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.
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.
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.
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