From introduction to Pure Lust, pp. 1–12.
From introduction to Pure Lust, pp. 1–12.
Elemental: [“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.
—Wickedary, p. 72
Six years separate the publication of Gyn/Ecology (1978) and Pure Lust (1984), during which time the controversies surrounding Gyn/Ecology, as well as changes in the women’s liberation movement, created feminist polarization around the figure of Mary Daly. Under these circumstances, the fact that Pure Lust (in the opinion of one of the editors, Daly’s strongest work philosophically) emerged as a nearly perfect blending of the righteous anger of Gyn/Ecology with the ontological, cosmological dimensions of Beyond God the Father is nothing short of astonishing.
Take, for example, this paragraph from the introduction:
Elemental female Lust is intense longing/craving for the cosmic concrescence that is creation. It is charged, tense, in tension with the tenses of fabricated “father time.” Incensed, it burns through the shallow impressions of insipid senses, sensing the Sources, Astral Forces, Angels and Graces that call from the Deep. This Lusting is divining: foreseeing, foretelling, forecasting. Unlike the dim divines and divinities, the deadheads of dead-land whose ill-luminations blind us, Lusty women portend with luster, our radiance from within that radiates from and toward Original Powers of creation.
Words are used for their resonance, their pinpoint accuracy, their multivalence, their sound, their cadence and incantatory power, while the dialectic tension between achieving a living union with be-ing and struggling against the non-being of patriarchy takes on cosmological rather than historical or political significance. Daly makes this explicit when she says that “women dis-cover our Original Race through the release of deep ontological Fury.”
However, the controversies had to be addressed, and Daly tried to counter the questions about her racial presumptions by defining “Race” differently, as an active verb rather than as a noun. Whether one agrees or disagrees with her perspective on this, it seems clear that she refused to address race within the existing parameters of the discussion.
The section explaining the title of the book features an analysis of a Pauline text. Daly uses Paul’s hatred of this world, and of any elemental beings or philosophies, to give the clearest positive assessment of the feminist elemental spirituality she champions: “The joy of Elemental women, then, is Earthy, and so also is our philosophic quest.” Going beyond the false dichotomy of transcendence and immanence, Daly articulates “the essential unity and intelligence of spirit/matter, the inherent telos of spirit/matter.” This culminated in the rich term “Nag-Gnostic” to describe those who assume the existence of “transcendental knowledge” but “never cease to Nag our Selves and others with recurrent awareness and uncertainty.”
—Editors
Eye-beam: “archaic: a radiant glance of the eye.”
—Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language1
I-Beam: “Archaic: a radiant glance of the I/Eye.”
Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language2
This book focuses upon and Spirals off from the traditional Deadly Sin of lust, which is treated here in an untraditional way. Phallic lust is seen as a fusion of obsession and aggression. As obsession it specializes in genital fixation and fetishism, causing broken consciousness, broken heartedness, broken connections among women and between women and the elements. As aggression it rapes, dismembers, and kills women and all living things within its reach. Phallic lust begets phallocratic society, that is sadosociety, which is, in fact, pseudosociety. The Lusty women who rage and roam through the Realms of this book wield the Labryses of our lustrous minds—our double-axes of divination—to defeat this obsession/aggression.
The title Pure Lust is double-sided. On one side, it Names the deadly dis-passion that prevails in patriarchy—the life-hating lechery that rapes and kills the objects of its obsession/aggression. Indeed, the usual meaning of lust within the Lecherous State of patriarchy is well known. It means “sexual desire, especially of a violent self-indulgent character: LECHERY, LASCIVIOUSNESS.”3 Phallic lust, violent and self-indulgent, levels all life, dismembering spirit/matter, attempting annihilation. Its refined cultural products, from the sadistic pornography of the Marquis de Sade to the sadomasochistic theology of Karl Barth, are on a continuum: they are essentially the same. This lust is pure in the sense that it is characterized by unmitigated malevolence. It is pure in the sense that it is ontologically evil, having as its end the braking/breaking of female be-ing.4 Its goal is the obliteration of natural knowing and willing, of the deep purposefulness which philosophers have called final causality—our innately ordained Self-direction toward Happiness.5
The word Lust has utterly Other meanings than this, however. It means “VIGOR, FERTILITY (the increasing lust of the earth or of the plant—Francis Bacon).” It means “an intense longing: CRAVING.” It means “EAGERNESS, ENTHUSIASM.” The word, then, derived from the Latin lascivus, meaning wanton, playful, is double-edged. Wise women wield our wits, making this word our wand, our Labrys. For it Names not only the “thrust of the argument” that assails women and nature on all levels (mythic, ideological, institutional, behavioral) but also the way out—the vigor, eagerness, and intense longing that launches Wild women on Journeys beyond the State of Lechery.
