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MASTER OF ARTS

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THESIS TITLE: "Rhetorics of Resistance and Revelation: Reading Daly, Woolf

and Silko as Ecofeminist Literature"

AUTHOR: Christina Bruer Ames

DATE OF SUCCESSFUL DEFENSE: July 18, 2006

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Rhetorics of Resistance and Revelation: Reading Daly, Woolf and Silko as Ecofeminist Literature

Christina Bruer Ames California State University San Marcos Summer 2006 Thesis Abstract

Ecofeminist theory can be said to privilege the idea of immanence over transcendence in order to promote a philosophical shift towards understanding ourselves as part of nature, as fundamentally connected to all living things and the earth itself (Starhawk qtd. in Gaard 3). Restructuring society to reflect this egalitarian and ecological viewpoint necessitates a radical shift of consciousness, one that will require persistent critique of existing hierarchal structures. Religion and spirituality come under intense scrutiny in this transition, as seen in the texts I will discuss here. Daly, Woolf and Silko revive ancient and indigenous tradition in order to offer a powerful alternative to mainstream Christianity and the Western patriarchal tradition. My purpose here is to further movement towards reversing the deeply ingrained dogma of female inferiority that continues to haunt women, and to join the many feminist thinkers, philosophers, and theologians who consider

Christian patriarchy a linguistic and symbolic system that no longer serves the needs of society.

The concept of Goddess is a particularly useful rhetorical strategy in imagining an alternative to the status quo, as Goddess is embodied in the world and in all living things. Goddess is not simply a replacement for the noun God; rather, reviving Goddess symbolism is an act of linguistic activism designed to inspire a more reverential attitude towards women and the earth itself.

Keywords: ecofeminism, Daly, Woolf, Silko, Goddess, Christianity, spirituality Table of Contents

Introduction 1

A Matter of History 7

The Radical [Re ]Vision of Mary Daly 17

Virginia Woolf: Reluctant Feminist, Radical Intellectual 42

Recovering Spirit in Spider Woman's Web: The Nature of Healing in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony 70

Epilogue 97

Works Cited 100 1

Introduction

The myth that women are marginal to the creation of history and civilization has profoundly affected the psychology of women and men. It has given men a skewed and essentially erroneous view of their place in human society and in the universe - Gerda Lerner

Today' s ecofeminism is restoring the earlier prehistory of goddess worship and its arts and rituals, which celebrate Nature as an order that is, in principle, not fully knowable precisely because humans are a part of it. Ecofeminism once more views Nature as sacred- Hazel Henderson ( qtd. in Gaard)

The spirits are not intangible; they are not of another world. They are the way the local earth speaks when we step back inside this world - David Abram

David Abram's essays speak to the necessity of rediscovering our sensual connection to the living land, "coaxing our communities and our cultures into a dynamic, dancing alignment with the breathing earth" (15). This sentiment eloquently alludes to a vital tenet of ecofeminism: the view that life on earth is an interconnected web rather than a hierarchy, and that androcentric and anthropomorphic values are projected onto nature in order to justify social and ecological domination. The broad historical and philosophical shifts leading to the formation and maintenance of hierarchal ideologies form a fundamental component of feminist/ecofeminist investigation; therefore, ecofeminist theory has found expression in religion and spirituality, the arts, literature, language, science and technology (Warren xiii). This comprehensive range of interrogatory analysis has 2 enormous potential to generate insights and perspectives relevant to the ambitious and vitally necessary goal of transforming a worldview that supports domination and replacing it with an alternative value system. This project will explore literary and rhetorical strategies of evoking such change.

Christian patriarchy a linguistic and symbolic system that no longer serves the needs of society.

Christian tradition typically denigrates the earth while fetishizing heaven, idolizes the machine over the cycles of life, and pushes notions of linear progress over ecological consequence, effectively producing the conditions for nuclear 3 annihilation (Caputi 243). In an effort to halt this doomed procession towards a manmade apocalypse, many writers have asserted the need for a new paradigm to guide human conduct, one that will revive a reverential and compassionate worldview. As symbols, images and language form the fundamental structure of ideology, the challenge becomes altering the deeply ingrained and static representations of patriarchal hierarchies and replacing these constructs with evolutionary, ecological and egalitarian value systems.

Goddess imagery and rhetoric seek to contest the idea of a transhistorical view of women as occupying a lesser or inferior social role, and to emphasize our responsibility to embrace life on earth. Recovering a female past increases understanding of history as a changing and evolving ideological structure; this knowledge also clarifies our ability to alter the course of history.

The bible has historically and persistently been cited as justification for sexism, racism, classism and domination of the earth; biblical interpretation indeed cannot be separated from the social/ecological history of North America.

Apocalyptic thinking in particular has had profound consequences, as concern for 4 maintaining and caring for the earth cannot be reconciled with anticipation of the rapture. The dramatic resurgence of this doctrine in current political realms and fictive pop culture makes the message of authors promoting compassion and earthcare particularly relevant.

Unsurprisingly, the sages of all world religions, including Christianity, promoted compassion as the goal of all human beings; true compassion can lead to encounters with the divine. Religion in practice, however, is hardly congruent with the message of its prophets and becomes increasingly perverse over time. In a world torn apart by greed and hatred, yet in possession of nuclear technology, this combination of factors becomes particularly troublesome. Daly, Woolf, and Silko

(and many others) logically position themselves in contrast to this ideology. Each author seeks to posit an alternative to the stifling strictures of Christianity that limit human potential and wreak havoc upon the earth. These authors stress the transformational qualities of intelligence, imagination and creativity as the necessary components of change.

Mary Daly has been a particularly relevant critic of patriarchal religion, symbols and language. Her work has liberated language and female history from the stranglehold of biblically induced inferiority and denigration, offering instead a rich mythological history of feminine power. Christianity has espoused a cult of male dominance, in which female subservience and dependence has been enforced.

Rather than realizing their intellectual and divine potential, women have been 5 forced into humiliating competition with other women for basic sustenance, resulting in a harmful division among women. Daly seeks to heal this fracture by restoring to women their ancient past, and educating them as to the monstrous tactics employed by patriarchy to ensure their continued subjugation. Daly reclaims the metaphorical power of words, words often distorted by the fathers of tidy time, doomed time (Wickedary 279). She utilizes Goddess imagery as "Metaphors of

Metamorphosis," designed to inspire female unity, action and movement.

Virginia Woolf is referred to by Daly as a most important Foresister; indeed

Woolf is cited by most feminist scholars. Woolf's work prefigures ecofeminist concerns in many ways: she is dismayed at the dualistic roles of men and women in

Victorian society, she laments the destructive warring factions in Europe, and she consistently utilizes Goddess and matriarchal imagery in her works of fiction to promote an alternative vision. Woolf's non-fiction works tirelessly promote autonomy for women as the necessary condition for societal change. Woolf astutely identifies the ways that language functions as an ideological construct and creates narratives to counter the logic of her day. As one of the first truly successful female novelists, however, Woolf handled her status with care, often cloaking her message in subtle allusion. Her fictional works are therefore profoundly multilayered and especially fascinating to consider. To the Lighthouse and Between the Acts are examined for their particularly evocative imagery and important social criticism. 6

Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony offers her rich Native American ancestry and mythology as a counter to modem social and ecological dilemmas. Her promotion of Native American earth reverence and animism is offered in a story that projects a holistic and egalitarian model of human relations, one that rejects violence, destruction, sexism and racism. Silko utilizes the gynocentric creation narrative of the Laguna Pueblo to infuse her story with feminine wisdom, sexuality and nurturance, qualities critical to the recovery of her protagonist and her reader.

Silko emphasizes the power of words as creating reality and presents life as a continuously unfolding story, thereby empowering her reader with the ceremony necessary for change.

Daly, Woolf and Silko share a common focus and concern regarding war like societal tendency, which has escalated to unacceptable risk with the development of nuclear technology. There is additionally the congruent idea of integrating feminine consciousness into a culture in need of a more compassionate and respectful relationship with the natural world and its inhabitants. Their rhetorical strategy employs Words as Action; language offers a primary tool for ideological change. These authors assert unanimously that women-while happily connected to nature-undeniably function in important cultural capacities. As men embrace their necessary inclusion in this concept, progress will be made towards the egalitarianism and earthcare ecofeminism insists upon, and the planet and its inhabitants may indeed be "saved." 7

A Matter of History

French philosopher Francoise d'Eaubonne is credited with coining the term ecofeminisme, based on her linking of the domination of both women and the earth.

Her works, as described by Barbara T. Gates, point out the fact that through most of recorded time, men have consistently desired power over women's reproductive functions, a desire that has then been projected onto nature (17). Women have historically been hindered in their attempts to control birthrates by male-dominated ideology, particularly through theological and legislative enforcement. Similarly, theology and legislation have been formulated to justify destructive environmental practices. Gates offers the following excerpt from d'Eaubonne's work in 1970's

Europe:

Practically everybody knows that today the two most immediate threats to survival are overpopulation and the destruction of our natural resources; fewer recognize the complete responsibility of the male System, in so far as it is male (and not capitalist or socialist)1 in these two dangers; but even fewer still have discovered that each of the two threats is the logical outcome of one of the two parallel discoveries which gave men their power over fifty centuries ago: their ability to plant the seed in the earth as in women, and their participation in the act of reproduction. ( qtd in Gates 16)

1 While the political implications of d'Eaubonne's comment are clearly significant, it is beyond the scope of this paper to give this topic proper discussion. 8

This assertion reflects historical/archaeological theory connecting the onset of agricultural development with ensuing patriarchal social structure and the insistence on connecting women and nature as entities to be controlled and manipulated. The ongoing controversy over control of female fertility, as well as the prevalence of destructive environmental policies, attests to the tenacity of this dominator mentality. D'Eaubonne, like the feminists and ecofeminists who follow her, recognizes that the problems created by inattention to women's and the earth's welfare demands nothing short of a mental and behavioral revolution.

Countering the derogatory implications in the supposed woman/nature connection, d'Eaubonne instead recognizes women as the earth's earliest gardeners, employing ecologically sound methods of agriculture, such as the practice of burning shrubs as a natural method of fertilization (Gates 19). D'Eaubonne's historical analysis does not validate essentialist claims of women as biologically closer to nature, but rather emphasizes the interconnectedness with nature that is central to ecofeminist theory, privileging responsible care of the earth. This interaction with nature is positively manifested in the present in feminist protests against nuclear power and scientific manipulation of the environment.

Ecofeminism's continuing critique of the profit and power-oriented goals of male dominated society that threaten planetary sustainability formulates an agenda designed to bring about the philosophical and ecological revolution d'Eaubonne promotes. 9

Vandana Shiva's essay Reductionism and Regeneration further articulates d'Eaubonne's analogy of the seed and women's bodies as the sites of regeneration that capitalist patriarchy seeks to colonize. Critiquing scientific demarcations of knowledge and ignorance as designed to legitimate male control of women and nature, Shiva states: "These sites of creative regeneration are transformed into

'passive' sites where the expert 'produces' and adds value. Nature, women and non-white people merely provide 'raw' material" (25). Some 20 years after d'Eaubonne's critique of chemical alternatives to natural regeneration, Shiva's observations are more expansive and alarming. The engineering and hybridization of the seed is connected with control of the female body as commodity: scientific degradation and mechanization of land management with the increased medicalization of childbirth and the female body into fragmented, fetishized and manageable parts (26). The desire to reduce the female womb to an "inert container, their passivity constructed along with their ignorance," is a modem analysis of an oppressive desire that dates as far back as history is recorded. The evolution of this repressive ideology is telling both in terms of explaining female subjugation and in positing an alternative paradigm.

The objective of feminist/ecofeminist concern to retrieve a women's history is born of the need to refute patriarchal promotion of women as naturally and inherently inferior to men. This notion has been solidified over the centuries through intense propaganda and terrorism; however, modem historians, 10 archaeologists and theologians offer evidence and analysis that expose the complexity of this transition, as well as the female participation required to maintain this view. Understanding how circumstance has lead to complicity is important for women in avoiding a victim mentality. Rather, a more accurate historical unveiling can lead to an empowering form of knowledge that demands change. Gerda Lerner's The Creation of Patriarchy is an informative and well researched history of how women's cultural roles have transitioned over time. She additionally offers a hypothetical scenario detailing how women initially came to be dominated by men, based on archaeological evidence, existing theories and her own extrapolation. Lerner views both theorizing and verifiable historic information as vital to progressing towards a more egalitarian society, stating:

The contradiction between women's centrality and active role in creating society and their marginality in the meaning-giving process of interpretation and explanation has been a dynamic force, causing women to struggle against their condition ... This coming-into consciousness of women becomes the dialectical force moving them into action to change their condition and to enter a new relationship to male-dominated society. (5)

When women can construct a vision of their place in history, this psychological shift will lead to their emancipation. It will free them from the heavily promoted view of patriarchy as an eternal and unchanging social structure. Largely denied the education and forum for recording, interpreting and creating their past, women 11 have become indoctrinated with the idea of a strictly male-identified experience-a worldview which has amazingly neglected over one half of the population. The clear and inarguable absurdity of this scenario is the object of study and reinterpretation by many feminist/ecofeminist scholars. Lerner's investigation posits plausible prehistory and uncovers salient evidence that lays important groundwork for imagining an alternative reality.

The establishment of patriarchy was not an event in history, but rather a process that unfolded over a period of over 2500 years, from approximately 3100 to

600 B.C.E. (8). This fact refutes any idea of a "natural" order to the idea of male dominated society; rather, it indicates a tenacious oppressive mentality that progressively gained dominance. Lerner, like d'Eaubonne, posits this progression as largely based on the appropriation of women's sexual and reproductive capacity, a commodification that many theorists believe occurred prior to the formation of private property and class society (Levi-Strauss, Meillassoux, Darlington). This theory is based on the phenomenon of exchanging women observed in many tribal societies around the world, which likely accelerated to become the leading cause of female subordination (46). It is the level of control desired over women's reproductive capacity that forms the basis of increasingly oppressive practices against women and the foundation of the patriarchal family structure.

Beginning with the basic assumption that men and women built society jointly, Lerner deems it logical that biological determinism guided the values of 12 human beings in earlier times, when the quality of maternal care was undoubtedly crucial to survival. The absolute necessity of women nourishing and sheltering infants indeed gave mothers the power over life and death, and undoubtedly created a powerful mother/child bond (40). Lerner emphasizes this necessity of social arrangements as creating initial divisions of labor, a reality, of course, that no longer holds sway. But during this historical period, both men and women must have accepted that group survival depended on mothers devoting themselves to pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, and developed corresponding cultural values (41). What logically follows is that women would choose activities that could easily combine with childrearing, such as small game hunting and food gathering, which is estimated to have provided sixty percent of a community's sustenance. Women's contribution to their respective tribes' welfare can therefore be described as immeasurable, with women's work also posited as including the development of agricultural and medicinal knowledge, as well as inventing necessities such as clay and woven vessels.

