Joan's banner and sword
Regular readers will know I have been experiencing a fairly constant stream of synchronicities relating to Joan of Arc.
Many of the early syncs focused on her banner:
- The first rainbow flag: Joan's banner discussed in detail
- In the cards: Illustrations in a Guardian article unwittingly allude to Joan's banner.
- That flag again! I run into Joan's banner by chance.
- Joan and the ark: Old Testament "arks" are associated with Joan's banner.
Later, the emphasis shifted to her sword, and this sword was associated with Donald Trump:
- In hoc signo vinces? Joan's sword as an answer to the question "What's going on in Washington?"
- Darkest hour: The dream-phrase épée d'Arc is associated with a Babylon Bee article in which Trump has "the Darksaber."
- Small hands, you say? Much is made of Joan's sword being held by someone with small hands, a stereotypical attribute of Trump.
- Trump with a sword again: The sync fairies lead me to a random op-ed in which the author randomly says "for some reason I picture Trump carrying a sword."
⁂
St. Michael
On February 8, I received an email from a regular correspondent, subject line "The Archangel Michael," soliciting thoughts on "whether Michael means anything special (perhaps vital?) for modern Christians, here-and-now."
I replied that I had no particular beliefs or feelings about that specific archangel, but that a Latin prayer to St. Michael, recommended to me by another online friend, had once proved effective in a specific unusual situation I found myself in back in the summer of 2019.
⁂
Hundred years' wars
This morning, yet another online friend, knowing and sharing my particular interest in Joan of Arc, sent me a link to a January 3 sermon by an anonymous Catholic priest on Regina Prophetarum, called "Ending the Hundred Years War Using Saint Joan's Holy Banner of War" (mp3). After a Hail Mary and some other preliminaries, it begins thus:
Saint Joan of Arc led her army to some of the greatest military victories in the history of the world. To make these victories possible, she was instructed by Heaven to make a banner with the holy names of Jesus and Mary painted upon it. She herself held this banner and led the way to victory, saying later, "I loved my banner 40 times better than my sword."
Joan struck the decisive blow in the Hundred Years' War with England, and the priest then refers to "a new Hundred Years' War . . . declared by the Devil himself in the hearing of Pope Leo XIII." In this war, "we have the names of Jesus and Mary, the holy names, but they need to be brought back and placed on the standard of war." The priest later says, "We need another Joan to lead the way. Come back, dear Joan! We need you again, to put a death blow to this new Hundred Years' War."
Joan has come back. I am not her only witness.
Not being familiar with this "new Hundred Years' War" declared by the Devil, I looked it up and found an article called "Leo XIII & the one hundred years."
It is said that after he had celebrated Mass in the presence of some Cardinals and members of the Vatican staff on October 13th, 1884, Pope Leo experienced a vision of the future concerning the Church in which the power of Satan would be unleashed for a period of 100 years. He was so shaken by the spectre of the destruction of moral and spiritual values both inside and outside the Church that he composed a prayer to St Michael the Archangel which he ordered to be said at the end of each Mass throughout the Catholic Church. This is the prayer--
St Michael the Archangel defend us in the day of battle. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God restrain him, we humbly pray, and do thou, the prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all the other evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.
This got my attention because I immediately recognized it as an English translation of the Latin prayer to St. Michael that had just been brought back to my memory by a random email query.
⁂
Many suns
Here is another extract from the sermon on Joan's banner.
In her great work The Mystical City of God, Venerable Mother Mary of Ágreda speaks of when the time had come to name the Holy Child on the octave day of Christmas. She writes, "When the great mistress of heaven -- Our Lady -- and St Joseph conversed with each other about the holy name of Jesus, innumerable angels descended in human form from on high, clothed in shining white garments . . . and emitted a greater splendor than many suns.
I had been listening to this sermon alone in my car. When I arrived home, I found that my wife had put some music on. She's been on a Chester Bennington kick lately, and I was greeted by the Linkin Park song "The Catalyst."
God save us, every one.
