November 2021
Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc, 1412 -1431) is one of the rare personalities of the Middle Ages whose life is very well documented, thanks to the Rouen trial of Condemnation (1430-31) where we can read her own words, and to the Rehabilitation trial (1456) where many childhood acquaintances and comrades-in-arms testified. All these written documents have been studied and compared by historians over the centuries. The numerous testimonies of the time attest to her role and the fervent support she received.
Joan of Arc intervened at a key moment in French history, the end of the Hundred Years’ War with England, the end of feudalism and the Middle Ages. Her intervention to liberate Orleans and crown King Charles VII was decisive in forging the kingdom of France. …
Joan of Arc and her voices
Joan was born in January 1412 in Domrémy, Lorraine — a village loyal to the Dauphin in Burgundian territory — to a family of not-too-poor peasants. At the trial she stated that her main occupation was spinning wool, and sometimes she kept animals. She was extremely pious, and appreciated by her friends. From the age of 13, she heard “her voices”, but did not tell anyone about them. Then “her voices” told her to go to Vaucouleurs to meet Robert de Baudricourt who would lead her to the Dauphin, to free France. She went there for the first time in May 1428, when she was 16 years old. “Her Lord the King of Heaven wanted the Dauphin to be made King.”
At the third attempt, Baudricourt gave her a sword and a horse and had her escorted to the Dauphin, who was residing in Chinon. She was also given men’s clothes. “The voice had promised me that, as soon as I had come to the king, he himself would receive me.”
In Maitreya’s Mission Volume II, Benjamin Creme states that Joan thought she heard the voices of Sainte-Marguerite, Sainte Catherine, Saint Michel, but that she in fact was contacted by the one ‘voice’ of her Master — Hilarion.
After a 500 km ride in 10 days, Joan arrived in Chinon on 23 February 1429. She was brought to the King and recognised him among many knights. She claimed to have a mandate from the King of Heaven to raise the siege of Orleans and have the King crowned and anointed in Reims. Charles VII received Jeanne, who told him a secret that only he knew.
The King had her examined by the clergy in Poitiers for three weeks. The church concluded that in no way did she contravene Catholic faith and that the King could accept her help.
She prophesied four things which turned out to be true: Orleans would be freed from the English, the King would be crowned at Reims, the city of Paris would return to the King’s rule, and the Duke of Orleans would be freed and come back from England.
From the beginning, Jeanne knew that she had very little time and that she would be taken prisoner. …
An initiate in contact with a Master of Wisdom
How could a 17-year-old peasant girl, uneducated, who was a nobody, living at the other end of France, in two years overthrow an institution (the ‘dual monarchy’ [the King of England also ruled parts of France]), defy the powerful University of Paris (which saw itself as the intellectual head of the kingdom of France, and of Christianity), have a king crowned who would forge the kingdom of France, transform the clan quarrels of the feudal lords into a war of liberation of a country and a people, speak such beautiful French, and dominate a court? Even the most rational minds see a mystery in her.
Jeanne had the best possible education. Her voices taught her. She had indestructible faith, the unspeakable strength that the fusion with her soul can bring to a 3rd degree initiate, supported day by day by a Master of Wisdom. She obeyed the divine and affirmed her autonomy from the Church and temporal power. She embodies the direct connection of each person with his or her soul and the divine, and the responsibility of the disciple who lives his faith into the most difficult domains, politics and war. Not only was Joan in direct and close contact with her soul, she had taken a further step in evolution and achieved a level of monadic consciousness which endowed her with an awareness of the Divine Will. She lived to serve Divine Purpose in as far as a 3rd degree initiate can encompass and express that level of Being. She became a fully soul-infused agent of the Plan of God or evolution. It was this connection which allowed Jeanne to carry out her actions with such strength and certainty that she was acting on the orders of the “King of Heaven”.
Her life also sheds light on the relationship between a disciple and a Master of Wisdom; the Master can give advice, support, but the action rests with the disciple who must fulfil their destiny. …
