MAPS: Chapter 1
Amelia Earhart, Borromean Rings, Knight of Swords, and Skrying
WHERE DID AMELIA LAST TRANSMIT?
“Late on the night of July 4, 1937 – two and a half days after Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappeared – three operators at U.S. Navy Radio Station Wailupe, Hawaii heard the following message fragments:TWO EIGHT ONE NORTH HOWLAND CALL KHAQQ BEYOND NORTH DON'T HOLD WITH US MUCH LONGER ABOVE WATER SHUT OFF
KHAQQ was Earhart’s radio call sign and the signals were received on Earhart’s nightime frequency of 3105 KCs. The message was sent in ‘extremely poor’ Morse code and only partial phrases could be understood.
This message was taken very seriously at the time and every available vessel – the USCG Itasca, the USS Swan, and a British freighter, the SS Moorsby – was diverted to search the ocean 281 miles north of Howland Island. They got there the next evening but found nothing. Reinforcing their frustration was a message from Lockheed officials stating that the location of the Electra’s radio gear would make it impossible for the airplane to transmit if it was floating.”
- post on Tighar.com since removed
Howland Island | Hawaii
Wailupe Hawaii | Naval Radio Station
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! If you are intrigued, I found this article that puts the above (now edited) Tighar post in a larger context. I don’t ascribe to any particular theory; what I offer is insight into the web of inspirational threads that hold this fictional work in a time and place and the persistent question, What If?
“Amelia Earhart prior to her last takeoff.” The National Archives. See here along with the radio flight logs.
PRINCESS OF AIR | AMELIA
In the Harris | Crowley Thoth Tarot the royalty cards are organized similar to an ordinary deck of playing cards with a Prince, Princess, Queen and Knight* for each of four suits. Pictured: the Princess of Swords (see all four princesses and their suits here) or the Princess of Air who will make many appearances in The Ash Girl.
So the essentials for now . . . the princesses are all of us (forget the assumed gender of the royalty cards and think instead of feminine and masculine aspects of which we are all comprised) in our most raw and vulnerable human condition, MASTERING, or ascending, to a higher order of being. The princesses might be thought of as Queens-becoming.
In Angeles Arrien’s The Tarot Handbook, The Princess of Swords (North | Air | Mind) is mastering the art of practical thinking. She actively cuts through and deflects dark moods and emotions, learning to focus her thoughts, channel inspiration, and use her Will (the sword she carries represents divine Will wielded by human Will) to carry out the commitments she makes to herself and the world.
Notice the interlaced circles on her ‘touchstone’ . . . these are the coins of the suit of Disks (South | Earth | Body), so to be successful (whole) she must stay grounded and keep her head attached to her body!
Every symbol in the Thoth Tarot has a multiplicity of layered metaphoric meanings. The other notable aspect of the coins on her touchstone is the Borromean Rings.
*Knights instead of kings according to Crowley because they represent the warrior | defender | lover aspects of the masculine over the ruler.
V | The Heirophant
The Borromean Rings on the mystic’s sceptre of this major arcana card
THE BORROMEAN RINGS gets its name from the coat of arms of the Borromeo family of Northern Italy, but the mythic symbol for the TRIAD has been recognized in Norse stone imagery as far back as the 7th century. In his highly accessible, expansive book The Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe (a MUST have reference to numerology and sacred geometry), Michael S. Schneider describes the creation power of three, literally embodied in the Borromean Rings. A small taste is offered below the book cover image.
An excerpt on the Borromean Rings as a Triad (page 50):
“At first glance the sign seems to consist of three interlocked rings. Yet on close inspection we see that no two rings actually interlock . . . alone or in pairs they’re separate. Each maintains its own distinct identity. But when all three come together they lock as one . . . a self-supporting whole beyond what the parts could do alone or in pairs. It takes all three interlocking simultaneously to become unified. Cut any one ring and they’ll all come apart.”
The implications to the book when I first read Schneider, amplified by the related synchronistic events (I will tell you sometime how THIS book found me!), are best prefaced by this next bit where Schneider uses a braiding of hair as the metaphor for a Triad . . .
“ . . . two tresses twirled around each other won’t hold together but will soon unwind . . . the Dyad’s principles will not create an enduring whole but merely opposites without resolution, an unending dance of conflict, like lawyers without a judge. But introduce a third strand of hair . . . to weave a braid, an ongoing trefoil knot, a self-reinforcing stable unity . . . a properly chosen third factor induces a relationship that unifies them and brings them to a new level.”
The Ash Girl is structured as multiple sets of Borromean Rings, where lost parts are reclaimed and the pathway to wholeness paved, when the ‘properly chosen third’ shows up. What if Frieda restored Artemis to Athena, rectifies beloved estranged ‘sisters’ with her painting? What if her tarot deck is unifying our perception of duality and bringing us to a new level, restoring our power to truly think, feel and act as one unified ecosystem?
Geek out more on Quantum Physics of three here.
What if flying for Amelia Earhart was her way of skrying?
SKRYING is a practice used by the occult orders to which Frieda Harris, the artist who painted the Thoth Tarot deck, belonged. I am no expert, but it involves rituals that help one to experience leaving the body and traveling other planes and dimensions. The intention is the same as any ritual, according to Joseph Campbell’s definition, which is to have an experience of unity with the divine or the wholeness of the universe.
Mention the occult and I know we are in scary waters for some folks, I am not at all fond of the darkest ends of the pond (where sex magick and satanism dwell). I refuse to give those forces much thought or power. Frieda Harris was drawing us toward the light and calling us to live in accord with nature by focusing our will on offering our gifts freely and mastering more and more expansive ways of seeing and being in her gorgeous, (I believe skrying inspired) paintings.
KNIGHT OF SWORDS | AIR | HELGE
My friend, Jul, asked me recently, “Why only goddesses? Where are the gods?” I will let you readers discover that for yourself, but there are plenty of ‘divine masculine’ characters in The Ash Girl!
Helge Gulbrandsen listens to the radio at his kitchen table in Oxford, England, having what might also be considered a skrying experience . . .
“The static from the speaker buzzed in his head as if he'd entered an electrified field. He skimmed over the ocean on the back of a horse, his chest flat against the mare's straining neck. Below him, flying in his draft, he saw three small planes (or were they birds?) with their arrow-shaped heads and widespread wings.”
- Chapter 1, The Ash Girl
WHAT’S NEXT?
For your personal quest, book club, or gathering of friends, QUEST(ions) are offered here.
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