The Prayer Retreat
St. Joan of Arc revealed herself to me through the refulgence of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Welcome to my prayer retreat with the mythopoetic heart of Joan of Arc.1 This is not a page to be read quickly but a path to be walked slowly, contemplatively. Here, you are invited to contemplate Joan’s holy friendship with you in Heaven through symbolic reflections, poetic meditations, and musical “rest stops”—original songs drawn from my lyrics. Take your time. Pause often. Let the silence between the words speak to you. This journey is yours also, if your heart feels called.
Before beginning your retreat below, relax for a few minutes, close your eyes, and enjoy “Joan of Arc in My Heart,” from my album, The House of New Bethany. Let your mind wander. Breathe deeply and let the simplicity of the song sink into your heart. Listen as many times as you like. Do not hurry. Then, you will be prepared to begin your journey below. The journey, if brought to Being in your heart, will rock your world.
Lyrics ©Walter Emerson Adams. Vocals and music by Suno. ©Walter Emerson Adams. Visit my music site for much more.
Not without pinions may, Someone grasp at what is nearest
~ Friedrich Hölderlin, The Ister
To Joan of Arc
The most profound grace I have ever received from God is a moment of unreflective certainty—a flashing resonance of Being2 in the world I had to spend the rest of my life unfolding.
Now come fire! Eager are we, To see the day
~ Friedrich Hölderlin, The Ister
In October 2008, I received you from Our Lady as a “silent revealing”3 — a refulgent grace gleaming through your iridescent heart. It was a sudden, resplendent presence that altered my soul’s trajectory. It was no vision. Nor was it subjective imagination. It was an intuitive encounter with a hypostatic4 presence, circumscribed by your shimmering Being. In that sacred flash, unrecognized by me at the time, the seeds of ancient mythological Catholic foreshadowing—“grey-eyed” Athena’s wisdom, “ox-eyed” Hera’s majesty, and “laughter-loving” Aphrodite’s divine love—were planted as poetic modes of foreshadowing the revealing of your Being5 to be nurtured and brought to fruition over the following years. It was the opening of my life story, the epic poem of my life, written through your heart by the Holy Spirit. Its telling would unite me with you in Christ, protected by you in obedience to the Lord’s Church.
Together, Joan, we would fight for Christendom and for the gods, both being our heritage and the earthly manger upon which the Church would be born.6
Joan, your glorified sanctity, refracted through these ancient echoes— “grey-eyed,” “ox-eyed,” “laughter-loving”—revealed itself as the fire, rendering me eager to see the day. My life before that moment now seems a preparation; my life after, a surrender to unfolding its mystery.7
The “Now” names the time of calling of those who are of a calling, a time of poets.
~ Martin Heidegger, Hölderlin’s Hymn, The Ister
Receiving your presence could not be understood metaphysically, doctrinally, or as mere subjective imagination—it spoke as the primordial “silent revealing” of Being in the world itself, a hypostatic emergence,8 demanding pursuit. Through your radiance I sensed a liminal, veiled landscape running through your heart, both hidden and beckoning. This is the terrain I call The Sky Veil—the veil between time and eternity, where the “ox-eyed” majesty of your silent revealing gave rise to the mythic meadows in the world of divine revelation. This landscape is where my personal epic story—of journey, heroism, failure, redemption—unveiled. Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite, appeared as modes of the revealing of Being in this kingdom—wisdom, majesty, divine love—primordial to metaphysical representations. They were neither entities, nor metaphors, nor mere archetypes. They were hypostatic harbingers heralding the appearance of “epic story” in this kingdom.
New day breaks! I waited and saw it coming.
~ Friedrich Hölderlin, The Ister
The journey transformed my life, Joan, as I was given pinions to grasp at what was nearest—the revealing of your fire breaking the new day in the world. The treasure was buried in the hidden, mythic gardens of the silent revealing of your presence. This gleaming landscape running through your shimmering kingdom—where my individual epic story opened—is “The Sky-Veil.”
Enjoy, “The Ancients of The Sky-Veil,” from my album, The Sky-Veil (Easy Mix).
