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matrilineal dissent and descent of ANTHRO-L goddesses
Daniel A. Foss (U17043@UICVM.BITNET)
Mon, 6 May 1996 18:49:05 CDT
course the first Thread in our corpus of Myth; that honour is accorded to
the Thread laid down by Ariadne in the Labyrinth, having been painstakingly
accumulated, my memory has deteriorated over all this time, I'm terribly
sorry, by her mother the same way my mother accumulated Thread, which was
to go to the bakery every Saturday, buy seven-layer-cake and maybe a couple
of eclairs, and once having carried the precious box home on the bus,
slipping the Thread *off the corners*, *never* snipping it. By this means,
my mother accumulated over thirty years' tenancy at 2004 Newbold Av, Bronx
NYC, a huge kitchendrawerful of Thread, unused, in perfect condition; and
were there an aspiring hero with a suitable girlfriend, it might've been
made use of. In the Bronze Age, Ariadne had no doubt done women's work,
which as in China even much later, entailed that most tedious exercise
ever contrived by the Mind of Man for the Fingers of Woman, *hemp-splicing*,
whereby ittybitty short fibers of hemp are stuck together, firmly, soundly
adhering, comprising a roughtough fiber for many hundreds of domestic uses,
few of them satisfactory. The mass of Thread Ariadne brought to the Relati-
onship were indicative of Ariadne's Caring and her intimate knowledge of her
man, Theseus; for hadn't he been thrown out of every chariotry in the Mycen-
aean world for mapreading deficits, disorientation, and general ignorance as
to his coming relative to his going.
This is a clearcut Sample Myth, which may disguisedly, confusedly represent
absolutely nothing whatever of even conjectural historicity, the odds-on
favourite; Else, a sociohistorical situation whereby Minoan Crete exerted
thalassocratic hegemony over nascent Mycenaean palace states, crude and
savage in their barbaric splendour relative to the decadent, softandeasy
living widespread in Cretan affluent society inexorably enfeebling itself
["into effeminacy," customarily appearing here in pre-veryrecent historio-
graphical convention, has been struck out here as now politically incorrect,
whereto even Ralph Holloway will concur, I'm certain]; or to *post facto*
rationalization of Mycenaean aggression against, and conquest of, Crete
circa 1450 BC, dictating horrid provocations by the Cretans against Mainland
Greeks, herewith those annual quotas exacted by King Minos of seven male and
seven female human sacrifice victims from Athens alone. (Linear B evidence
provides plentiful evidence of Mycenaean sacrifices of women for routine
purposes, men for extraordinary or critical situations, and golden bowls
accompanying the victims if extra-lavish deities-propitiatory gesticulations
were indicated. For Crete, human sacrifice has been found, but at nothing
like this order of magnitude.)
Myths, again, can reflect the proverbial *any damned thing* as the sought-
out Germ of Truth; or nothingatall, should the Germ of Truth itself turn out
figmentational or reported via Oral Transmission, the crudest form of radio,
down through the ages, till the Germ has been rendered Obscure Beyond All
Recognition. (Eg, another one: What kinda damned patriarch was Jacob supposed
to have been to have swindled his twin brother out of their partible inherit-
ance for a dollop of glop and slop? This is no way, *to us*, any kinda
edifying personification of Perfect Morality. Yet Edom, the People fictively
descended from Esau, like Moab, were Forbidden entry into the House of the
Lord; wavering as to who was what during the ethnogenesis may be seen. What's
more, Early Iron Age morality, Might making Right in so many of the more
artistic storytelling in Scripture, might well condone the hero's swindles
as Noble; Abraham as Trickster Figure goes back to Middle Bronze and we're
far from having a Clue.)
There's a school of thought advocating Direct Revelation of which,
I recall, Dwight Read's stern opposition to having any truck with; yet
when a friend of mine had students construct an Authentic [Pre-Civil-War]
Liberian Hut (in the treeless wastes of Newhall CA and vicinity, where
within the "vicinity" was the site of the new campus of CalArts,
Valencia CA, after the orange), this was sound pedagogy. Direct Experience,
sopping and grimy with the thickly described Mud slopped over the Peole's
lives, if that's the word, is qualitatively variably admissible. That's why
we have before us the Pantheon of ANTHRO-L.
Let the congregation please rise.
The Holy Name of our List is emblematic of, referential to, the Divine
Union symbolized by "-" among ourselves as well; on Earth as Under Heaven.
When I was a young village priest, people, I eagerly awaited the day of my
Name-Hyphenation, the magickal instand when there would get bestowed upon
me the new name *Lowenkron-Foss*. Or was it *Foss-Lowenkron*. In succession
I had wed, since they asked first, a Californian and a Communist. Of the two,
the latter was far more culturally conservative; yet her dissent from received
naming practices was awesome, majestic in its volcanic fury: "*I've hated this
goddam Lowenkron for 36 years, now I gotta chance t' get ridofit; and I won't
let anyone, least of all YOU, [obscenity]/fuck me over onnacounta some [amal
sphincter]/asshole idea! Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet lost!"
