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

APPENDICULAR WEB FOUR

Jumping Off the doomsday clock:
Eleven, Twelve ... Thirteen

Spinsters Spinning Widdershins – turning about-face – feel/find an Other Sense of Time. We begin by asking clock-whys and then move on to counter these clock-whys and then move on to counter these clock-whys with Counterclock Whys – Questions that whirl the Questioners beyond the boundaries of Boredom, into the flow of Tidal Time/Elemental Time. This is Wild Time, beyond the clocking/clacking of clonedom. It is the Time of Wicked Inspiration/Genius, which cannot be grasped by the tidily man-dated world.

The man-dated world is clockocracy – the society that is dead set by the clocks and calendars of fathered time. It is marked by measurements that tick off women's Lifetimes/Lifelines in tidy tidbits. It is the world of dismembered time, surgically sewn together to mimic and replace Tidal Time. It is the society of tedious time spent under the tyranny of tidy demons – those projections/emanations of the tyrants who seek to impose tidy order, yo tie women down, to stop the flow of each woman's creativity, cutting her off from her Genius/Demon/Muse.

...

In this Be-Witching Hour, then, Crones are joined by Other participants in Elemental Be-ing. Moreover, as we have seen, Journeyers are guided by many Mediums, who act as channels into the Background.[*] These include the stars, sun, and moon, as well as Other planets. Present, too, are the earth, air, fire, and water. Rivers, trees, mountains, seas also Act as Guides. Angels Presentiate their Selves on the Journey, bringing messages and protection. Foresisters are Here/There, accompanied by their/our Familiars – the hopping, leaping, prancing, soaring, splashing, diving, roving, lumbering crowd of hairy, feathery, finny, furry Friends who are at Home in the Thirteenth Hour. As the Toads say: "This is Toadal Time." As the Gorgons cry: "It's Time to get Gorgonized!"

Thirteen, then, is the time of Metamysterious Meetings, of synchronicities – "coincidences" experienced by Crones as Strangely significant. It is the Time of Realizing Star-Lust – the longing for knowledge of Astral connections, for scintillating cosmic conversations. Hence it is the Crone-logical Time for Weaving and Spinning Crone-ography and Crone-ology. It is the Time when Sibyls and Muses soar with the Race of Radiant Words. And of course it is the Hour when/where WIckedaries appear and Wicked women Announce our Departure from the State of Patriarchal Paralysis and our Arrival in Metamorphospheres.

Thirteen is when/where a Positively Revolting Hag Hears her own Name and finds the Courage to Be, to See, to Live, to Grieve, to Rage, and to Laugh Out Loud. And that is the End and the Beginning of Webster's First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language and Other Archaic adventures/ventures of Weird women who cast our lot with the Fates, the Spinners of Stamina, the Forces who can save the world.

AUTHOR'S IN-TEXT FOOTNOTES

[*] See prestige (Word-Web Three).

[*] See Preliminary Web Five.

AUTHOR'S FOOTNOTES

[1]. A brief history of the "doomsday clock" is presented in an editorial entitled "Three Minutes to Midnight," in Bulletin of the American Scientists, January 1984, p. 2.

[2]. The Lies of the media whiteout during the aftermath of Chernobyl precisely illustrate the mystifying manner in which mental and physical contamination – conjoined in deadly wedlock/deadlock – process endlessly together. One stunning example of the American media's coverage/hiding of the effects of Chernobyl was a Boston Globe report (published in its "Sci-Tech" section), July 14, 1986, pp. 37, 39. The article states: "Countries outside the Soviet Union received so little radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that any potential health risk is too small to calculate, says the head of a US government committee assessing health effects from the accident." The article goes on to discuss the statements of radiation biologist Marvin Goldman, head of a scientific panel assembled by the Department of Energy: "Goldman, who is based at the University of California at Davis said 'There was lots of dispersion, and at came down was washed out by rain' in many areas." Hags who have been in Touch with women in such countries as Sweden, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and other parts of Europe are aware of just how "lucky" these women feel to have been trapped in Europe after Chernobyl. Whereas some European newspapers, particularly those published in West Germany, exposed some of the horror, the American media functioned smoothly as "organs" of deception and propaganda concerning this and other nuclear atrocities, whose lethal effects, such as contamination of the food chain, keep spreading.

[3]. Robert Jay Lifton, "Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Hiroshima," New York Times, May 18, 1986, Section 4, p. 25.

[4]. A baxter, of course, originally meant a female baker. See The Oxford English Dictionary.

[5]. Northern peoples said the cosmic doomsday-wolf Fenrir was fettered by a heavenly chain to the north pole and would be released by the Norns to devour the heavenly father at the end of the world. See Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983), pp. 243, 307.

[6]. Barbara G. Walker, The Corne: Woman of Age, Wisdom and Power (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), pp. 175-76.

[7]. Ibid., pp. 177-78.