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 TWO

Spelling:
The Casting of Spells

Websters break the boring rules of spelling imposed by snoolish schoolmasters and move on to the casting of Spells. According to Webster's, one definition of the noun spell is "a spoken word or set of words believed to have magic power: CHARM, INCANTATION." It also means "a state of enchantment." The connection between Spells and spelling has been acknowledged by at least one dictionary editor, who wrote:

The words of a living language ore like creatures: they are alive. Each word has a physical character, a look and a personality, an ancestry, an expectation of life and death, a hope of posterity. Some words strike us as beautiful, some ugly, some evil.... There are magic words, spells to open gates and safes, summon spirits, put an end to the world. What are magic spells but magic spellings?[1]

The magic Spellings in the Wickedary open gateways, summon spirits, brew brainstorms, and Be-Speak Other worlds. There are several Ways in which such Spell-casting/Spell-speaking is done.

Ways of Spelling/Be-Spelling[2]

1. The Changing of Spelling

The first method of Spell-Weaving – a Way highly favoured by Websters – is the changing of spelling. For example, when the "normal" word bewitching becomes Be-Witching the ultimate ontological powers of Haggard female be-ing are conjured. Such changing of spelling is Archimagical Shape-shifting. It is transforming the physical form of a word in order to convey Super Natural meanings that have been masked and muted by man's mysteries.

Lusty women often use our double axes, our Labryses, to carve such Spellings. Thus Gyn/Ecology is created by a slash in the old word gynecology, an oppressive word used to designate a gynocidal branch of murderous modern medicine. The capitalization signifies the capital importance of this New Word. The slash of the Labrys also empowers Gyn/Ecology to Name Gynocentric Ecology. In a double sense, then, the use of the double axe to create this word wrenches back Weird Word-power to cast Spells on the malignant men and polluters who prey upon women and nature.

Such enchanting/changing of spelling is Spell-Craft. Spell-Crafty Websters, by Be-Spelling patriarchal words, Dis-cover and release ontological powers encased/encaged within them. This ontological Shape-shifting of words Be-Spells Speakers and Hearers as well, awakening latent powers of be-ing. We are thus enabled to Be-Speak with words in two senses: We communicate with the words themselves as Other Elemental creatures seeking to be freed, and we Be-Muse Archimagically with the help of such liberated/liberating words, creating New contexts. This brings us to the subject of the second method of Be-Spelling.

2. The Changing of Context

In the process of Be-Spelling, Websters are aided by such Guides as the wonderful Spelling Bees.[*] These apian accomplices, experts at unconventional communication, suggest buzz words from their own language. They playfully hum slogans to inspire our emulation of their Ways, which can be roughly translated, for example: "The Bees are Busy Bee-ing." Occasionally they even allow Weird women to observe their Bee-Spelling round dances and wagging dances. These contain coded messages concerning the directions and distances of nearby food supplies as well as information about the abundance and quality of pollen and nectar. Bee-Spelled Websters, inspired by such performances, wax Busier, Spelling out directions for Wanderlusting/Wonderlusting Journeyers.

As the Bee Dancers demonstrate, Spelling for them involves rhythmic movement, Weaving around, conveying essential clues to their sisters in a Bee-identified context. Websters also acquire an Other method of Spelling – one that essentially implies the creation of a Woman-identified context. Weaving around rhythmically, breaking set, we alter the environment in which a word is Heard, thereby releasing its powers of incantation.[*]

When the context is thus transformed, the material form of a word need not always be changed. The Realizing of a Metapatterning context awakens Metamemory, so that Archaic sense of a word can be Heard. Hag, for example, is commonly used disparagingly by snools to describe "an ugly or evil-looking old woman" (Webster's). Websters, considering the source and context of such disparagement, take this as a compliment, Re-calling the Archaic definition of Hag as "a female demon: FURY, HARPY" (Webster's). Thus Wickedarians keep this word intact (capitalizing it, to be sure) freeing it to Be-Speak once again, to Name the fierce beauty, courage, and wisdom of Crones. Hag is liberated to Spell New/Archaic idea-shapes, relation-shapes, action-shapes, passion-shapes.

Another example of a word whose shape is shifted in this way is prude. Under the rule of snoolish usage this word is doomed to designate "a person who is excessively or priggishly attentive to propriety or oversensitive to slight breaches of decorum" (Webster's). When freed from the patriarchal word-prisons, Prude reclaims its Archaic ancestry and Spells Female Pride. This word, in fact, has the same origins as its sister-word proud and is directly derived from the French prudefemme, meaning "a wise or good woman." Websters, therefore, can Re-call the word Prude and Spell it forth in a Gyn/Ecological environment.

