From chapter 6 of Pure Lust, pp. 257–59.
From chapter 6 of Pure Lust, pp. 257–59.
Rage: transformative focusing force that awakens transcendent E-motion; Passion that unpots the potted passions and melts down the plastic ones; Passion which, when unleashed, enables Furies to sever our Selves from the State of Severance, breathe Fire, and fly into freedom.
—Wickedary, p. 91
Distancing herself from real-world issues of race, Daly instead used the term “race” to reinforce her dynamic, open ontology, doing this through the glowing poetry of an ode to raging movement. This style of accumulated neologisms, wordplay, and intellectual ecstasy marked her writings—and her public appearances—for the remainder of her life.
—Editors
Women sever our Selves from the State of Severance by the force of righteous Fury, unleashed Rage. This passion unpots the potted passions and melts down the plastic ones. Potted love, desire, joy, hate, aversion, and sorrow, as well as potted fear, daring, hope, despair, and anger shoot forth, shattering the confining pots. Extending their roots and branches, they reach for their Elemental connections with Earth, Air, Water, Fire. Touched by the sweet earth, wild winds, rich rain, warm sun, they expand unendingly.
Righteous Rage makes love, desire, and joy realistic, unsentimental. Unsatisfied with the appeasing sops/slops fed to imprisoned plants, loving, desiring, rejoicing women—that is, Lusty women—allow no limits to the qualitative expansion of our Lust. Disdaining the dainty morsels served in the Severed State of Domestication, we drink deeply of Wild elements and thrive, grow.
Freed Fury makes hate, aversion, and sorrow biophilic. No longer twisted inward, devouring women’s Selves, these passions purge our souls of horizontal violence. Our hate and aversion—moving past the token torturers who are also victims—stir us to end the cruel rule of agents of aggression. Applying our Selves to Naming the real agents, Furies fueled by these passions are unappeasable. Our Fire is unallayed, unassuaged by Rites of Appeasement.
Our grief is for the Earth, our Sister, as well as for the Fore-crones of our Race. It melts/unfreezes frozen tears, tearing open Eyes to see what has been hidden and denied. Touching ancient scars, uncovering wounds, we wash away infections of Self-hate. The healing waters of our weeping give us strength. Our words of wailing wash our souls with truth that cleanses while it clears the air we breathe.
Rage-fueled fear and daring combine in forming focused ferocity. Furies know that the Ultimate Fearful Thing is loss of Lust for Life, and that this Lust is lost/killed by compromise, by crumbling before our fears of lesser evils. The righteous fear of compromise is one Source of Haggard Dreadful Daring. Furies dare also to reverse the reversal contained in this word—compromise—itself. For in its roots this does not mean “selling out” but simply “promising together.” Promising together to spurn the spurious promises of our would-be procurers and appeasers, Raging women learn anew the meanings of faith, of Fate. Faithful to our promises to each other, we can dare to re-create our Fates, to be Spinners of Stamina, the threads of Life.
Hope and despair are sharpened also by Righteous Rage. Furies dispense with potted hopes, such as hopes for equality within patriarchy, recognizing this to be a contradiction in terms. In this sense we despair, that is, turn our energies away from what had formerly been perceived as “good” and which was an illusion. Rage at having been deceived/duped into expending energy in the pursuit of false hopes emboldens women to reach/hope for more arduous and ultimately more real Goods. Rage, then, as a forceful reaction to realistic assessment of our caste’s conditions, releases pent up gynergy which can then express itself as original, creative hope.
Anger is unpotted and transformed into Rage/Fury when the vast network that constitutes the context of our oppression is recognized. It is further transformed when the positive network of Elemental be-ing is glimpsed behind the Foreground. As the Realm of Pyrospheres is Realized, anger bursts forth as Creative Rage.
In this Realm, passions are truly movements, verbs. We experience the melting down of noxious nouns embedded in our psyches, which are the plastic passions. Depression is converted into expression. Guilt, anxiety, frustration, and the other lumps of fixated feelings are broken into their real components—the hate, aversion, sadness, fear, despair, and Rage that really move. Full-fillment melts down simply into Nothing. This process cannot happen “all at once,” of course, but each movement of be-ing is experienced as an epiphany/ontophany.
Pyromancers learn to live simultaneously in many dimensions. Thus the passions that have evil as their object, such as sorrow, fear, and daring, do not and should not disappear. As powerful forms of E-motion, they have a place within a realistic, biophilic context. The same principle applies to Rage.
Pyromantic, creatively Raging women are Racy women. Racy means “having the distinctive or characteristic flavor, quality, or excellence of a race or kind.” Racy also means “full of life, zest, or vigor: LIVELY, SPIRITED.” Racy, Raging women, then, are Lusty, having the distinctive qualities of the Race of Women.
To comprehend raciness we can recall that the Race of Women is many-dimensional. We have seen (in the Introduction) that race means “act of rushing onward: RUN.”1 The distinctive flavor, quality, and excellence of Racy Women, then, implies movement—the act of rushing onward. Moreover, race means “a strong or rapid current of water.” The raciness of the Race of Women involves strength, speed, and focus. Also, race means “a heavy or choppy sea; especially one produced by the meeting of two tides.” The Elemental raciness of the Race of Women involves Wild and roaring movement, and Tidal meetings and encounters. Clearly, then, the Racy Raging Race of Women will require the Realizing of Volcanic Virtues, as we move deeper into Pyrospheres.