Will we burn inside the fires of a thousand suns?
For the sins of our hand,
The sins of our tongue,
The sins of our father,
The sins of our young? -- No!
I recognized "a thousand suns" as an allusion to the Bhagavad Gita -- the lines made famous by Oppenheimer when he quoted them with reference to the atomic bomb: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once in the sky, that would be the splendor of the Mighty One."
⁂
Bigger than Trump
Near the end of the sermon I listened to, the priest says that, while he certainly hopes Trump will be restored to the presidency, we need to realize that our problems will not be solved by having a crooked election set right, that we must set our sights higher.
I have associated Trump with Joan's sword. But Joan loved her banner -- bearing angels and the holy names of Jesus and Mary -- 40 times better than her sword.
I have associated Trump with the Sun. But the angels associated with the holy names of Jesus and Mary emitted a greater splendor than many Suns.
I feel that a very coherent message has, in the language of synchronicity, been communicated to me.
10 comments:
Rereading my own post now, I saw the name Leo XIII and thought -- the 13th day of Leo, I'll bet that's Trump's birthday! This thought popped into my head even though I know perfectly well that Trump is a Gemini, born on Flag Day, June 14. (This is part of the basis of my associating him with the Sun, since the Sun card of the Tarot, depending on the deck, shows either the Gemini or a large flag.)
I always try to follow up on random thoughts. The Sun enters Leo on July 23, so the 13th day of Leo is August 4. I checked the Wikipedia article about that date and found that it is the birthday not of Trump but of Barack Obama!
So, that was weird.
Rereading this again, I notice that the "octave day of Christmas" mentioned by the priest is January 1, the same day I was visited, twice, by the Maid.
You're not going to believe this.
After reading your post and comments, I went to look up whether Leo XIII was a twin, hence the Gemini connection. I searched "was Leo XIII a twin" in duckduckgo and the first result was Legio XIII Gemini. Here is what a certain encyclopedia (https://infogalactic.com/info/Legio_XIII_Gemina) has to say about it:
"Legio tertia decima Geminia, in English the 13th Twin Legion, also known as Legio tertia decima Gemina, was a legion of the Imperial Roman army. It was one of Julius Caesar's key units in Gaul and in the civil war, and was the legion with which he famously crossed the Rubicon on January 10, 49 BC. The legion appears to have still been in existence in the 5th century AD. Its symbol was the lion."
I know this doesn't exactly go with the post, but it's an interesting synchronicity nonetheless.
Curiouser and curiouser!
Regarding Trump and Leo, I was sure that he must have a strong Leo influence, the hair for a start but also the dramatic sense of self. Well, I've just checked his horoscope and it turns out that his rising sign is Leo and he has Mars in Leo right on the ascendant. This means Mars had just risen when he was born making this planet very strong in his chart, maybe a stronger influence than the Gemini Sun as you would expect from his character.
Interesting, William. His Mars isn’t by any freak chance 13 degrees Leo, is it?
Another coincidence. The Linkin Park song I have quoted repeatedly mentions being punished “for the sins of our tongue.” In the sermon, the priest mentions that Joan’s English enemies were known as les goddams because (to quote Byron, not the priest), “‘Tis strange — The Hebrew noun which means ‘I am’ / The English always use to govern ‘d—n’!” “No wonder they lost,” the priest says, and goes on to prescribe for those guilty of that profanity the rather extravagant penance of kneeling down and making the sign of the cross in the dust with their tongues.
This pricked my conscience enough to make me go back and delete an old comment in which I had jokingly said “Give the Lord the glory!” with reference to Lord Byron.
Why ask what I can look up myself? It’s 26 degrees.
Sword, you say?
Today a meandering series of clicks -- Matt Briggs's blog to Moldbug's new blog to the Wikipedia article on Zvi Mowshowitz to Zvi's blog -- led me to a post called (for reasons that my quick skim of the extremely long post did not make immediately clear) "Covid 1/7: The Fire of a Thousand Suns."
Post a Comment