Hello fellow Star Children! 

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I am Deanna Sophia, the Artistic Mystic formerly known as Danger.

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Over the past decade, I have been fortunate enough to explore profound spiritual practice through performance art, ritual, and the exquisitely grueling expression that is just good ol' human existence during the turn of the millennia. While Self-evolution is a journey rather than a destination, as I dance through my 41st rotation around our Sun, I can no longer ignore the quiet, still voice within that keeps calling me forth to step into a fuller expression in this lifetime, as what one of my earliest spiritual teachers called "A Helper." 

 

“To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers ― so many caring people in this world.” - Mister Rogers

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Helper, healer, priestess, caretaker, layperson, witch. They're all one in the same when the tools of work haven't changed since eons before any of them had any human-made, distinguishable words, definitions or origins....

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A little about the journey of how a strange, shy little girl became a fierce expression of the sacred, Divine Feminine. 

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I have always been my most comfortable on a stage, or hardwood classroom floor as a lifelong dancer. As a child, astrology, mythology, the classical arts, nature and science were fascinating areas of study in my otherwise conservative upbringing. In my teen years I began to study media production and communications. In my college years, I found rebellion as the true, punk rock, Aquarian spirit that I was awakening up to be. And as my 20s progressed, the circle became round as the Art of Burlesque entered my life. Thanks to my lifetime of classical dance training and my Bachelors in Mass Communications, it was not long before I became a full time, professional burlesque & performance artist, producer and instructor....and thereby also a path forger, community architect and storyteller. As seamless as entering & finding a place within this beautiful new artistic medium was, the Cosmos was sure to set me up with just enough unraveled threads to allow my path to journey through the most painfully paradoxical, yet divinely Self-Alchemizing adventure through Shadows & Light...and still within the daily-evolving pandem-o-volution, this path forges on...

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As a performance and media artist, my medium is nestled within the web of the Divine Feminine. And though I may identify as an Earth Witch, Nature Witch, Earth Priestess, or Red Witch (fire+blood), I've come to understand my expression is best described as that of a Catalyst. Just as fire is a frequency of energetic change, transformation, and transmutation, my Home Frequency highly resonates with the state of change. It is still shockingly, even to myself, a comfortable place of existence. I also prefer the term Catalyst over Lightworker or Shadowworker, because this binary nature doesn't fully encapsulate the totality of the field of my work.

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While there are many spiritual paths and modalities available in modern witchcraft & mysticism, I believe that Earth Magic is available to absolutely everyone who chooses to accept the validity of a force and source larger than, and undefinable by human-made words or symbols. I am an orphaned Nature Witch. There is no recent, historical record that I have yet found that points to any particular ancestor who was a studied Earth priestess. And though my BEcoming was a bit of a rough, solo landing with many tumbles, stumbles, falls, cuts & ego bruises, I honor that it just means my Ancestral Healing in this expression of my Soul's journey is to peel back that much more profoundly. I have several ancestral lineages ravaged by Christianity, Catholicism and Fascism and it is crucial to me, to utilize my deeply rooted & absolutely un-abandoned instincts, abilities and connection to Source to navigate the alignment of my own path of liberation within the grand web of liberation we weave together daily. I believe wholeheartedly that embodied presence in Self, Self-Love, Self-Actualization and Self-Alchemization is the path to better Healing the World around us. Micro Macro. As above, so below.

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My work is that of simple Nature Witchery. Elements. Fire. Earth. Air. Water. Aether. As a provocative Aquarian Sun and discerning Virgo Moon, I have a healthy awareness to unconsciously observing the status quo. I believe in questioning everything and being a lifelong learner. While I have practiced with a coven, I have found greater success as a solo practitioner, able to focus and hone in on my studies with a healthy & constructive home & spiritual life balance. As a fiery Leo Rising with Venus in Pisces, I am very much a deep feeling, extroverted introvert (or ambivert) and my pronouns are they/them/Goddess. She, her and sir are also welcome, I am a Self-partnered, non-binary person on my day to day, and most often step into my more volumous expression of the Divine Feminine as Goddess when sharing my art, practice and work with others. I am an avid gardener of both vegetables and herbs, and observe a near-daily practice of mindful meditation and yoga in addition to daily ritual. In February of 2021, I initiated into a path of structured study in the Vipassana (Insight) meditation tradition with the Mindful Meditation Teacher Certifcation Program with the highly respected, Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. I'm honored to be a scholarship award recipient for this prestigious program, which is certified by the Awareness Training Institute at the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, at Berkeley. I am absolutely enthralled with revolutionary development in brain & DNA science, discovering the parallels between my own instinctual Nature Witchery, Mindful Meditation and prefrontal cortex brain science, namely, neuroplasticity, was a game changer in my own healing process. So while brain scientist or astrophysicist has always been out of the question for me, Professional Catalyst or "Artistic Mystic" as it were, is presented herein as my embodied spiritual & Life expression.

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I always have a few books cracked at any given time on spiritual modalities, traditions, healing arts and de-colonial action from around the globe and across time, and have found many bridges of connection between most of them. I have discovered, learned and practice traditions that are of my own lineage (namely of Irish, Celtic and Czechoslovakian ancestry), and I work to continuously study and sift through these witchcraft and healing traditions too long passed through the lens of patriarchal colonialism and western imperialism. The traditions I observe uphold dignity & respect for all living & non-living creatures, beginning with honor to the Indigenous people of the Osage Nation, Otoe-Missouria and Illini Confederacy, who are the ancestors of the forcibly ceded lands occupied by present day St. Louis, MO, where I reside. I am pro-compassion, pro-liberation, pro-accountability, pro-harm-reduction, pro-restoration and pro-forgiveness. I awaken daily to embody the Dharma in action with lifelong, Wise Effort of decolonization through the practice of sacred stillness.

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