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
FORE WORD-WEB
I remember my first encounter with Mary Daly's work very well. At the time I was studying for a science degree in a mid-sized, though older university, and dealing with the dangerous tiredness that comes with burn out. In part to fend off that unpleasant condition, I was pursuing an independent study of philosophical and feminist works, which forced me to get acquainted with the arts library on the other side of campus, and therefore resist my physical and mental lethargy. Now I can't remember which book led me to the right area of the stacks to see the bright yellow spine of the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Gyn/Ecology on the shelf. Nevertheless, saw it I did, and the title was unusual enough that I took it down to flip through it and see what it was about. The flipping became reading, to the point that only the first intercom announcement that the library would be closing in fifteen minutes got me back to my feet so I could rush to the circulation desk to sign it out. The idea that philosophy and feminism could be brought together in such a way, Daly's mode of analysis, with her unique and thought-provoking writing style were completely mind-blowing. This was not a book a person would fall asleep over, and contrary to what some claim today, no it was and is not difficult to read. It is different to read, and deals with some incredibly challenging material. It raises many powerful questions, including about the ways in which the usual scholarly methods for critiquing mainstream practices may be both effective and frustratingly flawed.
Cover of the revised anniversary edition of Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, published with beacon press and apparently still in print.
I soon learned that Daly had earlier books in print, and that she provided updated introductions and afterwords reflecting on her earlier work. She emphasized development and change, not as a defensive response to critics, but as a principled requirement of her practice as a radical feminist philosopher. Unlike any other philosopher I had been reading before Daly, she acknowledged changes in her thought and how they led her to mature her philosophy and approach. It took longer to sort out how her greater openness to developing her thought and not attempting to simply disown her earlier work was so often used against her, although now I am no longer surprised by this suppression tactic.
To my mind, one of the best ways to deeply engage with Mary Daly's philosophy, besides reading her books and some of the better anthologies of articles responding to her work, such as Feminist Interpretations of Mary Daly edited by Sarah Lucia Hoagland and Marilyn Frye (pennsylvania: pennsylvania state university press, 2000), is to write a synthetic essay or build some sort of html based hypertext. Mirabile dictu, Daly in cahoots with Jane Caputi had already created a hypertext amenable to recoding in html. Hence this project, which includes experimental webbing. It is perforce not a full reproduction of the Wickedary itself, while combining some excerpts from Daly and Caputi's explanatory notes and other definitions to encourage the reader to explore the terms and Word-Webs further. The Wickedary is often available to borrow from libraries or via interlibrary loan, as indeed are Daly's other seven books.
To the best of my knowledge, only four of Daly's books, The Church and the Second Sex, Beyond God the Father, Gyn/Ecology, and Quintessence... Realizing the Archaic Future are still in print and usually available by special order. Daly's other books, Pure Lust, Wickedary, Outercourse, and Amazon Grace are only available second hand. I do find it especially puzzling that Pure Lust is not in print from beacon press, because it ties so closely to Gyn/Ecology.
About Mary Daly
Radical Feminist Pirate Philosopher Mary Daly (1928 - 2010) was born in schenectady, new york to working class irish parents Anna and Frank Daly. Born just before the beginning of the great depression, Daly nurtured a determination to become a philosopher from an early age. Her parents, especially her mother, were steady sources of emotional and moral support through their lives. Daly needed all of that and the practical support she could get as she fought her way towards her goal in an era when women were almost completely blocked from completing focussed study in philosophy even as a bachelor level major. Being from a catholic family, and with a route to becoming a philosopher via post-secondary study in theology just opening, Daly sought to complete a master's degree in philosophy after completing a bachelor's degree in english at the catholic university of america. However, unlike today when a graduate student would likely be guided to undertake some preparatory coursework to enter the program since she was starting with an english major, albeit as it happened with as many philosophy courses as she could complete as well, she was forced to complete her master's thesis in english instead. This closed her tenure at catholic university of america in 1952.
Still determined to complete the training and study necessary to be a philosopher and teach, Daly went on to complete her first PhD at notre dame university at st. mary's college, a private catholic women's liberal arts college. The program she completed in 1954 is no longer offered, but to this day their theology courses centre on the writings and theories of Thomas Aquinas. On attempting to find work, always a necessity since her studies were constantly supported by scholarships and teaching jobs, Daly soon learned that her Saint Mary's PhD was not taken seriously, adding to the barriers in the way of academically inclined women. This led her to a formative period of study and work partially supported by loans at the university of fribourg in switzerland, where she found herself having to start over again since none of her previous academic work was officially deemed transferable. Again, unlike today, the whole system of transfer credit agreements now in place did not exist, and therefore qualified students were not protected from arbitrary rejection. In 1963 Daly completed a PhD in theology and then in 1965 her fundamental academic goal, a PhD in philosophy.