Primarily, then, Pure Lust Names the high humor, hope, and cosmic accord/harmony of those women who choose to escape, to follow our hearts’ deepest desire and bound out of the State of Bondage, Wanderlusting and Wonderlusting with the elements, connecting with auras of animals and plants, moving in planetary communion with the farthest stars. This Lust is in its essence astral. It is pure Passion: unadulterated, absolute, simple sheer striving for abundance of be-ing. It is unlimited, unlimiting desire/fire. One moved by its magic is Musing/Re-membering. Choosing to leave the dismembered state, she casts her lot, life, with the trees and the winds, the sands and the tides, the mountains and moors. She is Outcast, casting her Self outward, inward, breaking out of the casts/castes of phallocracy’s fabrications/fictions, moving out of the maze of mediated experience. As she lurches/leaps into starlight her tears become tidal, her cackles cosmic, her laughter Lusty.
The struggle Named by the Labrys of this title is between reality and unreality, between the natural Wild, which is be-ing, and man-made fabrications that fracture her substance, simulate her soul. It is between the desire, eagerness, vigor, enthusiasm of/for expanding be-ing, which philosophers have called final causality, and blockage/blockers of this reaching of be-ing. Such blockage is the State of Lechery, in which longing for participation in transcendent Be-ing is reified, displaced, plasticized, rehabilitated.
Elemental female Lust is intense longing/craving for the cosmic concrescence that is creation. It is charged, tense, in tension with the tenses of fabricated “father time.” Incensed, it burns through the shallow impressions of insipid senses, sensing the Sources, Astral Forces, Angels and Graces that call from the Deep. This Lusting is divining: foreseeing, foretelling, forecasting. Unlike the dim divines and divinities, the deadheads of deadland whose ill-luminations blind us, Lusty women portend with luster, our radiance from within that radiates from and toward Original Powers of creation.
The word luster is itself a double-edged word, a Labrys, having quite opposite definitions. It means, on the one hand, “a glow of reflected light: GLOSS, SHEEN,” and “a coating or substance that gives luster to a surface.” On the other hand, it means “a glow of light from within: LUMINOSITY, SHINE: (luster of the stars)” and “an inner beauty: RADIANCE.” These opposed definitions give clues concerning the condition of women and of words.
When reflecting the artificial lights of patriarchal prisons, words help us recognize the superficial coatings, the flashy phoniness of the fathers’ foreground falsifications. Thus, for example, the word woman Names the alienating archetype that freezes female be-ing, locking us into prisons of “forever feminine” roles. But when we wield words to dis-close the inner beauty, the radiance of the Race of Lusty Women, we/they blaze open pathways to our Background/homeland. Thus woman, wisely wielded, Names a Wild and Lusty Female claiming wisdom, joy, and power as her own.
In their double-edged dimensions, then, words wield/yield messages about the tragedy of women and all Wild be-ing confined within imprisoning patriarchal parameters. Besides/beyond this, they radiate knowledge of an ancient age, and they let us know that they, the words themselves, are treasures trying to be freed, vibrations whose auras await awakening ears.
Breaking the bonds/bars of phallocracy requires breaking through to radiant powers of words, so that by releasing words, we can release our Selves. Lusty women long for radiant words, to free their flow, their currents, which like our own be-ing have been blocked and severed from ancestral Memory. The Race of Lusty Women, then, has deep connections with the Race of Radiant Words.
A basic thesis of this book, implied in the title, is that women who choose biophilic be-ing belong to the Race of Lusty Women, which participates in the Race of Elemental be-ing. For we are rooted, as are animals and trees, winds and seas, in the Earth’s substance. Our origins are in her elements. Thus, when true to our Originality, we are Elemental, that is “of, relating to, or caused by great force of nature.”
