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 THREE

Spinning Beyond the Compass:
Regaining the Sense of Direction

Sibyls who are Re-membering our Sinful Sense of Direction practice Space-Craft. This is the art of Spinning beyond the compass. It is also skill in walking/talking the Wrong Way, moving in Wicked directions, opening doors to Other dimensions, Other Spatial perceptions. By reversing the reversals of the snoolish space controllers, we enter a different context. This is Metapatriarchal Space/Time, beyond the measurements of compasses and maps.

Women who roam into these Wild Realms require Other navigational devices. Since we are traveling Widdershins, it is helpful to begin by noting that the word widdershins, or withershins, is derived from the Middle High German widersinnes, meaning "counter-course," which is made up of wider, meaning "against," plus sinnes, the genetive of sin, meaning "journey" (American Heritage). Following the etymological trail further, we find that sin is traceable to the Indo-European root sent- meaning "to head for, go" (American Heritage, Appendix on Indo-European Roots). According to the same Appendix, sent- is also the root of the Old English sand, meaning "message, messenger," and it may be the root of the Latin sentire, meaning "to feel" (i.e. "to go mentally"). If this is the case, the same root is the source of the English words scent, sense, sentence, sentient, sentiment, consent, presentiment. This etymological information provides Sensible Websters/Journeyers with significant clues concerning our New/Archaic Navigational Aids.

Journeyers traveling Widdershins are not too surprised when we Sense Metapatriarchal messages. These, of course, imply the existence of Senders, or Messengers. Seers recognize these Messengers as our friends, the Angels. The word Angel, derived from the Greek angelos, meaning "messenger," is defined in the Wickedary as "an Elemental Spirit of the universe whose duration and movement are outside the limitations of tidy time and whose principal activities are knowing and willing; bearer of Archaic knowledge and wisdom" (Word-Web One).

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Horse Sense

The ability to get in Touch with our Elemental Sense of Direction can be called Plain Horse Sense. According to Webster's, horse sense means "plain shrewd unsophisticated common sense." Naturally, the Common Sense of Weirdward Intergalactically Galloping Nags is quite unlike the "common sense" that is praised by the pseudosages of snooldom. The High-Spirited Horse Sense of Nags is unadulterated by the unsophistication as well as the sophistication of the sadosociety. It is Shrewd.

Indeed, the Horse Sense of Nags/Hags is nothing less than a Canny capacity to See, Hear, Touch, Taste, and Sniff out the Angelic/Elemental messages that come to us from all directions. In this sense, Horse Sense is a Primal Navigational Aid. Moreover, it heightens and brings into focus the ordinary senses of those who are escaping from dummydom. Hence it helps us to detect and refuse the poisoned apples and other elementary "wonders" dispensed by wasters disguised as wizards – the bad alchemists of snooldom.

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The Haggard Sense of Humor

Women gifted with Horse Sense are often accused of "lacking a sense of humor." This accusation is predictable in the State of Reversal. Naturally, Hags possess a Haggard Sense of Humor. The word haggard, according to Webster's, means "intractable, willful, wanton." Intractable, Willful, Wanton women See, Hear, Taste, Touch, Smell through the deceptions of phallocracy. A Natural expression of such perceptions is Horselaughing. Indeed, Horsey women/Nags frequently indulge in Horselaughing.

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The Sense of Wonder

The purposefulness of such flights is rooted in the Sense of Wonder,[*] which is inherently infinite. Because the Final Cause is always/all ways beckoning, Spinning beyond the compass s never ended. Unlike the phallic finishers/fixers, whose goal is to finish/obliterate life, Searching women generate/regenerate Life with Leaps of Imagination and Daring. Such boundless bounding, because it is Super Natural, is Hopping/Hoping in harmony with Other worlds. Such Springing breaks the dead beat of doomdom's funereal processions. That is, it is Bio-rhythmic.

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AUTHOR'S IN-TEXT FOOTNOTES

[*] Websters who have wondered about the word wonder will be interested in the fact that one of its synonyms is marvel, which is derived from the Indo-European root smei-, meaning "to laugh, smile" (American Heritage, Appendix on Indo-European Roots). Clearly, there is a connection between humor and wonder.

AUTHOR'S FOOTNOTES

[1]. Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being: Unpublished Autobiographical Writings, ed. and with an introduction and notes by Jeanne Schulkind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), p. 93.

[2]. See Woolf, Moments of Being. She writes: "In certain favorable moods, memories – what one has forgotten – come to the top.... I see it – the past – as an avenue lying behind; a long ribbon of scenes, emotions."

[3]. The "estimative power" was considered to be one of the four "interior senses." When referring to animals, Aquinas called this the "cogitative power." He wrote: "But the animal needs to seek or to avoid certain things, not only because they are pleasing or otherwise to the senses, but also on account of other advantages and uses, or disadvantages: just as the sheep runs away when it sees a wolf, not on account of its color or shape, but as a natural enemy: and again a bird gathers together straws, not because they are pleasant to the sense but because they are useful for building its nest. Animals therefore, need to perceive such intentions, which the exterior sense does not perceive." (See Summa theologiae, I, 78, 4C.)

[4]. Sonia Johnson discusses the power of morphic resonance in her book Going Out of Our Minds (Trumansburg, N.Y.: The Crossing Press, 1987), Chapter Seven.