From there Daly went on to a controversial career at boston college, where she was much loved by the majority of her students, men and women alike, while receiving little more than contempt and harassment from the college administration and many of her colleagues. The college administration was busy taking part in an effort to hold back time and stifle challenges to the catholic church, heedless of the fact that Daly's first two books, though fiercely critical, reflected her early belief in the potential for reform of the institution. The boston college administration found itself in the annoying position of having a controversial and popular professor on staff, whom they strove mightily to silence and direct students away from. That of course is not a new phenomenon, nor is it a thing of the past as today's new iteration of mccarthyism shows. Ironically, their abuse played an important part in Daly's eventual complete rejection of the catholic church.
Continuing her work despite these obstacles, Daly released her third book in 1978, Gyn/Ecology. This book remains perhaps her most famous, not least because it is a key early text in english drawing the connections between the way women, the Earth, and life itself are treated under patriarchy. The founding european-origin text was published in 1974, Françoise d'Eaubonne's Le féminisme ou la mort, which was not published in english translation until 2022. The other reason Gyn/Ecology was and is famous is for Audre Lorde's (in)famous "Open Letter to Mary Daly" concerning the book. The controversy came down to the question of whether Daly actually responded to the letter before Lorde went public, which she did, as ultimately corroborated by Lorde's biographer Alexis DeVeaux. Unfortunately based on the inaccurate reporting of both Lorde's critique and Daly's response to it, Daly's work is often dismissed as "racist" and "irrelevant" writing by a "white upper middle class woman." Preconceptions firmly set, many women never attempt to read any of Daly's work, even though they would not allow similar critiques to disuade them from reading work by men.
Nevertheless, Daly went on to write five more books, including the Wickedary, although she was finally muscled out of boston college. She remained a popular speaker, but suffered increasing isolation as the backlash period heralded by Ronald Reagan becoming president of the united states rose to ever-worsening levels. In her last book, Amazon Grace, Daly anticipated that worse was to come and that women would need the knowledge she had pirated and the philosophy she had developed more than ever. She had misgivings about what she referred to as academentia and the grave danger that women might be deceived into thinking they could become normalized members of the academy or any other patriarchal institution while remaining true to their Selves and other women. Alas that her misgivings have been more than borne out in our difficult present.
In very broad summary, Daly's degrees and books in temporal order are:
- 1950 BA english and latin, college of st. rose, albany NY
- 1952 MA english literature, catholic university of america, washington DC "The Mimetic Principle in the Theory of John Crowe Ransom"
- 1954 PhD religion, school of sacred theology, st. mary's college, university of notre dame, notre dame IN
- 1963 PhD, Licentiate, sacred theology, university of fribourg, fribourg, switzerland "The Problem of Speculative Theology"
- 1965 PhD, philosophy, university of fribourg, fribourg, switzerland "Natural Knowledge of God in the Philosophy of Jacques Maritain: A Critical Study"
- 1966 Natural Knowledge of God in the Philosophy of Jacques Maritain: A Critical Study (rome: officium libri catholici)
- 1968 The Church and the Second Sex (new york: harper and row)
- 1973 Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation (boston: beacon press)
- 1978 Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (boston: beacon press)
- 1984 Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (boston: beacon press)
- 1987 Websters' First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language (boston: beacon press)
- 1992 Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Voyage, Containing Recollections from My Logbook of a Radical Feminist Philosopher (Be-ing an Account of My Time/Space Travels and Ideas – Then, Again, Now, and How) (san francisco: harper san francisco)
- 1998 Quintessence... Realizing the Archaic Future: A Radical Elemental Feminist Manifesto (boston: beacon press)
- 2006 Amazon Grace: Re-Calling the Courage to Sin Big (new york: palgrave macmillan)
Mary Daly's personal and professional papers were deposited with smith college in massachussetts after her death under identifier SSC-MS-00637. It is well worth browsing the listings of documents and books in this archival collection, as they give a hint of her wide ranging social and political interests and readings. Best of all is to read her books and browse her footnotes and bibliographies, but the smith college listings may be more accessible for many readers today.
