CONSILIENCE
A Companion Blog to The Ash Girl
Consilience is a scientific method of validating a hypothesis across multiple disciplines. The biologist E.O. Wilson reclaimed the root of the word, which means “a jumping together” in his book of the same name. In it he posed the radical notion that the arts and social sciences might be invited to that auspicious table. This blog, and The Ash Girl, is a bit of an homage to E.O. Wilson’s proposal. Each post offers a deeper look into the story, the symbolism, the science and the themes from the author’s point of view (by chapter) and welcomes you to add yours.
In this way we might come to some expanded understanding and shared awe of our half-known worlds.
The Goddesses’ War
What if all of the goddesses (every goddess ever named in any myth or story anywhere) began their own war to reclaim what has been lost and bring the worlds back into balance? What if Athena, given her nature as warmonger, strategist and embodied wisdom was their leader? And what if all that we are experiencing now, the rise of extraordinary events in nature—tsunamis, hurricanes, plagues—the rise of women, the un-gendering movement, ancient methods of healing finding its healers, ancient ways of seeing finding its muses, was the effect of The Goddesses’ War?
Amelia Disappears
Amelia Earhart’s disappearance in 1937 triggered thousands of articles, books, and theories about what happened to her and her co-pilot and the avid interest of entire nations that still has echoes today. As happened with much of this book, Amelia’s part in the events in The Ash Girl revealed itself in what felt like serendipity.
Born of Ash
Traditionally in novels we have come to expect one central character who is transformed by the end. Others might shift a bit from and to as well, but mostly in service to this main ugly duckling turned to a swan, if you know what I mean. This story is about four human girls born to act out the roles of the four tarot princesses and help the goddesses rebalance the world—all of them will be changed by the end, but as in the Thoth Tarot, no one takes as a big a LEAP as the Princess of Disks.
Magic Number 3
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.
3 is the universal number of wholeness so let’s keep that in mind as we unpack CHAPTER 3!
Story Time
Once there was a story and no one to tell it.
Chapter 5 LEAPS in time ahead to 1945.
“BUT that is 3 YEARS,” some early readers cried. “I wanted to see Ben and Charlotte fall in love, the proposal.” Frieda trying to explain to Charlotte who and what she really is in a way that won’t make her descent harder than it already has been. All of that happened between the lines on the page, within the words that this telling offers and you have the power to re-appear it. Because.
Edge of the Abyss
Once a year she startled awake, gasping for breath.
Chapter 6 drops us into Asmeret’s story on the morning of her twentieth birthday. (Robert Bly says of fairytales and myths, “these kind of stories move very fast.”) The last day, and last chance she gets to choose the path chosen for her in the cards and fulfill the prophecy.
Echelons
“I fell asleep in the river reeds. I dreamed in my dream.”
Chapter 7 is delirious with dreams within dreams and story within story as Asmeret navigates the very narrow space between worlds by following the darkest days of her life to see where the light begins. This carries us through echelons (layers) of the whole.
Atonement
“This is where the little black dog comes in.”
Chapter 8 in some ways is my favorite, if one can have a favorite child. Not more loved perhaps, but one filled with voices that make me both starving and full. Images and lines that conjoured themselves and hover in my body long after my eyes leave the page.
Flying Lessons
“Teach me to fly.”
Chapter 9 is a flying lesson; wherein Asmeret and Charlotte (and Frieda) are ‘leveling up’ their own ‘powers’ (been hanging out with my nine-year-old nephew who uses this language daily), and learning to hear and use their gifts with the help of their teachers coaxing them into experimenting, taking risks, and trusting their instincts.
Turn of the Wheel
“And so we find our story at the turn of the wheel. A gate. A Passing through place. Spinning toward the next way of being.”
Chapter X is initiation space. Perhaps you noticed the shift in naming of chapters from arithmetic numerals (1, 2, 3 . . .) to Roman Numerals. Perhaps you wondered why?
Because of where this story is on its quest through the Wheel of Wholeness.
The Taroic Journey
. . . a thirteen-year-old cannot describe the compulsion to cast aside the thing she loved fiercely as a child.”
Chapter XI continues Asmeret’s Taroic Journey to her next way of being. You may be familiar with the 3 Stages of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, which he derived from an exhaustive life-long study of cross-cultural and ancient mythology.
Muck
They landed in the muck at the bottom of the sea, arms sprawled on wings, where they all feel asleep.
For many years, that first scene I wrote was the first scene in the book. Asmeret stands on the cliff and Asmara runs to her, tries to reach her in time. Now it’s in Chapter XIII. The end of the one who was once Asmeret.
One Goat (Under a Groove)
Restor(y)
But we were talking about the hero’s journey. Depart. Initiate. Return.
It has been suggested by those who are helping to re-translate and re-tell some of our dominant myths to be more, shall we say, inclusive, of the under or mis-represented perspectives that as brilliant as Joseph Campbell was
The Goddesses’ War
Once
Once there was a story and no one to tell it . . .
That time is over.
ReStory the Stars
The Heroine, by the divine Isak Dinesen, is a caution and a vision, as is The Ash Girl.