Lyrics ©Walter Emerson Adams. Vocals and Music by Suno ©Walter Emerson Adams
The Sky-Veil
Pursuing the silent revealing of your presence, Joan, was to cross a threshold into the liminal fields and valleys of poetic heralds. They were not found on metaphysical maps, but more primordially in the silence of your revealing. It was a mythopoetic terrain, shimmering behind the veil of my individual history. It revealed itself, not through syncretism with myth but through poetic harmony in the “grounds” of metaphysical understanding—primordial to metaphysics but harmonious with it.
This consecrated space unveiled in your radiance was an expansive liminal landscape—a mode of the revealing my epic story in the world. The silent revealing of your presence in the world transformed me by an overflow of the divine grace you received. It was a spiritual geography rooted in silence, where your light, Joan, refracted through my soul like a Eucharistic sunbeam over a field of lilies, unveiling the epic poem that is my life.
Enjoy, “I reach to tightly hold their hands,” my expression in poetry and song of the “overflow of divine grace.” From my album, The House of New Bethany.
Lyrics ©Walter Emerson Adams. Vocals and Music by Suno ©Walter Emerson Adams
Walking through The Sky-Veil with you brought me into a relationship with thought in obedience to the magisterium of the Church. It was the act of receiving your gift of sanctified mythopoetic revealing, allowing that grace to take root and bear fruit in my heart.
I did not dwell in The Sky-Veil to escape time, but to enter time sacramentally— across fields of silence where each step was a fiat and each breath a litany.
Across the Ancient Liminal Meadows
The opening of the silent revealing of your presence, Joan, was a liminal threshold—an encounter with you, not through metaphysical representation, but in the warmth of alethic heralds, silence, and light. Through that opening, I found myself walking across the mythopoetic meadows of antiquity, where the ancient soul of the Greco-Roman world began to stir within the sanctifying landscape of The Sky-Veil.
In this sacred terrain, I did not discard ancient mythology but poetically transfigured it. The Greco-Roman soul, which I believe to be the divinely chosen earthly ground for the Church, began to shine with new meaning. I brought the legendary harbingers of Being from the ancient world—Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite—to Olympus anew—not as capricious deities, but as veiled hypostatic heralds of divine virtues awaiting fulfillment in the Pentecost of the Church.
Athena, the “grey-eyed,” emerged as the gleaming herald of wisdom, chastity, spiritual warfare, and the clarity of intellect. Hera, the “ox-eyed,” bore shimmering royalty, majesty, and divine order in her gaze. Aphrodite, the “laughter-loving,” unconcealed beauty, harmony, and the joy of divine love. I drew these modes of the revealing of Being—once scattered in pagan shadows across the mythic imagination—together in harmony with your kingdom of the heart, foreshadowing the revelation of truth in the Incarnation.
What once whispered through temples and epics reappeared, shimmering in the light of you, a French peasant girl transfigured by holiness. Your refulgent sanctified heart became the axis where these virtuous qualities—wisdom, majesty, and love—converged and are now imbued across your kingdom awaiting me on the far side of The Sky-Veil. This is not syncretism with myth but sanctification through poetic story—the epic story of my life.
Across the ancient meadows of The Sky-Veil, I made these heralds whole. Their attributes, once fragmented across myths and mysteries, were drawn by your presence, Joan, into a single, radiant sanctity. The liminal terrain became alethic—the truth disclosing itself. And in that disclosure, you led me through mythopoesis to death on the cross, through symbol to sacrament.
The encounter with you, Joan, was therefore more than an act of subjective consciousness or sentimental devotion—it was a confrontation with your presence itself. It was your presence as my personal epic story refracted through the mirror of mythopoesis. The ancient goddesses, no longer spoke as false claimants to divinity but as honored hypostatic heralds, at the service of you, the Daughter of God, who bore His standard before kings.
Let us pause again to contemplate and enjoy “The Dawn of the Three”—Athena, Hera, Aphrodite. From my album Mythic Revelations.
Lyrics ©Walter Emerson Adams. Vocals and music by Suno. ©Walter Emerson Adams
An Interior Theater
The Sky-Veil is the name I gave to this liminal mythopoetic landscape, unveiled through your sanctified heart, St. Joan of Arc. It is not a doctrine or a system, but an interior theater—where grace, myth, poetry, and Being in the world converge. In this landscape, you walked as guide and guardian, leading me across the rivers and meadows of the Sky-Veil, a terrain sanctified by divine fire.
