Found Goddesses (Part 3) by Barbara Ardinger, Ph.D.

Note. The term Found Goddess was created by Morgan Grey and Julia Penelope for their wonderful book, Found Goddesses: Asphalta to Viscera (New Victoria Publishers, 1980). I started Finding goddesses—Nerdix, Compuquia, Hostilia, and Whizziwig—when I was working on a Y2K project for a major corporation. I Found the other goddesses described here when I was writing a book on the subject, Finding New Goddesses (ECW Press, 2003). The newest goddesses are Fubar-Ma and Linker Bell, who have just now appeared. Well, maybe they’ve been standing around and/or hovering; I just got them down on paper.  

The Computer Goddesses   

       The Found Goddess of the Internet and the World Wide Web is Whizziwig (pronounced WYSIWYG). She is the true Great Cosmic Mother, and Her domain is the High AltaVista, where She tends the Great Green Fields of Baud, planting and tending Her vast crops of kilobytes and gigabytes and coaxing each golden url and pixel to bloom. She cultivates Her ever-flowering dotcom dotedu, and dotorg gardens, and in the proper season broadcasts Her ripe applet seeds across the ethernet. Whizziwig ties the knots in the warp and woof that support the Net and the Web, and it is She who spins every cyberworld into being. Every spring, when the newbies are born, She midwives them and provides instruction in music, geometry, grammar, and courtesy.    

      Whizziwig’s Consort is the Silicon Man, the Beneficent One Whose image is carved upon the gateways of all the Temples of the Web. We recognize Him by the vegetative energy flowing from His mouth:         1010101010101010101010101010. . . . It is the Silicon Man’s ever-ready energy that makes the netscape grow and enables us poor, foolish mortals to safely explore the mists and mysteries of the World Wide Web.    

      Whizziwig also has twenty-seven fierce Daughters, the Flaming Amazon.coms, who gallop forth on their winged steeds from the High AltaVista to do battle against the Rapacious Billygates and tame the Swift Yahoos.   

      Here is an invocation to Whizziwig to pronounce before you go on-line:    

 

Whizziwig, Great WebMother, I prithee,

Touch my moving pointer, connect me. 

Scan for each virus, banish all spam. 

Your Child of the Network—I Am What I Am.    

 

      Whizziwig’s Three Eldest Daughters live in an airy castle on a cliff and rule the boundless realm of electronic mail. It is these Three Sisters under Whose aegis we are able to communicate with far-off friends and people we’ll probably never meet in person. The First is Bright Prolixity (pronounced pro-LIX-ity), She Who Is Effusive. Devotees of Prolixity type very fast and maintain correspondences with the multitudes. Second is Rotund Celerity (sell-AIR-ity), She Who Moves With Great Speed. Oddly enough, Heisenberg’s Law seems not to apply to Celerity: we do know both how fast and where She is going. Third is the Dark One, Mendacity (men-DASS-ity), She Who Lies. We’ve all encountered the thugs who worship this dark Goddess—dirty old men who pretend to be virtuous housewives. And vice versa.   

 

Prolixity, Celerity, Mendacity— 

I’m new at this, please pity me. 

Celerity, Mendacity, Prolixity— 

Watch me surf, I’m fancy free! 

Mendacity, Prolixity, Celerity— 

A villain lurks, take care of me. 

Prolixity, Celerity, Mendacity—

I’m having fun now, play with me.  

 

       When our friends (and their friends and friends of their friends) become tired of thinking for themselves, they follow that devilish ol’ path of least resistance and forward stuff to everyone in their address book. This is how we worship Annoya, goddess of jokes, rants, urban legends passed on as gospel truths, homely personal philosophies, appeals to political action, and assorted games people play.    

      All hail Annoya, Whose words are our daily substitute for creative thought, Whose appeals for our signatures go around and around and around and (hopefully, eventually) aground. Hail, Annoya, faster than a speeding DSL, stronger than a mighty modem, able to leap good sense with a single icon on the toolbar. All hail unstoppable Annoya, Who is the true goddess of recycling.   

      Is your bundle fraying? Does your DSL keep having dial-up hallucinations? When you try to log on, does your ISP send you billets-doux filled with Crowleyistical strings of numbers and letters? (These messages surely mean something, but we are already aware that the Words of the Gods and the Sibyls tend to be delivered as antic hocus-pocus.) Are you feeling disconnected and unplugged?   

      If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then it’s time to prostrate yourself before Fubar1-Ma, She Who Connects, the Mothah of All Internet Service Providers. It’s necessary to speak with her priests, the Sons of Fubar. If you can get logged on, go to Fubar’s web site and find the names of her priests, the Veriest Sons of Fubar. Send them vociferous e-mails. Put the Name of the Mother in the subject line. Someone will respond. Someone may even translate the billets-doux. You can also try what they call “live-chat,” but be very persistent. (You may feel like Henry II of England crawling to Canterbury in the winter in his underwear. On stoned highways. Excuse me: on stony highways.) When you finally get to someone who writes or speaks idiomatic English, ask to speak to the Priestly Supervisors; the minor servers who stand at the portals of the Temple of Fubar are mere anti-Girl Scouts—they’ll just try to take away your cookies. If you have to phone the Veriest Sons of Fubar, be sure to take careful notes in your Book of Shadows, as they are speaking through glossological veils and you are a mere catechumen and their arcane knowledge must be stepped down upon you—sorry, for you.    

      Great and Mighty Fubar, please recognize me. Wonderful Mother of the Inbox and the Search, please don’t suddenly tell me I’m “working off-line.” Of course I want to connect! That’s why I’m repeating Your Mantra—Logon, Logon, Logon. Magnificent and Pansophical Fubar, please remember my password. So mote it be.   

 

Barbara Ardinger, Ph.D. (www.barbaraardinger.com), is the author of Pagan Every Day: Finding the Extraordinary in Our Ordinary Lives (RedWheel/Weiser, 2006), a unique daybook of daily meditations, stories, and activities. Her earlier books are Finding New Goddesses, Quicksilver Moon, Goddess Meditations, and Practicing the Presence of the Goddess. Her day job is freelance editing for people who don't want to embarrass themselves in print. Barbara lives in southern California. To purchase a signed copy of Finding New Goddesses, just send Barbara an email at bawriting@earthlink.net.  

 

1 Alert readers will recognize the name of this Goddess as a military acronym that probably goes back to the armies of Thutmose III. The civilian version is Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition; the military version is slightly more colorful.