As discussed in my June 6 post "
What's the connection between Joan and Claire?" William Wright now believes that the beings I have interacted with under the names of Joan and Claire are in fact one and the same, an identification I have been somewhat hesitant to accept.
Well, why not ask Claire herself to mettre les choses au clair, so to speak? Yesterday, June 7, I had some free time, so I prepared for a read and said, "Okay, Claire, you've got one shot to convince me. One card. Make it count." I shuffled and cut the deck while repeating in my mind, "Joan and Claire: Are they the same or different? The same or different?" I put a single card face down in front of me and returned the rest of the deck to its ark.
When I read, it's my habit to try to engage whatever psychic faculties I may possess by trying to visualize the face of each card before I turn it over. Fairly often I am able to do this successfully: A mental image of a particular card comes to mind, and when I turn over the card in front of me, that's what it is. Sometimes a different image comes to mind, which doesn't match what's on the card but sheds light on how to interpret it. Or sometimes, of course, I just get random noise, or nothing.
When I tried to visualize this card, I got a fairly hazy image of a large metal chalice. The image was not at all detailed, and I couldn't even be sure what metal it was, but my impression was that it was supposed to be the Holy Grail. Unsurprisingly, my guess was that the card was going to be the Ace of Cups. Though this visual impression was fairly weak, it was accompanied by a much stronger and clearer aural impression: a piano playing the first three notes of a C major scale: do re mi. This seemed potentially relevant to my question, since some years ago an online friend had pointed out that Domrémy, the birthplace of Joan of Arc (now called Domrémy-la-Pucelle in her honor), is pronounced almost exactly as do re mi, the only difference being the nasalization of the first vowel.
I turned the card over. It was the Knight of Wands:
The first thing I noticed was that this was not a "new" card but one I had drawn before. This was only my fifth reading with this deck, and I rarely use more than three cards per reading, so this was the first time the same card had come up a second time. That in itself suggests an answer of "same" rather than "different" to the question I had posed. What's more, the first time I had drawn this card -- which was on June 2, in my very first reading with the deck -- it had been about Claire. My brief notes for that first reading are as follows:
2024 June 2 Sunday
First read with consecrated RWS, acquired on Joan's Day.
1. Who is CdL? 2. What is her role in my life? 3. Who am I to her?
1. Nine of Cups - very pleased, granter of wishes, full of joy
2. Knight of Wands - call to adventure, risk, Ahuric action, and yes fun
3. Four of Swords - sleeper, calm knight, deep and slow
CdL is of course Claire de Lune. I've usually written her surname as Delune -- one word, capital D -- but for whatever reason I'd abbreviated it as CdL in my notes that day.
So the Knight of Swords has already been associated with Claire. If I can see anything in it that unambiguously indicates Joan, then I'll have my answer.
Because of the do re mi impression I'd had before turning over the card, I tried to see if there was any possible way do re mi was encoded in the image. I couldn't find anything. I thought of different ways do re mi might be expressed -- C D E, for example. (Even though I don't have anything like perfect pitch, my impression had been clear that it was the beginning of a C major scale I had heard.) I noticed that the abbreviation I had used in my notes, CdL, was frustratingly close to this, but of course there is no such musical note as L.
But wait. If there were a musical note called L, which note would it be? Well, imagine if after G you just kept going instead of starting over at A. L would then be an octave above E, and would thus also be mi:
So, in a fairly straightforward way,
CdL =
do re mi.
Coming back to the image on the card itself, its an armored person on horseback, and in my opinion the face is even sexually ambiguous and could be seen as that of a woman. So that matches Joan in a general way. And the yellow leaves on the horse's bridle bear a certain resemblance to fleurs-de-lis. The suit of Wands has been seen as symbolizing the peasant class, so the Knight of Wands is someone from a peasant background raised to knightly status, like Joan.
