{"id":2778,"date":"2016-06-22T13:37:37","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T18:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.wordpress.com\/?p=2778"},"modified":"2016-06-22T13:37:37","modified_gmt":"2016-06-22T18:37:37","slug":"producing-a-lexicon-of-queer-witchcraft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/2016\/06\/22\/producing-a-lexicon-of-queer-witchcraft\/","title":{"rendered":"Producing a Lexicon of Queer Witchcraft"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post was originally written several years ago, while I was still in the Sunrise Temple.\u00a0 For some reason I can’t recall – possibly because it didn’t tie in neatly with the Ceremonial Experiment – I decided to post it exclusively to my Tumblr<\/a>.\u00a0 I repost it here, now, because I was looking to link to it as I was drafting my\u00a0response to the Ruth Barrett issue and was irate that I couldn’t find it.\u00a0 It was, probably, my most popular Tumblr post, and I think that the discussion is still relevant, and I am still struggling to think clearly in the wake of post-festival and post-tragedy collapse. \u00a0The below post has been slightly edited for spelling and grammar.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a thing that has been on my mind for a while, and I’m going to float it here before I begin drafting a larger post for the main blog.<\/p>\n

I know for a fact that I am not the only genderqueer witch who doesn’t fit comfortably under the trans umbrella.\u00a0 I strongly suspect that many like me share my struggle to find language to describe their experiences.\u00a0 The one word I know that comes close to describing the way in which my spirituality and gender identity intermix–Two-spirit–is not mine to use<\/b>.\u00a0 Being a Classicist, though, I have access to two whole lexicons from which to less problematically adopt words:\u00a0 Attic Greek and Classical Latin.<\/p>\n

Let me, therefore, propose a word for those of us whose spiritual genders embrace a combination of masculinity and femininity: digenes, from \u03b4\u03b9\u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03ae\u03c2.\u00a0 Literally, it renders as “two kind”, but is more commonly taken to mean “of dual or ambiguous nature”.\u00a0 For those who wish to explicitly embrace a broader spectrum, the neologism polygenes (\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03c5\u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03ae\u03c2) can be coined: many-natured.\u00a0 If you don’t like genes, phusis can be used: diphues (\u03b4\u03b9\u03c6\u03c5\u03ae\u03c2) or polyphues (\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03c5\u03c6\u03c5\u03ae\u03c2): literally two- or many- natured.\u00a0 Digenes is historically testified to describe Dionysus (citation pending), and diphues to describe Eros in the Orphic Hymn.<\/p>\n

So: the proposal:<\/p>\n

digenes, diphues, polygenes, and polyphues<\/p>\n

Attic\/Koine Greek borrow-words and neologisms to describe the experience of genderqueer spirituality for those of us whose traditions do not come equipped with such words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post was originally written several years ago, while I was still in the Sunrise Temple.\u00a0 For some reason I can’t recall – possibly because it didn’t tie in neatly with the Ceremonial Experiment – I decided to post it exclusively to my Tumblr.\u00a0 I repost it here, now, because I was looking to link … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,1,5],"tags":[15,38,216],"class_list":["post-2778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scholarship","category-uncategorized","category-witchcraft","tag-ancient-greek","tag-by-the-way-im-crazy","tag-queer-witchcraft"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-IO","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}