Under the conditions of patriarchy, women dis-cover our Original Race through the release of deep ontological Fury. By Fury I do not mean an agitated state of chronic or acute anger that immobilizes, or that misfires at the wrong target. Rather, I mean a focused gynergetic will to break through the obstacles that block the flow of Female Force. Female Fury is Volcanic Dragonfire. It is Elemental breathing of those who love the Earth and her kind, who Rage against the erasure of our kind. It is the Rage of those who choose this, our own Race of Elemental be-ing over all man-made, male-designed divisions and categories, Naming our Selves and all truly life-loving creatures as priority, refusing to be e-raced, to be severed from our deep roots—refusing the effacement of our Race.6 Lusty women experience great diversity, and know that we belong to many tribes.7 Dis-covering radical female-identified diversity, we decline confinement in man-made racetracks.8
A primary meaning of race is “the act of rushing onward: RUN.” This definition describes the movement of women who have dis-covered our original, Elemental Lust. Another definition is “a strong or rapid current of water that flows through a narrow channel.” Elemental life must often flow through narrow channels, for in the State of Lechery options are narrowed. Yet, under these conditions, force and focus can be intense. Race also means “a heavy or choppy sea; especially one produced by the meeting of two tides.” This definition indeed applies, for the Race of Women is Wild and Tidal, roaring with rhythms that are Elemental, that are created in cosmic encounters.
The principalities of the Phallic State continually connive to eradicate the Elemental Race, to reduce us to the state of possession by pulling us up by our roots, making us rootless. Their goal is our deracination, which is “detachment from one’s background (as from homeland, customs, traditions).” Thus women and other Elemental creatures on this planet are rendered homeless, cut off from knowledge of our Race’s customs and traditions. To the extent that such tactics are successful, we are deracinated, that is, “physically, mentally, or emotionally separated from [our] racial, social, or intellectual group: free from racial characteristics or influence (as deracinated migrants from another country).” In this way, our Racing is blocked, tracked into repetitive, circular movements. Cut off from our origins, we are disoriented.
Many women sense that we have been physically, mentally, and emotionally separated from our Original, Elemental Race, made “free”—that is, purified—of our own native characteristics and influence. We sense that we are “migrants from another country.” Yet that country seems to be nowhere: it seems to be only a feminist utopian’s dream.
Together with Virginia Woolf, feminists moan: “As a woman I have no country.” And together with her we may add: “As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.”9 But there is something poignant about this brave assertion, for “the whole world” is groaning under phallic rule. It must be, then, that it is in some other dimension that “the whole world” is the country, the homeland of the Race of Women. This is not to say that a woman should cease struggling for survival within, or rather, on the boundary of, phallocracy. But that struggle is inadequate without Pure Lust, the active longing that propels a woman into her own “country,” that is, into the Realms of Elemental Reality, of ontological depth.
As the oppression and depression of the eighties increases, women are indeed pressured to be free from our “racial characteristics or influence.” Subsumed under the fathers’ spheres of influence women have forgotten that influence means “the exercise of a power like the supposed power of the stars: an emanation of spiritual or moral force.” Afflicted with amnesia, women have been subliminally seduced into forgetting the emanations of spiritual/moral power that are the influence characteristic of this Race.
This book is an invitation to women to unforget our potentialities—to re-call the Elemental potency asleep in our ancestral Memory. This requires entering Elemental Realms, and encountering the Race of Radiant Words, that is, dis-covering Elemental feminist philosophy.
In scribing the words Elemental feminist philosophy I intend to Name a form of philosophical be-ing/thinking that emerges together with metapatriarchal consciousness—consciousness that is in harmony with the Wild in nature and in the Self. The force of this philosophy has its source in women breaking out of the tamed/tracked modes of thinking/feeling of phallocracy. It is the force of reason rooted in instinct, intuition, passion.
Several meanings of the word Elemental converge for the conjuring of Elemental feminist philosophy. An “obsolete” definition is “material, physical.” The philosophy here unfolded is material/physical as well as spiritual, mending/transcending this deceptive dichotomy. Another definition is “characterized by stark simplicity, naturalness, or unrestrained or undisciplined vigor or force: not complex or refined: CRUDE, PRIMITIVE, FUNDAMENTAL, BASIC, EARTHY.” Elemental feminist philosophy is crude (in a natural state), primitive (original, primary), fundamental, basic, and, especially, Earthy. Its stark complexity spurns contrived simplicity.
