My New Good Luck Charm called Joan of Arc

I got a new good-luck charm from the thrift store this weekend.  There was something about it that called out to me, maybe her black eyes or burn-victim face, whatever, it said to me, "buy me and I'll bring you good luck." 

And so I have another spooky conversation piece that will go well with the chalk drawing my daughter made of me and her at a Dallas Museum of Art summer art class I once took her to when she was 5.  It is kind of spooky too for in her chalk drawing I look like the devil.  The art teacher said my daughter had talent, today she is an artist/art teacher and the teacher was right: I am the devil. 

The Chalk Drawing

Speaking of burn-victim faces and the devil, on this day in the year of our lord 1431 a man of God showed Joan of Arc all the torture tools he had to use on her if she continued to insist God had talked to her.  

 

The thumb smasher to smash your thumbs one twist at a time, in the name of of lord.

The Gossip mask we put on the head of woman who have been found gossiping, or talking as if she were a man, for woman who gossip or talk like a man are being controlled by the devil. 

This chair has tiny spikes on it which will cause you to bleed out, slowly enough so you have plenty of time to repent.

The breast ripper.  Need I say more?

And for woman who have had an abortion, the Kavanaugh Special (named after a 13th century knight, not our current Supreme Court man by the same name): the Clit Ripper. 

To avoid being victimized by anyone of these tools of God, all Joan had to do on this day in 1431 was admit to the priest that "God only talks to men."  But Joan wasn't playing any of that shit, and instead, she said (as we know from the church records):

"Truly, if you were to have me torn limb from limb and send my soul out of my body, I would say nothing else.  And if I did say anything, afterwards I should always say that you had made me say it by force.

I have asked my voices to counsel me whether I should submit to the Church, because the churchmen were pressing me to submit to the Church.  And my voices have told me that, if I want our Lord to help me, I must lay all my deeds before him."

 

And what did the priest say in response?  That wasn't recorded, but we do know that a few weeks later, on May 30th of the same year, Joan was burned to a stake at the tender age of only 19. 

 

My new conversation piece titled "Joan."

 ~~ Eso Terry