Stephanie's Studio

Art by Kathy Fornal Recently I took an angel workshop. I've flirted with the idea of angels for many years but I wasn't quite sure what to make of my interests. The workshop has been transformative in many ways. I learned what to call the interactions I've had with angels. I learned more about the order of angels. Most importantly, I've reestablished my workings with them in a more informed way. Some of you may be wondering what the heck I'm talking about. In some ways I wonder myself, yet I know they have been a constant in my life.  I learned in the workshop that angels do "walk-ins." This is where they appear in human form and interact with you briefly, only to be never seen again. Moreover, you must speak out loud to them. You are assigned two guardian angels for your lifetime. They are always with you. Our workshop focused on the messages of the archangels.We communed with them through divination and meditation.            ...

Quite a while ago, I wrote a piece of prose called “The Pathway Home.” It was later published in the anthology, “Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number,” edited by Carleen Brice. In “The Pathway Home” I write about many things, (my garden, my relationship with my son and planning dinner). Another aspect of this story is an encounter with a being I believed to be an angel. You know from coming to this blog, that I believe in many different spirits, gods/goddesses, creatures, orisha, lwa, sprites and more. Just the past week I’ve written about dragons and sirens as well as the goddesses. Today I am feeling gratitude for angelic beings. The back story is, that 2 days ago I wrote a blog post, called “Writer’s Rant” and posted it over at the website for women writers called She Writes. I have since that time deleted the post because it was written in anger, in a time I was feeling low and I don’t want that kind of energy coming out into the world from me. In it though, I was in a rag...

When my siren appears in my new novel, "Out of the Blue," it is not certain whether she is an angel, young woman, demon or spirit. I have had a long term fascination with water and everything within it--real, from the spiritual realm, folklore, mythology and tales stemming from the imagination. I also love thinking about the possibilities presented by angels. This particular siren that has called to me, is far from angelic. She is of the very old type, not a mermaid but more of a bird woman. What does she want, I wonder. She looks like La Sirene from the Vodou pantheon, being light skinned but not white. Today, I wait for her elusive spirit to return. I am conjuring her, so that I can carry on telling her dark tale in Chapter 2. If any of you out there in the blogosphere have any interesting tales about encounters with Sirens or La Sirene, I would love to hear from you.

This ATC features a woman from a Botticelli painting transformed into a mermaid with two angels behind her.  While I was working on it I was transported to my childhood and began pondering my connections to mermaids, the lake and the sea.  When I was growing up I spent many hours swimming in a lake fed by freshwater springs.  I would encounter all sorts of wetland creatures as I swam, like small schools of fish, turtles and even otters.  Sometimes I would get tangled in the seaweed.  Swimming and rowing were respites from a sometimes stressful life inside the house. I always found wonder and a sense of peace from observing the tides, floating and swimming deep down towards the sandy bottom of the lake.  As I grew older my uncle introduced me to the Ifa path of the Yoruba people and that was my first time of reflecting on the diverse types of mermaids of the spiritual world.  At first he thought I was a child of Oshun, but eventually it was revealed...

Hmmm. Don't know what I actually think about angels, whether they exist or not. I like to think they do. I can imagine that they are not all cutesy and sweet like often depicted, rather, they are kind of dark and perhaps conflicted because of the duality in which they exist. Wings are curious things. We companion two winged creatures in our home, an African Grey named Zazu and a screeching Nanday Conure named Chache, that is very beautiful to look at. Some times they like to hang, upside down and just flutter their wings. Can't tell what that means; if they are itchy or need airing out or they are expressing some emotion or what. Maybe it's just fun. Perhaps our angels are ourselves from another dimension in space and time (in the multiverse) who are a little ahead of us with a better perspective on what is going on and what will happen. One of my bird friends is an excellent flyer. He is the little guy--the conure. The Grey seems like he is too fat too fly. He flies like a...