Atonement
at . one . ment
“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.
In this chapter I can hear my own guides so clearly. Tree looms while I sit cross-legged, rapt, listening to it spin the tale just as I did in first grade with my beloved Mrs. Brink. (I was the tiny girl in the back who leapt out of her seat, hand waving shamelessly high when she asked what we wanted to learn in first grade . . . “TO READ” I shouted and the other children looked at me, sized me up, and I was done for.) My little black dog from those childhood days in the woods, Bertha (the butt, as my dad called her), takes her place in the story as Asmeret’s savior and other half of her heart. Hyena paces and growls softly by my side (funny how my big black dog, PJ tends to wander over and plunk his huge head in my lap when I think about Hyena) and Artemis howls her unspeakable story, finding, I hope, the readers she has waited for to listen with kindness, compassion and grace.
“When I woke up Orion was dead. His throat was torn open and his body ravaged; pieces of him scattered like acorns and branches. Still, the deed was done. I crawled to the hut of a witch in the woods who nursed me and let me stay until I gave birth to the twins. I left them on the village’s sacrificial stone, praying that a goddess could be forgiven.
How my lover, the father of our son and daughter, came to be immortalized in the stars is a story you can tell any way that you wish. It makes no difference to me or to the fate of the worlds. However, her story, the girl asleep on my breast, the last in the line of Artemis and Orion, changes everything. I can feel the truth of it as her breath on my neck melts through the stone.
And I think maybe this is atonement.”
Atonement.
A word for me that is freighted and fraught with dark images of crosses, spikes, and self-flagellation. Of sin and hard-earned redemption. A story this tarot deck puts behind us. And so I must reclaim the word. Pull it apart.
At. One. Ment.
What if inside every story for which I would ask forgiveness, scrape and bow to make up for my terrible transgressions, all that is asked of me is to look for my own wholeness. Remember I am the hyena, the mother, the monster, the tree.
Breathe.
What if instead of villian-ifying those whose names I spit or refuse to let past my lips I thank them for accepting the role in this life that had to be played (and thank the gods it wasn’t my lot this time around if I must make a distinction between me and them).
Breathe.
And I think maybe writing this story is atonement.
Breathe.
The Ace of Disks is the Throne of the Princess of Disks, the lowest of low and the highest of high and so is also the throne of Artemis and the High Priestess. A fitting card to represent this chapter in which Asmeret feels her way to Tree, the throne that holds and protects her in the upper world as she grows up. Tree, that in the middle world, witnesses Asmeret re-storying her life. Tree, that in the under world integrates Artemis into its heartwood where, together, they transmute into mineral—something base and elemental. Tree that in the magic hut in the woods, becomes the serpent who makes an eternal double loop—the sign of the One.
Tree knows this story and gave it to us.