MAPS
explore the stories behind the story of
The Ash Girl
facts, truths, images, links, treasures, and juicy bits by chapter
Reader Map
where in the world is The Ash Girl on its quest?
MAPS: Chapter 0
The Ash Girl opens in the North African region now more commonly called The Horn of Africa. In 1886 modern day Eritrea and Northern Ethiopia were a part of the Abyssinian and Nubian Empires. Why would the Greek Goddess, Artemis, be hunting so far from home? We might say that gods and goddesses as storied forces of nature know no boundaries of place; we might also look to historic record.
MAPS: Chapter 1
When Amelia’s disappearance made itself known as the trigger that started the events of The Ash Girl, I began to dig a bit. The excerpt above inspired the character of Billy Courtright, a US Navy radio operator who receives her last transmission in morse code. Yes, this is a little fictionalized bit of a theory about a historic unsolved mystery!
MAPS: Chapter 2
A word on the theme of occupation in The Ash Girl. We have already seen Frieda occupied by some unseen force that paints the tarot cards with her hands. Now Artemis and Orion occupy humans (folks who have never uttered their names) and through them have children. Both acts are metaphoric (have I beat that drum enough yet?) and fraught with questions of personal agency, the nature of humans and beasts to stake out and claim new territory in the name of survival and expansion, and of course the topics the likes of colonialism, war, and genocide.
MAPS: Chapter 3
Doors between worlds are everywhere in The Ash Girl . . . door in the floor of an attic, the door to the goddesses’ cavern in your dreams, a god and goddess slipping into the body of a man and a woman to experience, briefly, the pleasures of flesh and bone.
MAPS: Chapter 4
Names are a ritual we are all familiar with. Names are little myths all in themselves . . . if you recall one of the 3 purposes of myth from Joseph Campbell - to give us a metaphoric way to refer to that which eludes explanation through our limited sense.
MAPS: Chapter 5
Eritrea: Birthplace of Asmeret. How in the world did I come up with that? When this story emerged from my personal journal writing (with a sudden shift to third person) “She stood on the edge of the cliff . . .” I knew we were in Africa, but I had only been to South Africa and I sensed that we were north.
MAPS: Chapter 6
Asmeret was the one to show me how to lay the cards in this way. I was on a five day silent writing retreat on a beautiful snowy day in January, 2016 when this scene (you just read in Chapter 6) was written. As I wrote Asmeret laying the cards in the Wheel, I stopped, pushed back all of the furniture in my borrowed condo living room, and did as she did.
MAPS: Chapter 7
You Thoth Tarot readers may already have visions of Asmeret as a bit of The Hermit dancing in you heads. And you are right.
The rest of you are crying, “Wait! I thought Asmeret was the Princess of Disks?!?”
She is, and more.
MAPS: Chapter 8
The Ace of Disks has long vexed me. Aces are hard enough, the best most can do is explain them something like, “Aces include all of the suit but only in the sense that it represents the seed or the source without any of the attributes.” Huh?
MAPS: Chapter 9
9 Stories of Goddess Energy Rising
Inspired by The Ash Girl
click on an image to follow the path to goddess work all over the world—opens in new window
MAPS: Chapter X
Arsema’s 13th year initiation ritual and painted tattoos were inspired by all nine of the ethnic groups that comprise the Eritrean nation, while faithful to not any one.
MAPS: Chapter XI
Freya, The Fortuneteller, came into this story much as Charlotte and Alicia did—a thin wisp of character whose voice and story grew more insistent until I had to make the space they demanded.
MAPS: Chapter XII
You may recall the Greek myth Tree offered early in the book about the first generation of Greek Gods (Zeus et. al.) calling a council and murdering their parent’s, the Titans (Hestia abstained). This bit of treason started the world clock (the death of Chronos) and was accompanied by the act of creating humans to quell the boredom of a perfect peaceful planet.
MAPS: Chapter XIII
ATU XIII DEATH deserves to be Re-storied for our times. The Thoth deck took this on explicitly. Harris and Crowly laid the groundwork for contemporary readers, mystics, and makers of Tarot decks not to fear the Death card, or instill fear in their clients, but to take the metaphor into one’s bones and face the grief and the glory of re-making one’s self out of light and dark and ash and heart.
MAPS: Chapter XV
I am going to propose a joint venture here, dear readers, if you are game. I have envisioned a GALLERY of goddess energy rising that we crowd-source together. Here is how it could go . . .
MAPS: Chapter XVI
The EYE and the I
Chapter XVI offers a very tight focal point on Charlotte following her return from the Goddesses’ Basecamp. It’s subtle, but she now has the perspective of both worlds, represented in the Tower card by the Eye of Horus at the top, which I am taking literary license in this case to rename the Eye of Ara.
MAPS: Chapter XVII
Princess of Cups
I wonder if you are curious why it has taken so long for the Princess of Cups, Alicia, to show up. Of course she existed in the corners of this myth that I hadn’t bothered to peer into yet