Book Title: The Mystery of Joan of Arc Author: Léon Denis First Published: France, Year (?) Original Title: (in French):
Description: The story of Joan of Arc, told by Spiritist Author, Léon Denis. Read The Introduction	View Table of Contents Obtain a Copy

Obtain
 Obtain a Copy of "The Mystery of Joan of Arc"   Back to Top

- You can download this book at the Spiritist Group of New York site:   http://www.sgny.org/main/books.htm  (Right click on the book title to save to your computer)

INDEX
  Table of Contents of "The Mystery of Joan of Arc"    Back to Top

Translator's Preface
Introduction

I. DOOMERY

II. THE SITUATION IN 1429

III. THE INFANCY OF JOAN OF ARC

IV. VAUCOULEURS

V. CHINON, POITIERS AND TOURS

VI. ORLEANS

VII. REIMS

VIII. COMPIEGNE

IX. ROUEN- THE PRISON

X. ROUEN- THE TRIAL

XI. ROUEN- THE PUNISHMENT

XII. JOAN'S SECRET POWER

XIII. WHAT WERE HER VOICES?

XIV. ANALOGOUS POWERS, ANCIENT AND MODERN

XV. JOAN OF ARC AND THE MODERN PSYCHIC MOVEMENT

A MESSAGE

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

Intro
  Introduction To "The Mystery of Joan of Arc"    Back to Top

"The memory of Joan of Arc has never aroused such ardent and passionate controversies as have raged for the last few years round this great historical figure. One party , while exalting her memory, tries to monopolize her and to confine her personality within the limits of Catholic doctrine. A second, by means of tactics which are sometimes brutal, as in the case of Thalamas and Henri Berenger, sometimes clever and learned, as in the case of M. Anatole France, tries to lessen her prestige and to reduce her mission to the proportions of an ordinary historical episode.

Where shall we find the truth as to the part played by Joan in history? As we read it, it is to be found neither in the mystic reveries of the men of faith nor in the material arguments of the positivists critics. Neither the one nor the other seems to hold the thread which form the mystery of this extraordinary life.

To penetrate the mystery of Joan of Arc it seems to us necessary to study, and have practical knowledge of, psychic science. It is necessary to have sounded the depths of this invisible world, this ocean of life which envelops us, from which we all come at birth and into which we are replunged at death.

How can writers understand Joan if their thoughts have never risen above terrestrial facts, looked beyond the narrow horizon of an inferior material world, nor caught one glimpse of the life beyond?

During the last fifty years a whole series of manifestations and of discoveries have thrown a new light upon certain important aspects of life, of which we have had only vague and uncertain knowledge. By close observations and by methodical experiment in psychic phenomena a far-reaching science is gradually being built up.

The universe appears to us now as a reservoir of unknown forces of incalculable energy. An infinite vista dawns before our thoughts filled with forms and vital powers which escape our normal senses, though some manifestations of them have been measured with great precision by the aid of registering apparatus.

The idea of the supernatural fades away, and we see Nature herself rolling back for ever the horizon of her domain. The possibility of an invisible organized life, more rich and more intense than that of humanity , but regulated by tremendous laws, begins to intrude itself. This life in many cases impinges on our own and influences us for good or for evil.

Most of the phenomena of the past which have been asserted in the name of faith and denied in the name of reason can now receive a logical and scientific explanation. The extraordinary incidents scattered over the story of the maid of Orleans are of this order. Their comprehension is rendered the more easy by our knowledge of similar phenomena observed, classified and registered in our own time.

These can explain to us the nature of the forces which acted in and around her, guiding her life towards its noble end.

The historians of the nineteenth century, Michelet, Wallon, Quicherat, Henri Martin, Simeon Luce, Joseph Fabare, Vallet de Viriville, Lanery d' Arc, have all agreed to exalt Joan as a marvelous heroine, and a sort of national Messiah. It is only in the twentieth century that the critical note has been heard. This has sometimes been bitter. M. Thalamas, Professor of the University , has even been accused by certain Catholic critics of treating this heroine as a wanton. He defends himself from this charge, and in his work "Joan of Arc, History and Legend," he does not go beyond the limits of honest and courteous criticism. His point of view, however, is that of the materialist:

"It is not for us," he says, "who look on all genius as an affair of the nerves, to reproach Joan for having magnified into saints what was really the voice of her own conscience."