System of Web Symbols (🌛 🌝 🌜 🌚 )
In her 2000 era conjuration of a hypertext version of the Wickedary, Madrid Tennant assigned a background image to each word web, three photographs of spider's webs. Hypertext icons and backgrounds are not discussed much today, in part due to the excessive use of templates. Yet icons and backgrounds are an important transformation of the ways in which the contents of a physical book are presented in a coherent and accessible manner. For this hypertext, each Word Web will be symbolized by a set of alternate Moon icons. These are:
The experimental meanings gathered into Word-Web Four are derived from Mary Daly's later books and additional material from the O.E.D. or Webster's. There are a very few exceptions, such as Emily Erwin Culpepper's alas still unpublished dissertation, which will have a marker [CW] for "Companion Webster" at the end of the entry. Dictionary sources will be noted at the beginning of the definition, following the formatting in the original Wickedary. When drawing on material from Daly's books, they will be noted by the following abbreviations in square brackets after the definition:
- BG - Beyond God the Father
- G - Gyn/Ecology
- PL - Pure Lust
- W - Wickedary
- O - Outercourse
- Q - Quintessence
- AG - Amazon Grace
Text quoted from the Wickedary often includes the associated footnotes, which are marked by superscript red symbols between red square brackets, i.e. [5], [†]. Other red numbers in superscript are for Annotations that themselves form another, sparser, Experimental Web of thoughts, reference links, and definitions. But be warned, in general the Cockaludicrous Comments, Catty Comments, Canny Comments, Sad Commentaries, and footnotes on the definitions are not reproduced here. The Original Wickedary experience can only be had by reading the published book.
The Fore Word-Web
Now for the first portion of experimental webbing. The Fore Word-Web takes up words defined in the Wickedary that occur in the various headings and subheadings of that text for the First Phase. Sometimes there are notes in curly brackets to provide additional information. There are also words from the highly experimental Word-Web Four, which is not part of the original Wickedary as such. Word-Web Four is my imagining of what might have been added at minimum to a second edition of the Wickedary from Daly's subsequent books Outercourse, Quintessence, and Amazon Grace. Daly would probably not have clustered all these terms in a fourth web, she would have continued the Word-Web form, and done something Wild and New rather than simply writing further Appendicular Webs. She might have provided another preface, a Reintroduction, or perhaps one or more Archaic Future Afterwords.
- Animals 🌛 n [derived fr. L. anima soul – Webster's] : Elementally ensouled beings characterized by rich Diversity; instructors in the arts of Spinning, healing, communication, navigation; Helpers/Guides on the Journey beyond the State of Extinction into the Realms of Elementary Reality.
- Announce 🌚 v : To declare beforehand, foretelling triumphs of the Fates, speak oracularly, thereby bestowing ineffable gifts. [W]
- Archaic 🌛 🌕 adj : occurring in Tidal Time; Original, Primal, Primordial.
- Be-Spelling 🌛 [bespell "to cast a spell on: ENCHANT" – Webster's] : Discovering and releasing Archimagical powers of words; ontological Shape-Shifting of words which awakens latent powers of be-ing in the Spell-speaker, in the hearer, and in the words themselves.
- Brainstorm 🌚 n : The Flashing sense and experience of transcendental knowledge, Sparking Journeys to the Other side. [W]
- Brewing : 🌝 🌕 Brewster n [brew "to bring about (something troublesome or woeful) as if by brewing magical potions or spells (brewing mischief)" Webster's] {"brew" a drink prepared by boiling or boiling and fermentation} : a Witch who Brews Archimagical potions and Spells, stirring up trouble for the trickers and torturers of women; a Wise Woman who stirs female Passions and Imagination, conjuring Metamorphic Dreams and Visions.
- Context 🌚 n ["the weaving together of words in a language" Webster's] : interwoven cues and clues of words on the labrynthine path. [W]
- Denounce 🌚 v : To declare patriarchal ideologies, institutions, and practices to be blameworthy and evil. [W]
- Elemental 🌛 🌕 adj ["characterized by stark simplicity, naturalness, or unrestrained or undisciplined vigor or force... CRUDE, PRIMITIVE, FUNDAMENTAL, BASIC, EARTHY" – Webster's] : This definition has been awarded Websters' Intergalactic Seal of Approval.
- Elemental Sounding 🌛 🌑 1 : the Speaking of Elemental creatures in the chorus of be-ing. 2 : Weird activity of Searchers who seek to fathom the depths of Elemental Memories and experiences.
