WHERE IN THE WORLDS?

The Ash Girl opens in the North African region now more commonly called The Horn of Africa. In 1886 modern day Eritrea and Northern Ethiopia were a part of the Abyssinian and Nubian Empires. Why would the Greek Goddess, Artemis, be hunting so far from home? We might say that gods and goddesses as storied forces of nature know no boundaries of place; we might also look to historic record. Once, the Greek Empire extended far into the African continent. Pottery and statuary bearing the Ancient Greek pantheon have been unearthed in Eritrea and Ethiopia. In The Ash Girl, the goddesses’ cavern lies ‘somewhere beneath the Red Sea.’ As the cavern itself is a maze of space (versus place) that mirrors (in essence) the ecosystems above and doesn’t follow the same boundaries or rules as the human world, beneath the Red Sea cannot be assumed to pertain exactly to our maps. However, the Red Sea is the connecting body of water to a geographically dense and literarily rich treasure of goddess and god mythology and has an unusually high level of volcanic activity.

THE THREE VIRGIN GREEK GODDESSES

ARTEMIS is one of the three ‘virgin’ goddesses of the Ancient Greek Pantheon. She is perhaps best known as The Huntress. Her mythology casts her as the protector of young women, the wilderness, wild animals, midwifery and childbirth. She embodies the aspect of our humanity that is one with the all beings and the way of life that takes life for necessary sustenance and with grace and gratitude. In this way her bow kills without pain. Artemis is also a twin. Her brother, Apollo is the Sun God to her Moon Goddess. They are the offspring of Zeus the ‘King’ of the Greek gods and his wife Leto, a daughter of Titans herself. (Once she gives birth, with infant Artemis’ help, Leto largely disappears from mythology altogether essentially leaving the twins with a distant, powerless mother who will be tortured by Zeus’ next wife, Hera, for bearing Zeus’ children).

ATHENA was not only a fabled virgin but she was born straight from the top of her father, Zeus’ head. Uranus and Gaia told Zeus if Metis (pregnant with his child) had a daughter, that daughter would grow up to have a son that would deprive him of his heavenly kingdom. Zeus swallowed Metis. Later, with a blow of an axe by Hephaestus to Zeus’ head, Athena, a girl in full armour sprang from his head. She uttered a war cry heard in the heavens and became the warrior goddess.* While inside Zeus, Athena’s mother, the Titan of craftiness and wisdom, gave Athena all of her knowledge and also equipped her with full battle dress, a sword, and a shield. Athena’s mythology cast her as a master strategist in war, the initiator of boys to men, and also a cunning craftswoman and weaver (maker of webs and of worlds).

HESTIA was a sister of Zeus, also a virgin, and one of the remaining direct descendants of the Titans to rise to the thrones of Mount Olympus in ancient Greek myths. Notably, she is the one sibling who did not attend the council table as the plan to slay the Titans and take control of the universe unfolded. Hestia is well-known in Greece, as most homes have some altar to her at their hearth fire as the heart of the home, but she was not a conqueror, mother, or muse in the glorious adventures and odysseys that have been shared over centuries and so she is largely unknown. If we use our human family tree as a model, Hestia is the aunt of both Athena and Artemis.

*From The Dictionary of Classic Mythology, Pierre Grimal; translated by A.R. Maxwell-Hyslop. Oxford, England; New York, NY: Blackwell, 1985, c1986.

GUARDIAN ANIMALS

Guardian animals or spirit animals are a part of nearly every mythology and tradition, and, like the gods and goddesses patterns of qualities, powers, and the relationship to humans arise across time with small variations from culture to culture. The Ash Girl guardians were inspired by these myths but also my love of the daemons in Philip Pullman’s classic series His Dark Materials, in which every child’s soul is embodied externally in a ‘daemon’ animal shape. In the world Pullman created, the daemon shapeshifts moment to moment when the child is young, settling around puberty into its final form. Much like animal companions in fairy tales, the daemon exhibits the ‘shadow’ aspect of the child - if a child subconsciously feels very small and insignificant in a way that is to frightening to face, the daemon may take the form of a mouse - and by adulthood personifies the core nature of its human.

My guardian animal, like Artemis, is Hyena. In some traditions, the guardian or spirit animal, is met on a quest marked by isolation, being ‘thrown out of one’s life’ (as Joseph Campbell was fond of saying about the hero’s journey) and having an epic, mysterious encounter with an animal in this ‘liminal space.’ My meeting took place in the African Bush on a 2:00am watch. Someday I will include an essay on that encounter on this site. That encounter is still somewhat a mystery to me, and The Ash Girl, in part, is my way of more deeply living into that experience.

Athena’s guardian animal is the Three Hares, who arrived in the book as many characters did, unbidden and without bothering to explain themselves. So I keep writing and do what research I can. Athena was said to send out ravens with messages but I have not found mention of the hares as significant to her stories, so her guardian animal remains a bit of a mystery too. Read more about Three Hares.

In The Ash Girl, the tarot deck Frieda paints holds the prophecy of four human girls who will be born to save and re-story the world. Frieda is the first of those girls to be born, and must fulfill her destiny to (re)paint the now faded original tarot deck before the other girls can be ‘activated’ in the new story.

