Magickal Women Conference 2024
I am extremely pleased and incredibly honoured to announce that I will presenting a lecture as a Speaker for the Magickal Women Conference during its third edition in June this year !
This will be my first in-person conference in the occult world, and my first done in the English language as well: I am both thrilled and delighted to be a part of the 2024 panel amongst talented peers, friends, colleagues and inspirations alike.
The Venue
Saturday, 22 June 2024
The Birmingham & Midland Institute
25 speakers on the history, practice, and art of women in the occult
Catered lunch
(In)famous raffle
Vendor room
Jules Bastien-Lepage, Joan of Arc, 1879
The Lecture
L’Arbre-aux-Dames : Joan of Arc as Saint of the French Fairy Faith
The figure of Joan / Jeanne of Arc, France’s most remarkable patron saint, is in our collective memory inseparable from a host of iconic imagery: striking depictions of a virgin warrior, clad in armour and holding banner or sword, spring to mind at the mere evocation of her extraordinary story, and her unwavering faith as well as staunch determination are, to this day still, a beacon of inspiration to many. In this presentation, however, we aim to present a lesser known Joan – the one who, before she answered her fateful calling, was a child touched by something Other, whose initiation corresponds to her reaching the age of puberty. If Joan of Arc is, undoubtedly today, a Catholic saint, the circumstances surrounding the appearance of her many voices and visions are enigmatic, disconcerting even, and profoundly tied to French regional fairy lore, embedded in the very landscape of Joan’s local vicinity. Indeed, crucial in underpinning the myth of the Maid of Orléans, is the overlay of French Christianisation upon the remnants of an animist, atavistic fairy cultus. Shifting the narrative and presenting compelling evidence on what or who, exactly, may have addressed Joan of Arc under the so-called “Ladies’ Tree” (Arbre-aux-Dames) of Domrémy, we will drink deep from the miraculous waters of the “Well of the Thorn” shrouded in its shadow, and deliver thought-provoking insights, rigorously cross-examined with historical records, on Joan of Arc framed as potential “Fairy Saint” – investigating how, as modern practitioners, we may be able to see her as a venerable primogenitor of the French fairy resurgence or fairy reliance, and a common ancestor of the French fairy seers, teaching us something about the sovereignty of the land.