- Eyes 🌚 🌕 Real Eyes (Denise D. Connors) : the Authentic, Elemental, Wild Capacity to Realize. [W]
- Familiars 🌝 🌕 Familiar n ["a supernatural spirit often embodied in an animal and at the service of a person (the loathsome toad, the witches' familiar – Harvey Graham)" – Webster's] : a Super Natural Spirited Background Animal, the Graceful Friend of a Witch.
- fix 🌜 🌕 v ["to treat so as to make some condition permanent... to kill, harden and preserve... FASTEN, ATTACH, AFFIX... to hold fast: CAPTURE.... CASTRATE, SPAY... to remove a principal means of defense from (as a pet skunk)... get even with: PUNISH... to determine the outcome of (a contest) by bribery or other improper methods... to tamper with in advance (a horse fixed to lose a race)" – Webster's] : These definitions have been awarded Websters' Intergalactic Seal of Approval.
- fixation 🌚 n : A state snools and other patriarchal agents attempt to enforce in order to prevent change, bind minds, and stop clocks. [W]
- Glamour 🌝 🌗 n ["a magic spell: BEWITCHMENT" – Webster's] 1 : an Archimagical Spell by which Nixing Nags dispel phallic pseudopresence/absence. 2 : the Attracting/Magnetizing Powers of Hags. 3 : Word Magic: the Grammer of Wicked Websters. N.B.: According to Walter W. Skeat: "The word glamour is a mere corruption of grammarye or grammar, meaning (1) grammar, (2) magic."
- Good 🌚 v : A Verb which inspires us to Realize Be-Witching Powers, becoming ever more Wicked, free from the rules of sadosnools, Dis-closing Original Integrity. [W]
- Grammar 🌛 n 1 : harmonious interplay among the primal sounds of words; concordances of words Sounding and Resounding together in complex compositions, as they communicate manifold meanings; the agreeable agreement of words as spoken/written/sung by Metapatterning Muses. 2 : Original order in the rhythms of all Elemental be-ing; natural affinity among all living beings which makes possible communication, relationship, and concordance.
- grammar 🌜 n : See phallogrammar / fellowgrammar.
- Guide 🌝 Guide n ["one who leads or shows the way, esp. to a traveller in a strange country" O.E.D.] : an Otherworldly Helper who shows a Traveler the way into the Country of the Strange, her Homeland.
- mediator 🌚 n : A typically mysterical man or other patriarchal agent who seeks to stop the flow of communication by means of elementary magic or trickery. See phalloglamour [W]
- Mediumship 🌝 🌕 n 1 : the creative activity of Happy Mediums. 2 : the vessel/vehicle chosen by Happy Mediums for our Otherworld Journey.
- Meta-etymologies 🌚 n : Webster-revealed etymologies that transcend the usual patriarchal etymologies by transforming their meanings and revealing the New/Archaic meanings once situated in the Background into visible, audible meanings in the New/Archaic context. [W]
- Metamystery 🌛 n : depths/surfaces that are hidden by man's mysteries/misteries; Wonders of Wild Reality that are behind/beyond the fathers' façades; ever Unfolding reality glimpsed by Seers and announced by Be-Speakers: the Radiant Integrity of Be-ing.
- mysterical 🌚 adj : Referring to the common psychology of males in a patriarchal state, characterized by a profound absence of presence. [W]
- Mystery of Man 🌛 Mystery of Man, the : [mystery derived fr. Gk myein to close (used of the eyes and lips), close the eyes – Webster's] 1 : irrationality of the patriarchal male, projected onto women and nature, whom he archetypically brands as "mysterious"; the non-sense and purposelessness of the phallic male, which is hidden from women by means of the twofold injunction against Seeing and Naming Female Elemental powers. 2 : the ontological lack which is the raison d'être of all patriarchal religions and institutions. 3 : the male veil of pomp and circumstance designed to conceal snoolish ineptness, vacuousness, inanity, and malignancy.
- Out Loud 🌝 🌑 Laughing Out Loud, Virtue of (1985 ed.) : Lusty habit of boisterous Be-Laughing women: habit of cracking the hypocritical hierarchs' houses of mirrors, defusing their power of deluding Others; cackling hat cracks the man-made universe, creating a crack through which Cacklers can slip into the Realms of the Wild; Virtue of Crackpot Crones whose peals of laughter peel away the plastic passions and unpot the potted ones.
- phallogrammar / fellowgrammar 🌜 n : fixed foreground ordering of speech that fies Female minds into phallocentric molds.
- Phases 🌚 n : A period of development, in planets and satellites of the Solar System, how their illumination changes with time and position as they rotate around the Sun and one another. This word is a strong candidate for the Webster's Intergalactic Seal of Approval.