It would be impossible to overexaggerate the importance of context for Be-Spelling. The word context itself, according to Webster's, has as its first and "obsolete" meaning "the weaving together of words in language." Be-Spelling Websters follow the cues of words, cooperating with them in the Weaving together of a Biophilic context/atmosphere. This requires wrenching ourSelves away from the necrophilic State of Possession and, with the indispensable aid of Guide Words, breathing forth Life-Lust.

This Life-Lusty atmosphere has several noteworthy qualities by which it can immediately be identified. It is marked by Haggard Humor – the Lusty Laughter of Leaping Women who Laugh Out Loud at cockaludicrous loutishness. It is characterized also by explosions of Righteous Rage on behalf of all Elemental sisters. This Metapatriarchal atmosphere vibrates with Virtuous Disgust at the dreariness of daddyland, with its deceptive dickspeak and dis-spiriting, dryasdust dogmas and daddygods.

Many Other distinguishing traits pervade the Crone-logical context in which Wild/Weird Words can be uttered/muttered. Word-chasers can detect the contagiously Contrary-Wise style of Crackpot Crones. Nag-noteworthy also is the Volcanic Prudence of Prudes, who choose words of Extreme Power and in so doing exercise extravagant Shrewdness and Wild Caution. Present also is the Regal Rationality of Word Witches, practitioners of Word-Magic whose Be-Spoken words are wands emitting vibrations that Transverse the archetypes of the State of Deadly Deception, overturning and reversing its reversals. Of crucial significance to this environment is the Presence of Nemesis, the Virtue beyond justice that is acquired by Inspired Acts of Righteous Fury and that makes possible Passionate Spinning/Spiraling of Archaic Threads of Gynergy.

Such qualities are essential to the context in which words are freed to Act as Mediums of exchange and change, to Speak as Metamorphic Messengers of Musing Powers. Within such a Be-Speaking context, yet an Other Way of Be-Spelling can be Realized.

3. Spinning Off

The third method of Spelling/Spell-Casting is a Spin-off from the second Way. It involves Hearing words in a Gyn/Ecological context and Weaving around these, sometimes combining parts of words or entire words, thus Realizing Other words and phrases of a heretofore unknown character.

The Spelling of Wickedary, for example, first of all involves Hearing Wicked in a Hag-identified context and then combining this Be-Witching word with the suffix -ary (meaning "of or belonging to or connected with"). The word Wickedary instantly makes sense to Spell-Brewers when Heard in conjunction with the word Websters', for this combination Conjures the idea of a dictionary that is of or belonging to or connected with Wicked women.[*] The very sound of Wickedary links it inevitably with dictionary. The rhyme and rhythm of these words Announce their association with each other. The only remaining task is Spelling Out the definition.[*]

An Other example of this method of Spelling is the construction of the word Nag-Gnostic. According to Webster's, the verb nag means "make recurrently conscious of something." The adjective gnostic, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means "believing in the reality of transcendental knowledge." Hearing both of these words in a Wicked context, Wickedarians can Weave them together – or, to be somewhat more accurate – participate in the process of these Wild Words' Weaving together. The result is the New Word Nag-Gnostic, which, as a noun, Names a Nag who Senses with certainty the Reality of transcendental knowledge and who therefore practices the Virtue of Nagging, combating the psychic numbing that is demanded by all the religions of the sadosociety, the State of Oblivion.

Spelling as Brewing of Brainstorms

Wicked Spellings open doors to Other Worlds where Words – like Other Wild creatures – are alive. In these Other Worlds, their Powers of revelation, both as nouns and as verbs, are ecstatically Realized. Spell-Speaking women Spelling the Ways into these Strange yet utterly Familiar Realms break the Great Silence imposed upon us by man's mysteries. Such Silence-breaking is Taboo-breaking. It is Archimagical expression of Spiritual Touching Powers, enabling Travelers to Break Out of the touchable caste.

By such Taboo-breaking/Spelling, Weird women raise tempests – a fact recognized by all who have been confronted with the Spelling Powers of Witches. It is Nag-noteworthy that the Witch persecutors who composed the "authoritative" work of demonology, the Malleus Maleficarum, included a chapter entitled "How They Raise and Stir up Hailstorms and Tempests, and Cause Lightning to Blast both Men and Beasts." The conclusion of these malefactors/male-factors is clear: "just as easily as they [witches] raise hailstorms, so can they cause lightning and storms at sea; and so no doubt at all remains on these points."[3] And indeed this is true.