This vision of women is considerably different from theories arguing man the hunter as naturally dominant. Big game hunting is recognized, in fact, as less important to overall tribal culture, and likely performed mostly by men in order to protect women from unnecessary danger. Men's and women's skills were both essential and manifold, and women in Neolithic society must have recognized their power and contributions as critical and not only equal, but perhaps superior to that 13 of men (43). Women's life-essential skills were likely viewed as a source of abundance and strength in early cultures and indeed became infused with a sense of magic, as it is noted that in some societies women jealously guarded their "group secrets, their magic, and their healing herbs" (44). It becomes conceivable that women, especially of childbearing age, came to be reified and viewed as a form of wealth to early communities. This reification marks the onset of women being offered to neighboring communities as an exchange designed to bring peace and prosperity, which may have initially seemed both logical and desirable to women in terms of social power. This practice escalated, however, later to develop into exploitation and severe commodification of a tribe's most valued asset.

The social shifts that occurred legitimizing the practice of exchanging women likely took place at such a slow pace that women were disenfranchised before fully recognizing their diminishing role. This theory helps explain confusion regarding women's complicity in their oppression, marking the process as gradual and insidious. Indeed, women eventually became pawns in conflicts between tribes, and warrior culture emerged. Lerner posits that women (rather than men) were exchanged for a variety of reasons in addition to those stated above. Women were/are more easily coerced, due to the ability of men to rape and otherwise assault women. Once impregnated, women were more likely to bond with their children and relatives and remain with their captors. This use of sexuality marks a profound transition in the relationship between men and women, in which pain and 14 domination intrudes on the most intense and pleasurable aspect of human relations.

Further, by learning to dominate women, men gained the psychological tools necessary to implement slavery, as historical evidence suggests the process of enslavement was developed and perfected on female war captives and that it was reinforced by already known practices of marital exchange and concubinage (78).

And so we see the domination and enslavement of women as the illustrious origin of institutions that become increasingly corrupt, and begin to include men and

Others.

The reality of the vital procreative role of women, however, is also the actuality that motivates the theory that the earliest societies centered on worship of a Mother Goddess, a hypothesis supported by the vast number of ancient figurines and artwork depicting the female form, often pregnant or giving birth or with accentuated vulvas. This evidence dates as far as 30,000 years before the thirty to fifty centuries we call recorded history. For instance, in the Neolithic community of Lepenski Vir (Yugoslavia), fifty-four red sandstone sculptures carved on oval boulders were found placed around vulva and uterus shaped altars in shrines that were themselves in the shape of the pubic triangle, the primary historical symbol of the Goddess (Eisler 16). In other places, the vulva is represented with symbols from nature, most commonly with the cowrie shell, which has been discovered in many burial sites as well as in Egyptian sarcophagi. The cowrie shell was still seen as a powerful symbol of regeneration and illumination as late as the Roman Empire 15

(Eisler 17). The phallus and the vulva are united in much artwork as well, although the phallus is more prominently depicted after the onset of the Bronze Age.

The theory of the sacredness of procreation is given added weight by the earliest written mythologies, depicting the Great Mother or Creatress as the maker of the universe. This body of evidence pointing to societal respect and reverence for female contribution and participation coincides with myth and ritual that celebrates fertility and sexuality, a theme that many feminists feel is necessary to revive in order to achieve the consciousness necessary for real and substantive social change. Western mythology in fact contains many references to the sacredness of sexual union, in which sex is enacted to ensure nature's continued abundance. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, we see sexual union with a priestess

(alternately translated as courtesan or harlot) as transforming Enkidu from beast to human, making him "wise ... like a god" (Sandars 65; Eisler 8). We later see the union of kings with high priestesses as necessary to legitimizing their rule, again depicting human sexuality as sacred, rather than profane.

The progressive model of patriarchal desire to control female sexuality is, however, rife with violence and manifest in phobic obsession with virginity and vilification of the human sex drive. In Western ideology, this view is most clearly perpetuated by the Christian doctrine of Original Sin, in which Hebraic scripture is reconceived to explain the corrupt nature of human sexuality and female responsibility for human transgression. Domination of the procreative urge comes 16 to be seen as the ultimate spiritual victory, and it is this mentality that is so seamlessly projected onto nature.

It becomes clear that changing attitudes towards women and sexuality is a prerequisite to mending our relationship to nature, as the tenacity of the woman/nature versus man/culture connection continues to validate dominator mentality. Hope lies in understanding that patriarchy and female subjugation has an historical origin and can be ended under altered historical conditions. Feminist and ecofeminist rhetoric employs a variety of approaches to instigate this change and enable a new historical vision. 17

The Radical [Re ]Vision of Mary Daly

Sexual caste is hidden by ideologies that bestow false identities upon women and men. Patriarchal religion has served to perpetuate all of these dynamics of delusion, naming them "natural" and bestowing its supernatural blessing upon them. The system has been advertised as "according to the divine plan."~ Beyond God the Father

Gyn!Ecology: knowledge enabling Crones to expose connections among the institutions, ideologies, and atrocities of the foreground; habit of Dis-covering threads of connections hidden by man-made mazes and mysteries~ Webster's First New Intergalactic Wickedary

A primary traditionalist argument for female subordination lies in theological justification of male dominance, most clearly articulated for modern

Western concerns in the Judea/Christian doctrine. Despite the eventual triumph of patriarchal monotheism over more tolerant, pagan philosophies, there is ample evidence that for long periods of time other cultural practices struggled to survive.

The instinctive attraction of Goddess worship persisted, and women continued to participate in respected roles as priestesses, prophetesses, diviners and healers, making claims of male exclusivity in the spiritual realm untenable, and debunking the woman/nature man/culture demarcation. These depictions of feminine power offer compelling rhetorical tools to feminists and ecofeminists concerned with changing the consciousness not only of men, but of the group that must first be convinced of an alternative reality: women themselves. Mary Daly's many works are thus designed to produce a radical shift in female consciousness. 18

By emphasizing patriarchal appropriation of language, mythological imagery and female autonomy, Daly hopes to ignite the Righteous Rage of women and enlighten them to the origins of their modem predicament. She further seeks to direct women towards an alternative future: a future based on High Hopes, Humor, and Spinning2 out of the mind-binding, spirit-binding stasis of patriarchal control.

Her rhetoric is fierce and unforgiving as she assaults the motives of patriarchal institutions in stripping women of their power. Much as Lerner seeks to educate women as to the slow erosion of their rights and powers and their disadvantaged, underemphasized participation in the cultural realm, Daly seeks to shock women out of their current malaise by revealing the intent and violence that has been required to ensure the continued dominance of women. She accomplishes this by illuminating the "stolen mythic power" of the christian doctrine and other mythologies, as well as the various and hideous forms female subjugation has taken around the world-events Daly refers to as Goddess-murder.

Daly's analysis reveals the way patriarchal ideology has distorted and destroyed female identity, systematically committing acts of murder and defilement upon women's bodies and spirits. It is only when women recognize the ferocity and intent of these acts that they can begin to refute and reject patriarchal language that has promoted Goddess-murder all over this planet. When women acquire the

2 The use of capital letters for emphasis, as well as omission of such punctuation is characteristic of Daly's language reclamation. I have similarly utilized this stylistic device in my effort to represent Daly's work. 19 courage to ask the Big Questions and uncover their hidden histories, they will discover the enormous power that patriarchy has worked so vehemently to suppress.

Resurrecting this power will culminate in Courageous Confrontation and Action against patriarchal principles, a time when enlightened women will direct their creativity and genius towards life-affirming change.

Daly's transformational message requires "shifting the shapes of words and worlds," rhetorically constructing new categories of language that reflect feminist consciousness. Daly describes the urgency of this transformation in Gyn/Ecology:

This is an extremist book, written in a situation of extremity, written on the edge of a culture that is killing itself and all of sentient life. The Tree of Life has been replaced by the necrophilic symbol of a dead body hanging on dead wood. The Godfather insatiably demands more sacrifices, and the fundamental sacrifices of sadospiritual religion are female ... Gyn/Ecology requires a constant effort to see the interconnectedness of things. It involves seeing the totality of the Lie which is patriarchy, unweaving its web of deception ... seeing through patriarchy is at the same time learning to see the Background, our stolen integrity/energy/being. (17-20).

Daly works to reveal the tangible and intangible ways women are manipulated by patriarchal ideology. Christianity and its ensuing social structures are designed to physically and psychologically threaten women, as are other patriarchal world religions. The urge to dominate has now translated into danger for the planet as a whole, as progress seems irreconcilable with planetary sustainability. The journey 20 engendered by Gyn/Ecology is to ignite the Spark of Knowing in women, to make explicit what women implicitly understand: that within their Selves lay the power, the gynergy, to change the world.

Mary Daly is uniquely qualified and positioned to criticize patriarchal structures and language. Educated at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland,

Daly holds three doctorates in philosophy and theology, with a total of seven degrees. She held a teaching position at Boston College for 33 years, a career, unsurprisingly, surrounded by controversy. Boston College, after much concerted effort to be rid of Daly, suspended her for her policy of teaching only female students in the classroom, based on litigation brought by a young man backed by the right-wing Center for Individual Rights. As Catherine Madsen points out, whatever one thinks of her policy, the college's tactic is transparently vindictive,

"demonstrating the power of a stripling boy to reduce an old woman to dishonor and poverty with the help of a male-controlled hierarchy," thus largely proving

Daly right in her assertions regarding pervasive and repressive patriarchal institutions (333).

Formerly a Catholic theologian, Daly acutely understands the diminutive position of women within the patriarchal institution of religion, and her first book,

The Church and the Second Sex, is an attempt to reform this status. Daly quickly realized the futility of restructuring entrenched institutions, and has since released this text with a new, postchristian introduction. While recognizing her first work as 21 a necessary component of her journey, Daly now disagrees with "the author" of this text. In Beyond God the Father, Daly ironically alludes to the perpetuation of beliefs that she attempted to address in her first text:

The history of antifeminism in the Judeo-Christian heritage already has been exposed. The infamous passages of the Old and New Testaments are well known. I need not allude to the misogynism of the church Fathers-for example, Tertullian, who informed women in general: "You are the devil's gateway," or Augustine, who opined that women are not made to the image of God. I can omit reference to Thomas Aquinas and his numerous commentators and disciples who defined women as misbegotten males. I can overlook Martin Luther's remark that God created Adam lord over all living creatures but Eve spoiled it all. I can pass over the fact that John Knox composed a "First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women." All of this, after all, is past history. (3)

Of course these beliefs are anything but defunct; rather these attitudes form the historical basis of continuing discriminatory attitudes towards women. The influence of the Adam and Eve myth in particular has had astonishing longevity, purporting nothing less than blame for all evil and death itself exclusively on women. Christian theologians such as Augustine have compounded this perversion by creating increasingly prejudicial interpretations, such as his infamous doctrine of

Original Sin, which has resulted in a pervasive sense of guilt regarding human sexuality. Of particular importance is the punishment cited in Genesis and 22 reinforced in the Pauline epistles, which dictate that women may redeem themselves only through childbearing. It becomes impossible to ignore the political implications of such doctrine in light of the continuing punitive attitudes towards women's sexual function. Women indeed must be acknowledged as the primordial scapegoats (47).

The myth of the Fall can be seen as a prototypic case of false Naming, one

Elizabeth Cady Stanton accurately described as the foundation for the entire structure of christian ideology (47). Stanton states:

Take the snake, the fruit-tree and the woman from the tableau, and we have no fall, nor frowning Judge, no Inferno, no everlasting punishment-hence no need of a Savior. Thus the bottom falls out of the whole Christian theology. Here is the reason why in all the Biblical researches and higher criticisms, the scholars never touch the position of women. (qtd. in Beyond 69)

The power of myth and Naming is inestimable, despite the increasing secularity of society and modem biblical scholarship that no longer applies credence to the

Adam and Eve story. These foundational "truths" have had undeniable influence on social and political policy from time beyond conscious mind, making this sexist logic particularly insidious. Reclaiming language, myth and Naming therefore must constitute a rhetorical strategy of female empowerment. Understanding the way language functions to maintain the status quo will begin women's metapatriarchal journey, a journey of unveiling and repudiating derogatory representations. 23

A critical tactic of Daly's rhetoric is to promote a unity among women that she feels has been purposely crippled by mythological appropriation of female divinity and by blatant physical abuses and atrocities legitimized by cultural ritual.

Daly therefore reconstructs a history of mythology preceding Judea/Christian monotheism, revealing a shocking and surprising series of metaphorical reversals designed to negate female spirituality. While there has been much empowering movement in feminist recovery of Goddess mythology and worship, Daly warns against reducing Goddess to a static symbol, a mere replacement for the noun God.

Rather, it is vital that Goddess remain a verb, with Shape-shifting3 powers that inspire creative activity. Goddess images can lead to Self-Realizing bonding with

Other women, functioning as Metaphors of Metamorphosis, as verbs fostering participation in the Verb, Be-ing (Beyond xix). Goddess metaphors call for action and movement, evoking a clash with the "going logic," and introducing a new logic

(Morton qtd. in Beyond xix).

Patriarchy's usurping of female identified myth is one of the most deadly metaphoric mutations affecting women's psyche. This reality is reflected in the fact that the most readily retrieved female history comes in the form of religious challenges written by women. In The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, Gerda

Lerner writes:

3 Transcendent transformation of symbol-shapes, idea-shapes, relation-shapes, emotion-shapes, word-shapes, action-shapes; Moon-wise Metamorphosis (Wickedary 96) 24

Only after exploring the process of the 'dethroning of the goddesses' in the various cultures of the Ancient Near East could I fully appreciate the depth and urgency of the search of Jewish and Christian women for connection to the Divine, which found expression in more than 1000 years of feminist Bible criticism and religious re-visioning. (vii)

The abundance of both ancient and modern feminist rebuttal affirms the objective of male-centered religion and philosophy as promoting a view of women as inherently evil and ultimately inferior. This hierarchal logic has permeated human consciousness to such a degree that it has affected all social, sexual and economic relations. It is this "logic" cloaked in the splendor of supremacy that women must detect and refute. (Envision priestly/papal costumes in comparison with the plain garments assigned to nuns.) Daly uncovers the origins of myths hijacked by patriarchal religions-myths transformed to convince women that the fathers hold the keys to spiritual reality. Understanding the function of mythic reversals is an important aspect of freeing women's minds and spirits from the stranglehold of internalized inferiority.

