Ok, my people, tomorrow marks Saturn’s big move into Pisces after a six-year slog through Capricorn and Aquarius (I mean, if you didn’t feel the churn and burn, where have you been?!) This Piscean shift is my “coming of age” Saturn Return (1993-1996), and I’m ready to get emo with it. Let’s throw Pisces patron saint Kurt Cobain into the boombox and strap on our flannel. Buckle up, buttercup.
So between the dreamscape of The Reboot, the mystery of The Alchemist, and the theological throw down of The Chaplain, we’ve been wandering around Esoterica quite a bit, so let’s bring it back down to earth. It’s time to meet The Parents.
3 & 4 | The Empress & The Emperor
In Euro-traditional Tarot, we’ve arrived at the cosmic mother and father archetypes. The Empress embodies the wildly creative, nurturing, fertile soil and capricious climate that give rise to The Emperor’s seed manifested — a bounty eventually harvested and distributed via the tools and methods of law and order. The Empress is the nutritiously raw ingredients to The Emperor’s precisely measured contents inside of a package with dietary info and a UPC label on the side.
The Empress also symbolizes the erotic essence of Venus, the embodiment of passion, sexuality, and the arts, while The Emperor is represented in Mars — strong and battle-ready, like a five-star general who relies on logical intellect and authoritarian action.
And to return to Greek mythology for a second, recall the High Priestess's link to the goddess Persephone. The Empress and Emperor are her parents, Demeter and Zeus. Zeus tricked Persephone into joining Hades in the Underworld where she decided to stay half the year, while Demeter spent that half in maternal grief, mourning her daughter (which, in mythology, symbolizes our season of winter). Both of these regal archetypes can indeed go dark. A heartbroken maternal figure can turn cold and barren just as a provoked father figure can turn rigid and self-righteous.
When you draw The Empress, consider whether forces in your life are roots that act as nurturing sustenance or restraints that keep you tethered. Is there some idea floating around in the womb of your imagination that begs for birth? And if you pull The Emperor, take note of the law and order around you. Is the structure in your life essential scaffolding or a stifling prison? Are you locked in or locked out?
From day one, I knew there’d be some mommy and daddy issues in the Bonesick universe. As I developed this following story slice and Tarot diptych, however, I felt much less confident in my path. It was bound to happen!
I’m trying to dig my way through the parental tropes and clichés. But there’s a very slight autobiographical thread here too, which makes this key plot point in the story a vulnerable one to boot. I’m trapped between waiting for my Empress — the creative, organic growth of my imagination — and shackled to my Emperor — falling prey to story writing over-architecture.
After two and a half weeks of waiting for Zeus’s lightning to strike, I just gotta ship this. I accept that this is mega-draft mode. I’ll tinker over time to make what I see in my head work on paper, but let’s start here and see how she lands.
3 & 4 | The Parents
No masters or kings when the ritual begins
There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin
In the madness and soil of that sad earthly scene
Only then I am human
Only then I am clean
— Andrew John Hozier-Byrne
Toby had worked late again, the standard eight-hour day wasn’t even an option anymore. When Pam hovered into the living room he had checked out, a slump on the couch, television on, comedy series Season 5, which he’d already watched countless times. His glare was more vacant than usual. “You seem particularly somber tonight,” she interrupted.
“March 13th,” Toby mumbled.
“Ah.” Pam sat down on the couch. She gave the anniversary some air before she prodded, “Feel like talking about it?”
Toby shrugged. “Eh. What’s to talk about? Every year, I’ve felt the same way. I don’t know why I thought flaying my skin off would make a difference.” He scanned his body for the wound that festered somewhere much deeper than The Procedure could reach.
Pam scooted in a bit. “I’m all ears and limbs over here. Lay it on me.”
Toby took a big gulp of air, but swallowed it whole. He returned to the politically incorrect hijinks unfolding on screen. He felt much more satisfied picking at the wound without an audience.
Pam had her work cut out for her.
“Toby, it hasn’t yet been a year; this is going to take a while. Remember what the doc told you? ‘Addition by subtraction,’ right?”
Exasperated but still locked to the screen, Toby continued, “Pam, you know that never made any fucking sense. What’s more to subtract?” He waved his hand over his shell of a frame.
Pam snuggled in closer to Toby, two of her three tentacles grazed his forearm. The sensation spread through the conductive Polyacetylene like a tranquilizer. He felt the knot in his chest loosen, his iron doors reduced to folds of gauzy fabric. His glossy stare solidified into focus; he shifted from television to tentacles to the face of his friend.
“Like doc said, walk me through it. AH—“ she held up one tentacle to his open mouth, “I know you’ve recounted it a thousand times. Maybe this time you’ll find that door he mentioned? Isn’t it worth a try?”
Toby rolled his eyes and reeled his memory back to his childhood home.
—
It was an unseasonably warm afternoon for that time of year, so his mom was in the backyard preparing garden beds, turning crusty leaf bits and other compost from last year into the soil with a cultivator. Toby loved watching her in her element, bits of dirt and straw tucked throughout her auburn curls. He distinctly remembered that he snuck up behind her that day with a trowel. Or no, maybe a spade. He handed it to her and said something cheesy like, “a Garden Queen needs a scepter.” She laughed and told him a Queen needs her Prince’s help before the King gets home. It wasn’t hard to tell which dimmed the light between them: the dark clouds rolling in from the west or the foreboding gloom of his father’s return.