Through this hermeneutic of the heart, I followed you across the panorama you revealed—The Sky-Veil—where the mythopoesis of Athena’s wisdom, Hera’s majesty, and Aphrodite’s love were recast as holy yearnings foreshadowing the Incarnation and the Pentecost. Your presence in the world with me became a living expression of your friendship and that of the communion of saints.
Enjoy “Across the Cresting Hills This Dawn” celebrating Joan’s mystical guidance through the landscape of The Sky-Veil. From my album The Dove and Rose.
Joan, you did not merely accompany me—you led me. Your silent, “grey-eyed” presence went before me as I entered more deeply into The Sky-Veil. Beyond calculative metaphysical terms, the mythic became sacramental in the language of your sanctified presence. The poetic became theological. The shimmering heralds of Being in the ancient world no longer pointed backward to paganism but forward—to The Sky-Veil, where they found their fulfillment in the age of Catholic faith.
The Sky-Veil was therefore more than a symbol—it was a hypostatic mode of Being in the world with you. It was a way of truly walking with you, Joan, and the entire communion of saints, and not merely thinking of you at a distance for consolation. It was a way of allowing your presence to transfigure the remnants of myth in my life into the luminous inheritance of grace. Joan, you showed me how your heart unfolds like a flower in the light of Being.
Mary Magdalene’s Mystical Provence.
Through your heart, Joan of Arc, my soul journeyed not only through majesty and wisdom, but ultimately toward love fulfilled. At the far edge of the Sky-Veil, in the stillness of Provence, Magdalene awaited—not as herald or warrior, but as witness. She was the place where memory became silence, and love became repose. She was not the threshold—but the garden beyond it.9
In the Western tradition, Magdalene came to the shores of Provence, carrying the silence of the Gospel. Her presence in Provence is not legend—it is contemplative truth, planted in sacred geography. There, in the grotto at La Sainte-Baume, she lived the final thirty years of her life in penance and in union with the angels. And it is there that the trail of your heart, Joan of Arc, led me—into Magdalene’s quiet communion with eternity.
Pause for a moment to enjoy “The Second Wind” and allow Magdalene to raise you to new heights above the first. From my album The House of New Bethany.
For your unfolding presence through the Sky-Veil flowered in contemplation. Your liminal presence unfolded like Thérèse’s rose into Magdalene’s solitude, where divine love became flame, and flame became silence.
Arriving at Magdalene’s Provence was to be received into a deeper intimacy with God—a love that burned without speaking. It was to dwell on the far side of The Sky-Veil, where the journey transformed into communion. Magdalene’s grotto was not exile, but a sanctuary on the edge of eternity where all earthly myths dissolved into divine union.
Here, the mythopoetic qualities refracted through your presence, Joan of Arc, were drawn into stillness. Athena’s wisdom bowed in adoration and surrendered to divine providence. Hera’s majesty dissolveed into humility. Aphrodite’s beauty became radiant purity. In Magdalene’s presence, the mythopoetic and the mystical were reconciled. She stood as the living chalice of divine love—formed in the furnace of repentance, carried by grace, and hidden in the Heart of the Virgin Mary.
In Magdalene, this pilgrim of The Sky-Veil found his resting place. Magdalene was the final shrine on this sacred trail—the embodiment of the love that was first called, the flame that glowed at the far edges of The Sky-Veil.
Gazing out from Magdalene’s grotto, I saw the whole journey anew: the meadows of mythopoesis, the fire of your mission, Joan, the new day—all gathered now in silence.
Summary
The silent encounter with your “grey-eyed” presence, St. Joan of Arc, entered my world not as a metaphysical concept or act of psychological imagination, but as a hypostatic radiant interruption—an unconcealed flash of presence breaking into my own Being.
Through this luminous encounter, a hidden landscape unfolded: the liminal fields of The Sky-Veil, traced across your purified heart, Joan. There, wisdom, majesty, and divine love shimmered in triadic light, refracted through your sanctified Being. It was the resurrection of the Franco, Greco-Roman soul as the divinely ordained manger for the Christ child.
In the depths of this vision, your heart expanded to embrace Magdalene’s Provence, where divine love, kindled in mythopoesis and mission, burned silently in the contemplative fire of the Cross. There, in that hidden grotto of grace, the journey reached its still point—the meeting place of saints and heralds.