I thought it best, my dear congregation, to have had for ourselves
*eponymous ancestrices* (sing. *ancestrix*). That is, we are all the
matrilineal descendants of the goddess ANTHRO, patroness of our People,
who was Consort to El. Not, to be sure, a monogamous consort; El was/is
hardly that sort of deity. (Rafael Patai, The Jewish Goddess, 1966.)
El, as you know, was the ithyphallic fertility god of Canaan/Israel;
and this god is worshipped in backwaters, for instance, the Chicago
River; that water is *backwater* even by East River standards, even
the Illini called it Stinking Creek before Contact, if you can imagine.
In this region, the devout, as you know, say, "El is above all the
people, yea, and he telleth them all where to get off. Amen, no
smoking, no graffiti, no radio playing." The Consort, later the Great
Wife of El was Asherah, polysemic and multivocal, yet on the whole
suggesting "fertility" and "abundance." The Hebrew word for "rich,"
*'ashir*, derives from the name of this divinity. As does the leader
of what The Nation calls "the most plausible and superficially rational
fascist leader in this country today, and a woman who consigns, via the
merest suggestion of comparison in your own mind, unassisted, Patrick
Buchanan to the condition of Rubehood which, they say, he should have
remained in, permanently.
Asherah [Dr Elektra] Hubbard contrived her name, like everything else
about her (or having to do with her) with utmost deliberation. For one
thing, it alludes to her sister Elizabeth's *tragic* infertility problem.
Asherah, the more famous sister, crows, "I've had more abortions than
she's had periods; what does she know from Woman! As far as I'm
concerned, my sister is my best advertisement. With her representing
Feminism, oh, what a joke, I can do *much worse* to those rich NOW
ladies, smug in their Beltway islands of luxurious security, without
*ever* using such stupid insults as *feminazis* and *femicops*. I can
insult 'em smarter than Rush, so Rush, better Rush somewhere Else, cuz
your posterior is done Slung! Yer an Embarassment, Rush; Asherah's here,
and Asherah does everything *right*, fatso!"
Back on high, the goddess ANTHRO, frustrated of the mighty organ of
the Grower of All Stuff, assigned herself the task of Keeperess of
ye Triangles and ye Circles; her role that of Protectress of Children,
Inoffensive Beasts, and Matrilines. For the first two, she cautioned
against Sexual Abuse where child or sheep was close relations. As to
the third, we have the hardly credible Divine Oracle, "For let ye be
aware, I have a Savage Mind; accordingly, let ye each exchange with
another of exchange objects. For whilst Nature dictates we be exchange
objects today, we shall with equal Naturalness seem to ourselves and
others veritable Sex Objects on the morrow."
--- I myself, hardly Orthodox, as you know, say, What Garbage! to that!
In later times, The Book Of The Generations was written; its contents
falsely credited to Illiterates in later times. The Book of Generations
has the Evil goddess, the Tiammat-figure of this pantheon, need I say,
Stephanie J. Nelson, born of the coupling of El and Asherah. As such,
The Book, coauthored by Mormon, held her responsible for an earthquake
in California, I think, in Los Angeles. We have an atrocious poem,
on lined yellow paper, attributed on slender evidence to Daniel A.
Foss, an unknown being, in which Stephanie J. Nelson, qua Tiammat,
is overtly blamed for the earthquake. Sour Grapes a Gallo Make,
as they said then.
The Good Spirit, Neutopia, in the same source, is the outcome of the
lackadaisical, passionless embraces of ANTHRO by her Lord El. All
manner of congenital brain damage, disposition to Bipolar Disorder,
inconceivability of conception which nevertheless under no circumstances
vitiated Neutopia's fear of "germs," her stautary naked on hilltops,
bundled up by fireplaces, in short her *inversion of cultural themes
considered adequately known* by overconfident social scientists, all
of this, according to informants, "just figures," "whaddaya expect."
What is *believed* by devotees of Neutopia is uncertain this week; and
hardly better the previous week. Her acolytes, priests, and believing
personifications of "the wisdom of the Crone, which goddess stole from
Mary Daly" sacrificing chickens in divination inspecting street-crossing
behaviours, the precise content, even imprecise content, is occasion for
giggling.
Let me shut up [vast cheers throughout the crowd on the hillside] by
reminding you, theologically speaking, there must be no confusion
between Neutopia the sky goddess and Elizbeth N. Hubbard, subsequently
Doctress Neutopia and so recorded on her driver's licence, checkbook,
diploma, Library of Congress number for her dissertation in Future
Studies, U Mass at Amherst (a Woolworth's-like diploma mill, which
howbeit it ground slowly, ground extremely lousy, and the purchase
of their degrees in Woolworths may have been the fons et origine of
emotional compatibility betweem our Prophet of Doom and our "living
goddess" here) and the all too mortal woman whom tens of thousands
of Internet users have imprecated, "Why don't you just *DIE*!" It
gets worse, of course.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 5 May 1996 20:07:08 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Daniel A. Foss" <dfoss@uic.edu>
To: U17043@UICVM.cc.uic.edu
cc: neutopia@spiff.gnu.ai.mit.edu, neutopia@asylum.org,
neutopia@genesis.nred.ma.us, campbell@i-2000.com
Subject: authentic neutopian texts from Former Han dynasty
lizzy,
In a recent "ploy," I suppose you'd (plural, sensu Broad Masses) call it,
I adduced, for the benefit of what I've called "the culturally-generated
sense of Time-Immemoriality" indispensable for imbuing us the certainty
of the *wasness* of the *supposed-to-have-wuz*, indispensable for the
construction of the excessive neatness and extreme-to-the-point-of-
superfluity clean-flowing-lines of the design of the Past as it's
supposed to have *wuz*, though it's highly unlikely to have ever been
*wuz* the least bit like that. All this, I maintained, is "one of the
main Thingies in the culture's job description; what it gets paid for,
to oversimplify so even your newsgroup Retards can understand it, in
other words.
