Dirk,

    Etymology is not a finished soft science. One thing that it lacks as a
proper and necessary tool is a clear origin for its letters which once
understood as originally "trees" (and this is shockingly unorthodox I know)
should make so much of language and myth more understandable and more
transcendent, harder to be highjacked by sophistry. Idealistic? Perhaps but
in the Poundian tradition.
    Nevertheless Virgo as a constellation serves to point out evidence of an
uncanny coincidence of the the young green shoot "virga" associated with the
virgin "virgo" as opposed to "vir", Lat.,"wer, OE, "vira", Skt.  meaning man
as antonym of woman.
    Celestially Virgo, holding a palm branch in her right hand and an ear of
wheat in her left, is the universal Maiden with many faces. In Egypt, Virgo
is pictured on the zodiacs of Denderah and Thebes, poosible here is she is
Isis. Ishtar, Ashtoreth, Kauni (mother of Krishna), Kuanon (Buddhist goddess
of mercy [Canto LXXIV]),Turkoman's Dufhiya Pakhiza "Pure Virgin", Astraea
(goddess of justice,last to leave, first to redux by Virgil's reckoning),
Athena (wisdom long gone sporadic at best but in Dorian mind Athana
"deathless". Virgo is Persephone whose white lunar hand may have been on the
bough long before Moses' was.
    But from Pound's jealous rival, Robert Graves here is an expansion on
Pound's styptic quip of virgo being made monkish male. From THE WHITE
GODDESS-

    "In Christianity the sheep are permanently favoured at the expense of
the goats, and the Theme is mutilated: ecclesiastic discipline becomes
anti-poetic. The cruel, capricious, incontinent White Goddess and the mild,
steadfast, chaste Virgin are not to be reconciled except in the Nativity
context.
    The rift now separating Christianity and poetry is, indeed, the same
that divided Judaism and Ashtaroth-worship after the post-Exilic religious
reformation. Various attempts at bridging it by the Clementines,
Collyridians, Manichees and early Christian heretics and by the
Virgin-worshipping palmers and troubadours of Crusading times have left
their mark on Church ritual and doctrine, but have always been succeeded by
a strong puritanical reaction. It has become impossible to combine the once
identical functions of priest and poet without doing violence to one calling
or the other, as may be seen in the works of Englishmen who have continued
to write poetry after their ordination: John Skelton, John Donne, William
Crashaw, george Herbert, Robert Herrick, Jonathan Swift, George Crabbe,
Charles Kingsley, Gerard Manley Hopkins. the poet survived in easy vigour
only where the priest was shown the door; as when Skelton, to signalize his
independence of Church discipline, wore the Muse-name 'Calliope' embroidered
on his cassock in silk and gold, or when Herrick proved his devotion to
poetic myth by pouring libations of Devonshire barley-ale from a silver cup
to a pampered white pig. With Donne, Crashaw and Hopkins the war between
poet and priest was fought on a high mystical level; but can Donne's DIVINE
POEMS, written after the death of Ann More, his only Muse, be preferred to
his amorous SONGS AND SONNETS? or can the self-tortured Hopkins be commended
for humbly submitting his poetic ecstasies to the confession-box?
    I remarked in the first chapter that poets can be well judged by the
accuracy of their portrayal of the White Goddess. Shakespeare knew and
feared her." - GRAVES

Charles



----------
>From: Dirk Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Virgo Made Male
>Date: Thu, Feb 20, 2003, 5:29 PM
>

> A link between virgo and virga would be interesting (something along the
> lines of following shades of synonyms to reach antonyms), but it's
> really a long leap from vajra to virgin, and the whole thing sounds a
> bit far-fetched to me.
>
> It's true that virga (rod) and vajra (thunderbolt) are likely related...
> and there is even a rare usage of verge (from virga, not virgo) to
> indicate the penis.  But the link from virgo to virga isn't the least
> bit clear to me.  Do you have a source for the etymological link, or is
> it just apparent?  None of the words coming from virga traces to virgo,
> as far as I can see.  Wouldn't virga trace to vir?  I know there's folk
> etymology that traces virgo and thus virgin  to vir, but it's spurious
> and based upon mere appearance and coincidence of sound.
>
> charles moyer wrote:
>
>>Then there is Liberace. "I trowe he were a geldyng or a mare." -Chaucer
>>
>>But the gender of the Latin noun is not changed- virgo -inis, f. "a maiden,
>>virgin." Fascinating is the word's closeness to "virga, -ae, f. "a green
>>twig" as in French "verge"(la) from Snskrt "vajra" and may associate with
>>the golden bough, subjectively, but let us not forget Daphne.
>>Dionysus' crosier was a thyrsus. Nietzsche's BIRTH OF TRAGEDY is worth
>>noting in the catharsis between the Dionysian feminine lunar chaos and the
>>masculine Apollonian solar order. The muse is always a goddess and of a
>>triple nature, but she is absent from the Judeo-Christian reduced pantheon
>>replaced by only one of her aspects, the Virgin, accompanied by her
>>surrogate priest eunuch thus sacrificing balance for patriarchal authority
>>contrary to that which Jung might have called "individuation" as sought in
>>Ars regis' hermaphrodite but in all not necessarily "occult".
>>   Anyone ever make any sense out of Pound's alchemist poem?
>>What about the cats? Anyone? Anything? Anton Wilson says Hemingway, a cat
>>lover himself, noted  them and called the Pound's residence "the cat house".
>>
>>Charles
>>
>>
>>
>>----------
>>
>>
>>>From: Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
>>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>>Subject: Re: Virgo Made Male
>>>Date: Wed, Feb 19, 2003, 7:54 AM
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>Ambrose, a great proponent of virginity, also had much influence upon
>>>medieval Christianity; he had in turn been influenced by the extremist
Origen.
>>>
>>>Phallic and ambrosial
>>>made way for macerations.
>>>         --EP
>>>
>>>Tim Romano
>>>
>>>Matthew 19:12 For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their
>>>mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men:
>>>and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of
>>>heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
>
> Dirk Johnson
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