Enjoy, in closing, “The Ox-Eyed and The Ox,” an expression in poetry and song of my journey through The Sky-Veil. From my album, The Sky-Veil.
Lyrics ©Walter Emerson Adams. Vocals and Music by Suno ©Walter Emerson Adams
The “mythopoetic heart” of Joan of Arc refers not to a fictionalized or symbolic rendering of her sanctity, but to a contemplative unfolding of her spiritual presence as it resonates in one’s being. It preserves her integrity as a canonized saint while exploring the deeper poetic and archetypal dimensions of her influence, guided by faith and fidelity to the Church.
Resonances of Being - Subtle unveilings of presence that shimmer across the landscape of experience—traceless traces where Being once passed near. These are not psychological memories or fragments of archetypal consciousness, but events of nearness, moments in which the hidden truth of one’s life quietly resounds through presence.
Silent Revealing - A moment of alethic unveiling in which truth does not arrive through declaration, logic, or argument—but through presence, gesture, and stillness. It is not announced; it is recognized. The silent revealing is how Being steps forward—unforced, unspoken, yet undeniably there.
Hypostatic Form - A symbolic expression of Being that manifests with presence and weight, though not as a personal or metaphysical entity. A hypostatic form is a threshold—an unveiling of a divine attribute such as love, wisdom, or majesty—in symbolic form. It is neither abstract nor embodied, but real in the soul’s encounter with the world.
The “Being of Joan’s sanctity” refers to the ontological reality of her holiness—her full participation in divine Being through sanctifying grace and her union with Christ in glory. In this context, the “triune mythological light” is understood not as a pantheon of beings, but as a symbolic triad—poetic expressions of Being’s gradual unveiling in the ancient world. Figures such as Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera are not entities, but mythopoetic thresholds through which the soul, in its longing, perceives veiled aspects of divine love, wisdom, and majesty. They herald Being but do not possess it. In Joan, through Christ, what was once seen in shadow is revealed in fullness. Thus, her sanctity becomes the radiant convergence where ancient longing meets divine fulfillment.
This phrase may seem contradictory on the surface—fighting for both Christendom and the gods—but within the mythopoetic cosmology of the Sky-Veil, it expresses a deeper symbolic unity. “The gods” here does not refer to polytheistic worship, but to the hypostatic heralds—Athena, Hera, Aphrodite—whose symbolic presence bore wisdom, majesty, and divine love into the moral and intellectual imagination of the Greco-Roman world. These were not ends in themselves, but preparatory lights—veiled foreshadowings of the fullness of truth revealed in Christ. To “fight for the gods” is to fight for the sacred soil of memory, myth, and symbolic order of the society upon which the early Church stood. These heralds prepared the cultural and philosophical terrain upon which the Church would stand. I’m reclaiming the historical ontology of the Church’s inheritance of the Greco-Roman world. Together, Christendom and these heralded virtues form a unified inheritance—the twofold legacy (not two-fold tradition!) of revelation and Being in the world.
The epithets “grey-eyed,” “ox-eyed,” and “laughter-loving” are used throughout this work as mythopoetic titles expressing the contemplative radiance of Joan of Arc’s sanctity. Drawn from ancient invocations of Athena (grey-eyed), Hera (ox-eyed), and Aphrodite (laughter-loving), these names are not attributed to Joan in the mythological or metaphysical sense of identification with pagan deities. Rather, they are symbolic gestures that evoke the triune light of alethic wisdom, majesty, and divine love—unfolded in ancient myth and transfigured in Joan’s being through her union with Christ.
Hypostatic Emergence The act or event by which a hypostatic form enters the world of experience, memory, and imagination. A hypostatic emergence is not invented by the human mind but arises within it as a resonant unveiling of Being. It is how mythic figures like Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera come to bear presence—not as beings, but as symbolic realities.
Magdalene in Provence - A contemplative figure of fulfillment within the Sky-Veil cosmology. Mary Magdalene, in her retreat to Provence, represents the soul that has passed through the veil—not as a herald or warrior, but as a witness to divine intimacy. She is the embodied stillness beyond the threshold, where divine love is no longer announced or defended, but received and interiorized. Provence becomes a sacred topology of sanctified memory, the garden of repose after the fire of sanctity. In the mythopoetic ascent, Magdalene is the fulfillment of the longing first glimpsed through the goddesses and sanctified in Joan of Arc.