Friday Ramble - Radical

 

This Friday's word is radical, and it comes to us through the late Latin rādīcālis meaning having roots and the Old English wrotan meaning to root, gnaw or dig up, both originating in the early Indo-European wrad meaning branch or root.

Synonyms include: fundamental, basic, basal, bottom, cardinal, constitutional, deep-seated, essential, foundational, inherent, innate, intrinsic, meat-and-potatoes, native, natural, organic, original, primal, primary, primitive, profound, thoroughgoing, underlying, vital. They also include pejorative words such as anarchistic, chaotic, excessive, extremist, fanatical, far-out, freethinking, iconoclastic, immoderate, insubordinate, insurgent, insurrectionary, intransigent, lawless, left wing, militant, mutinous, nihilistic, rabid, rebellious, recalcitrant, recusant, refractory, restive, revolutionary, riotous, seditious, severe, sweeping, uncompromising and violent.

We use the word radical to describe someone who dwells outside the mainstream, someone who has departed from accepted norms, traditions and social conventions and does their own thing. The word has been in common usage since the sixties, and being called radical may or may not be a compliment. I am always astonished and vastly tickled on some level to think that a word used to connote the rebellious, unconventional,, confrontational and downright peculiar actually means something as lovely and organic and simple as "rooted. Now how did that happen?

In the original sense of the word, being radical simply means being connected and part of things, and that makes the word one of my all time favorites.  It signifies (for me anyway) a bone deep connection with everything that matters, with the Old Wild Mother and all her creations, with the earth under my feet, the moon and stars over my head - with timeless notions of rebirth, transformation and non-duality. Pots off, roots down, branches up and away we go...