Spell-Speakers know very well that the raising of hailstorms and tempests by Hags is related to brewing of brainstorms. The lightning that flashes in the sky and the Light that gleams from a Spell-Glancer's Eye Spark in cosmic concordance. Be-Spelling women can find even in the writings of phalloscholars material that acknowledges Electrical Spelling Powers. Thus, for example, Julian Jaynes writes:

The function of meter in poetry is to drive the electrical activity of the brain, and most certainly to relax the normal emotional inhibitions of both chanter and listener. A similar thing occurs when the voices of schizophrenics speak in scanning rhythms or rhyme.[4]

Though Spell-Casters scoff at the concept of "normal emotional inhibitions" and at such pat labels as "schizophrenic," we recognize here a dim perception of Augurs' Awesome Elemental Electrical Powers. Jaynes has lifted his male veil just enough to glimpse the Electrical Connection.

Pyromancers know that the word electric is related in its origins to the Sanskrit ulkā, meaning "fiery phenomenon in the sky, meteor" (Webster's). We know that the Musings of Muses are Meteoric and ecstatically Electromagnetic, Sparking Cosmic Connections. Brewsters' Brainstorms brighten skies/eyes.

Spell-Speaking, word-hurling/word-whirling women are kin to Fire-breathing Dragons, whom we join in the work of Distempering the man's world. The verb distemper means "to throw out of order or proper or smoothly working adjustment" (Webster's). It also means "to disturb or derange the condition of the air, elements, weather, climate, et cetera" (O.E.D.). Brainstorming, Be-Spelling women Distemper in both of these senses, throwing bore-ocracy out of its odious order and smoothly working adjustment by Raising Hailstorms and Tempests and Otherwise Exercising Disturbing Elemental Powers.

To Be-Spellers overthrowing dronedom/clonedom it is clear that such disturbance/derangement is absolutely necessary.[5] The Spelling of Soothsayers throws the old order out of order, Dis-covering New/Archaic Orders. In this Stormy atmosphere other women begin to Realize their own Ecstatic E-motional Disorder. Finding her Rage and Hope, a woman observes the melting away of plastic passions that had possessed her, blocking the flow of Elemental Communicating Powers. The old guilt, anxiety, depression, bitterness, resentment, frustration, boredom, resignation, and – worst of all – feminine full-filment begin to disappear. Seeing these as pseudopassions injected into her soul by the fathers of fixocracy, she flushes them away. As she exorcises these plastic parasites she begins Be-Spelling. She finds it especially efficacious to begin Spelling/Be-Spelling Out Loud.

Spelling Out Loud

Spelling Out Loud is utterly relevant to the practical realities of women's lives, for it involves Spelling Out the situation of women, both as the universally oppressed caste and as Raging Race breaking free into Ecstatic Space.

Most women instinctively know the importance of "talking things over" with other women, but the force of this instinct/intuition is diminished by the inaccessibility of Living Words to express such "things." Imprisoned by patriarchal language, words are forced into taking on the usual habits of prisoners. They become isolated and unimaginative, unable to bond with each other in creative ways. They appear and sound untrustworthy, hopeless, depressing. Their capacity to express Deep Memory and E-motion is muted. Women, then, are baffled/bamboozled in their victimization by the concomitant confinement of words under patriarchal rule.

It is necessary, therefore, that words and women find and fight for each other, bonding in Mutually Magnetizing Meetings, realizing our common cause. Only the meeting/conjoining of the Race of Wild Women with the Race of Wild Words can render possible Spelling Out the context of oppression and Spelling the Way Out. Moreover, with every act of Spelling a woman joins words in coming Alive. The emerging and bonding of Living Words provides an atmosphere in which Metamorphosing women can really breathe.[6]

This emergence of women and words requires Spelling Out Loud. Even the pedants of the ubiquitous elementary schools of snooldom recognize the importance of making their pupils spell out loud their spellings, their rules, their grammar – thereby inducing logorrhea, spreading/embedding their labels, their lies. When Spell-casting women Spell Out Loud in Original/Archaic Words the truths of our lives we counter and overcome these negative vibrations.

