hypatia
Barbara Mor
Working Notes
Hypatia, 355 AD(?) - 415 AD - – the first Witch killed by the Inquisition.
Hypatia, the First Witch sacrificed sadopornographically (stripped, assaulted,
tortured, burned, erased from Man’s History) by what was to become, in 10
centuries, the European Inquisition. Who was she?
Halfway thru, I realized she was the daughter of Theon (essentially, Theos =
God), who dies & is, in my text, “reborn” -- funny!!!
What is this about? Hypatia (1) comes to consciousness in a copy shop, circa
our time; gradually via copying documents & resensing memories, she recalls her
Past, inclusive of the past lives of other Western women punished precisely for
their Powers. (2) Embodied by this recollection into Now, Hypatia absorbs our
gluey gestalt ambience in which the West’s “liberated woman” moves, sometimes
exhilarated sometimes trapped, “free” & “lost.” This middle part is muddle, i.e.
Now is Messy. The ambience is one in which great changes can occur because
forms & orders, both material & psychic, are so fragmented & in flux: a female
oceanic matrix that can churn into conscious acts of fractaling & recombining
DNA & its imaginations. The copy machine is, like the Female, a reproductive
organ; i.e. some quantum/magic/poetic capacity to re-engineer a world committing
suicide (for want of Female intelligence). (3) Past energies recollected & Now
cognized, Hypatia becomes her supraTime/Space Self: not only Nature’s Creature
but Earth’s Creatrix. Vast responsibility & sorrow implied: this is a story of
Witch Power, not always a happy ending. Because it is Real, i.e. up to Us.
Hypatia, more than an historic person who “reincarnates,” is a kind of natural
female consciousness that recurs in any of us if we are not programmed otherwise.
Hypatia becomes Us – recollecting those original radical days! Like many of us
in the 60s, she comes to awareness in a Daly act of re-membering herself: reading
& reprinting female history discovered for the first time (over & over): Wow, this
is what we were, this is what happened to us. I am an historic essentialist, sorry.
Herstory, retrieval of our past, becomes a kind of parthenogenic machine, in the
end, for Hypatia. This was the original idea; last year I read The Last Sex (Arthur
& Marilouise Kroker, editors), & found the Peter Greenaway quote, which made
me yelp Hah!! My copy machine trope is HOT!!!
Of course the idea is desperate: the Hypatia figure is desperate: the whole world
is desperate. This text is a condensation of The First God (my title for GCM), a
longer but optimistic book…I believed there was some hope then. Now: maybe
not. Hypatia’s recall/realization of ontologic power is desperate, in face of the
huge forces of terrestrial destruction, human psychopathy. But still: Refusal.
REFUSAL.(That was Thurmer-Rohr’s theme, in Vagabonding.) It’s a kind of
wobbly pathetic grand iconic DEFIANCE: to redo the species DNA without men?
Without Republicans?? Without religious opportunists & fanatic freaks??? I don’t
know. Worldwide women are so bogged down in the details/detritus of sheer
survival; Western women performing various patriarchal handmaiden positions;
who would’ve thought, in 1965, American women would still be Asking Permission
to Live, even more desperately & with less hope?
Nobody expects the American Inquisition!!! But look at our Supreme Court,
ladies. I thought the rousing old Fist would be fun one more time, even if it’s
just punching a copy button. But, definitely ambiguous. The arty cop-out.
Copy=Clone=FractalPatterns=Quantum Jump=ChangetheWorld=Save the
World=SlogansTypedonaScreentoBeCopied….I believed, we all did believe,
that women’s writing had, could have & did have, this kind of world evolving
power, inherent in the awakening experience described: knowledge of past,
present, possible futures. I tried to write Hypatia as if I still have such belief,
but I don’t know if I do, or consequently – if it works.
Hypatia, the First Witch sacrificed sadopornographically (stripped, assaulted,
tortured, burned, erased from Man’s History) by what was to become, in 10
centuries, the European Inquisition. Who was she?
Halfway thru, I realized she was the daughter of Theon (essentially, Theos =
God), who dies & is, in my text, “reborn” -- funny!!!
