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 (and as dedicated he to the freeing of women into their own dreams and agency), the hero’s myth doesn’t fit very well for the return of the Divine Feminine to the world. (The IT of the Somerville College motto that rattled Charlotte’s brain.)
The Ash Girl explores how the Depart and Initiation parts of the quest might be a bit different to bring about the new order of things, so what of the Return?
Two other models come to mind . . .
Descend | Ascend, from the Tree of Life and the Thoth Tarot, and
Appear | Disappear from the elemental functions of magic.
In the Thoth Tarot, modeled on the Kabbalist Tree of Life, the Descent of matter into spirit bottoms out in ATU XIII | Death (with the leap of the Princess of Disks into the abyss), the two aspects are re-alchemized in ATU XIV | Art, and the Ascent begins in ATU XV | Devil (Dark Mother/Oldest Living Catfish/Three-eyed Goat). But the next click of the Wheel of Wholeness is no simple return to one’s village having slain the dragon and rescued the princess.
No. It’s war.
And it’s not your daddy or his daddy or his daddy’s war.
It’s the Divine Feminine taking back its power by both destroying and creating in unfathomable measure.
HURRICANES
RISE of VOICES too long unheard.
WILDFIRES
RE-MAKING of BODIES and RE-NAMING NAMES that don’t fit one’s identity or genitalia.
PLAGUES
The CLAIMING of HEALING GIFTS called New Age that are the CIRCLING BACK of the ANCIENT WAYS.
It’s the Tower. ATU XVI.
Aleister Crowley says in The Book of Thoth that this card is also named War. (I am leaping ahead to what might rightfully belong to Chapters XVI and XVII but it feels right here. To have this in mind as you read to the end.)
The Tower is one of the four foundational Tarot cards of 2020 in the Wheel of Wholeness (along with the other major arcana cards that are factors of four: IV | Emperor VIII | Justice XII | Hanged Man - see image below), and it’s happening now. Structures, dogma, foundational assumptions and the dominant story of progress at all cost is under siege.
It is painful and filled with terrors. But also with the possibility of emancipation into another way of being.
2020 TAROT MAP by A’Lis Bly
You see, XVI isn’t the last card in the deck. It’s the place where Descent meets Ascent. Where Appear and Disappear converge. Where instead of RETURN from the hero’s journey, we might instead name it RESTORE, from the vernacular of magicians.
And modify it, ever so slightly, from restore to ReStory.
When my dear friend and Master Magician, Andrew Bennett, explains ‘restore’, he says, “when I have destroyed something (a popular trick he performs is tearing up a newspaper then folding it and suddenly flicking the whole thing into the air back to a whole newspaper again) I need to have something else to replace it.” Another newspaper.
Another story. One that is RESTORATIVE of what has always been so, but we forgot. (Now so in love with, addicted to, woozled by the current story it’s hard to change. Tough to wake up. Nearly impossible to choose what to give up—disappear—to make room.)
The story has always existed of how to be whole.
And now its (re)finding its tellers all over the world.