- Power 🌚 n : in general, the abilities to act and reason in the world with the world and other beings; among of the most important of these are the Powers of Be-ing, which are the abilities to act with courage and hope to Self Name and Affirm while turning away from know-nothingness. [BG, PL]
- Pronounce 🌚 v : Elemental Sounding of the spoken letters of the alphabet, as these combine to form the Primal Race of Words [W]
- Pronunciation 🌚 n : the action of Denouncing, Pronouncing, or Announcing authentically, or Naming. Its three modes are Announcing, Denouncing, and Pronouncing. [W]
- Re-membering 🌛 🌗 1 : Re-calling the Original intuition of integrity; healing the dismembered Self – the Goddess within women; Re-calling the Primordial connections/conversations among women, animals, and Other Elemental beings. 2 : Realizing the power to See and to Spell out connections among apparently disparate phenomena: Spinning, Creating.
- Sin 🌛 : See Originally Sinful Acts; Original Sin of Women.
- Skein 🌝 n ["A loosely coiled length of yarn or thread.... something suggesting the twistings and contortions of a skein.... a flock of wild fowl (as geese or ducks) in flight" – Webster's] : the organic purposeful design of any Spinning/Spiraling creation; the Metapatterning/Soaring which is characteristic of the Race of Wild Women and the Race ow Wild Words/Birds in flight.
- Spelling 🌝 : Speaking, singing, or writing words that open gateways, summon spirits, brew brainstorms, and Be-Speak Other worlds. [W]
- Spells 🌝 Spell n 1 : a spoken, sung, or written word or set of words known by Crones to have Be-Speaking power: CHARM, INCANTATION. 2 : any Archimagical thought, glance, or gesture.
- Spinning 🌛 🌗 1 : Gyn/Ecological creation; Dis-covering the lost thread of connectedness within the cosmos and repairing this thread in the process; whirling and twirling the threads of Life on the axis of Spinsters' own be-ing. 2 : turning quickly on one's heel; moving Counterclockwise; whirling away in all directions from the death march of patriarchy.
- Unfix 🌚 v : exorcism of plastic parasites and deadening droning to restore life, drive out double crossers and reopen the possibilities of Hopping Hope and for the Archaic Future. [W]
- Verb 🌚 n : A word that describes an action, a happening, a be-ing. The etymological origin of the word is latin, where "verb" means simply "word" and the english "word" is from the same stem as "verb." Indo-european languages, which include english and latin among many others, are comparatively unusual in their massive favouring of nouns over verbs. Others are more balanced, and there are significant families of languages referred to as agglutinating or polysynthetic which favour the verb above all else, creating entire sentences by adding morphemes to a verb stem.
- Web 🌚 n ["a piece of woven fabric; a network of fine threads constructed by a spider (O.E.D.)] : the many intersecting clues found and Traced by Websters to restore the Background and create New Words. [W]
- Webster 🌛 🌕 n [(derived fr. OE webbestre female weaver – Webster's): "A weaver... as the designation of a woman" – O.E.D.] : a woman whose occupation is to Weave, esp. a Weaver of Words and Word-Webs.... The word Webster was Dis-covered by Judy Grahn...
- Wicked 🌛 🌕 adj [akin to OE wicce witch – American Heritage, Appendix on Indo-European roots] : beyond patriarchal "good" and "evil"; characterized by Original Integrity; Originally Sinful; actively participating in the Unfolding of Be-ing as Good.
- Wickedary 🌛 🌕 n : Archaic: Wicked/Wiccen dictionary; dictionary for Wicked/Wiccen Women; Metamysterious Web-Work Spun by Websters; Guidebook for the Intergalactic Galloping of Nag-Gnostic Voyagers; Book of Guide Words for Wayward, Weirdward Wanderers.
- Witch 🌝 🌕 n [derived fr. A.S. wicce. Allied to M.Du. wicker, 'a soothsayer.' witch perhaps = 'averter.' – Skeat's] : an Elemental Soothsayer; one who is in harmony with the rhythms of the universe: Wise Woman, Healer; one who exercises transformative powers: Shape-shifter; one who wields Labrys-like powers of aversion and attraction – averting disaster, warding off attacks of demon and Magnetizing Elemental Spiritual Forces.
- Witches' Hammer 🌚 n : The Labrys/double ax which is our Grammar, to Destroy the illusions (phalloglamour) propagated by patriarchs to destroy women. See Grammar. [W]
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