In my post "Can you just choose a patron saint?" I quote Mark Twain's preface to his book about Joan of Arc, in which he emphasizes the contrast between the perfect goodness of Joan herself and the extreme evil of the times in which she lived -- "the brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the darkest ages."
The purest form of evil is called Sorathic, from a word created by Rudolf Steiner out of the Hebrew numerals for 666. Steiner characterizes Sorath as the "Demon of the Sun" -- an evil Sun in opposition to the good Sun which is the Christ. This theme of the good and evil Suns is something I have explored in some detail at The Magician's Table.
Today an email correspondent mentioned that he had first learned about Joan of Arc by typing "joan the maid" into a search engine. For some reason, after reading that, I was immediately moved to do the same thing myself -- and then, when the search results came up, my mouse hand sprang into action as if directed by an intelligence not my own. Click-scroll-click-scroll-click, just like that -- so fast that I didn't have time to read anything and had no conscious knowledge of what I was clicking on, as if executing a series of steps long since rendered automatic by habit -- and I found myself staring at an article about a 1926 novel by Georges Bernanos called Sous le soleil de Satan -- Under Satan's Sun.
I am not exaggerating how very quickly this happened; and happened is the correct word, since to say I did it would imply that the conscious mind played a role. Checking my browser history to retrace my steps, I find that Joan the Maid is the English name of a 1994 French historical film starring Sandrine Bonnaire in the title role, and that this same actress starred alongside Gérard Depardieu in the 1987 film version of Sous le soleil de Satan.
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What does this mean? Well, the most natural interpretation, I think, is that Joan is back because Sorath is back. She is here because she is needed. Maid of Heaven, pray for us!
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I end with a quote from Oliver Cowdery which has been on my mind recently.
Man may deceive his fellow-men, deception may follow deception, and the children of the wicked one may have power to seduce the foolish and untaught, till naught but fiction feeds the many, and the fruit of falsehood carries in its current the giddy to the grave; but one touch with the finger of his love, yes, one ray of glory from the upper world, or one word from the mouth of the Savior, from the bosom of eternity, strikes it all into insignificance, and blots it forever from the mind.
11 comments:
I am thoroughly enjoying these Joan of Arc posts, William. St. Joan is a truly remarkable person.
The whole synchronicity thing is fascinating and perplexing and wildly interesting to me. I thought I'd tell you about something that happened to me just now.
My wife and I were listening to the reports of the donnybrook taking place at the US Capitol in the wake of the electoral college mess. We watched some of the footage of this extraordinary event, and then my wife said, "Why don't we watch or listen to something peaceful?" I agreed, and she decided to continue watching a DVD she had been watching last night.
The DVD was "The Sound of Music," and the scene that started when she resumed the DVD was the famous "Do Re Mi" scene. I picked up my laptop and started noodling around. I decided to read some more about St. Joan of Arc. When I went to a biographical site, I saw the name of the town where the Maid was born.
The town is called Domremey.
I plugged this word into a program that audibly pronounces foreign words. This town, spoken aloud in French, sounds EXACTLY like "Do Re Mi."
Thought you might enjoy that.
Remarkable, SK! You will perhaps have noticed that I have already connected the Maid with a doe (a deer, a female deer).
I haven't yet checked what happened in Washington yesterday, and somehow, despite all the anticipation, I find I'm not in any particular hurry to find out.
"Joan is back because Sorath is back. She is here because she is needed. "
Quite possibly - but what does this mean? That she has been summoned back by the prayers of lots of people? And what will/ could she do - or what could she add to the possibilities of what may be done?
The problem I have about this way of thinking is that (as I understand things) nothing can be done without the positive, conscious, chosen purpose of people.
I tend to feel that the 'rate limiting' factor is not in Heaven (there is always plenty of power 'up there' for whatever good purposes), but down here.
But people can be inspired, can be touched and in a way transformed by contact with something higher, and she is doing this. Even in the rather small circle of people known to me personally, I am not the only one to have been visited -- then how many, all behind the scenes of course, in the world?
"people can be inspired, can be touched and in a way transformed by contact with something higher, and she is doing this"
I don't doubt this. But surely this was always possible? I can't see that God, or Joan, would hold-back on this until now.
Do you think it is this the result of some change up-there? Or in response to something from down-here - and if so, how could the idea come to many at once?
I find this kind of thing hard to make sense of.
I don't know, Bruce, why does anything happen when it does rather than at some other time? God knows.
In my own case, it is pretty clear I would not have benefited from a visitation like this had it occurred at an earlier date. Ripeness is all. And perhaps developments in my own life are part of a larger pattern which we cannot see because it is by its nature not a public thing.
Ripeness is all. - That makes the kind of sense I am looking for. e.g. That attitudes among Christians on earth came together at this time to create this Particular 'need'; and Joan responded, as being the one who could fulfil this need.
I'm not sure if this means much, but the good I've drawn from your posts has been mostly centered on the presence of Joan rather than on what her presence may mean or what her presence might lead to. The visitation itself is what matters most. As for everything else, it will all unfold in due time.
BTW - I'm going to check out that novel. Sounds interesting.
I think that God or St. Joan might very well "hold back," as Bruce put it, for the same reasons that we as parents hold back on immediate action towards something our children did or did not do. Perhaps God and/or St. Joan used an intuitive sense within themselves to determine the best time to intervene...or not intervene.
Something is clearly happening, and I do not smirk at the sychronicities you've been noticing, William. I'm very grateful you've been writing about these things.
No smirking here either. Quite the contrary. And like, S.K., I am also grateful for these posts.
To quote a misprinted English sign I once saw in Japan, "Thank you for not smirking."
Like Frank, I feel that the fact of Joan's presence -- more than anything she may do -- is the main point.
Awake and arise, O ye slumbering nations!
The heavens have opened their portals again.
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