The Anathemata
Mabinog’s Liturgy (continued)
After all there should be
solidarity in woman. No great thing but what there’s a woman behind it, sisters. Begetters of all huge endeavour we are. The Lord God may well do all without the aid of man,1 but even in the things of god a woman is medial—it stands to reason. Even the gigantic dynion gynt2 and mighty tyrannoi of old time must needs have had mortal woman for mothers, if demi-gods or whatever father’d ’em—it stands to reason. For these were of flesh and bone, not illusions men. So here also there is occasion for very flesh, for how should the eternal hypostasesa be conjoined with a flesh not substantial?
Expert with the hudlath3 we may be, and professionally concerned with many and various metamorphoses, p’r’aps, but not Docetae,4 I hope!
It all hangs on the fiat. If her fiat was the Great Fiat,b nevertheless, seeing the solidarity, we participate in the fiat—or can indeed, by our fiats—it stands to reason. Not chosen and forechosen of Theos Soter, indeed, but not so jealous, sisters: there is proportions and magnitudes and degrees both of conferrings and of acceptances, very and many various, and, after all, sisters, he was her baban.5
David Jones notes
1 Cf. English carol
‘Who all without the aid of man
Bore us the King of Kings.’
2 dynion gynt, din-yon gint, men of by-gone times.
3 hudlath, hid-lahth, magician’s wand; from hud, illusion and llath, rod.
4 The Docetic doctrine was that our Lord had only an apparent or phantom body. Magicians or such as deal with occult knowledge, of any time or place, tend toward such Mandaean or Manichee-like beliefs.
5 baban, bab-ban, accent on first syllable, babe.
additional notes
a hypostasis (plural hypostases): that which forms the basis or support for something. Here it refers to the basic stuff of the universe, from which all other substances are formed.
b Great Fiat: when Mary was told about the significance of the babe in her womb, she replied ‘fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum’ (‘be it unto me according to thy word’) (Luke 1:38). The point the witch is making is that by similar fiats, or acts of acceptance of our own will, we can participate in hers.
comments
The witch urges feminist solidarity with Mary.