Obvious examples of mythic reversals can be detected in the story of

Athena's 'second' birth from the head of Zeus, or the birth of Eve from Adam's rib; however, Daly moves us from simple conclusions of womb-envy into a more complex understanding that reveals the fact that patriarchal myth contains stolen mythic power. To make the metapatriarchalleap towards awareness requires that 25 we examine ancient myths for their subversion of elemental feminine capacity. For instance, in the case of Athena we must know the primacy of the story of Metis, the

Goddess of wisdom, which is thereafter subsumed within the myth of Zeus, who claims to have swallowed Metis while she is pregnant with Athena. Zeus then alleges that Metis advises him from inside his belly, "ascribing wisdom to this prototype of male cannibalism." After Athena emerges from the head of Zeus, "she becomes totally male identified, employing priests rather than priestesses, urging men into battle, and siding against women consistently" (Gyn 13). Feminists will return Athena to her real source as the daughter of Metis, the keeper of all knowledge, and to her real Self, as inheritor of divine wisdom, by recognizing the insidious intentions of divine male mothers.

This hijacking of feminine Wisdom is similarly appropriated in

Judea/Christian myth, where the Son replaces the symbol of Sophia, who is originally depicted as the secondary persona of God, mediating the work of creation. The original Hebraic scripture reads as follows:

For she is the breath of the power of God And pure emanation of his almighty glory; Therefore nothing defiled can enter into her, For she is the reflection of everlasting light, And a spotless mirror of the activity of God And a likeness of his goodness. (Wis. of Sol. 7:25-26) 26

Sophia, as the feminine aspect of God responsible for enacting Creation, generates a more balanced image of the female/male characteristics of nature. This idea of the second persona of God as female, however, is corrupted in order to explain the divine identity of Jesus, who is thereafter described as "the Wisdom of God." This appropriation discards primary feminine imagery in favor of an entirely male centered theology (Ruether 58).

Divine male motherhood is most detrimentally portrayed in the symbol of the trinity, where God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost replace the long history of Trivia, the Triple Goddess, who is also manifested as Mother, Maiden and Crone (as well as many other culturally specific names). Trivia's image invokes the archaic and cosmic meaning of three, which represented the division of the ancient world into three parts-earth, heaven and sea-all of which fell under the protectorate of the

Goddess (Gyn 78). The Maiden, Mother and Crone represented life as reflected in the lunar cycle: as the Moon waxes, She is the Maiden; full, She is the Mother; as

She wanes, She is the Crone. Mircea Eliade's scholarship confirms lunar symbolism as enabling men "to relate and connect such heterogeneous things as: birth, becoming, death, and resurrection; the waters, plants, woman, fecundity, and immortality" and the rebirth of the lunar phase (light coming out of darkness) as

"weaving the symbol of the 'thread of life,' fate, temporality and death" (Eliade

156) (emphasis mine). Eliade's form of observation reflects scholarship tainted by androcentric assumption, but affirms christian appropriation of these ideas and 27

symbols, with woman and the earth somehow excluded from this scheme originally

derived from the natural world.

The reversal of feminine life (and death) affirming imagery into the

depiction of Creation through an all-male alliance is seen historically as ancient

myth evolves into images of gods slaying the Goddess, and Trivia being abducted

by or married to male gods. This violent patriarchal reversal of power eventually eliminates all female mythic presence in the cosmos, and Woman is, ironically, no

longer the necessary elemental birthing force. Celebration of life is replaced with

obsession with death; this world is punishment designed to prepare us for an

improved, hierarchical heaven, as reflected in mythologies of the old and new testaments. It becomes interesting, and Fatefully important, for women to consider what Trivia has come to be associated with in terms of patriarchal definitions: insignificant, unimportant, and of little value. Learning to see through the

distorting lenses of philosophical/language transformation gives us an intuitive

ability to see into our Energetic Background. In this Background we can perceive

patriarchal myths as pale derivatives of more ancient, gynocentric traditions (Gyn

47). Such understanding begins the journey towards our hidden history, and unearths the creative, Wickedly Wise processes that define radical feminism. By leaping into our Background, Daly po~its the unearthing of our "archaic future."

Starhawk, a Witch, peace activist and ecofeminist, comments on the

alternative of life-affirming Goddess imagery: "It is important to realize that the 28 symbolism of Goddess imagery is not a parallel structure to the symbolism of God the Father. The Goddess does not rule the world; She is the world" (33).

Ecofeminists understand patriarchy's abandonment of the natural cycles of the earth for violent, death-oriented fantasies as the fundamental danger facing women and

society. Facing this danger requires the courage to question deeply ingrained dogma:

Radical feminism is not reconciliation with the father. Rather it is affirming our original birth, our original source, movement, surge of living. This finding of our original integrity is re-membering our Selves. Athena remembers her mother and consequently re members her Self. .. Radical feminism means that mothers do not demand Self-sacrifice of daughters, and that daughters do not demand this of their mothers, as do sons in patriarchy. What both demand of each other is courageous moving which is mythic in its depths, which is spell-breaking and myth-making process. The "sacrifice" that is required is not mutilation by men, but the discipline needed for acting/creating together on a planet which is under the Reign of Terror, the reign of the fathers and sons. (Gyn 40)

Daly clearly sees female unity, support and bonding as the necessary precondition

to initiating the kind of historic action that will be needed to confront patriarchy's

value system and demand alternatives to the status quo. Inspiration from the past

can indeed function to remind women of their stolen power. Reclaiming this 29 authority will allow women to make demands necessary to true salvation, effectively transforming Goddess imagery into Metaphors of Metamorphosis.

Understanding the intent behind metaphoric reversals allows women to renounce derogatory dogma and move towards metapatriarchalliberation, and of course this language infiltrates the boundaries of religion and mythology. Daly cites the term "Metaphor" as deriving from the Greek meta (meaning after, behind, transformative of, beyond) and pherein (meaning to bear or carry), illustrating the power of words to carry us into a Time/Space that is beyond the stifling stasis of patriarchy. Daly dis-covers the sexual politics surrounding the transformation of formerly powerful words such as Spinster, Webster, Hag, Witch, Sibyl, and Muse.4

The demotion and demonization of such words is indicative of the careful and conscious erosion of female powers. In restoring the positive origins of such words, Daly seeks to further ignite Memories and incite the Righteous Rage of women.

Spinster is a term especially useful to Daly's [re]appropriation of language.

The art of Spinning has long been perceived as a magical craft, and Daly restores the act of Spinning to its original power and mystery. The word Spinster has been transformed by patriarchy to negatively indicate the status of an unmarried, independent woman, who is considered shrewish, ugly, or otherwise apparently unfit for the ultimate goal of marriage. The art of Spinning, likewise, has come to

4 For a crash course in Daly's language reclamation, curious Hags will find gleeful inspiration in the Wickedary. 30 be associated with the low status of the seamstress, a mere utility skill. Spinning, however, has deep mystical roots. Daly quotes Eliade's study of various cultures which ritualize puberty by periods of seclusion, a time in which girls are often schooled in the arts of spinning and weaving. Eliade writes:

The moon "spins" Time and "weaves" human lives. The Goddesses of Destiny are the spinners. We detect an occult connection between the conception of the periodical creations of the world and the ideas of Time and Destiny, on the one hand, and on the other, nocturnal work, women's work ... performed almost in secret. In some cultures, after the seclusion of the girl is ended they continue to meet in some old woman's house to spin together. (qtd. in Gyn 176)

Here we have the powerful image of exclusive communities of women, gathering together to invoke powers reflective of universal energy. Eliade goes on to say that

"spinning is a perilous craft. .. which in some parts of the world has been given up, and even completely forgotten, due to its magical peril" (176). The Goddesses of

Destiny spring forth from the web of space and time that the Mother Goddess once spun from her eternal womb, signifying the cosmic web in which all life is interrelated; indeed, Neolithic Goddess figures have been dis-covered buried with spindle whorls (Baring xiv).

Daly asserts that Spinsters must recognize patriarchy's need to obliterate the original magic and power associated with Spinning as a purely feminine craft.

Spinning ancient meaning back into these terms requires not only Seeing and 31

Naming metaphoric reversals, but adopting the motion of Spinning, Acting on this knowledge by weaving its power into living consciousness. By Spinning

Metaphors of Metamorphosis, Spinsters can find the lost threads of connectedness that reveal patriarchal atrocities. This knowledge will clarify, in frightening detail, the need for a radical Re-Visioning of our lives and our futures. As Helen Diner points out, the ability to weave also includes the ability to "unravel anything that is completed:" a proper metaphor for the need to untangle and reweave feminine reality (Gyn 400).

In addition to the manipulation and reassignment of language, Daly reveals methods of female subjugation that truly defy the imagination. The Rape of feminine power has taken deliberate and hideous physical form worldwide in acts such as Chinese foot-binding, Indian suttee (widow burning), African genital mutilation, European Witchbuming, and American Gynecology, each of which

Daly discusses in detail. Imprinting and branding male dominance into the minds of women has required both mental and physical degradation, and illumination of these acts is both disturbing and agitating. These rituals have been instituted by enforcing the participation of women in their own torture, resulting in the severing of bonds between women, most notably the mother/daughter bond. This erosion of trust among women has resulted in a mind-binding, spirit-binding numbness that has been extremely difficult to overcome. By revealing the history of these acts,

Daly reminds women of the brutal, intentional and systematic oppression of their 32

Selves. While each of these socially prescribed and underreported acts are astonishingly oppressive and barbaric, Witches hold particular interest in terms of their functionality as midwives, healers, herbal experts and as the likely remnant of ancient, gynocentric tradition. I discuss Witches in detail here to underscore the barbarity of the final eradication of pagan/feminine wisdom and ritual.

Witchburning represents the most insidious attempt by christian patriarchy to eradicate feminine knowledge and power. It is astonishing to note the degree to which this dramatic episode in history has been erased and glossed over by

"pseudo-scholarship." The witchcraze took place from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, primarily in Europe. According to Matilda Joslyn Gage, a nineteenth century scholar,

It is computed from historical records that nine millions of persons were put to death for witchcraft after 1484, or during a period of three hundred years, and this estimate does not include the vast number of persons who were sacrificed in the preceding centuries upon the same accusation. The greater number of this incredible multitude were women. (qtd. in Gyn 183)

Although estimates by scholars vary, ranging from the tens of thousands to several million, it goes without question that an event of such magnitude has been given little attention. Gage goes on to say, "The superior learning of witches was recognized in the widely extended belief of their ability to work miracles. The witch was in reality the profoundest thinker, the most advanced scientist of those 33 ages" (Wickedary 180). One need not guess why the idea of women performing healings and miracles might be threatening to claims of exclusivity made by christianity.5 Female healing capacities countered the male-centered mysteries of the church. Witches also challenged church dictated roles for women, as most were widows or Spinsters who rejected marriage, living spiritually and physically outside the boundaries of patriarchal control. It is noted by many scholars that witches likely possessed herbal knowledge relating to birth control, making them especially threatening to doctrine insisting on this singular activity for women. To be accused of witchcraft inevitably lead to death, as the methods assuring confession reveal barbaric acts that expose a truly demented religious psychology. These vicious acts6 were committed to appease the wrath of God and to purify society of this unacceptable group of nonconforming and dangerous Wise Women.

Witches were accused, of course, of far more than simply possessing magical healing powers. The Malleus Maleficarum depicts witches as able to torment men with the illusion of removing and separating the penis from the body.

(Daly wickedly compares these women with today's castrating bitches.) Witches were accused of lewd and lascivious behavior, including orgies and other sexual improprieties. Witches were said to "turn men into beasts, copulate with devils, and

5 Scholars of antiquity, however, know these claims are anything but exclusive. Many documents exist revealing healing and miracles as common to storytelling practices in the ancient world. 6 Torture methods included limbs torn asunder, eyes driven out of the head, feet torn from legs, sinews twisted from the joints, flogging with the scourge, smiting with rods, crushing with screws and burning with various implements. Tormentors were apparently determined to realize their sadistic vision of christian hell. (Gyn 200) 34 raise and stir hailstorms and tempests. Witches kissed the devil under the tail if he appeared as a stinking goat, on the lips if he were a toad" (Gyn 187-88). Infallible detection methods, such as the discovery of a wart or a mole, were used as confirmation of guilt. (In light of these allegations, one must wonder about the created metaphor of female hysterical tendency.) To ensure a comprehensive list of accusations, it was preached that the good witch was equally at fault with the bad; the good witch was, in fact, "a more horrible and detestable monster than the bad"

(Perkins qtd. in Gyn 193). Daly notes that this all-encompassing plan for eradication indicates the church's need to ascribe all aspects of feminine power regarding wisdom and healing as tools of the devil. The idea of native talent and superiority of women in these regards was (and is) unacceptably evil.

Witches, like other powerful communities of women, have been interpreted by patriarchy as a serious threat to the majesty of God, and therefore, have a history of physical eradication through slaughter. This massacre, has, in fact, included all heretics, both male and female (i.e. the christian crusades ultimately turned against heretical christians); however, male scholars7 have concluded that men were

"protected from so horrible a crime as witchcraft because Jesus was a man" (Gyn

187). Witches were especially threatening to the dearest idea of patriarchal religion: by identifying God and the Trinity as an all-male alliance, men could claim to be approximations of God-the direct and only link to all His mysteries.

7 Kramer and Sprenger, translators of Malleus Maleficarum. 35

Witch's ability to heal, perform miracles, and use Glamour8 as magical empowerment defeated notions of an exclusively male spiritual superiority. Their presence was entirely unacceptable to church authority, and their eradication is viewed with antiseptic "objectivity" by male scholars:

Turning briefly to the larger social question of [the] function [of the witchcraze ], we can concede that the small trials may indeed have served a function, delineating the social thresholds of eccentricity tolerable to society, and registering fear of a socially indigestible group, unmarried women ... Until single women found a more comfortable place in the concepts and communities of Western men, one could argue they were a socially disruptive element. .. without patriarchal control... the small witch trial may have even been therapeutic, or functional. (Midelfort qtd. in Gyn 184)

This pitiful reference to "therapeutic" function certainly did not extend to women or their children; burning women alive after nearly torturing them to death must be viewed as the patriarchal perversion that it is, performed in the name of a god who demands total annihilation/destruction. Midlefort reveals the comfort of Western men as necessitating the elimination of powerful women, a reality that finds incalculable historical manifestations. Daly astutely names the point of patriarchal religion as Point Zero, with a history of unspeakable acts emulating the apocalypse.

8 A magic spell: Bewitchment. The Attracting/Magnetizing Powers of Hags. (Wickedary 128) One should consider the perversion of this word by patriarchy as a visual/physical state of "unreal" and unattainable beauty imposed upon women by society. 36

The truly lasting and complex effect of Witch burning, foot -binding, genital mutilation, and other atrocious acts against women has been the deliberate destruction of potent female bonds. In witch trials, children were forced to testify against their mothers, as the laws disallowing the testimony of small children were magnanimously waived for the purpose of convicting witches. Not only did children/daughters have to witness their mothers burned alive, they were flogged during the burning. Daly states, "To remember all her life that she had been used to accuse and condemn her mother to death, that she had in effect committed matricide, would have meant carrying a burden of self-loathing that is almost unimaginable" (Gyn 197). It is clear that male children viewing their mother's execution were similarly traumatized, yet the underlying message of female evil

and the necessity of quashing insubordination is also horrifyingly solidified.