The four girls are embodied in the Four Tarot Princesses, each carrying the archetypical qualities associated with the natural element, suit (of cards), four directions and related role and gift as compiled from global first nations traditions by Angeles Arrien in her stellar book The Four-Fold Way.

In the window between ages 8 and 9 Frieda meets her guardian animal, Tiger, but forgets him as soon as she falls asleep on Athena/White Raven’s back. She will meet him again as she paints The Princess of Wands.

*Chapter 0 note: in the census taken when Frieda was three, her five year old sister, Florence, is named as the head of their household. The reason for their parents’ absence is unconfirmed.

In the Harris | Crowley Thoth Tarot the major arcana tarot card (one of 22 cards in the 78 card deck that represent principles and dynamics of a forming universe and archetypical human qualities) numbered VIII is called ADJUSTMENT. It pictures, according to Crowley’s own description, the Egyptian Goddess of Wisdom, Maat. She balances the scales of divine judgment and brings the Great Sword of divine Will to practical use on Earth. In scholarly endeavors to fully expand on the intricate, cross-cultural symbolism in this deck, often beyond Crowley’s intent, VIII is also associated closely with ATHENA.

ATU VIII is an AIR sign which is associated with all aspects of the MIND, the WARRIOR archetype, and the direction of NORTH. You can see how all of these together, along with the SWORD, support the association of this card with Athena.

Whoever she is, she BALANCES between the ever-moving forces at work in the liminal space between endings and beginnings in the human experience of time. Her role is not to demand justice and mete out ‘blind punishment’ as in the traditional tarot decks (her mask has eyeholes), rather she serves as wise counselor to help us view our situations with an objective mind, employing highest purpose for the good of all as the decider of action. As painted in this deck, the Goddess of Adjustment is perhaps a more relevant and useful model for what humanity might strive for in our times than either Maat or Athena.

Notably, ATU VIII is one of the four cornerstone tarot cards for the year 2020 (the four major arcana cards that are multiples of four: 2+0+2+0=IV+4=VIII+4=XII+4=XVI). If you are interested, CONTACT me and I will send you the article and TAROT MAP for 2020.

I feel called to reclaim and amplify Frieda Harris’ contribution to the world of art, spiritual exploration, and activism. In much of what is written (and I have heard said) about Frieda’s role in the ‘Crowley’ Thoth Tarot deck has been downplayed to the extent of calling her a puppet and suggesting that she was a modestly talented painter who had no knowledge of the subject and followed Crowley’s directions only (and with difficulty). You can see from the letters between Frieda and Aleister the injustice done to her reputation! Not only is she actively interpreting his ‘vision’ as an artist but she is actively engaging with the characters she is painting as if they have a Will of their own. You can also SEE depths and nuances in her work that far transcend Crowley’s writing. I started to wonder, WHAT IF Frieda was painting in an ‘ecstatic’ state? And what if in that state she became a messenger for the Mother of Mothers | the One (the divine feminine) and through her artistry was a powerful activist against the dark* masculine energy embodied in World War II?She was a student and member of occult orders who used skrying or astral projection (leaving one’s body to travel to other planes - seeking an experience of unity with other worlds / the divine) and so this doesn’t seem too far a stretch of imagination! The Ash Girl takes many liberties with Frieda’s story and history. This is the right, so they say, of fiction writers but I didn’t set out to co-opt her story . . . what I experienced writing The Ash Girl is similar to the way Frieda is depicted painting the tarot. Guided by invisible hands. WHAT IF Frieda is one of my guides, put the deck in my hands that first time and chose me to tell her story this way?

In Chapter 0, Frieda is taken on an initiatory journey by Athena at the age of nine. Frieda was tutored in color theory and watercolor by Rudolph Steiner, who also founded the Waldorf Schools as a means to not only educate children but to intentionally form their human | divine nature in a unified way. The age of nine is significant in his theosophy, calling it the Nine Year Change. This is roughly the period in a child’s development, he observed, when the veil of wonder is pulled away and their experience is suddenly (and painfully) ‘real’. Parents who were omnipotent and idealized are suddenly seen for their flaws; the magical aspect of life, amplified by events like birthday parties, suddenly doesn’t match up to past memories and so is gravely disappointing. I saw this in my own daughter and her friends! So the window between 8 and 9 is the moment when the Goddesses in The Ash Girl have the opportunity to show girls who and what they truly are (and send them to find their guardian animal—more on Frieda’s Tiger later) and try to help them not forget.

But we live in the Age of Forgetting so there is much remembering yet to do.

*The reference to dark and light divine masculine and feminine comes from Robert Bly’s spectacular body of work unpacking pre-christian fairytales to derive the ways we use story to understand the wholeness of human experience. The Maiden King unpacks a fairytale from the North that The Ash Girl is a direct descendant of (although I hadn’t read it until several years into my writing when I found out he was a distant cousin of mine. I was stunned by the uncanny parallel themes of Bly’s work and mine and the story of The Ash Girl and how he interprets The Maiden King.)

WHAT’S NEXT?

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