But sometimes in his lectures he was more severe. At Tours on April 29th, 1905, he reminded us of the opinion of Professor Robin on Joan of Arc. She had never existed, he believed, and her whole story was a myth. M. Thalamas would not go so far as this, and recognized the reality of her life, but he attacked the deductions which her admirers had drawn from it. He exerted all his ingenuity to minimize what she had done without attacking her personal character. She had done nothing herself, or at least very little; for example, he held that it was the inhabitants of Orleans who had wrought their own deliverance.

Henri Berenger and other writers have followed in the same sense, and the official view of the question seemed to be coloured by their theories. In the history books of the primary schools they have taken from the story of Joan everything which could have a psychic meaning. It is no longer a question of voices; it is always the voice of conscience which guides her. This difference is a very real one.

Anatole France in his artistic volumes does not go so far as this. He cannot get past the evidence as to the objective reality of the visions and of the voices. He is too well acquainted with the documentary evidence to deny that. His work is a faithful reconstruction of the epoch. The appearances of the towns, of the countryside, and of the men of that epoch are painted with the hand of a master and with a fineness of touch which recalls Renan. Yet reading him leaves one cold and disappointed. His judgments are often falsified by prejudice, and one is conscious, all through his pages, of a subtle and penetrating irony which is out of place in history .

In truth, an impartial judge may state that as Joan is exalted by the Catholics, she is attacked by the freethinkers less out of dislike for her than through a spirit of contradiction and of opposition. The heroine, dragged this way and that, becomes an object of contention to these rival parties. There is exaggerated statement on both sides, and the truth, as so often happens, is between the two extremes.

The vital question is the existence of occult forces, which the materialists ignore, of invisible powers which are not supernatural and miraculous, but which belong to those domains of Nature which have not yet been fully explored. Hence comes the inability to understand the work of Joan and the means by which it was possible for her to carry it out.

Her critics have never realized the immensity of the obstacles which the heroine had to surmount. A poor girl, eighteen years old, the daughter of humble peasants, without education, "knowing neither A nor B," says the Chronicle, she had against her, her own family, public opinion and all the world. What could she have accomplished without that inspiration, that vision of the world beyond, which sustained her?

Imagine this child of the fields in the presence of great lords, ladies, and prelates; in the court and in the camps. She was a simple rustic from the depths of the country , ignorant of warlike things, and speaking a provincial dialect! She had to meet the prejudices of rank arid birth, and the pride of caste. Later she encountered the mockeries and the brutalities of soldiers accustomed to despise women, and unwilling to admit that a girl could command and direct them. In addition there was the hatred of the men of the Church, who in those days saw in everything which was unusual the intervention of the devil. They never pardoned her for acting independently of their authority , and indeed that was the main cause of her ruin.

Picture to yourself the prying curiosity of those debauched men amongst who she had to live constantly. She had to endure fatigue, long hours on horseback, and the crushing weight of iron armour. She had also to lie on the ground during weary nights in the camp, harassed by all the worries and responsibilities ofher arduous task.

During her short career she surmounted all these obstacles, and out of a divided people split into a thousand factions, decimated by famine, and demoralized by all the miseries of a hundred years war, she built up a victorious nation.

It is this wonderful episode which clever but blind writers have tried to explain by purely material and terrestrial means, lame explanations which go to pieces when one realizes the facts! Poor blind souls -souls of the night, dazzled and dazed by the lights of the Beyond! It is to them that the words of a thinker apply:

"That which they know is nothing, but from what they do not know one could create a universe."