Witchbuming is commented on by one woman as likely having the effect of breaking the minds of young girls to such an extent that all female identification, all capacity for confident bonding with women would have been effectively destroyed

(footnote 196). This effect is similarly enacted in foot-binding and genital mutilation, where society dictates that mothers perform these "purifying rituals" on their daughters. This severing of female bonds has clearly had long-term effects, carrying on through generations. Psychologically and physically, women have been forced by patriarchy to participate in the murdering of their own divinity. 37

Acts of both physical and linguistic transformation/mutilation constitute an ideology of Rapism, "the fundamental ideology and practice of patriarchy, characterized by invasion, violation, degradation, objectification, and destruction of women and nature" (Wickedary 91). Asserting a paradigm of Energetic Life and

Happiness to counter the Doomsday that patriarchy continually seeks to realize is a key component of Daly's message, a message that proclaims the ecofeminist goal of reviving a healthy spiritual and ecological perspective. Increasing threats based on the development of nuclear technology have made the apocalyptic vision of christianity a frightening reality, a hallucination that dominator ideologies seemingly wish to see materialized. Countering this abysmal scheme requires that enlightened women unify in an effort of historically magnanimous proportion,

9 revealing a stance that is truly Pro-Life , and pronouncing an end to the Rapism of patriarchy.

The Rage that readers will inevitably feel upon learning the extent of patriarchal atrocity is the Fire, the Spark of Energy that is needed to undertake the courageous journey back to the Self, and towards healing society. Daly's revelations regarding the maltreatment of women in physical, symbolic and

9 By using the word Pro-Lifer, Daly refers to Life-loving women who are committed to quality of life and to freedom of choice to ensure that quality in all dimensions. She snatches back the word as rightfully belonging to Lusty women, a word which has been ripped off by self-righteous "right to lifers" whose indifference to women's lives is manifested in this characteristic use of the strategy of reversal (Beyond xxii). Lerner and many other theorists agree that a truly pro-life stance applicable to modem circumstance requires considering the sustainability of all life on the planet, which necessitates rigorous birth restriction. 38 ideological terms is therefore balanced by uniquely uplifting, inspiring, humorous and life-affirming rhetoric. She is ultimately concerned with promoting female solidarity as a force for instigating change, an untamed force that will pursue the hard work of questioning seemingly indisputable ideologies:

The call to wild-ize our Selves, to free and unfreeze our Selves is a wild and fantastic calling to transfer our energy to our Selves and to Sister Selves ... The wildness of our Selves is visible to wild-eyes, to the inner eyes which ask the deepest "whys," the interconnected "whys" that have not been fragmented by the fathers' "mother tongues," nor by their seductive images or -ologies. These are the "whys" undreamt of in their philosophies, but which lie sleeping, sometimes half-awake, in the wild minds of women. These are the whys of untamed wisdom ... The natural flow among [questions] has been intercepted. Males have posed the questions; they have placed the questions, tagged and labeled, into the glass cases of mental museums. They have hidden the Questions. The task for feminists now is con-questioning, con-questing for the deep sources of the questions, seeking a permanently altering state of consciousness. (343-45) Daly invites women to come out of their domestication and partake in the mental and behavioral revolution that will free women, and therefore all of society, from the artificial confines of destructive philosophies. Converting the energy of Rage into creative and positive action will require a tenacity illuminated by patriarchy's repeated attempts to quash the questions and repeal feminist accomplishments. 39

Only a unified action of unseen proportion can negate this powerful backlash and repossessing of women's historical efforts.

The strictly female centered analysis and motive driving Daly's work has garnered criticism citing essentialism and solutions that preclude men from the process. While this criticism can be justified, Daly's vision utilizes what Gayatri

Spivak has termed "strategic essentialism" (214). By consciously authorizing and prioritizing female intuition, intellect, and spirituality in her rhetoric, Daly is advocating the type of authentic bonding between women that is negated by the patriarchal worldview; therefore, her Reversal is one of absolute focus and elevation calculated to counter treacherous philosophies that have fragmented female consciousness. The evil that Daly seeks to exorcise is internalized dogma that insistently degrades women; she does this by offering a narrative that unequivocally lifts women from this depressed state. The absolute negation of female inferiority is necessary before real and egalitarian social transformation can take place; therefore Daly's strategic essentialism places women in the unfamiliar position of superiority-a launching point for liberatory revolution.

Daly's Transformative philosophy carries an urgency appropriate to a world that now faces a reality unimaginable to the original apocalyptic authors: overpopulation, pollution (of earth, mind and spirit), and nuclear disaster. Daly's essay "Jumping Off the doomsday clock: Eleven, Twelve ... Thirteen" exhibits this urgency, as well as her biting wit, critique and linguistic invention: 40

Radiation disasters such as Chemobyl do spread a miasma of mystery, that is, the Mystery of Man. This is the mystery of the flopocratic pops of patriarchy who swing and bounce from one grotesque fiasco to another-the mysterical men whose fundamental dispassionate lust is for the destruction of all life. The invisible tentacles of these male-factors maintain the inhabitants of clockocracy in a psychically numbed state, wrapped and strangled in mindbindings/spiritbindings that stop Movement. Raging/Be-Laughing Websters unwind these bindings that would numb us, dumb us. With Eyebiting Eyes/1' s we See through and Name man's interconnected atrocities-his rapsim, his witchcrazes, his vile medical experimentation, his intended annihilation of the animals, the trees, the rivers, and seas. We Proclaim that the primary product of man's civilization/snivelization is toxic waste and that patriarchy/phallocracy/fatherland is the world of wasters: It is Wasteland. (Wickedary 281)

This scathing connection of male domination, female oppression and environmental degradation clearly articulates ecofeminist concerns. The outdated christian doctrine dictating that women must achieve "salvation through childbearing" no longer ensures the perpetuation of the species, but condemns it. The subjugation of women and the environment is now recognized as detrimental to a society that must call upon all of its resources to instigate change. Women as recognized culture makers, in alliance rather than contention with men, offer the solution. But to instigate this change, women must first collaborate in an effort to refute male 41 hierarchies that lead all living things towards destruction. This, as Daly states, is radical feminism's "Fate-directed destination-her Final Cause" (Beyond xxvii). 42

Virginia Woolf: Reluctant Feminist, Radical Intellectual

The emphasis which both priests and dictators place upon the necessity for two worlds is enough to prove that it is essential to their domination - Three Guineas

Virginia Woolf, like Mary Daly, is one of feminism's most oft cited thinkers. Although she rejected being labeled "feminist," Woolf's essays as well as fictional works display decidedly egalitarian intent, employing rhetoric designed to negate and challenge Christian and Victorian tenets prescribing a singular existence for women. Woolf's narratives can, in fact, be seen as embodying many of the strategies later articulated by feminists and ecofeminists: the merging of ancient sensibilities with modem concerns and attentiveness to the way language functions as an ideological construct. Living during a time of dictators, tyrants and the devastation of WWI and WWII, Woolf s essays increasingly criticize systems of domination and encourage education and pacifism. Her fictional work, on the other hand, resurrects ancient imagery and ambience in order to frame a directive to reject outdated notions defining separate social and physical spheres for men and women.

Utilizing Goddess metaphors is part of Woolf's "method"10 of conveying this objective. It is her astute understanding of the issues that feminism and ecofeminism continue to address that make Woolf, as Mary Daly asserts, a most important and honored Foresister.

10 Woolf s diary charts the development of what Woolf refers to as her "method," which she continually strives to perfect. 43

Woolf's denial of her status as prominent feminist has been a matter of some confusion, inciting criticism regarding her level of commitment to women's freedom. The word feminist, however, had in Woolf's time already been assigned negative connotation and was largely associated with the suffragette movement.

With the vote secured and opportunities for women to earn a living steadily increasing, Woolf considered the primary objectives of feminism met, and encouraged abandonment of the term. Woolf's rhetorical strategy, in fact, includes the abandonment of all outdated terms and ideologies; therefore, in Three Guineas she justifies her rejection of the term feminist by simultaneously suggesting denunciation of terms such as dictator and tyrant. Woolf links these terms as ironic comparison of speech that seeks to liberate women (and is thus deemed militant) with actual military/political words defining the oppressive practices of militaristic

European culture. Within this rhetorical move is Woolf's clear understanding of the function of Naming and how those in power manipulate language. Woolf's unquestionably ironic and rather subtle style can therefore be seen as forging a way for women to create new spaces of cultural and psychological meaning.

There is much evidence indicating Woolf's opinions regarding religion, patriarchy and violence as tools of oppression. Her hard-won recognition as an accomplished writer allowed Woolf the forum to articulate her views and concerns, while simultaneously creating the sort of literary anxiety that finds expression in her diaries (helping explain why she sometimes tread this new territory with care). 44

Certainly over the course of her lifetime she becomes more outspoken and less concerned with the ever-present male critic, saying, "I will not be "famous,"

"great." I will go on changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped, stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded" (206) (emphasis mine). This stance is insistently echoed in decades of subsequent feminist writings, demonstrating both the tenacity of entrenched social institutions and the importance of Woolf's influence.

Woolf's fiction similarly follows an evolutionary path of self-discovery, with increasingly overt expression of myth and symbol depicting feminine power.

Woolf's desire to promote a more egalitarian social structure is framed in a preponderance of ancient imagery and metaphor that Woolf feels recalls more respectful and compassionate ideologies, images that additionally illuminate the consequent diminishing of women. The figure of the subversive and triumphant

Isis, about whom the final phase of paganism had crystallized, proves especially useful to this task (Haller 11 0). Woolf's allusions are often complex and multilayered, but in utilizing Goddess metaphors, Woolf expresses both a desire for cultural reform and encouragement to women to transcend their current reality. Her female characters embody the struggle to reclaim the authority and esteem of the past, ideas she symbolically explores in novels such as To the Lighthouse and

Between the Acts 45

Woolf was well familiar with the burgeoning field of prehistory and the multiple theoretical works surrounding its development. Egypt held particular appeal for Woolf because it was anterior to Greek culture with its denigration of women and exaltation of male homosexuality (Haller 109). The work of prehistorians such as Jane Harrison also challenged the moral imperatives contained in Victorianism and Christianity, social institutions that Woolf felt created untenable circumstances for women and society at large. The late Victorian culture of Woolf's youth cherished the separate spheres of domesticity and commerce, which permitted the conflicting moral values of Christianity and capitalism to coexist (Froula 137). Women were to exude moral ideals of purity and modesty, with their primary purpose being strictly tied to biological destiny. As education became more available to women, they were encouraged to view this instruction as simply preparing them "to be better listeners, better wives and mothers, makers of more genteel homes, and more attractive adornments to civilization." Victorian society insisted on women's absence from the cultural and public sphere, for this was the male domain; therefore the idea of a woman artist or culture-maker was a contradiction in terms (Froula 138). Woolf herself becomes an active force in changing this perception of women, and she places her female protagonists in the position of challenging convention as well.

In To the Lighthouse, Woolf illustrates the dueling desires of women within the characters of Lily and Mrs. Ramsay. Lily represents the female artist and 46 intellectual who seeks her place in the world, both internally and externally. Her aspirations as a painter are not well received by Victorian society, which dictates that women should "create" offspring only. Therefore Lily is an outsider, determined to pursue her own goals, and yet simultaneously captivated by the mother figure of Mrs. Ramsay. She longs to unite somehow with Mrs. Ramsay, to embrace all elements of her womanhood, but societal conditions make this impossible. By focusing on this forced separation of the female psyche, Woolf explores the historical power of the mother figure, its consequent diminishing by the patriarchy, and the need to bury forever the modem sacrificial role of women.

In order to detect the symbolism and allusion in Woolf's work, one must have some familiarity with the mythology surrounding the Goddess figures of the past. Woolf's affinity with Greek and Egyptian thought is verified by the contents of her personal library, which included Jane Harrison's seminal studies. Woolf had read Harrison's Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1908), Themis: A

Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion ( 1912), Ancient Art and Ritual

(1918), and Reminiscences of a Student's Life which was actually published by

Virginia and Leonard Woolf at the Hogarth Press (1925) (Moore 42). Woolf had heard Harrison speak on these topics, and a friendship developed between them.

Harrison was a groundbreaking scholar of antiquity and a role model for

Woolf. Prolegomena was adopted as a textbook by the University of Cambridge shortly after publication and remains one of the few works of this time period still 47 relevant and readily available in print. The longevity of Harrison's work is due to her innovative application of classical archaeological evidence and evolutionary anthropology to the interpretation of Greek history, a strategy that now guides

academic research. Her remarkable life as well as her engaging language skills made her a fascinating, if controversial, character. The fact that Harrison was the first internationally renowned female scholar in a time when there was no such thing as a "token" woman in academia make her accomplishments extremely relevant to women's struggles (Ackerman xi). She was a heroine to Woolf and many other young women and was often associated with the Bloomsbury Group.

Harrison's work on mothers and daughters in pre-classical Greece, and her

study of the transition of the powerful myths of Mother-Goddess worship into patriarchal Greek thought as we know it, was very important to Woolf's writing and thinking (Marcus 13). The systematic stripping of female power and divinity into the limited figure of mother advocated during Woolf's time is a theme she exploits repeatedly in her work. The Goddess, or Great Earth Mother, went through many transformations throughout history. The Great Mother (Gaia) embodied the fertile power of nature, death and rebirth; she was indeed the Earth itself. Later forms of the Earth Mother are portrayed as Mother and Maiden, woman mature and woman before maturity, but essentially the same Goddess figure. The Mother and the Maid eventually developed into myths of mother and daughter, as in Demeter and Kore

(Harrison 263). The primary goddess figure to emerge in Egyptian culture (later 48 integrated into Greco-Roman myth) was that of Isis, a figure of unlimited power.

Isis has been referred to as the Lady of Heaven, the Goddess of Love, the Giver of

Life, and the Queen of the Gods.

Woolf's library included Pater's Marius the Epicurean, which provides eloquent description of the rites of Isis, and references the work of Apuleius, a major source of information about the Greco-Roman Isis (Haller 112). The following account of Isis, as recorded in Metamorphoses by Apuleius, depicts her as one of the most powerful deities of the Greco-Roman world:

All the perfumes of Arabia floated into my nostrils as the Goddess deigned to address me: "You see here Lucius, in answer to your prayer. I am Nature, the universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen also of the immortals, the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses that are. My nod governs the shining heights of Heaven, the wholesome sea-breezes, the lamentable silences of the world below. Though I am worshipped in many aspects, known by countless names, and propitiated with all manner of different rites, yet the whole round earth venerates me ... the Egyptians who excel in ancient learning and worship me with ceremonies proper to my godhead, call me by my true name, namely, Queen Isis." (Ruether 16).

