Jeanne, Marianne & Mlle. Lenormand

Recently, Morgan and I began a new podcast series on Mystery Channel about the famous French celebrity fortune-teller, Mlle Lenormand. You can listen to those episodes [here]. As our listeners know, we don’t script our shows. We let the conversation unfold like a kitchen-table exchange, full of surprises, and you, the audience, get to eavesdrop.

Jean d’Arc

In the very first episode, I drifted into the French Revolution and the figure of Marianne. For a moment her name escaped me, and I instinctively reached for Jeanne d’Arc. Both women, in their own ways, reveal how France loves to see the feminine as a revolutionary symbol. But the layers go much deeper.

Myth and Politics

Myths and symbols are all too eagerly conscripted for political ends.. They have a mysterious function and rulers, institutions, and revolutionaries alike have always sought to harness them.

Think of Maria de’ Medici, Queen of France, painted not as a mere woman but as Minerva, goddess of wisdom and war. Or her son, Louis XIV, the Sun King, staged in Versailles and in portraits as Apollo, radiant and divine. These weren’t innocent flourishes of artistic imagination. They were political theatre. By cloaking themselves in the robes of gods, they claimed cosmic sanction: wisdom for Maria, solar sovereignty for Louis. The message was clear>>>their rule was not only earthly but divinely ordained.

Louis XIV> Sun King Apollo

Maria de Medici>Queen of France as Minerva

The same dynamic runs through the stories of Jeanne and Marianne. Symbols are appropriated, reshaped, and redeployed. Saints become rebels. Allegories become weapons.

Jeanne d’Arc – The Virgin-Warrior

Jeanne (1412–1431) appeared in the crucible of the Hundred Years’ War. A peasant girl turned commander, guided by visions, who saved France by lifting the siege of Orléans. She was purity and defiance fused into one.

Her archetype was that of the virgin-warrior: innocent yet fierce, echoing Athena and Minerva. Burned at nineteen, she was reborn as myth. First a martyr for the monarchy, later a heroine for the people. By the 19th century, in the age of Romantic nationalism, Jeanne was reclaimed as a female-Robin Hood>>>a rebel-saint for everyone, monarchist or republican alike.

Marianne – Liberty with a Phrygian Cap

Three centuries later, the Revolution needed its own icon. It found her in Marianne: a mother, warrior, and allegory of the Republic.

Marianne’s name itself was a provocation>>> a fusion of “Marie” and “Anne”, sacred names tied to the Virgin Mary and Saint Anne. By twisting them into Marianne, revolutionaries created a secular saint of the people, a counter-figure to both crown and church.

The Enlightenment was far from rabidly atheistic in the beginning; rather, spirituality was wrested away from the institution of the Church. Suddenly, value was placed on magic, magnetism, and occultism >>>themes we will explore in depth in upcoming articles and podcasts.

Most striking is her Phrygian cap>>>the red liberty cap. To modern eyes, it’s a quaint emblem of revolution. But its roots go far deeper. In Roman times it was the cap of freed slaves, the mark of initiation into liberty. In older mystery traditions, the cap symbolized rebirth: a sign that one had passed through ordeal and emerged transformed. On Marianne’s head, it proclaims not just political freedom but spiritual initiation>>>the collective initiation of a people into a new order.

Jeanne and Marianne: Two Faces of the same Nation

Placed side by side, Jeanne and Marianne reveal two comparative archetypal masks of France:

 

Aspect - Jeanne d’Arc (15th c.) 

Role - Savior of monarchy

Archetype - Virgin-warrior, divine maiden, liberty

Symbolic Echo - Athena, Minerva, Virgin Mary, Valkyrys

Cultural Use - Sanctified icon, folk heroine

Aspect- Marianne (18th c.)

Role - Embodiment of the Republic

Archetype - Mother-warrior, liberty

Symbolic Echo - Libertas, Roma, mystery traditions

Cultural Use - Allegory of the people, civic emblem, folk heroine

 

Together, they show the perennial pattern of the feminine as vessel of national destiny. Jeanne sanctifies the old order; Marianne consecrates the new. Both carry the eternal archetype of the woman as protector.

 

From Marianne to Marie Anne: The Fortune-Teller’s Name

Which brings us back to Mlle Lenormand. Her own name, Marie Anne, echoes the symbolic charge of Marianne. Whether by coincidence or intention, she carried in her very name the polarity of sacred and rebellious femininity.

Lenormand, who read for emperors and queens, embodied yet another face of this tradition: the woman as seer, as oracle of the nation’s fate. Where Jeanne wielded a sword and Marianne a banner, Lenormand held a deck of cards>>> but all three channels led to the same archetypal well.

 

Symbols are like a sponge…

From Apollo at Versailles to Minerva on the throne, from Jeanne’s sword to Marianne’s Phrygian cap, the lesson is clear: symbols never rest. They are stolen, recycled, reborn. Monarchs turn into gods, rebels into saints, fortune-tellers into oracles.

And perhaps that is why we keep returning to them. Because in every age, behind the politics and the propaganda, the archetype endures>>> whispering of something older, wilder, and infinitely deeply human.

👉 Want to hear more? Dive into our Mystery Channel podcasts

{https://open.spotify.com/show/1TMRXkRQ13TBAQLNqxhZxO?si=ahRuuucaTCuaf0X2tQfzMQ}, 

where Morgan and I unpack these archetypes in real time, letting history, myth, and symbol collide like sparks at a kitchen table.

Björn Meuris

Symbol Detective