After helping his mom clean up, Toby escaped to his bedroom to draw until his father came home. It was dark out when he heard the muffled force of the front door announce his father’s arrival. His mood was black and rigid, as expected. Toby could sense it in the absence of greetings between his parents. And when the silence was dismantled by a series of hushed exchanges, Toby knew better than to step out of his safe cocoon to ask what was for dinner. With an ear to the crack of his bedroom door, he gathered they were arguing about the Church again. “As of today, we’re officially down to 175—” he heard his father say, “—from over two thousand just a year ago.” He must’ve been talking about the congregation, or rather what was left of it.
“Stuart, that’s all the more reason to stay,” he heard his mother answer, thick with exhaustion. Toby knew she had repeated these eight words too many times to count.
Eventually, his parents collapsed into an uncensored war of words. From time to time, Toby caught poetically Biblical bits and pieces, “a shepherd tending to his flock” and “throwing seeds onto rocky soil,” but nothing that amounted to any sense of confidence that his family wasn’t headed toward certain disaster. He heard his father shut down the battle with a defiant growl, “I’m needed elsewhere! End of story!”
And then nothing.
Toby crawled into a deep cave of blankets and his favorite stuffed toys. His stomach rumbled, but he knew his mom would have to slip a plate of food into his room later that night. Sleep needed to carry him until then. He closed his eyes and thumbed through the piles of anxiety to find a soothing image that would pull him away from this stark reality. There it was: their living room, sunlight poured in from the east, wood blocks scattered the floor, two men in harmony, their voices curled through the room like incense, his father hummed along with the alto as he prepared a Sermon, his mother rested her head on his shoulder waiting for the timer to announce that her breakfast casserole was ready. Of course this wasn’t a lived memory, but Toby played with it often enough that it felt like his own. He allowed the sunlight, the music, the scent of potato and cheese to hold him until he drifted away. He hoped they’d pull him far enough from images he couldn’t control.
But he was just a boy. Too vulnerable to hide for long.
The record scratched to a halt.
The living room went black.
The silence was broken by a roar, like an old muscle car, annihilation announced its approach and screeched to a halt at their doorstep.
Right on time.
Toby stood at the open front door with his mother, the winds teased their hair and bedclothes.
Three bolts of lightning and blinding headlights stripped away any sense of sanctuary. They were exposed, vulnerable.
They had watched his father gather things into a suitcase.
They had listened for a word of solace that this was all just temporary.
They had waited for a tearful embrace.
They craved just one goodbye.
They received none of these things.
The man that was a father and a husband climbed into his future without them, without even a glance back, as if they never even existed.
A clap of thunder startled Toby to consciousness. He tried to blink away the wind and the suitcase and the headlights, but the residue of his nightmare remained. Toby sat up in his bed. He glanced toward the door, but saw no plate of food waiting for him.
He knew the end had come.
He knew down to the thick of his core that the morning would dawn only darkness.
—
Forehead in hands, Toby scraped at his bare skull with the tips of his fingerbones. “Pam, I just don’t get it. How could a father just up and leave his family like that?” With a swift stroke of his hand, Toby swiped away his childhood bedroom, his sad little house, that terrible spring, his father’s departure, and his devastated mother. He sighed, “Day One: I should’ve shoved that man’s memory into a trash compactor.”
Pam shifted and asked with the utmost care, “So you don’t think he’s worth all this fuel you give him?”
Toby lifted his head with a jolt. “Nope. Sure don’t.” Then dropped his head again. “Yet here I am, pumpin’ away like he’s gonna drive me to some awe-inspiring destination where the point of all this finally dawns on me…some utopian land where I don’t feel like a lost cause, where I wasn’t just…discarded.”
Pam added, again, as tender as she could, “It’s a terrible thing to feel discarded, isn’t it?”
Toby shot her a dreadful, hunted look. Her comment, a pickaxe to very thin ice. “Yep, you’re right, Pam. I’m just like that asshole. Cut from the same shit-stained cloth. The apple rotting away right there under his shadow for all eternity.”
Abruptly, Toby arose from the couch. “I need to get out of here. I’ll be down at Nick’s.”
Pam nodded and floated behind him, holding vigil till he walked out the door. So much work still needed to be done. Toby’s indomitable sponsor, Sully, would have to pinch-hit this one. With the soft click of the latch, she shuddered at the thought of everything that awaited this lost boy.
Synchronicity of the Week: Nada! My synchie guides pushed me out on my own to create this one. “You’ve had enough fish biscuits; it’s time to do a solo dive,” they told me. Neat!
References: The lyric at the beginning is from Hozier’s “Take Me To Church.” I remember watching the video in the middle of the day at my old job and being gutted, trying to hide the pools in my eyeballs.
The “rocky soil” mention is from the Bible’s Parable of the Sower.
Next Time: When your mood goes dark and your emotions get the best of you, it’s best to take up counsel with a neutral party. Two-for-ones are optional.