Inheritor of the powers ofUa Zit (the Cobra Goddess), Maat (Wisdom, nourishing mother), and Hathor (the Cow of Heaven), Isis was the throne of Egypt in whose 49 lap the pharaohs sat (Leeming 77). Isis was associated with the sea itself, and

Egyptian symbols of the abundance of life, such as the fishpond and the lotus-that is, the water Lily (Haller 118) (emphasis mine). The ancient Egyptian symbol for

"plant" meaning "Tree of Life" is three sacred water lilies. The Greco-Roman myth includes Isis as Isis Pharia-guardian of the Lighthouse at Alexandria; she is additionally the Star of the Sea. We are thus presented with powerful imagery in To the Lighthouse, where the difficult and elusive voyage [to the lighthouse] can be interpreted as a global message: society's necessary return to the Goddess.

I would argue that Woolf frames the relationship of Mrs. Ramsay and Lily as that of the Mother and the Maiden, with Mrs. Ramsay as the mature goddess who is held captive by an ideology that has robbed her of her sacred and respected role, and instead sacrificed her to a singular and limited existence. Mrs. Ramsay symbolizes the "fall" of the Mother Goddess as protectorate of all living things to simply the mother of men, her only role to support and sustain male promise. This is clarified in Woolf's early description of Mrs. Ramsay:

Indeed, she had the whole of the other sex under her protection; for reasons she could not explain, for their chivalry and valour, for the fact that they negotiated treaties, ruled India, controlled finance; finally for an attitude towards herself which no woman could fail to feel or to find agreeable, something trustful, childlike, reverential.. .and woe betide the girl-pray Heaven it was none of her daughters!-who did not feel the worth of it, and all that it implied, to the marrow of her bones! (6) 50

Woolf's irony is palpable in this passage. She simultaneously establishes Mrs.

Ramsay's compliance and subjection to Victorian values of male dominance and the "cult of true womanhood," while implying male centrality as mysterious and earned through questionable means. Ancient reverence of the Goddess is now an artificial reverence for women who stay in their assigned place, and are lulled into enforcing the status quo. This role is solidified by Mrs. Ramsay's proclivity for match-making and encouraging marriage.

Lily is cast as the Maiden (not having yet reached maturity) who must resurrect the freedom and power of the past by asserting herself as artist and intellectual. In her role as painter, Lily illustrates the idea that female creation can take multiple forms. Her painting comes to represent an alternative ideology, a vision of egalitarianism and hope that coordinates with the successful journey to the

Lighthouse and the completion of Lily's painting. Lily desires that her painting be

"Beautiful and bright on the surface, feathery and evanescent... but beneath the fabric must be clamped together with bolts of iron. It was to be a thing you could ruffle with your breath; and a thing you could not dislodge with a team of horses"

(TTL 171 ). This description is strangely reminiscent of Woolf's observations regarding the subtle pervasiveness of ideological constructs in Three Guineas, where prejudicial attitudes are described as the "atmosphere" created by men that surrounds and engulfs women. It is pervasive because it is impalpable; this 51 atmosphere is responsible for ideological indoctrination, women's most powerful enemy:

Atmosphere plainly is a very mighty power. Atmosphere not only changes the sizes and shapes of things; it affects solid bodies, like salaries, which might have been thought impervious to atmosphere. An epic poem might be written about atmosphere, or a novel in ten or fifteen volumes. (TG 52)

Here Woolf comments on the particular longevity of female subjugation, manifested in women's material existence in the form not only of salaries, but in bodily confinement. Lily's desire for her painting is thus described as having the attributes of an ideology, subtle yet powerful, but projecting an entirely different message. Female oppression is the epic that must be rewritten, and the prospect is a daunting one. Lily's work on her painting is long and arduous; the passage from conception to completion often frustrated and impeded-much like women's struggles for equality.

Lily's desire to unite and become one with Mrs. Ramsay becomes symbolic of Woolf's desire for society to recognize the many facets and capabilities of women. Her allusion to this unity of female capacity, as well as to ancient forms of worship, is clear in the following passage:

Sitting on the floor with her arms round Mrs. Ramsay's knees, close as she could get, smiling to think that Mrs. Ramsay would never know the reason of that pressure, she imagined how in the chambers 52

of the mind and heart of the woman who was, physically, touching her, were stood, like the treasures in the tombs of kings, tablets bearing sacred inscriptions, which if one could spell them out, would teach one everything, but they would never be offered openly, never made public. What art was there, known to love or cunning, by which one pressed through into those secret chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored? ... Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs. Ramsay one? (TTL 51)

Much as the Rosetta Stone unlocked the secrets of Egyptian myth, Lily seeks to discover the elusive path to wholeness, a way to combine the artist, the intellectual,

and the Sacred Mother. Mrs. Ramsay represents the maternal wisdom Lily must

relinquish in order to pursue her artistic goals, yet it is a limitation she assumes

unwillingly and with yearning for what she is denied. Until patriarchy yields to

women's multiplicity of desires and abilities, Lily is forced into her singular and

rebellious role as artist, much as Mrs. Ramsay is limited to her position within

marriage and motherhood. Only through mutual love and respect can society

breach these boundaries.

Woolf presents Mrs. Ramsay as the influential, Goddess-like center of the

universe, yet her presence no longer empowers women but restricts them. She is

fully indoctrinated by her Victorian training of God's laws as laid down by man:

she may be polished, but she is not to be critical; she may be beautiful, but should

not be argumentative. So educated, it is no wonder that Mrs. Ramsay is frightened 53 of her own potential for intellectual achievement (Lilienfeld 153). Through Mrs.

Ramsay's interior monologue Woolf illustrates society's value of ignorant women; the more foolish a wife appears to her husband, the more desirable she becomes:

What did it all mean? To this day she had no notion. A square root? What was that? Her sons knew. She leant on them; on cubes and square roots; that was what they were talking about now; ... she let it uphold and sustain her, this admirable fabric of the masculine intelligence, which ran up and down, crossed this way and that, and that, like iron girders spanning the swaying fabric, upholding the world so that she could trust herself to it utterly, even shut her eyes or flicker them, for a moment, as a child ... (TTL 105)

In this passage Woolf ironically illustrates Mrs. Ramsay's apparent acceptance of her restricted role, while concurrently commenting on the unstable nature inherent in a system of domination that treats its women like children. The repressed agitation of Mrs. Ramsay (and all women) can be perceived as the swaying fabric, insisting that the iron girders eventually give way. This same restlessness is then offered more openly by Mrs. Ramsay, although she struggles to conceal and rationalize it:

She took a look at life, for she had a clear sense of it there, something real, something private, which she shared neither with her children nor with her husband. A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her; and sometimes they parleyed ... (TTL 59) 54

There is an enormous impression of compromise in this passage, one that makes

Mrs. Ramsay's sense of lacking clear. Although endowed with the nurturing traits of the Mother Goddess-qualities that attract all to her-Mrs. Ramsay is aware that there is more to life, and that she possesses an untapped potential, yet she fears crossing socially prescribed boundaries. Her wholeness is stifled by patriarchal expectations.

The same social parameters that constrict Mrs. Ramsay force Lily Briscoe to rebellion if she is to pursue her artistic ambition. This means negating possible desires for marriage or motherhood for a similarly singular path. This dichotomy marks Woolf's statement regarding female potential: women are forced to surrender and sacrifice physically, psychologically or intellectually to avoid social and religious persecution. Therefore, although Lily is enormously attracted to Mrs.

Ramsay and her role of motherhood, she strives throughout the novel to reconcile her conflicting desires. Her love for Mrs. Ramsay is so great that she feels anxiety and guilt over not wanting to follow Mrs. Ramsay's dictions to marry and have children, but resists in order to complete her painting. It is, in fact, only Mrs.

Ramsay's death that frees Lily to pursue her (marriage-less) life as an artist. In her mourning, Lily discovers new ways to love and accept herself. She realizes that she can reject the religious and social roles that Mrs. Ramsay personified, strictures that had crippled Lily's talent and prevented her from finishing her painting (Lilienfeld 55

165). Lily is a clear reflection of Woolf's admonition to women to transcend their current reality.

Mrs. Ramsay's death and that of the role she embodies can be interpreted as the death necessary for the successful journey to the Lighthouse that ends the narrative. Woolf is simultaneously honoring the Goddess-like roles of motherhood, nurturance and protection, while condemning the destruction wreaked by the

Victorian social arrangement on human capacities for freedom and growth

(Lilienfeld 148). Therefore, Mrs. Ramsay's death compels Mr. Ramsay, the symbol of male domination, to make the journey to the Lighthouse with his children, illustrating the need for the patriarchy to yield its hold on women and their spirituality, as well as Woolf's hope for the future generation. As the group reaches the Lighthouse, Lily sighs with relief:

"He must have reached it," said Lily Briscoe aloud, feeling suddenly completely tired out. For the Lighthouse had become almost invisible, had melted away into a blue haze, and the effort of looking at it and the effort of thinking of him landing there, which both seemed to be one and the same effort, had stretched her body and mind to the utmost. Ah, but she was relieved. Whatever she had wanted to give him, when he left her that morning, she had given him at last. "He has landed," she said aloud. "It is finished." ... I have had my vision. (TTL 208-09)

This final passage of To the Lighthouse reveals the difficulty of asserting the image of the female Divine back into cultural consciousness, a more complete image of 56 womanhood with its multiplicity of forms. Lily has finished her painting and offered her vision to those able to receive it, even one as unlikely as Mr. Ramsay.

The passage rings with biblical familiarity, as Lily's uttering, "it is finished" mimics the uttering of Jesus upon his death (John 19:30). We can imagine that

Lily's gift, however, is the vision of egalitarianism and hope that I have argued is the symbolic meaning of the journey to the Lighthouse. With this culmination of her novel, Woolf demonstrates the tenacity and strength women must show in their efforts to influence cultural reform-to realize their own vision of freedom.

Woolf's work following To the Lighthouse continues to turn to the ancient past, with its infinite wealth of woman-identified imagery. Jane Harrison defines the triad psychological principles of matriarchy as group, cooperation and fertility, with the opposing patriarchal principles as individual, competition and war (Barret

20). Essentialist as this analysis may seem, the feminine principles offered comfort to Woolf, who was clearly troubled by the state of the world. Her narratives become increasingly concerned with promoting egalitarianism and pacifism, and

Three Guineas is offered in the form of a letter responding to the question of "how to prevent war." Her final novel, Between the Acts, written in the thick of WWII, contains amplified and overt expression of ancient thought and ritual that celebrates our inherent connection to nature, an idea central to Goddess worship. Woolf's diary offers provocative references that may indeed pertain to her imagining of this final story: "I am now haunted by some semi-mystic very profound life of a 57 woman, which shall all be told on one occasion; and time shall be utterly obliterated; future shall somehow blossom out of past. One incident-say the fall of a flower-might contain it" (101). Woolf writes this after having completed both Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse; her pondering expands upon women she has already created. The occasion might be the historical pageant of Between the Acts, the woman Ms. La Trobe and her inclusive and futuristic visions. During the actual writing of the text, Woolf's diary reveals that she will reject "I" and substitute "We," the ending an invocation to the 'We' in "all life, all art, all waifs and strays-a rambling capricious but somehow unified whole" (279). Woolf's final revelations seem based on suggesting a harmony to counter the disintegration of Europe unfolding before her.

The setting of Between the Acts is consistently dominated by Egyptian imagery. Yell ow and golden light permeates, much as archaeologist Howard Carter described upon his entering of Tut-ankh-amen's tomb (Haller 115). (This pulsing golden light is reminiscent of the golden beam of the Lighthouse, 'illuminating' scenes from TTL). The setting of the novel is Pointz Hall, which has in its view two dominant objects: the spire ofBolney Minster and Hogben's Folly, both of which evoke the form of the obelisk of Egyptian landscape (a definitive toying with ideas relating to a church steeple) (Haller 116). In the expansive yard of Pointz

Hall lies the lily pond, the metaphorical location of change and transformation (the 58 dressing room!) for the pageant that is to take place that day. This pool has a long history; a history Woolf creates to allude to the long-standing oppression of women:

There had always been lilies there, self-sown from wind-dropped seed, floating red and white on the green plates of their leaves. Water, for hundreds of years, had silted down into the hollow, and lay there four or five feet deep over a black cushion of mud. Under the thick plate of green water, glazed in their self-centered world, fish swam ... It was in that deep centre, in that black heart, that the lady had drowned herself. Ten years since the pool had been dredged and a thigh bone recovered. Alas, it was a sheep's, not a lady's. And sheep have no ghosts, for sheep have no souls. But, the servants insisted, they must have a ghost; the ghost must be a lady's; who had drowned herself for love. So none of them would walk by the lily pool at night, only now when the sun shone and the gentry still sat at table. (BT A 43-44)

This passage is loaded with symbolism and irony. The constant presence of the

lilies can be interpreted as the inarguable fact that women have been shapers

and makers of history, yet this history lies deep under the obscuring layers of

patriarchal history. Keeping in mind that the Goddess is associated with the

sacred fish pond, and has appeared in history as cow, bird, ewe and lioness, one

can connect the suicide of the woman and the resulting discovery of the sheep

bone as insinuating the tragic death of the Goddess. The suicide can also

implicate the psychological devastation of women, as they have struggled

against purported claims of natural and inherent inferiority. The sheep with "no 59 soul" is a jab at Greek philosophy, in which Aristotle imagines women as soulless, incomplete humans, akin indeed to animals, and whose only function is to incubate the complete male. This misogynistic superstition of the stunted female came to replace the wholeness of Goddess. The servant's requisite of the "enlightened" protection of the gentry in order to risk passing by the pool implies the absurdity of these assumptions. The transformative qualities of the pool, however, will reemerge in LaTrobe's pagent.

Imagery in Between the Acts additionally includes multiple references to the cows that graze nearby (Hath or), and the activity of the swallows, another primary symbol of the Goddess. Harrison writes, "of all living creatures, birds longest keep their sanctity" (qtd. in Barret 34). Isis transformed into a swallow to search for the scattered remains of Osiris, and their son Horus is the hawk

god. Demeter, in her frantic search for Persephone, "put a dark veil over her

shoulders and, like a bird, sped here and there" (Leeming 69). In the outdoor

setting of the pageant, the area of the lily pond is described much like the open

air shrines (groves) of ancient ritual, filled with birds:

The [other] trees were magnificently straight. They were not too regular; but regular enough to suggest columns in a church; in a church without a roof; in an open-air cathedral, a place where swallows darting seemed, by the regularity of the trees, to make a pattern, dancing ... only not to music, but to the unheard rhythm of their wild hearts. (BTA 65) 60

Here Woolf refers to the lost freedom and affinity with nature inherent in

Goddess worship. She criticizes the unacknowledged rhythms and patterns of

female aspirations by society. The swallows dancing and darting evoke the

image of the Goddess Hath or as the sovereign of merriment and song, of

dancing and leaping; and whom, with the rattling of her favored musical

instrument, the sistrum, 11 drove away the evil spirits while people reveled in her

temple of enjoyment (Leeming 43) (emphasis mine). This very theme is played

out in the pageant itself.