Elemental also means “SPIRIT, SPECTRE, WRAITH.” The sixteenth-century alchemist, physician, philosopher Paracelsus used this word to name the spirits of the elements, the “administrators of the processes of the elements.” Since, according to his own admission, Paracelsus learned everything he knew about healing from the Witches, we can surmise who were the true sources of his naming of Elementals.10 Following sources from Greece, Egypt, India, and China he divided these into four groups: the gnomes (earth spirits), undines or nymphs (water spirits), salamanders (fire spirits), sylphs (air spirits).11 Elementals, thus understood, provide Radiant Words for Naming our spiritual connections with the elements.
Elemental also means “a first principle: RUDIMENT.” Wonderlusting women seek understanding of first principles. Sensing deeply that officially condoned knowledge has been on the wrong track, a Wild woman yearns to return to beginnings, to rudiments, to the original questions of her childhood, of her ancestral/racial Memory.12 She recognizes that these have a special aura, that they are imbued with a sense of deep Wonder, which as Aristotle noted is the beginning of the philosophical quest.13 For Wonderlusters, this is the quest for Elemental Wisdom, which is knowledge of first principles.
Clues about the nature of Elemental Wisdom can be gleaned from statements attributed to the apostle Paul—arch-hater of life in general and women in particular—concerning elements and Elementals. He wrote:
See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. (Col. 2:8 [R.S.V.])
It is evident that Paul experienced distaste for philosophy which is associated with Elemental spirits. The antithesis of such Wild Worldly Wisdom is Christ. The extent of the necrophilic lust motivating these words becomes even more evident later in the same chapter:
If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? (Col. 2:20 [R.S.V.])
Elemental philosophy is of the world. It is for those who love and belong to this world, who experience Be-Longing in this world, who refuse the horror of Self-loss implied in dying “with Christ” to the Elemental spirits of the universe. In case there could be any delusions concerning the element-hating thrust of christian ideology, which seeks to kill Earthy wisdom, Paul drives home the point:
Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. (Col. 3:2–3 [R.S.V.])
In contrast to this, Elemental women experience our Selves, and, therefore, our philosophy, as rooted in love for the earth and for things that naturally are on earth. This Elemental Earthy Lust was expressed by Emily Brontë in Wuthering Heights, in the words of Catherine:
“If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable. . . . I dreamt once that I was there . . . that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.”14
The joy of Elemental women, then, is Earthy, and so also is our philosophic quest.
The lust to kill this philosophical quest is expressed in yet another pauline text, which provides further clues for understanding the perversion/reversal of primal Wonderlust:
When we were children, we were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe. But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying “Abba! Father!” . . . But now that you have come to know God, or rather be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits, whose slaves you want to be once more? (Gal. 4:3–9 [R.S.V.])
Elemental women who have learned to recognize the technique of reversal will be suspicious of the word slave in this context. We do not wish to be redeemed by a god, to be adopted as sons, or to have the spirit of a god’s son artificially injected into our hearts, crying “father.” Having seen the horror of such phallocratic “spirituality,” we indeed can “turn back again,” re-membering our Selves as strong and proud “Elemental spirits,” and using this expression as Metaphor to Name our Sources, Sisters, Muses, Friends, as well as our Selves. As we turn back, re-membering, we understand ever more deeply the war continually waged against Elemental life by the fathers and sons.
The logical outcome of the war against Elemental be-ing that is legitimated by such “spirituality” was expressed in the second epistle of Peter:
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up. (2 Pet. 3:10 [R.S.V.])
As self-fulfilling prophecy and manifesto of necrophilic faith, this “inspired” text is one among many that have paved the way for modern technological war against the elements, which takes such forms as nuclearism and chemical contamination. Understanding/moving through and beyond this war is the work of Elemental feminist philosophy of life.
Women who have not died to the Elemental spirits of the universe naturally do live as if we still belong to this world, which is the Otherworld in relation to the sadostate legitimated by Peter and Paul, Tom, Dick, and Harry. Naturally, we Lust for more re-membering of the elements and of Elemental spirits.
