Muck
They landed in the muck at the bottom of the sea, arms sprawled on wings, where they all feel asleep.
Following my Hyena encounter in Africa and my father’s death in 2010 I spiraled into a deep period of mourning, spending long, dark mornings laying the cards and writing into whatever showed up—searching, I guess, for clues as to who I was now. After a significant death is one time in our culture that cuts you some slack, excuses you from the dominant story of being PRODUCTIVE, working at full capacity, making progress. There is some small shred of grace offered to detach, be still, not be yourself. (But not for too long, please, we must all go on! yes that was a bit of snark)
When my journaling shifted (unconsciously) from first person forays into my childhood, memories of my father and stream of conscious responses to the cards (nothing about the trip to Africa—that had been suppressed, tucked away until I could look at it full-on, or so I thought) to a third person myth . . . SHE stands on the edge of the cliff, I knew then that it was the end and beginning. I just had no idea of what.
For many years, that first scene I wrote was the first scene in the book. Asmeret stands on the cliff and Asmara runs to her, tries to reach her in time. Now it’s in Chapter XIII. The end of the one who was once Asmeret.
Fitting of ATU XIII. I will get more into that in a bit (and even more in MAP XIII).
But we were talking about the Hero’s Journey (in Consilience Post XII). Departure. Initiation. Return. We are at the part in which the quester is invited to risk their life, or turn back never to know what they might have truly been. In traditional initiation rites in various cultures, Joseph Campbell tells us about the golden thread across them: adolescent boys are sent into an experience that tests the limits of their survival capabilities—to touch their own mortality—then return to a waiting community to greet them as adults and begin teaching them their parts.
Asmeret and Asmara don’t have that community (because they represent a new story), but they have the prophecy in the cards and the goddesses, guides, and ancestors to show them what to do.
ASMARA has grown very sick (a ‘shamanic’ illness that is a hallmark of African shamanic experience—a signal to cross the threshold out of one’s ordinary life and depart into the one you were born to). His guides feed him breadcrumbs that lead him in to the Village of Ash; a place of talented healers, he’s heard. And lo, in his delirium he sees Theia, dancing on the line between dark and light—a creature he can’t figure out (she reflects his past, his present, and his future—none of them are in full view, or fully realized) yet he experiences her with pure joy—sees the Sun in him in her. Touches his own mortality as he watches her dance.
Succumbed to his fever, he is a lion, running toward (Ahhh. There is the Prince of Wands | Fire!) Asmeret, the lost part of himself. The limits of his survival capabilities are tested against the primordial bones of life entombed in the Staircase of Epochs—it fights him, takes him down, and casts him to his death on the jagged rocks below (guardians to the gates between worlds). But here comes Raven to drink his last breath and harvest his heart (taking all of the memories, experiences, and the essence | quintessence of Asmara, who is all four Tarot Princes, if you recall from Consilience Post XII). Raven flies all of this to Asmeret, the Princess of Disks, the lowest of low, (embodying the essence of all Four Tarot Princesses) when she calls, “Come to me now.”
ASMERET, as prepared as she is, must make this final choice to leap into the abyss. Where Asmara’s test of his survival capabilities has come to an end, Asmeret’s is about to begin.
Just as the Death card in the Tarot has never been an indication of real, physical death (the majority of scholars and practitioners agree on this) it is, instead, an indicator of the gestation process—the regeneration—of the bare essence that is left (when the ego gives way) into a new form, and a new identity.
Out of the muck rises, what?
It depends. On your destiny, the choices you make, the story you are Willing and able to see for yourself, the Work you put in and what you can bring yourself to give up.
Images I found many years ago as I wrote the original passages of what would become The Ash Girl. I regret that I didn’t record the sources or artists at the time.
