A Message Down St Michael's Way.

Anna M in Villefranche, Nice, 2013.

Anyone who has followed my blogs long enough will know that I was in Nice three years ago with the Anna M. I also have a niece living thereabouts. Presently, I look across the sea to the south-east, across that land that I love, and am appalled. We may be getting hardened to such dreadful events, but this particular atrocity struck like a blow in the solar plexus! How are we all going to settle down to enjoying the good life this summer?

As a matter of fact I felt rather sorry for M. Valls, as he stood on the Promenade des Anglais being booed. What is he supposed to do? We’ve heard all the nous sommes en guerre stuff and President Hollande’s appeals for national unity. Now the Boss looks more bewildered and impotent than ever. The aircraft carrier and bombers have been dispatched to Syria, the State of Emergency in place for months. It is hard to see what’s left, that is any way compatible with Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Yes, there are endless security measures that may be taken, but they tend to heighten the atmosphere of fear, hatred and insecurity in which evil men thrive, and who will find a way to ratchet it up.

If it goes on like this, the dream of Lib, Eg, Frat may not stop a certain future Mme Présidente from rounding up all young men of Arab extraction and putting them in concentration camps, or let's say -'centres for re-education', or alternatively sending them out of the country so that they can go off and fight for Isis. There is a certain horrible logic to things, after all…. Why not go for the Final Solution? Get the Force de Frappe on the job, drop the bomb on the lot of them! Les Anglais might help with those submarines of theirs, and maybe President Trump will be in the White House to offer his support!

After all the Middle East is all desert anyway, pretty uninhabitable and what with the wars and also with climate change, getting rapidly worse especially while everyone these days is apparently too distracted to think seriously any more about stopping it! And we found out long since that it’s not on to let them into Europe, didn’t we?

Is there an alternative to such a scenario? How about a little French logic, for starters; let us define the problem. What are we up against? Just suppose we try calling it simply spiritual evil? We might then go on strangely to admit that no amount of material power, technology, psychology is capable of overcoming it. Horrible, unthinkable admission, to some! We may even be reduced to taking words from Christ; for a start, ‘this kind of evil spirit can only be driven out by prayer and fasting!’

Well, Notre Dame is still there; it’s a small step for a man, though it may be a giant step for a socialist French President. You too can do it, M. le Président: on your knees and beg Our Lady, all the Saints and all the Holy Angels to deliver us from the Evil One; St Michael the Archangel, do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God thrust Satan down to Hell, and with him all the wicked spirits that wander through the world for the ruin of souls! How come it sounds so outlandish and impossible? Largely because the French Revolution set up that secular trinity of Lib, Eg, Frat.

But here is the most outlandish and impossible part - many people, present as well as past, can testify that such prayer works, which is more than can be said for revolutions! One might recall the relationship that St Joan of Arc had with St Michael.* How about some more advice from the Gospel? ‘Before you take the splinter from your brother’s eye, take the beam from your own! Then there is always ‘By their fruits shall ye know them'.

As I’ve said before, one little amusement that I indulge is to ask French people what they think of their Revolution; would they call it successful, in retrospect? This question generally evokes the same kind of bewilderment that is so familiar on the face of M. Hollande these days. One is not used to thinking about it. Well, we got our Republic out of it,  is about all that may be said.

Yes, at the cost of a lot of murder and mayhem, which ruined and permanently weakened France, and ended up in the rule of a tyrant who could look on a field of corpses, young men whom he had led into futile battle, and say “Bah! Une nuit de Paris remplacera tout cela!” (‘One night in Paris will replace that lot!’) And they still call him ‘un grand homme’! Quite some beam in the eye, and the more so because one can see there were some noble aspirations in it all, even though the Lib, Eg, Frat did not quite come off.

At aother time when Europe had fallen into chaos, long before the Ancien Regime and the horrible ensnarement of religion with power politics of those days, humble men set out from remote Irish monasteries to remind the Continent of what already was its ancient heritage. In those so-called Dark Ages, they travelled broadly speaking along the St Michael/Apollo Axis.

It actually runs from Skellig Michael off Kerry, through St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall and Mt St Michel in Brittany, on through various eminent churches and shrines associated with that Archangel messenger of God across France, come to think of it, not far from Nice, on through Italy and to Greece. There the line also strangely passes through some famous places associated with another bright and shining divine messenger, Apollo, notably his birth-place at Delos and his oracle at Delphi. After that it goes on to Mount Carmel, a place long associated with hermits and seers, where the Hebrew prophet Elija discomfited the 250 prophets of Baal, according to 1Kings 18 vs20-36.

Mosaic in Ostia

Delphi was to the Ancient Greeks the navel or centre of the world, where Apollo could be consulted through the Oracle, and many people travelled far to do so. The consonance with dolphin is not fortuitous, for Apollo was said to have come there in the form of a dolphin. He slew the Python, a serpent or dragon that had lived there at the world’s navel, which reminds us of the warrior-archangel Prince of the Heavenly Host who thrust Satan down to Hell, and rescued the Christ-child from the dragon that threatened to devour him at birth, according to the Book of Revelation.

There's much more about St Michael and ley lines, including one up through England from St Michael's Mount; so much rubbish to those children who claim to be of the Enlightenment. One might be tempted to call them endarkened! At least, as every sailor knows, there is no arguing with physical facts, such as rocks! There they are, in a line across Europe, eminent places associated with St Michael from long ago. How on earth did it come about? I’ll leave you to do the googling, if you are interested**. Funnily enough, this little island of Sherkin is also pretty much on that line. I send my small voice along it to say: Fille Ainée de l’Eglise, ressouviens-toi de ton vrai héritage.***  

* <http://angels.about.com/od/Famous_Saints/fl/The-Relationship-of-Archangel-Michael-and-Saint-Joan-of-Arc.htm>

**You might start with <https://lucaamendola.wordpress.com/2016/01/04/the-st-michael-axis/>,

though I do not altogether agree with the comments!

*** 'Eldest daughter of the Church, remember your true heritage.'