Unwittingly, biblical scholars have provided some helpful hints for Earthy Hags concerning the Greek word stoicheia as used in Paul’s letters, which is translated sometimes as “elemental spirits” and sometimes simply as “the elements.” It means: (1) the spoken letters of the alphabet; (2) the fire, air, earth, and water of which the world was thought to be constituted; (3) the elements of the universe, the larger cosmos, including the sun, moon, planets, and stars; (4) “the spirits, angels, and demons which were believed to ensoul the heavenly bodies, traverse all space, and inhabit every nook and cranny of earth, particularly tombs, desert places, and demented persons.”15 These multiple meanings not only name the targets of the life-haters who control sado-society. They can also aid adventurous Amazons to cut through the foreground films of deception into our Elemental Realms. These meanings can be examined separately.
First, elements, defined as the spoken letters of the alphabet, suggests—if a Wondering woman listens with her Third Ear—the primal Race of Words: their cosmic sounds, meanings, rhythms, and connections. The fathers, sons, and holy ghosts attempt to annihilate this Archaic alphabet, replacing these sounds with meaningless noises, with verbiage and verbigeration. Women Naming our own experience awaken our Powers to hear the Elemental sounds.
Second, elements as fire, air, earth, water constitute the deep Realms of reality with which our senses are naturally and Wildly connected. These Realms are masked by the mediators who produce substitutes for the natural components of this world. Women Naming this world for our Selves re-member our relations with these Earthy realities.
Third, elements as the larger cosmos describe the vast context within which primal powers must be understood. They also describe the context in which Elemental philosophy is woven and suggest the scope of the Wanderlust/Wonderlust that motivates exploration/creation. The lords of lechery hide this context by embedding unnatural limitations in minds, senses. Muses melt these blinders with the Fire of desire. We break them with the winds and waters of Wild Words, Racing free.
Finally, Elemental spirits/angels/demons may be understood as Metaphors manifesting the essential unity and intelligence of spirit/matter, the inherent telos of spirit/matter. They Name Intelligence ensouling the stars, animating the processes of earth, air, fire, water, enspiriting the sounds that are the elements of words, connecting words with the earth, air, fire, water and with the sun, moon, planets, stars. The Metaphoric language of “Elemental spirits” is crucial for the empowering of women, for this conjures memories of Archaic integrity that have been broken by phallic religion and philosophy. The task of reclaiming this integrity demands Stamina—the threads of life spun by the Fates. The Spinning of these threads is the task of Elemental philosophy. Also it is the work of Graces, the work of natural, Elemental Grace.
Readers of Gyn/Ecology will recall that its Journey was/is a work of Hag-ography, a whirl through the time/space of Hag-ocracy, the Otherworld (Background) inhabited by Hags, Crones, Harpies, Furies, Amazons, Spinsters. As the Spooking, Sparking, and Spinning Voyagers continue to move, our Wanderlust/Wonderlust intensifies. The heat of our battles is heightened. The Force of our Fire is volcanic/epiphanic. The expanse of our Journey is Astral/Archaic and the Voyagers are Archelogians whose Lust is fueled by the influence of the stars.16
Archelogians are neither religious nor irreligious; we are Nag-Gnostic. One meaning of the verb nag is “to affect recurrent awareness, uncertainty, need for consideration, or concern; make recurrently aware of something (as a problem, solution, situation).” One meaning of the adjective gnostic is “believing in the reality of transcendental knowledge.” Nag-Gnostic Archelogians sense with certainty the reality of transcendental knowledge. At the same time, we never cease to Nag our Selves and others with recurrent awareness and uncertainty.
The Nags who blaze the paths of Pure Lust are characterized by rich diversity. Fired by Dreadful Desire, we battle the butchers/blockers/stoppers. Reeling through new Realms, Nags conjure forth Sister-Nagsters, all fueled with Elemental Fury. The following list will Name and summon forth a few. We are: Augurs, Brewsters, Dikes, Dragons, Dryads, Fates, Phoenixes, Gorgons, Maenads, Muses. We are Naiads, Nixes, Gnomes, Norns, Nymphs. We are Oceanids, Oreads, Orishas, Pixies. We are Prudes, Salamanders, Scolds, Shrews, Sibyls, Sirens. We are Soothsayers, Sprites, Stiffs, Sylphs, Undines. We are Viragos, Virgins, Vixens, Websters, Weirds.
As the crowd increases, the diversity intensifies. Our power is not of numbers but of astral force.