It is a deplorable thing that certain critics of our time feel impelled to minimize and drag down in a frenzy or dislike everything which rises above their own moral incapacity .Wherever a light shines, or a flame burns, one sees them running to pour water upon that which might give an illumination to humanity .

Joan, ignorant of human forces, but with profound psychic vision, gave them a magnificent lesson in the words which she addressed to the examiners at Poitiers, which are equally applicable to the modern skeptics, the little narrow minds of our generation:

"I read in a book where there are more things than are found in yours."

Learn to read there, also, you sceptics, and to understand these problems; then you may speak with a little more authority about Joan and her work. 

When one studies the great scenes of history , one has to realize and reconstruct the souls of nations and of heroes. If you know how to love them they will come to you, these souls, and they will inspire you. It is the secret of the genius of history .That is what great writers like Michelet, Henri Martin, and others have done. They have gone out in sympathy to the genius of the race and of the era of which they wrote, and the breath of the Beyond runs through their pages. Others, like Anatole France, Lavisse, and his collaborators, remain dry and cold in spite of their cleverness, because they have no grasp of that personal intimate communion where souls reacts upon soul. This communion is the secret of all great artists, thinkers and poets. Without it there is no imperishable work.

A constant stream of inspiration flows down from the invisible world upon mankind. There are intimate ties between the living and the dead. All souls are united by invisible threads, and the more sensitive of us down here vibrate to the rhythm of the universal life. So was it with our heroine.

The critic may attack her memory; his efforts will never prevail. The story of the maid of Lorraine, like that of all the great agents of Providence, is graven on the eternal granite of history . Nothing can wipe out that record. It is one which indicates most clearly amid all the mixed tumult of life that sovereign hand which guides the world.

To understand this life, and to realize the power which guided it, one must raise one's mind to those great vital laws which govern the destiny of nations. Higher than all worldly events, and independent of the confused results of human action, one may trace an unswerving will which surmounts the resistance of individuals and works straight to the predestined end. Instead of losing itself in the confusion of life it seems rather to organize it, and to be the secret thread which leads through the maze. Gradually there appear a method and a system, which harmonize all things. Their inter-relation becomes more defined, while their contradictions fade away until one vast plan stands revealed. One realizes, then, that there is a latent invisible energy , reacting upon all of us, leaving to each certain measure of initiative, but enveloping all of us and sweeping us towards a fixed goal.

The apparent incoherences of life and of history depend upon the delicate equilibrium between the liberty of the individual and the authority of the Supreme Law. The deeper workings of these forces dawn gradually upon the man who can penetrate into the inner meaning of things. If it were not for this profound law, there would be nothing but disorder and chaos in that infinite jumble of efforts and of individual ambitions which make up the workings of the human race.

From the days of Domremy to those of Reims the action of this law could be traced in the whole episode of the Maid. During that period man was working for the most part in harmony with the higher Law. After the incident of the consecration at Reirns, ingratitude, wickedness, the intrigues of courtiers and of clerics, and the bad conduct of the King obscured the issue. To quote the expression of Joan, "Men refused to do the will of God."

Selfishness, disorder and rapacity stood in the way of the higher action, which was attempted by Joan and her invisible helpers. The work of deliverance became more uncertain and was chequered by ill fortune and reverses. She followed out her mission none the less, but for its full accomplishment there would have been needed a greater length of time and ever harder exertions, with less disturbance from the forces of evil.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *     *  

As I have said, it is entirely from the point of view of our new scientific knowledge that I undertake this work. I repeat it so that none may misunderstand my intention. In trying to throw a little light on the life of Joan of Arc I am not actuated by any selfish motive or by any political or religious prejudice. My views are as far from those of the anarchists as from those of the reactionaries. I am neither among the blind fanatics, nor among those who are ever incredulous.

It is in the name of truth and of moral beauty , and out of love for our French Fatherland that I try to clear the noble figure of the inspired Maid from those shadows which have gathered round her.

Under the pretext of analysis and of free criticism there has been, as I have already remarked, a most regrettable tendency in our days to drag down everything which has been admired in the past, and to alter and to tarnish what has been spotless and perfect up to now.

