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.

9insights 6/21/20 9insights 6/21/20

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.

9insights 6/8/20 9insights 6/8/20

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.

9insights 6/1/20 9insights 6/1/20

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.