I mentioned this offhand to the 792 anthropologists on ANTHRO-L; and
to hint of the Seriousness (you remember what Seriousness wuz) of the
Thingie, I proposed for ANTHRO-L's most recent newbies, ephebes, and
boys awaiting capping ceremonies or teenage-circumcision puberty rites
a *body of mythology* subsuming Tall Weird Tales, not just Jacqueline
and the Bean Sprouts for widdle girls, but whole Imaginary Beings for
generations; where after a while one of them may be allowed to get
human enough to disguise self as swan to get raped by Hera, Else the
Mama of the goddesses gives her Mad Cow Disease.
For starters, I adduced the immortal, cuz I fear she aint dead,
Stephanie J. Nelson and you. Stephanie J. Nelson, you don't know;
and she's unlikely to have any use for you, either. Not that she's
quiet or mousy or anything; she's just as exhibitionistic as you.
Where her idea of namedropping is, contrariwise w.r.t. you,
mentioning offhand how she'd spent her morning productively
[which scores one point off me] "polishing up my translation
of Quintilian," which is supposed to score five points, ie,
get me to off myself, cuz I'm not supposed to have *heard* of
Quintillian! Nyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah that time, Stephanie.
For years we charged each other's machineguns from Western Front
trenches; she made me out as prince of darkness of the Manichees
and herself as Queen of Flame. Where I said, "Will trade dubious-
advantage gender for Moral Virtue, you do the honours with this
here silver sacrificial knife, like in the Attys cult." In the
end, Mike Lieber (q.v.) Judged her as Evil, and singlehandedly
drove her to Attempted Suicide. Then I wrote to Mike Lieber,
Jewish-Guiltily, "Mike, I'd feel terrible if she's dead, worse
if she isn't."
The other supernatural being was you. There's a catch. As you
were never subscribed to ANTHRO-L, and have nothing even to wear
to an anthropological religious rite, it turns out that, of 792
anthropologists, 83% never heard of patriarchy, but a full 97%
never heard of *you*. One of the latter is the only woman, she
says, still corresponding with me, if afraid of giving me her
phone number in New Jersey for fear of getting Stalked. All women
have now acquired this fear, and I make sure that they do so.
[omissions and censorship removed before the fiction.]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 06 May 96 16:41:54 CDT
From: U17043@UICVM.cc.uic.edu
Subject: yer in denial
To: "B.C." <campbell@i-2000.com>
[omissions and censorship removed before the fiction.]
A more complete Mythology and Cosmogony of ANTHRO-L, the name obviously
redolent (and yellowlent) of the union in matrimony of the ancestrix, ANTHRO,
a nymph, that is, from the Bronze Age when there was nothing about a nymph
considered dirty, she taking lotsa baths, of course, and El, the god of the
apiru/Shasu/Canaanites (qv in Redford after the stuff around 1200 BC; also,
Drews, End Of The Iron Age, 1993; also, T. Dothan & M. Dothan, People
of the Sea, 1992). What I am trying to tell you is, that poor ANTHRO, how
much she loved the god El, yet he hearkened not, the bastard. Besides, he
had lots of work, for "He is above all the people, and he telleth them
where to get off." As we know, there was unto El given in Primary Relation-
ship the goddess Asherah [fertility, abundance]; not to mention some girl-
friends like Anat, also Inanna/Ishtar when she was on a business trip.
Warning, I am going to post this paragraph, and much more to be added.
The idea is, recall, we were into, for the nonce, the Myth biz. What it
has to do, when it does, with the Past what wuz, instead of whut suppozed
to have wuz.
Well, for the younger generation, I have some goddesses ready. Even Ruby
has got a cut of the family action. The Daoist Big Mama.
Oh, yeah, BC, gotta tellya, a book, like a tumour, is taking Form
in my head. Like, the wuz of Time Immemoriality is no worse than the
gonnabe of The Future Lies Ahead, when it comes to neatened-up socially
convenient fakery.
I got this driving vision, see, Barbara, if it isn't in Print, it
isn't. The Net's a throwaway medium, but without recycling. The General
Law of the Accumulation of Garbage, see unpublished writings, 1991,
governs the iteration-reiteration of samedamnthreads, as well as their
complexity; complexity theory drops out. You don't hafta tell *me* what
this looks like, Barbara, you scamp.
Daniel A. Foss
<artificial stupidity laboratory investigation of minimalistic wage>
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