Spelling Out Loud means women Be-Speaking with each Other – privately and in groups. It means Speaking and Singing in private and public gatherings, producing works of art, books, journals, political actions. Spelling Out Loud is the Original Sounding of Original Women. In other words, Be-Witching women Spell Other Words. Witches Spell these into the Ether, where they continue sending vital vibrations, joining each Other in Metapatterning connections, changing Reality.[7]

Women engaged in Spelling Out Loud Spell Out also the problem of decoys that mimic this Primal activity. One of these decoys/distractions is the incessant droning of the mass media. Another snare that badly imitates Spelling Out Loud is academented sadoscholarship. This form of verbigeration repeats and defends in paralyzing detail the dogmas of Boredom, which can sometimes be dressed up even as "feminist scholarship." It challenges nothing (while pretending defiance) and cannot Name Nothing. It has the aura of styrofoam and the texture of plastic. It is recognized by Be-Spelling women as manifesting presence of absence – as mental/spiritual bloat, a garbage heap of details without focus, a decentralized mass without organic purpose.

A particularly seductive substitute for and imitation of Spelling Out Loud is the psychobabble of the Therapeutic State. It is therefore important to Spell Out the differences between this elementary mirror image of Spelling and genuine Metamorphic Musing. First, this uninspiring unspelling is quiet. Even when its adherents indulge in "primal screams" it fails to be Loud, for its feeble vibrations cause no cracks in the sacred canopies of male myths that cover/smother women's be-ing. The therapeutic way-of-talk may smile, but it does not Roar. It may permit anger, but it does not Rage. It may show mild disapproval, but never Disgust, It has its own jargon, but it does ot Electrically Name Out Loud. It does not Spell Out/Away the man-made mystifications, but rather it mystifies further. It induces "serenity" but it does not give Gynergetic Furious Focus that reaches for the stars. Only Elemental Soundings have such scope/hope.

Be-Spelling and Elemental Sounding

Be-Spelling Websters Hear Elemental Power in the Sounds of the alphabet. Indeed, one ancient meaning of the word element is "the spoken letters of the alphabet."[8] Unnaturally, the deadmen of daddyland block the ears of woemn so that these Sounds will not be Heard, babbling obscenely: "In the beginning was the [phallic] word." Moreover, they strive to mute these Sounds by all their deadly distractions. Spell-Crafty women learn to unblock our Inner Ears, and by listening carefully we begin to Hear the Original tones and rhythms of Elemental Sounds. As Gyn/Ecological Shape-shifters we participate in the rearranging of these Sounds in Natural Orders, generating and regenerating New/Archaic vibrations, Be-Musing Musical Macromutations.

By so Hearing and Speaking, Augurs become Abecedarians. According to Webster's, an abecedarian is "one that is learning the alphabet," and the "archaic" meaning of this word is "one that teaches the alphabet and the rudiments of learning." Websters, Hearing this word in our own context, understand an Abecedarian to be an Augur who is learning and teaching the Archaic Alphabet: one who Dis-covers the Sounds of Rudimentary/Elemental learning. Since Websters clearly are Abecedarians, it follows that the Wickedary is an Abecedarium – not merely in the usual sense of "ALPHABET BOOK, PRIMER" (Webster's), but in an Archimagical sense. That is, it is an Archaic Alphabet Book, a Primal Primer of Elemental Philosophy.[9]

As Abecedarians, Spell-Weavers are agents of Nemesis, counter-Acting the babblers of babblespheres, Denouncing dickspeak dick-tated by the drones and dummies of dummydom. Spelling Websters intend and participate in Elemental disruption of patriarchal equilibrium.

As Abecedarians, Websters recall important knowledge that is partially recorded in the re-search of Robert Graves:

There is evidence... that before the introduction of the modified Phoenician alphabet into Greece an alphabet had existed there as a religious secret held by the priestesses of the moon – Io, or the Three Fates: that it was closely linked with the calendar, and that its letters were represented not by written characters, but by twigs cut from different trees typical of the year's sequent months.[10]

Now is the Time for Re-membering the Primal Sounds of the Alphabet held secret by the priestesses of the Fates. Be-Spellers are beginning to sense the interconnectedness of these Sounds with our own Biorhythms, our consciousness of cosmic calendars. In tune with the moon and with trees, we Spell Archaic, Rudimentary Runes.

This Spelling/Spilling of Archaic Sounds into the Ether, by transforming vibrations, counterbalances and cancels out the negativity that prevails in archetypal deadtime. It spills the beans concerning the inanity/insanity of babblespheres, the place of sadospeak/pseudospeak.