Then I realized that the wooden staff resembles a stake, and that the Knight looks as if he is on fire.Those aren't actually flames on his helmet, though, but feathers -- just as a bird reportedly rose from the flames when Joan was burned. Then I noticed the black lizards printed on the Knight's outer garment -- which, I know from reading Waite, are not actually lizards but salamanders, representing the element of Fire. Wait, didn't I post something about salamanders recently, and wasn't it about Joan?
I put
salamanders in the search box on this blog, and a single post came up: "
The arrow through the window," dated June 2, 2024. It was an unfinished draft, last edited in 2021, but I'd decided to publish it on that day -- the same day I did that first reading and drew the Knight of Wands. The post does indeed deal with Joan, and it also mentions that story about a bird flying up out of the flames. Keep in mind the title of the post, with its reference to a
window.
My attention next turned to the horse on the card. Did Joan ride a brown horse? She's often shown on a white horse in art.I ran a search for
joan of arc's horse, and the very first result was "
Stories of Joan of Arc at Orléans," from a site called Sacred Windows. It says her horse was "dark-coated," but I was more interested in what it had to say about her banner:
It was twelve feet long, silky white, and emblazoned with the names of Jesus and Mary – a warrior’s banner. It was mounted on a tall pole for all to see, the resolute declaration of a conquering hero, like David against Goliath: "You come against me with sword and spear and scimitar, but I come against you in the name of the Lord of hosts" (1 Samuel 17:45).
Thus did Joan of Arc ride into battle – holding high the banner, declaring her identity as a Christian soldier. Joan knew who she was, and announced it to her friends and enemies alike. Such a bold, bright, obstinate declaration of a warrior’s character must have struck mortal fear into the hearts of every foe, as the maiden, clad in armor and fire, rode onto the battlefield bringing war to their strongholds.
It specifically mentions the "tall pole" from which the banner flew, and that Joan held it high as she rode into battle. The card doesn't show a banner, but the Knight is holding up a pole. "Clad in armor and fire" also matches our Knight pretty exactly.
After the reading, since piano music had come up in connection with Claire, I thought I'd listen to Clair de Lune, the piano piece by Debussy. I found it on the YouTube Music app on my phone, but it had to play an ad first. The ad began with footage of people fighting with lightsabers, and a voice said in English something like "You have the weapon of a Jedi, but you are not a Jedi yet," after which it switched to Chinese. I didn't quite catch the exact quote, nor had I processed what exactly was being advertised when, a few seconds later, the ad ended and Clair de Lune began playing.
It took me a second to remember why I associated lightsabers with Joan of Arc. Then I remembered: In my January 2021 post "
Darkest hour," I relate dreaming the phrase
épée d'Arc ("sword of Arc") and relating it to a Babylon Bee article about Trump having "the Darksaber," which I guess must be from one of those
Star Wars sequels I've never watched.
Dark and
d'Arc are homophones, and
épée and
sabre are two different (but not very different) fencing weapons. As it turns out, it's also this post that brings up how
Domrémy sounds like
do re mi.
It's been decades since I fenced, and I only ever did foil. and just after typing the above, I wanted to check whether I had remembered correctly how the three weapons differ. The first search result, "
Foil, Epee or Sabre? Choose Your Weapon," had mugs for sale comparing the weapons to wands.
Besides the link to the Knight of Wands, "My wand chose me" is also a link back to my post about my first two encounters with Joan, called "
Can you just choose a patron saint?" The first two comments there took issue with my title, saying, "It sounds like your Saint chose you."
I really wanted to see that lightsaber ad again and get the exact quote and the context, but no amount of Googling turned up anything, so I figured all I could do was keep playing songs on YouTube Music and hope it would come up again. It never did, but the music (which I let the algorithm choose) was remarkably synchy. The second song it played was "The Sound of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel, which begins with these lines:
Hello, darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Since I had just been thinking about the dark/d'Arc connection, this obviously caught my attention. Then the very next song was Emily Linge singing "Stand by Me," which begins thus:
When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we'll see
Another dark reference, immediately followed by a reference to moonlight -- or, in French, clair de lune.