It is a duty for any man, who can by pen or by voice exercise an influence on his fellows, to maintain and to defend whatever makes for the greatness of our country , and emphasizes the noble examples that she has given to the world, and the scenes of beauty which enrich her past and shed a glory on her history .

It is, on the other hand, an evil action to endeavour in any way to enfeeble our moral inheritance, the historical tradition of the people. Is it not the very thing which should give us strength in difficult hours? Is it not that which helps us to higher virility in moments of danger? The tradition of a people and its history are the poetry of its life, its solace in trouble, its hope in the future. It is by the common ties which it creates between all our citizens that we feel ourselves to be the children of the one mother and members of a common fatherland.

It is well that we should often recall the great scenes of our national history .It is full of striking lessons, and rich in wonderful examples. It is possibly superior in that respect to the history of any other nation. Wherever we explore the past of our race, everywhere and in every age we see great shadows hovering, and those shadows speak to us, and exhort us. From far-'off centuries voices come down to us recalling great memories, memories which, if they were always present in our souls, would suffice to inspire and to brighten our lives. But there comes the chill wind of scepticism, of  forgetfulness, and of indifference. The preoccupations of our material life absorb us, and we end by losing touch with all that has been most great and most eloquent in the teaching of the past. Among these traditions there is nothing more touching and more glorious than that which deals with this extraordinary young girl who illuminates the darkness of the Middle Ages by her radiant presence, and of whom Henri Martin has said, "Nothing like her has ever happened in the history of the world."

In the name of the past as well as of the future of our race, in the name of the work which still waits to be done, let us endeavour to keep in its entirety our moral inheritance. Let us try to keep from the soul of the people the intellectual poison which threatens it, and so to preserve for France that beauty and that strength which will make her great in hours of peril and restore to her all that prestige and self-respect which have been weakened by so many evil and sophistical theories.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *     *  

It is only fair to recognize that the Catholic world -of recent years, at any rate -has done solemn homage to Joan. The orthodox have praised her, have glorified her, and have raised statues and temples in her honour. On the other hand, the Republican thinkers have discussed a project of founding a national fete in her honour, which should be dedicated to the cult of patriotism. But neither party has really understood the true character of our heroine, nor grasped the inner meaning of her life. There are few men who have been in a position to analyze this great figure who stands so high above the days in which she lived, and seems more and more majestic as the years roll by.

There is in this wonderful life a depth which cannot be plumbed by minds which are not prepared beforehand for such a study. There are factors which must cause uncertainty and confusion in the thoughts of those who have not the necessary gifts to solve this great problem. Hence the sterile discussions and the vain polemics. But for the man who has lifted the veil of the invisible world the life of Joan is brilliantly clear. Her whole story becomes at once rational and intelligible.

Observe how many different points of view and contradictory ideas there are among those who praise the heroine! Some try to find in her some argument for their particular party .Others strive to draw some secular moral from her fate. Some again only wish to see in the triumph of Joan the exaltation of popular and patriotic sentiment. One may well ask if in this devotion which rises from all France there is not blended much which is egotistical and much which is mixed with self-interest. No doubt they think of Joan, and no doubt they love Joan, but at the same time, are they not thinking more of themselves and of their parties? Do they not search in that glorious life only for that which may flatter their own personal feelings, their own political opinions, or their own unavowed ambitions?  There are not many, I fear, who raises themselves above prejudice and above the interests of caste or of  class. Few, indeed, try to penetrate the secret of this life, and among those who have penetrated, no one up to now, save in a most guarded way, has dared to speak out and to tell that which he saw and understood.

As for me, if my claims for speaking of Joan of Arc are modest ones, there is at least one which I can confidently make. It is that I am free from every prejudice and from all desire either to please or to displease. With thoughts free, and conscience independent, searching and wishing for nothing but truth, thus is it that I approach this great subject, and search for that mysterious clue which is the secret of her incomparable career."

Léon Denis