exciting" and even "libeating." Some have been fooled into believing that such an attitude is "feminist." Be-Speaking Grammarians point out that such obsessions are not at all Wicked, but woman-hating, Self-hating. The same Prudish reasoning applies to all manifestations of sadomasochism. Since a truly Feminist stance on these phallic phenomena – i.e., that they are utterly opposed to the Good for women – is nonnegotiable, any talk of a "split among feminists" on these "issues" is pure phalloglamour.
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