As in To the Lighthouse, Woolf represents the various forms of goddess

in her female characters. Miss LaTrobe, the creator of the pageant, is a

mentally and physically forceful woman, still an outsider, and yet fully capable

of powerful expression. She is unmarried, signifying Woolf's statement that

unity and acceptance has not yet been achieved-the female artist remains a

subversive figure. Her pageant marshals through two millennia of English

history in a survey of the male tradition, but in doing so, La Trobe actually calls

the entire tradition into question. Encoded between the acts of the novel are

signs that speak to a matriarchal past and reenactments of the sublimation of the

Goddess by patriarchy. LaTrobe rescues the feminine imagination through

language and her play (Barret 20).

11 The sistrum is a metal rattle or noisemaker consisting of a handle and a frame fitted with loosely held rods, jingled by the ancient Egyptians in the worship of the Goddess [Isis]. 61

The structure of the pageant itself mimics the configuration of the

Eleusinian mysteries, whose secret ceremonies remain largely hidden from us.

In rituals designed to honor the earth gods and goddesses, the rites incorporated three types of sacred observances: legomena: "things recited," such as short liturgical statements and explanations, deiknymena: "things shown," such as sacred objects, and dromena: "things performed," including song, dance and music (Meyer 10). The different segments of LaTrobe's play begin with scene announcements and explanation, proceed with actors who are costumed and holding symbols, (such as scepters and orbs), and finish with song and dance, which Woolf refers to as a "triple melody." The arrangement of La Trobe' s reiteration of masculine history is therefore decidedly egalitarian in nature, as the Eleusinian mysteries were celebrated by rich and poor, male and female

(Meyer 9). Her play calls attention to the passage of history, but laments the idea that "all passes but we, all changes ... but we remain forever the same"

(BT A 139). This allusion to triad ancient ritual paired with modem stagnancy can be interpreted as Woolf's admonition to shed the psychologically and spiritually stifling tenets of patriarchy and reclaim a more balanced worldview.

La Trobe cloaks in her history of empire and domination with caution, which is exposed as the actors chant: "Palaces tumble down, Babylon, Nineveh,

Troy ... And Caesar's great house ... all fallen they lie ... " (139). During this critical moment of the play the wind rushes up and drowns out the voices of the 62

actors, and LaTrobe fears losing the illusion she has been meticulously

creating. But nature itself seems to collude with her in the form of Hathor:

Then suddenly, as the illusion petered out, the cows took up the burden ... All the great moon-eyed heads laid themselves back. From cow after cow came the same yearning bellow. The whole world was filled with dumb yearning. It was the primeval voice sounding loud in the ear of the present moment. .. The cows annihilated the gap; bridged the distance; filled the emptiness and continued the emotion. Miss LaTrobe waved her hand ecstatically at the cows. "Thank Heaven!" she exclaimed. Suddenly the cows stopped; lowered their heads, and began browsing. Simultaneously the audience lowered their heads and read their programmes. (BT A 140- 41)

This "natural" choreographing suggests that LaTrobe rules over the pageant the way a priestess rules over a ritual (Barret 33). Woolf's description of the event alludes to a deep yearning that the audience members (society) are perhaps unaware of, although the cows are bellowing their message. The primeval voice of the

Goddess that once empowered women needs to be heard again if the past is to be healed. This acknowledgment will "annihilate the gap," "bridge the distance" between the two sexes, and "fill the emptiness" that threatens all inheritors of a dominator ideology.

To finish her exploration of history, LaTrobe designs a scene in which the audience is to examine themselves; the impact of her play, in fact, lies in the 63 performing of this communication: "She wanted to expose them, as it were, to douche them, with present-time reality" (179). But she senses that something is wrong, that reality may be too strong-she is feeling sympathetic to her audience.

Once more she stands paralyzed, and yet again nature comes to her aid:

This is death, death, death, she noted in the margin of her mind; when illusion fails. Unable to lift her hand, she stood facing the audience. And then the shower fell, sudden, profuse. No one had seen the cloud coming. There it was, black and swollen, on top of them. Down it poured like all the people in the world weeping. Tears. Tears. Tears ... They trickled down her cheeks as if they were her own tears. But they were all people's tears, weeping for all people ... The tears were sudden and universal. Then it stopped. From the grass rose a fresh earthy smell. 'That's done it," sighed Miss LaTrobe, wiping away the drops on her cheeks. Nature once more had taken her part. (BTA 180-81)

Here Woolf laments the sadness and inequity in the world, injustices based on illusion, while simultaneously emphasizing the qualities of renewal found in nature.

Only by returning to a mentality that honors tears, humanity, nature and regeneration can society heal. It seems that Woolf desires her message of hope to sweep over and shock the reader into recognition, much as the downpour catches the audience unawares. Even so, Woolf's most vehement messages remain cloaked in scene, action and metaphor. She obliquely exposes the fears of the patriarchy in

Miss LaTrobe's lament that when "illusion" fails it is the "death" of an ideology. 64

The final scene of the pageant has the cast holding all forms of mirrors and reflecting devices towards the audience, causing extreme discomfiture (including the cheval glass from the Rectory!). "The gramophone gurgled Unity-Dispersity.

It gurgled Un .. dis .. . And ceased" (201). Though Miss LaTrobe is not convinced of her success, the reader is confident that she has put forth a lasting communication.

Indeed, Woolf (uncharacteristically) shares audience contemplation regarding the meaning of the pageant, albeit confused: "It's odd, that science, so they tell me, is making things (so to speak) more spiritual. .. The very latest notion, so I'm told, is nothing's solid ... There, you can get a glimpse of the church through the trees ... "

( 199). This smattering of conversation concretizes Woolf's promotion of humans as inextricably part of the web of life, something scientific progress has validated.

The church's flawed position on human separateness from the earth is a view Woolf would like to see fade away, barely glimpsed through the groves that once celebrated this connection. Our last view of Miss La Trobe solidifies this sentiment, as she realizes the vision for her next work:

It was growing dark. Since there were no clouds to trouble the sky, the blue was bluer, the green greener. There was no longer a view no Folly, no spire of Bolney Minster. It was land merely, no land in particular. She put down her case and stood looking at the land. Then something rose to the surface. "I should group them," she murmured, "here." It would be midnight; there would be two figures, half concealed by rock. The curtain would rise. What would the first words be? The words escaped her ... Suddenly the 65

tree was pelted with starlings ... She heard the first words. (BTA 210- 12)

The lack of definition and encroachment upon this landscape indicates an unspoiled terrain that will be the template of a new narrative, a narrative that will unfold in a direction that alters philosophical history. I posit LaTrobe's plan is a rewriting of

Genesis, but however one decides to interpret this last vision, it is clearly directed by the Goddess. The tree itself, of course, has been eternally sacred throughout history, and the illumination that the starlings bring clarifies the 'origin' of the vision. The pelting of the tree is a metaphorical jangling of the sistrum. The scenery is Eden-like, and the "first word" is reminiscent of logos, not coincidently congruent with the book of Genesis and the Gospel of John. 12 The play beginning at midnight signifies the "beginning" of a new day and a revised ideology.

Although Miss La Trobe is the most powerful female character in the

Between the Acts, Isa Oliver reveals strong association to the Goddess as well. (Of course it is hard to miss the proximity of the name Isa to that of Isis.) Our first view of Isa has her partaking in an exchange ritual that includes items strangely suggestive of the sistrum (already mentioned) and the situla (a small pail), dominant

12 Genesis presents the creation of the world as coming into being through the word of God. Genesis 1:4: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. St. John 1:1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. La Trobe' s rewriting of Genesis, however, would be particularly concerned with a retelling of the Adam and Eve myth. (Barret's article has an unelaborated statement that Jane Marcus also interprets this as a potential rewriting of Genesis. I have not read that particular article by Marcus.) 66

iconographic accessories oflsis (Haller 121). She is extremely attracted to afarmer

named Haines, and describes what is their third meeting:

She had met him at a Bazaar; and at a tennis party. He had handed her a cup and a racquet-that was all. But in his ravaged face she always felt mystery; and in his silence, passion. At the tennis party she had felt this, and at the Bazaar. Now a third time, if anything more strongly, she felt it again (BTA 5).

Later that evening, her continued reflection upon the farmer solidifies the

impression of ancient symbolism:

She stood in front of the three-folded mirror, so that she could see three separate versions of her rather heavy, yet handsome, face ... "In love," she must be; since the presence of his body in the room last night could so affect her; since the words he said, handing her a teacup, handing her a tennis racket, could so attach themselves to a certain spot in her; and thus lie between them like a wire, tingling, tangling, vibrating ... (BTA 14-15)

The rattling sistrum (tennis racket) and the sistula (teacup) combined with the triplicate versions of Isa in her mirror seem clear references to the ceremonies invoking Isis, Osiris and Horus to replenish the land out of love for their people. In this triad myth, Osiris is the brother/consort of Isis who is murdered by his evil brother Set. As Isis searches for the body of Osiris, her tears cause the yearly

overflowing of the Nile that in turn brings renewal of life. When she finds Osiris,

she brings him to life momentarily in order to conceive Horus, of whom every 67

Pharaoh is the incarnation. Isis, therefore, is the stable, life-giving, female factor the horizontal line of the triangle, as Plutarch termed her. While the Pharaohs came

and went and her brother and consort died each year to be reborn as Horus with the flooding of the Nile, Isis remained constant, the source of life (Haller 114). This

imagery supports Woolf's stance of a more central position for women in society.

She may also be illuminating the fact that the idea of a trinity is an ancient concept

in which the female figure was an integral component. This myth is also clearly

reflected and multiplied in the scene where the rain falls as tears in LaTrobe's play

described above.

Isa moves through the novel mourning the state of things, both large and

small. She is unhappy in her marriage and at times seems suicidal. She creates

verse spontaneously, in an effort to explicate her mental state. Isa speaks for not

only herself, but for all womankind in the following passage, where she stands

under a tree with pears hard as stone, and dogs chained nearby:

"How am I burdened with what they drew from the earth; memories; possessions. This is the burden that the past laid on me, last little donkey in the long caravanserai crossing the desert. 'Kneel down,' said the past. 'Fill your pannier from our tree. Rise up donkey. Go your way till your heels blister and your hoofs crack."' ... "That was the burden," she mused, "laid on me in the cradle; murmured by waves; breathed by restless elm trees; crooned by singing women; what we must remember: what we would forget...On little donkey, 68

patiently stumble. Hear not the frantic cries of the leaders who in that they seek to lead desert us." (BTA 155-56)

Here Woolf implicates the very unearthing of Egyptian mythology, and the ramifications of these ancient views on the female consciousness. Faced with the actualization of their forgotten power, women must tirelessly strive towards this elemental consciousness and reclaim their lost divinity, as is depicted in the metaphor of the laboring donkey. The donkey is also reminiscent of Jesus riding into Jerusalem to deliver his message of social equality, words that have never been heeded in the many religions that claim to follow him. The setting of a tree with hard pears (perhaps a reference to the severe consequences of the Adam and Eve myth) and the chained dogs nearby represent the unyielding nature of male domination and female imprisonment within this ideology. As Isa states later in the novel, "Surely it was time someone invented a new plot, or that the author came out from the bushes" (215).

The new plot is surely the need for a new ideology; one for which the script has not yet been written. I can't help but think ofWoolfs efforts in Between the

Acts when reading these words written much later by Gerda Lerner:

It takes considerable time for women to understand that getting "equal" parts will not make them equal, as long as the script, the props, the stage setting, and the direction are firmly held by men. When women begin to realize that and cluster together between the acts, or even during the performance, to discuss what to do about it, 69

this play comes to an end ... What women must do, what feminists are now doing is to point to that stage, its sets, its director, and its scriptwriter, as did the child in the fairy tale who discovered that the emperor was naked, and say, the basic inequality between us lies within this framework. And then they must tear it down. (CP 13)

Clearly this sentiment embodies what Woolf, Daly, and so many others struggle to realize: a new worldview based on hearing the voices of women, men and the Earth itself. What has been lost with the Goddess is society's recognition of this connection, and the spiritual needs of its women. The repression and sublimation of the Goddess by patriarchal mythologies has left a gap in the collective human experience. It is a gap reflected in our inability to move from a war-like, destructive culture to one of cooperation and compassion. The respect and reverence now claimed solely for the male realm is, in Woolf's view, largely the cause of society's ills. She was vehemently opposed to the separate spheres for men and women dictated by Victorian ideology, and opposed to religion as well.

Woolf was in no way recommending a return to the Goddess in a religious sense, but was compelled by the image of the feminine divine as a vision that offered hope to a society in need of compassion, intellect, and protection for all of its members.

Woolf's concerns in many ways prefigure the emergence of ecofeminist philosophy. 70

Recovering Spirit in Spider Woman's Web: The Nature of Healing in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony

I hold to the traditional Indian views on language, that words have power, that words become entities. When I write I keep in mind that it is a form of power and salvation that is for the planet. If it is good and enters the world, perhaps it will counteract the destruction that seems to be getting so close to us. I think of language and poems, even fiction, as prayers and small ceremonies - Linda Hogan (qtd. in Caputi)

The top secret laboratories where the bomb had been created were deep in the Jemez Mountains, on land the Government took from Cochiti Pueblo ... he had arrived at the point of convergence where the fate of all living things, and even the earth had been laid ... From that time on, human beings were one clan again, united by the fate the destroyers planned for all of them, for all living things; united by a circle of death ... -Ceremony

The correlation of forces that threaten planetary and cultural sustainability are themes that drive Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, where indigenous landscapes, values and traditions struggle under the pressure of dominant Christian culture. The subjugation of indigenous peoples draws clear parallels to ecofeminist criticism of dominator ideologies, where difference is perceived as inferiority, and in the case of Native Americans, as justification for genocide. Native American history represents a colonial intervention of staggering proportion, in which the majority of the Indian population perished due to persecution or disease. Surviving

Native Americans were actively and often violently prevented from practicing their spiritual beliefs and rituals and were steadily driven from their lands by incoming 71 white settlers. Consequently, modem Native Americans actively seek to reclaim their land rights, assert the right to self-define, and legitimize their religion and ideologies. Silko's text accordingly incorporates political as well as spiritual substance.

In keeping with the Native American belief that language creates reality,

Silko offers a narrative designed to counter the social and ecological dilemmas facing society; in effect a ceremony infused with traditional Native American wisdom. Her protagonist's illness and subsequent healing mirrors the sickness that plagues the modem world: a lack of reverence for the land that sustains us, a vilification of human sexuality, and an ideology of gender and racial discrimination.