Elemental Sounding cuts the dead lines of daddyspeak. It opens Musing Minds and Spins threads of spiraling communication. It sends out Musical Messages whose creative zinging/singing harmonizes with sounds of waters, winds, grasses, trees, thunder, and crackling fire. Cackling Crones brew veritable alphabet soups of sounds, stirring the worlds. The Spelling Bees hum "Sound Louder!"

This Sounding prepares the way for Nemesis to do her work – encouraging Acts of Righteous Rage, disrupting the patriarchal balance of terror/error, releasing Gyn/Ecological vibrations. Elemental creatures urge the work on, Sounding Out the alphabets of their own languages and concording in the chorus of be-ing (or, as some would hum, "be-ing"). Seals bestow their Seal of Approval on the Whole Ecstatic Enterprise. Owls concede that the Idea of Cosmic Concordance seems Wise. Frogs croak that they like this Preposterous Joke. Most enthusiastic of all are the wondrous multicolored winged creatures who, mocking patriarchal pomposity, declare: "In the Beginning was the Bird." All seem to agree that they have the Last Word.

AUTHOR'S IN-TEXT FOOTNOTES

[*] For an elaborated discussion of animal accomplices in the work of the Wickedary, see Preliminary Web Five.

[*] All New Words sound different from old words, even when the spelling (in the traditional sense of spelling) is the same. Thus, for example, the New Word New does not sound like the old word new, for the context changes the vibrations when the New Word is spoken. Be-Witching, of course, does not sound like bewitching. See Preliminary Web Four.

[*] To those familiar with Crone-logical contextual Spelling, it is also clear that since animals are essential Guides to the Wickedary and since Witches are known to have Familiars, the Wickedary is also a Bestiary (in the best sense of the word).

[*] See Wickedary (Word-Web One).

AUTHOR'S FOOTNOTES

[1]. Morris Bishop, "Good Usage, Bad Usage, and Usage," in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976), p. xx.

[2]. This section can be seen as a discussion of Metamorphic Morphology. According to Webster's, one definition of morphology is "a study and description of word-formation in a language including inflection, derivation, and compounding – distinguished from syntax."

[3]. Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, The Malleus Maleficarum, trans. with introductions, bibliography, and notes by the Rev. Montague Summers (London, 1928; New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1971), The Second Part, Question I, Chapter XV, pp. 147-49.

[4]. Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976), p. 73.

[5]. Be-Spelling women can learn a great deal about dealing with drones from our sisters, the Worker Bees. The drone – whose brain is smaller than that of both a worker and queen – has as the sole justification of his existence the necessity of fertilizing the queen. Once the young queens have ceased to fly, the hundreds of excess drones in a colony are treated as eminently disposable. Karl von Frisch, a specialist, discussing the fate of the drones, writes: "The workers start plucking and biting those very drones whom up to now they have nursed and fed, pinching them with their firm jaws wherever they can get hold of them. Grasping their feelers or their legs, they try to pull them away from the combs, and to drag them toward the door of the hive.... Once they are turned out of the hive, the drones, unable to fend for themselves, are doomed to die of starvation. With great obstinacy they try to force their way back, only to be received again by the workers' biting jaws, and even by their poisonous sting, to which they yield without offering any resistance. For drones do not possess a poisonous sting, nor for that matter the least fighting spirit. Thus they find their inglorious end at the portals of the bee dwelling.... From that time onwards until the following spring, the females of the colony, left to themselves, keep an undisturbed peace." See The Dancing Bees: An Account of the Life and Senses of the Honey Bee, trans. by Dora Ilse (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1955), pp. 31-32.

[6]. Suzette Haden Elgin, in her remarkable novel Native Tongue (New York: Daw Books, Inc., 1984), describes the liberation of women through the invention of "Láadan" – a language developed and known by females only. The invention of this language is a catalyst for leaps of Metamorphosis in women's lives.

[7]. In Native Tongue, Elgin illustrates how the creation of a woman-identified language could change reality in completely unpredictable ways. See especially the last chapter (pp. 284-97).

[8]. This ancient traditional meaning of element is spelled out in Raymond T. Stamm, Exegesis of the Epistle of the Galatians, 4:3, in The Interpreter's Bible, 12 vols. (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1952-57), X, 521.

[9]. The idea of the Wickedary as an Abecedarium and of Websters as Abecedarians was suggested by Emily Culpepper (Conversation, Boston, February 1986).

[10]. Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1955, 1960), I, 52.2.