Historical Paris is a city filled with ornate churches and the extraordinary power or women. When I travelled to the City of Light in 2019 to research Woman On The Wall, I understood.
Knowing it was my father’s birthday, I lit a candle for him at Basilique Notre-Dame Des Victories. More than 37,000 ex-votos, devotional artifacts that take their name from the Latin “ex voto suscepto,” or “from the vow made”, covered the walls of the 400-year-old church. I found myself overcome with the urge to pray. Despite my own aversion to organized religion, I wondered if the power of belief could draw even the most profound disbeliever down onto their knees.
This beautiful minor basilica in Paris has been a pilgrimage site for those who pray to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for hundreds of years.
Time and time again over the coming weeks, Mary and other feminine figures would appear to me in different places and ways, transforming a trip to France into a spiritual experience filled with the extraordinary power of women.
Mine wasn’t one of conversion, but one of profound reverence for the stories of women within the ancient world. Their stories remain hidden in plain sight if one knows where to look.
Left with a sense of wonderment, I found myself wandering Paris a bit until the grand mishmash of architecture that defines Église Saint-Eustache came into full view.
Église Saint-Eustache
I’d read of its stunning sanctuary but honestly only went because the gentle hand pushing me along did so in that direction. From the moment I stepped into the vestibule, I lost all sense of time and the outside world.
While the other visitors made their way to the right to admire its Gothic flying buttresses, rose windows, and breathtaking art, I found myself speechless and enraptured in the Chapel of the Virgin.
There, amongst the handful of faithful, the Virgin rose up and I once again found myself before the Great Mother and her child, wide open and listening amidst absolute grandeur.
I stood amongst sacred geometry from every belief system intricately woven into the designs.
On the towering walls, ancient goddess and Sibyl figures with doves and serpents sat woven into the tapestry of Christian stories told through art.
The stunning Cosmati-style floors that adorn the walkways of Renaissance-era churches across Europe made me gasp (I have a thing for Cosmati). These floors were crafted with the sacred stone taken from ancient temples dedicated often to their own Great Mother. According to the anecdotal accounts, they mark the path which clergy must walk to reach the higher plane. They are rumored to have deep sacred feminine roots.
The Conciergerie
Through the remainder of my Paris afternoon, I visited iconic sites. At Sainte-Chapelle and the Conciergerie, I sought out small stories and found myself rewarded.
At the Conciergerie—a place that disturbed me beyond explanation—I found myself locking eyes with a woman in the lower-level chapel.
I have to be straight with you. Following a day of incredible cathedrals and spiritual guidance, I had very little left for such a place. Especially its most famous inhabitant—Marie Antoinette.
I’ve never been a fan of her. Therefore, the absolutely horrifying history of the Conciergerie as a prison didn’t improve that condition. Later in my research trip, I ended up at a place that spent a century and a half as a prison after the French Revolution. My experience there proved extraordinarily different. The effort at the prison seemed to be at preserving the dark spirit of death and execution.
Back to our woman hanging on the wall. She never waited for me to acknowledge her.
“We are all the Woman On The Wall,” she said to me. “Never forget.”