What is this about? Hypatia (1) comes to consciousness in a copy shop, circa
our time; gradually via copying documents & resensing memories, she recalls her
Past, inclusive of the past lives of other Western women punished precisely for
their Powers. (2) Embodied by this recollection into Now, Hypatia absorbs our
gluey gestalt ambience in which the West’s “liberated woman” moves, sometimes
exhilarated sometimes trapped, “free” & “lost.” This middle part is muddle, i.e.
Now is Messy. The ambience is one in which great changes can occur because
forms & orders, both material & psychic, are so fragmented & in flux: a female
oceanic matrix that can churn into conscious acts of fractaling & recombining
DNA & its imaginations. The copy machine is, like the Female, a reproductive
organ; i.e. some quantum/magic/poetic capacity to re-engineer a world committing
suicide (for want of Female intelligence). (3) Past energies recollected & Now
cognized, Hypatia becomes her supraTime/Space Self: not only Nature’s Creature
but Earth’s Creatrix. Vast responsibility & sorrow implied: this is a story of
Witch Power, not always a happy ending. Because it is Real, i.e. up to Us.
Hypatia, more than an historic person who “reincarnates,” is a kind of natural
female consciousness that recurs in any of us if we are not programmed otherwise.
Hypatia becomes Us – recollecting those original radical days! Like many of us
in the 60s, she comes to awareness in a Daly act of re-membering herself: reading
& reprinting female history discovered for the first time (over & over): Wow, this
is what we were, this is what happened to us. I am an historic essentialist, sorry.
Herstory, retrieval of our past, becomes a kind of parthenogenic machine, in the
end, for Hypatia. This was the original idea; last year I read The Last Sex (Arthur
& Marilouise Kroker, editors), & found the Peter Greenaway quote, which made
me yelp Hah!! My copy machine trope is HOT!!!
Of course the idea is desperate: the Hypatia figure is desperate: the whole world
is desperate. This text is a condensation of The First God (my title for GCM), a
longer but optimistic book…I believed there was some hope then. Now: maybe
not. Hypatia’s recall/realization of ontologic power is desperate, in face of the
huge forces of terrestrial destruction, human psychopathy. But still: Refusal.
REFUSAL.(That was Thurmer-Rohr’s theme, in Vagabonding.) It’s a kind of
wobbly pathetic grand iconic DEFIANCE: to redo the species DNA without men?
Without Republicans?? Without religious opportunists & fanatic freaks??? I don’t
know. Worldwide women are so bogged down in the details/detritus of sheer
survival; Western women performing various patriarchal handmaiden positions;
who would’ve thought, in 1965, American women would still be Asking Permission
to Live, even more desperately & with less hope?
Nobody expects the American Inquisition!!! But look at our Supreme Court,
ladies. I thought the rousing old Fist would be fun one more time, even if it’s
just punching a copy button. But, definitely ambiguous. The arty cop-out.
Copy=Clone=FractalPatterns=Quantum Jump=ChangetheWorld=Save the
World=SlogansTypedonaScreentoBeCopied….I believed, we all did believe,
that women’s writing had, could have & did have, this kind of world evolving
power, inherent in the awakening experience described: knowledge of past,
present, possible futures. I tried to write Hypatia as if I still have such belief,
but I don’t know if I do, or consequently – if it works.
About the author
Barbara Mor, author of The Great Cosmic Mother, has published poetry, essays & experimental fiction in Sulfur, BullHead, Orpheus Grid, Studia Mystica; Brit journals Intimacy & Ecorche; The New MS & Trivia: a Journal of Ideas (1990-94). Online, “24/7 & Yr Dreams,” an essay-interview with Adam Engel, appear in www.dissidentvoice.org, June 14, 2004; “the secret pornographies of Republicans,” “What’s Left,” & “Preferably Knot” appeared in www.triviavoices.net, Dec. 2004; “A Song of Captain Joan” & “akaDarkness: on Kathy Acker is online at www.triviavoices.net, Feb 2007. Experimental fiction, “Oasis,” “Oasis2,” “Here,” & “Sea of Hunger” are online at www.ctheory.net, “A Thousand Days of Theory,” Aug 4, 05; April 4, 08; Dec 15, 05; & April 12, 06 respectively. Www.woodslot.net, April 4, 08 also links to the CTheory fiction, & also Trivia #1’s “the secret pornographies
of Republicans.”
For an updated list of works published in TRIVIA, please see this author's contributor page.
of Republicans.”
For an updated list of works published in TRIVIA, please see this author's contributor page.