Technology and unimpeded progress is revealed as the stimulus for war and cultural domination; the advent of nuclear technology becomes the catalyst demanding a cohesive effort to avoid universal annihilation. Silko's healing ceremony encourages a renewed relationship with the natural world, and recognition of humanity as but one element of Spider Woman's vast and wondrous creation.

Human sexuality is redeemed as part of our natural connection to all life, as celebration and regeneration of body and spirit. By embracing the philosophical tenets of Native American tradition, Silko's protagonist is able to reject ideology that promotes violence and destruction and instead embrace the holistic vision of

Spider Woman, whose constantly evolving creation offers salvation to those willing 72 to enable a new Story. By presenting life as an ongoing narrative, Silko invites her reader to partake in altering a trajectory that threatens to destroy all sentient life.

A primary tenet of Native American culture is a profound connection to the land; different tribes often define themselves in relation to a particular landscape.

This differentiates Native American religion from other religions in its very lack of portability; depriving Indians of access to their sacred sites has serious spiritual consequence. Thus place and environment have been infused with a significance that is not easily grasped by non-Natives. The common term for this ideology is animism, a philosophy adhering to the idea that a spiritual force animates the universe and every natural object within it. Animism credits nature with a spiritual persona identical to that of humankind; therefore, Native American philosophy recognizes the need for a respectful and reciprocal relationship with the earth. This relationship is realized in rituals that honor the forces that govern procreation, rites seen as perpetuating and ensuring good will between humans, the earth and its creatures. Often a dearth of resources is viewed as the result of improper observance.

A worldview based on ritual observance and reverence for nature differs in many ways from current definitions of conservation and ecological concern.

Modem scholars and archaeologists have, in fact, called into question whether

Native American animism has historically translated into more sound ecological practices, with varying results. Jared Diamond and Shepard Krech III argue that 73

Native Americans have shared in the destruction of natural resources through over hunting and unchecked burning practices, perhaps hunting some species into extinction. Other scholars, such as Lee Schweninger and Wilbur Jacobs state the opposite: that Indian reverence for the land has translated into sound ecological practice. It is fair to say that increased awareness of the need to conserve in the modern sense coincided with and was perhaps more clearly realized through interaction with early American colonizers themselves, which is ironic in light of the massive destruction caused by said colonizers. Critics agree, however, that if

Native Americans misconstrued the effect of their actions on the environment, it was due to their belief in reincarnation and the unquestioned power of the earth to regenerate. Animism in modern times is seen in both the continuing spiritual relationship with the earth and in enhanced ecological awareness on the part of many Native American groups. Spiritual reverence for the earth is argued as an undeniably positive ideology for promoting a healthier and more respectful world view, a philosophical resurrection that indeed may save us from looming nuclear disaster.

Leslie Marmon Silko's 1977 Ceremony was written during a time of significant revitalization of Native American culture. N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer

Prize winning novel House Made of Dawn (1966) paved the way for a new awareness of indigenous culture, and issues regarding religion, sovereignty, and the social plights of many Native Americans. Prominent Indian activist Vine Deloria, 74

Jr. published multiple essays criticizing Christian appropriation of land and spirit, ironically stating, "It has been said of missionaries that when they arrived they had only the Book and we had the land~ now we have the Book and they have the land"

(22). Deloria's work discusses Christianity's attempts to invalidate Native

American beliefs-methods unsurprisingly similar to those utilized in the European witchcraze. When confronted with the skills of medicine men, missionaries ascribed their remarkable feats to the devil. Preaching the power of reciting simple words and phrases over the complex rituals of Native American practice,

Christianity had a certain appeal, appeal backed by the "magic" of guns, iron kettles and whiskey. As Native Americans made no distinction between religion and life's

abundance, it was initially thought that "the white man's god took pretty good care of his people" (23).

Deloria cites Indian beliefs as essentially and stubbornly enduring, despite

Christianity's best efforts. The increasing irrelevance of Christian doctrine to

humanity's concerns has resulted in a return to traditional religion for many Indian

people. Additionally, the church's persistent racism (and sexism) may inevitably

lead to the church's demise. Deloria states,

The determination of white churches to keep Indian congregations in a mission status is their greatest sin. But it is more a sin against themselves than it is against the Indian people. For the national churches do not realize how obsolete their conceptions have become 75

and they continue to tread the same path they walked centuries ago. (23-24).

The church's inability to adjust to modem times in terms of human rights issues is

leading to its abandonment. Even those Native Americans attracted to the theology

are repelled by the inability of the church to modify positions that negate inclusive

policy. Despite the preponderance of missions on Native American land, Indians

have historically been denied not only the clergy but also to function in any position

of importance, for fear the pristine doctrine will be compromised through

translation or other 'mishandling.' This is incredibly ironic in light of the enormous

translation issues surrounding the bible, a text for which no originals of the

presumed primary manuscripts exist. The upside of church stagnancy is the

resurgence of a tradition rich with wisdom, insights accessed under a number of

rubrics, including the works of fiction by Native American authors.

Silko's story of a Native American man of mixed ancestry is reflective of

her own status as a Laguna Pueblo, Mexican and white American. Silko grew up

on the Laguna Pueblo Reservation in New Mexico, learning the oral traditions of

her culture from female relatives. Women enjoy enhanced status in many Native

American communities, including the culture of Silko's background and narrative.

Pueblo social order is based on matriarchal lineage: children belong to the clan of

their mother, men move into the home of their wife, and women own most property

(Swan 39). Men have authority over the children of their sister rather than their 76 own biological offspring. Men are responsible for the teaching of religious practice as well as guardians and disciplinarians, contributing to the family in vital ways

(41). This egalitarian scenario is perpetuated in Silko's narrative, where spiritual wholeness is achieved by her protagonist Tayo only when he learns to embrace both masculine and feminine realities. Tayo's heroism lies in defying Western notions of masculinity, destruction and revenge, instead accepting the inclusive Pueblo philosophy embodied in the mythological depiction of Spider Woman, or Thought-

Woman, who weaves creation into existence. Understanding that humans represent but one strand of Spider Woman's all-encompassing web is the ethic of Silko's narrative.

The creation stories of many Native American groups are gynocentric, with

Pueblo and Navajo myth based on the story of Thought-Woman, whose power to

Name creates reality and all the cosmos. Silko's text begins with this myth

affirming the power of language:

Ts'its'tsi'nako, Thought- Woman, is sitting in her room and whatever she thinks about appears ...

Thought-Woman, the spider, named things and as she named them they appeared.

She is sitting in her room thinking of a story now 77

I'm telling you the story she is thinking. ( 1)

Silko utilizes this creation narrative to assert a powerful message: the Story of humanity continues and is ongoing-it can be rewritten and retold in order to reshape reality, much as Spider Woman continues to spin new patterns. A female

Creatress offers a distinct challenge to the androcentric Christian mythology which has historically sought to eradicate Native American language and culture.

Christianity, which asserts dominance over nature and Others, is in direct

opposition to Native American myths representing all life (animate and inanimate)

as interconnected in Spider Woman's metaphorical web. Silko empowers herself as

Storyteller, weaving a tale that questions gender roles, validates sexuality, and

stresses a merging with Spider Woman as necessary for both Tayo's and the

reader's healing. The ongoing flow of creation is attributed to the power of words

as action, with both women and men possessing the capacity to instigate change.

Silko's merging of masculine and feminine consciousness represents a holistic,

egalitarian message that rings with the active fusion necessary to our modern social

and ecological dilemma.

Silko's protagonist Tayo clearly reflects the Laguna precept that words

create reality. He feels personally responsible for the prolonged drought that is

affecting the Laguna people, due to his verbal cursing of the jungle rains while

fighting during WWII. Tayo is incredibly traumatized during the war, and he 78

perceives his desolate state as reflected in the barren environment that surrounds him (Swan 55). The horrors of modem combat and the loss of his brother during

the war have pushed Tayo to severe alcoholism and to the brink of insanity. This

grief is compounded by the death of his uncle and mentor, an important figure in

the Pueblo family structure, but also the only father Tayo has ever known. Tayo's

paternity is credited to a white man he has never met and his "indiscreet" Laguna

mother is long dead; therefore Tayo is consistently confronted and tormented by his

half-breed, outcast status, most tragically realized in his debilitating survivor guilt.

He has spent many years following the war in a mental institution, but Tayo's

homecoming makes clear his failure to respond to the white man's therapy. His

continuing illness and deterioration inspires Tayo's family to send for a Laguna

medicine man, despite the Army doctor's admonitions against Indian medicine (34).

This attempt also fails, as Tayo's illness is deep-rooted and beyond the experience

ofKu'oosh.

Ku'oosh's attempts to heal Tayo include stories of ancient places, reminding

Tayo of his connection to the land. He speaks of a cave Tayo knows, where warm

lava rocks draw snakes to "restore life to themselves" (35). In the old days,

warriors went and threw their scalps there, in ceremonies designed to similarly

restore the spirit of warriors. This ritual, however, was based on knowing who each

man had killed, on being able to touch their dead enemy. Conversely, modem war

is anonymous and hideous, utilizing weapons far beyond the old man's imagination. 79

Tayo reflects on Ku'oosh's failure and understandable naivete regarding his war

expenence:

In the old way of warfare, you couldn't kill another human being in battle without knowing it, without seeing the result, because even a wounded deer that got up and ran again left great clots of lung blood or spilled guts on the ground. That way the hunter knew it would die. Human beings were no different. But the old man would not have believed white warfare-killing across great distances without knowing who or how many died. It was all too alien to comprehend, the mortars and the big guns ... the old man would not have believed anything so monstrous. Ku' oosh would have looked at the dismembered corpses and the atomic heat-flash outlines, where human bodies had evaporated, and the old man would have said something close and terrible had killed these people. Not even oldtime witches killed like that. (37)

Having to admit that "there are some things we can't cure like we used to, not since

the white man came," Ku'oosh leaves Tayo in much the same state he found him.

Faced with the perversion of modern nuclear weaponry, Silko posits a scenario

requiring a new cure, a new ceremony. While hardly glamorizing traditional Native

American warfare, Silko stresses the dilemma of modern time: the enemy is

nameless and faceless, and the destruction that is wreaked poses a threat to all life.

In creating warfare that literally and figuratively obliterates our "enemy's"

humanity, the essence of spirit is severed. This is the illness that plagues Tayo. 80

Despite her condemnation of war and nuclear technology, Silko is careful to include this development under the rubric of a narrative, as history brought into being by language. Native Americans remain the primary storytellers, inventing white people in an act of "witchery." Silko describes a time before whites existed, when all the peoples of the world came together in a contest of dark magic. One witch, unidentifiable tribally or as man or woman, sought to outdo the witchery of all the others, warning that as it told its story, the story would begin to happen:

... [in] caves across the oceans white skin people like the belly of a fish covered with hair.

Then they grow away from the earth then they grow away from the sun then they grow away from the plants and animals. They see no life Whentheylook they see only objects. The world is a dead thing for them the trees and rivers are not alive the mountains and stones are not alive The deer and bear are objects They see no life ...

They will fear what they find They will fear the people They kill what they fear ...

Up here in these hills they will find rocks, rocks with veins of green and yellow and black. They will lay the final pattern with these rocks they will lay it across the world 81

and explode everything. (135-37)

By implicating Native American storytelling as bringing forth white witchery, and with it nuclear technology, Silko posits Native American narratives, values and rituals as additionally having the power to alter this history. Her depiction of

Tayo's journey toward enlightenment illustrates the progression of this ideological change.

Edith Swan illuminates Tayo as a traditional Native American folklore hero, whose narrative action follows a pattern of heroic renewal based on achieving ceremonial knowledge and power. The name Tayo, in fact, will be familiar to a

Laguna youngster in much the same way Superman might be to a white child (46).

Swan describes the original myth as depicting Tayo being taken to the sky by his pet eagle, to the mountain of the upper world where he goes "northward down" to the home of the Spider Woman. He stays for a long while (46). This archetype figures prominently in Silko's retelling, as her protagonist is sent on a quest up the mountain that inevitably unites him with Ts'eh, the embodiment of Spider Woman.

Ts'eh teaches Tayo how to interact with the world around him, to understand the connections between loving her, loving the earth and loving himself. Ts' eh is

Tayo' s salvation.

The story that brought white witchery into being is told to Tayo by a prophetic medicine man named Betonie, who also foretells the ceremony necessary to Tayo's healing. Silko significantly places Betonie as physically and psychically 82 straddling white and Indian culture: he lives in a hogan in the foothills overlooking white town and the Gallup Ceremonial grounds, where whites make their yearly appearance to partake in a commercial display of Native American culture. This

"ceremony" underscores a generally shallow understanding of Indian culture and tradition; rather, the event is organized by whites and interest is based on the desire to be entertained. Indians, for their part, exploit this interest to make money. This simplistic congregation will be contrasted with the profound implications ofTayo's ceremonial cure, a ceremony infused with the true power and meaning of Native

American ritual. Through Betonie' s insistent occupation of his traditional dwelling,

Silko posits the necessity of a truer understanding of Native American ceremony and ethics-a proximity of spirit rather than infringement. The politics of unchecked urban development and the accompanying poverty and filth that surrounds and affects Indian lands is additionally implicated.

Betonie' s circular hogan is built traditionally, with the west side built into the hill, halfway underground. From his unique vantage point, Bertonie maintains his cultural connection to the land while observing the social and environmental

advance of white society. Betonie tells Tayo, "It strikes me funny, people wondering why I live so close to this filthy town. But see, this hogan was here first.

Built long before the white people ever came. It is down there which is out of

place. Not this old medicine man" (118). Betonie is connected to place, and the hogan retains its spiritual power, despite the encroachment of white society. Silko's 83 placement of Betonie can be interpreted as offering a primary wisdom that must now necessarily pertain to both white and Native American society; Bertonie is a character that understands the inevitable clash or consensus that must take place between the two cultures. Nuclear technology terminally links all societies, making

Tayo's ceremonial reconnection with the land and the feminine principle of Laguna culture an ideology that must necessarily include all readers.

Reinforcing the universality of Silko's message, Betonie informs Tayo that he is "at an important place in this story," because during the war he had seen "what the evil had done: you saw the witchery ranging as wide as this world ... They will try to stop you from completing the ceremony .. .it never has been easy. The people must do it. You must do it" (124-25). As Edith Swan points out, WWII is but a

pale shadow of the witchery's intent, a prelude for the plan of nuclear holocaust

(47). Tayo must learn to which clan he belongs, and adhere to those values that

promise survival. Betonie convinces Tayo that he must cast aside the advice of

white doctors, who prescribed individual salvation, and trust his intuition that his

cure lay in "we" and "us." Silko contrasts the critical difference of Christian

ideology and Native American consciousness: the solution, or cure, lies in a

ceremony that is "great and inclusive of everything." Betonie will offer a cure,

however, that accommodates evolution and change, an idea Silko formulates to

assert the necessity of all philosophies needing to change and grow: 84

At one time, the ceremonies as they had been performed were enough for the way the world was then. But after the white people came, elements in this world began to shift; and it became necessary to create new ceremonies. I have made changes in the rituals. The people mistrust this greatly, but only this growth keeps ceremonies strong. She taught me this above all else: things which don't shift and grow are dead things. They are things the witchery people want. (126)

Through Betonie Silko posits that Native Americans too must adapt to a changing world; clinging statically to the old ways may be insufficient for modern concerns.

Rage over stolen lands and repressed cultural tradition must be, indeed are meant to be, fuel to further the positive survival of pertinent Indian ways and values. For this to occur, Native Americans must direct their energies purposefully, peacefully and

strategically, in synergy with Spider Woman's evolving narrative, thus influencing reality. The witchery's march towards the apocalypse reflects the stagnancy of

doctrine that refuses to acknowledge its negative impact on the earth and all its creatures. Native American philosophy offers an alternative to this potentially catastrophic conclusion.

Whites, for their part, must face the reality of their history, and face the lies that have been obscured by "patriotic" wars, advancing technologies and

accumulating wealth-all distractions to fill an emptiness that slowly devours the

spirit: 85

If the white people never looked beyond the lie, to see that theirs was a nation built on stolen land, then they would never be able to understand how they had been used by the witchery; they would never know that they were still being manipulated by those who knew how to stir the ingredients together: white thievery and injustice boiling up the anger and hatred that would finally destroy the world: the starving against the fat, the colored against the white. (191)

Silko vilifies inequities legitimized by white Christian capitalistic values, values

authorized by sacred texts that posit slavery, racism, sexism, and land appropriation

as normative. These policies of hatred must be recognized as inevitably leading to

destruction, and as the source of an unacknowledged but insistent source of spiritual

unrest--even for those that perpetuate them. Silko offers a hopeful message

underscoring the necessary triumph of human compassion, justice and intellect, a

logic that must recognize the effects of such unnatural doctrines. Betonie shares

with Tayo the ancient Indian belief that land ownership/domination is ultimately an

illusion; neither deeds, papers nor Christian canon trump the fact that the people

belong to the land, not vice-versa. The power of Tayo's cure will thus require he

reconnect with nature on the sacred site of Mount Taylor, long believed by the

Laguna to be the locus of Spider Woman's creation. There he will begin the

transition towards recovering his Laguna heritage. 86

The importance of place to Native American ideology is emphasized in

Silko's use of Mount Taylor as the site ofTayo's regeneration and healing. Laguna myths describe Mount Taylor as the Emergence Place, or the Place of Divination, where understanding, seeing, prophecy, knowledge, learning and naming are realized-all qualities associated with Spider Woman (Swan 51). The Creatress delineates the earth as essentially feminine in Laguna mythology, and protecting her as a holy place becomes a vital aspect of Tayo's ceremony. His union with Ts'eh reminds Tayo of his place in the cosmogony of Spider Woman, and thus takes on radically different symbolism than that of a dominator ideology: planting a seed in the earth (or in women) does not elevate men to a status above others; rather it indicates a caretaking that honors and protects all life, a nurturing stewardship of the land (Swan 54). It is Ts'eh, therefore, that teaches Tayo the need for careful attention to life's procreative cycles, planting seeds of ecological and reverential consciOusness.

Tayo comes to Ts'eh only after the first half of his ceremony is complete, a ritualistic healing journey through the mountains with Betonie. Tayo has begun to feel the pull of the sacred places and traditions, drawing him closer to the completion of his task. Betonie shares the wisdom of his grandfather, who had lived his last years loving a Mexican mystic who could hear many languages unfamiliar to her, echoing insistently through the old man's hogan:

"They are working for the end of this world, aren't they?" 87

"I think so." "Sometimes I don't know if the ceremony will be strong enough to stop them. We have to depend on people not even born yet. A hundred years from now ... This is the only way. It cannot be done alone. We must have the power from everywhere. Even the power we can get from whites." He gazed into his smoky quartz crystal and she stared into the fire, and they plotted the course of the ceremony by the direction of dark night winds and by the colors of the clay in drought -ridden valleys. (150)

Silko posits Tayo's cure in the collaboration not just between man and woman, but amongst all peoples. The dilemma facing the earth and its inhabitants indeed dictates that we act as one clan, united in a common interest. Tayo's encounter with Ts'eh continues the narrative begun by Betonie's grandfather and his partner, clarifying the ceremonial reconnection with the earth that will ensure his/our survival. Betonie leaves Tayo with the admonition, "Don't let them stop you.

Don't let them finish off this world" (152).

Ts'eh first appears in Silko's text in seemingly human form, as a wise and mystical woman Tayo meets on the mountain. She is expecting him, and enactments of Betonie's vision are initiated. The stars in the sky appear precisely as Betonie has drawn them, and Tayo understands that he has reached the next phase of his ceremony. Ts' eh' s very essence is conceived as nature, and Silko describes her in ways that mesh dream and reality. Tayo's sexual union with Ts'eh 88 infuses him with an enhanced sensitivity to his surroundings; the earth smells lush and fertile, dense and rich, and "being alive was all right then: he had not breathed like that in a long time" (181 ). Tayo uncharacteristically feels happy to be alive.

Silko affirms ancient thought that links the pleasure of sexuality with the attainment of wisdom; all procreation is a sacred gift. Tayo' s continued healing is inextricably linked to Ts'eh's sexual love and this sensual connection to nature, directly opposing destructive thought that correlates sex with transgression. Only by embracing sexuality as part of our innate being can humans understand their place in nature.

Tayo's consequent encounters with Ts'eh continue to meld dream and reality. In a realistic scene, Ts'eh restores Uncle Josiah's lost cattle to Tayo, an important element of his quest on the mountain. Recovering his uncle's cattle, appropriated by a white rancher, represents Tayo's future autonomy and the continuance of his uncle's vision. His Uncle Josiah envisioned a livelihood based on a durable and drought resistant breed of cattle, perhaps symbolizing Silko's idea of the resilience needed by the Native American population to retrieve their autonomy through perseverance and resolve. Tayo works productively and consistently once he returns horne with his cattle, but his nights are filled with dreams of Ts' eh. He feels overwhelming love for her: "tears filled his eyes and the ache in his throat ran deep into his chest...He knew he would find her again ... The terror of the [past] dreaming ... was gone, uprooted from his belly, and the woman 89 had filled the hollow spaces with new dreams" (218-19). Through his love for

Ts'eh, Tayo understands that the fear and pain he felt at things lost during the war were not lost at all, that in fact "all was retained between the sky and the earth, and within himself' (219). He understands that his historical moment in WWII and its aftermath is simply part of a much larger context of history that continues to unfold

(Cochran 77). His love for his uncle and brother are retained in "blood memory, and the people were strong, and the fifth world endured, and nothing was ever lost as long as the love remained" (Silko 220). Being engaged with the living world and living creatures is healing Tayo's grief. His cattle continue to flourish and multiply, and he sees Josiah's vision emerging, "taking form in bone and muscle." A tangible new narrative is unfolding as Tayo becomes increasingly reoriented to

Laguna precepts of time and place.

As Tayo's sense of connectedness continues to increase, he is again united with Ts'eh. This encounter takes on a more definitive dream-like state, as once again Ts'eh is embodied and reflected in nature. On the banks of a river, Tayo makes love to her but he cannot determine where "her body ended and the sand began." He is alternately sure and then unsure of the reality of her presence, yet what she teaches him is certain. She gathers plants and teaches him the properties of care and cultivation. She shows him a plant he must gather for her, one that won't be ready for harvest until she has left him. 90

"What color of the sky is in this one?" She shook her head. "This isn't for color," she said. "It's for light. The light of the stars, and the moon penetrating the night." It was too dense and green to be taken then; if the stem were broken then, before the final season, its wet flowing vitality would be lost in a single breath. "I'll remember it," he said. "I will gather it for you if you're not here." (227)

This plant promising illumination will take on particular significance in Silko's final climactic scene. Tayo' s remaining time with Ts' eh is one of profound healing; his tears of grief are replaced with tears shed at her profound love for him. His long sojourn in nature with Ts'eh has, however, begun to worry his family, and Ku'oosh

and the other wise men wonder why Tayo has not come, sensing he has something to tell them. A new danger faces Tayo: people wonder if he has relapsed and

should be forcibly taken back to town. Ts'eh, nevertheless, has more to teach Tayo,

and he stays with her a little longer.

Ts'eh is now pushing Tayo towards the final revelations necessary to

completing his ceremony. She explains the dangers facing him and all of

humankind, dangers bred of human disregard for each other and the unnatural

desire for domination over all living things:

"Death isn't much," she said. "There are much worse things ... The destroyers: they work to see how much can be lost, how much can be forgotten. They destroy the feeling people have for each other ... Their highest ambition is to gut human beings while they are still breathing, to hold the heart still beating so the victim will never 91

feel anything again ... They are all around now. Only destruction is capable of arousing sensation, the remains of something alive in them; and each time they do it, the scar thickens, and they feel less and less, yet still hungering for more." "Old Betonie said there was a way to stop-- " "It all depends," she said. "How far are you willing to go?" (229-30)

Tayo's (and humanity's) recovery requires enacting a complete intellectual revolution, a denunciation of human values gone astray-values based on cruelty, violent conquest and destruction. Tayo's ceremony must end with a resurrection of consciousness that honors care and concern, a choice reflecting suppression of the violent instincts bred by society. Reverence for life and all of Spider Woman's creation is the only answer to the escalating threat of nuclear disaster. Tayo's hope lies in the fact that the destroyers do not "know about stories or the struggle for the ending to the story" (232). Silko empowers her reader with the knowledge that they too may struggle to change the ending of a story that posits fear and judgment over compassion and nurturance.

The completion ofTayo's quest necessarily takes place at the site of uranium mining on the Cebolleta land grant in New Mexico. Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was exploded, lies three hundred miles to the southeast. The

secret laboratories where the bombs were created lie deep in the Jemez Mountains, on land taken from Cochiti Pueblo (246). With these facts Silko underscores the irony of colonization: in their efforts to vanquish a people, whites have in actuality 92 subjugated the entire human race. The determination of "civilized progress" under biblical authority has resulted in the most unholy of alliances. The pattern of

Tayo's ceremony will be completed crouching among the powdery yellow uranium, again ironically contrasted with ideas of Native American culture that view yellow as the color of personhood, and the myth of Yell ow Woman, who is indeed a reflection of Spider Woman.

Tayo's fellow war veterans and friends have fallen prey to the ideology of white witchery; they have come to believe that Indian ways are obsolete and inferior to progress. They represent a common dilemma, however, in that they have been abandoned by the same government that so valued them in the war effort, becoming angry, dislocated and aggressive in their renewed marginality. They have denigrated Tayo's attempts to return to Laguna ways, and have indeed been hunting him in order to return him to white authorities. As Tayo sits near the uranium mineshaft, his friends appear, drunk and riotous, with Harley, the one friend suspected to be loyal to Tayo, beaten and lying in the car's trunk. They are perhaps unaware of Tayo' s presence, but he knows it is here, now, that the final pattern of his ceremony will be laid. His friends have joined league with the destroyers, indulging in a cruelty and violence that lures Tayo towards vengeful reaction. He understands, however, that his friends represent the larger evil embodied in the witchery: 93

They would be here all night, he knew it, working for drought to sear the land, to kill the livestock, to stunt the corn plants and squash in the gardens, leaving people more vulnerable to the lies ... The witchery would be at work all night so that the people would see only the losses-the land and the lives lost-since the whites came; the witchery would work so that the people would be fooled into blaming only the whites and not the witchery. It would work to make the people forget the stories of the creation and continuation of the five worlds; the old priests would be afraid too, and cling to ritual without making new ceremonies ... (249)

As destructive ecological policies and pollution threaten basic survival, Silko posits a desperation and fear that will propel people towards the devastating tendencies of dominator ideologies. Fueled by hatred rather than compassion, Indians may forget the life principles embodied in Spider Woman's creation, blaming their dilemma on whites rather than looking to the holistic vision embodied in their own stories. This diversion will cause neglect and apathy, leading to a spiritual and cultural amnesia and a continuing disintegration of the earth. Native Americans will become enmeshed in the fear-driven dogma and blame that makes it possible for the witchery to thrive. The stories and ceremonies, which breathe new life into traditions and are critical to positive cultural evolution, will flounder and perish.

Tayo's response to the situation he finds himself in is therefore designed to represent a much needed cohesive societal action. As the gruesome scene of

Harley's torture unfolds before him, Tayo struggles with doubt and rage, and 94

contemplates killing Emo, the group's leader. It becomes clear that the provocative

scene is for Tayo's benefit-they have tracked him here. As the men become

hideously ensnared in their own violent spectacle, grotesquely drawn in to the

negative energy of death, Tayo forces himself to resist the infectious urge to plunge

his weapon into Emo's head and stop the bloody murder. But he realizes this act

will only draw him into the witchery as well:

It had been a close call. The witchery had almost ended the story according to its plan; Tayo had almost jammed the screwdriver into Emo's skull the way the witchery had wanted, savoring the yielding bone and membrane as the steel ruptured the brain ... He would have been another victim, a drunk war veteran settling an old feud ... the white people would shake their heads, more proud than sad that it took a white man to survive in their world and that these Indians couldn't seem to make it. At home the people would blame liquor, the Army, and the war, but the blame on the whites would never match the vehemence the people would keep in their own bellies, reserving the greatest bitterness and blame for themselves, for one of themselves that they could not save. (253)

Overcoming the urge to embrace rage, violence and murder as a solution to the social and political dilemmas facing Native Americans is personified in Silko's depiction of Tayo. Represented as an ordinary and flawed man, Tayo has taken on heroic proportion by enacting a consciousness that strives towards peace rather than aggression, a position amplified by the chosen location of the uranium mine. Silko 95 warns of the critical importance of adopting this ideological change and resisting the contagion of brutality and dominance. She cautions against the self-satisfied arrogance of whites, who misconstrue their dominance as superiority and have deceived others into conditions of self-loathing. Rather it is whites who have

something to learn from Native American stories, and all peoples are included in the necessary transition completed by Tayo, who arrives at the realization that we

are all held together in the same web, under the same stars (254).

Tayo will go back now to retrieve the plant shown to him by Ts'eh; he will gather the seeds and plant them among the sandy hills with great care, as Ts'eh has taught him. "The rainwater would seep down gently and the delicate membranes would not be crushed or broken before the emergence of tiny fingers, roots, and leaves pressing out in all directions. The plants would grow there like the story,

strong and translucent as the stars" (254 ). Such is the care and patience that will be required to enact Silko's powerful message. Tayo completes his ceremonial return

to Laguna culture by telling his story to the wise men, who will then incorporate

this knowledge into future ritual. They understand that they have all been blessed

through Tayo's encounter with Ts'eh, Spider Woman. Silko must hope for a