High On Angels -- Angels Have Swept Past Ufos And Ghosts As Our New Spiritual Liaisons

They're everywhere, perched up there on your shoulder, whispering advice, planting hunches, delivering heavenly messages.

Call your mother. Microsoft looks good this week. Prepare for the millennium. Watch out for that truck, pal.

Angels have swept past ghosts, space aliens and ancient spirit-warriors who growl in English accents as the metaphysical envoy du jour, speaking to the masses from beyond the veil.

And the masses are listening.

According to a Time magazine survey, 69 percent of us believe in angels, 46 percent think there's at least one guardian angel for everybody and 32 percent say they've felt an angelic presence in their own lives.

Cherubim and seraphim are flitting about everywhere these days. Go to the movies and see the angels help the home team win at baseball. Flip on the TV and see them save lives and solve crimes. Check out the boutiques specializing in angel knickknackery. Read all about 'em in magazines, newspapers and books.

Angels have their own section at University Book Store, right up there with "science" and "self-help." That's because angelica sells: Betty Eadie, a local writer, has seen her book "Embraced by the Light" on the bestseller list for more than 70 weeks.

Eadie says she was inspired to write by a spirit who woke her up and ran a copy of the book through her head, "like a tickertape."

Eadie may call it a spirit. But the experts say that's classic modus operandi for angels. Eadie's not special, they add - we all have angelic counsel.

So who's up there trying to rouse you into action, helping you through the day? How do you call up him, her, it or them for a talk about violence on the streets and next week's winning lottery numbers?

It's not as difficult to commune with the angels as one might think, says Howard Wimer of the Inner Peace Movement, although you have to be sensitive to some mighty subtle messages.

Wimer and some 50 psychics - they prefer to call themselves "sensitives" - from the Pacific Northwest will show how it's done this weekend at a psychic fair at Seattle Center.

"The idea is to show people where their strengths are and how they can work with their guidances (another word for angels)," Wimer says.

You just have to stop ignoring premonitions, intuitions, hunches, random thoughts and little chills that creep up your arm now and then.

Angels have been trying to show us the way for more than 3,000 years, according to angel experts, an odd collection of true believers who include theologians like the Rev. Billy Graham and psychics like Wimer.

Angels as messengers

The Persians, Babylonians and Sumerians believed in angels, and references to angels as messengers from God are found in the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Bible mentions them some 300 times.

But sacred history doesn't explain today's proliferation of heavenly hosts - a secular crew that causes some discomfort in Christian pews. They're in part an offshoot of the New Age interest in the spiritual that took flight in the '60s - remember mantras and "Jesus Christ Superstar?"

The angels of the New Age have moved into the theater, too. In the first part of the Broadway hit "Angels in America," which begins a six-week Seattle run Oct. 7, an angel introduces The Millennium.

Which scholars say does explain today's angel-mania.

Every time the calendar says we're about to mark another 1,000 years, they note, people start pondering the mystical, the metaphysical, Armageddon, the Apocalypse.

That is not to say your guardian angel bears much resemblance to the fearsome warrior-angels of the Bible or the hideous legions of Satan's fallen angels they battled.

"We don't get involved in theology or dogma," says Wimer. "We don't try to answer all the questions. But your angels have been there with you from the beginning. They're always good, always there to help you, but you have to be willing to listen. When a person goes out and starts shooting up the streets, it's obvious somebody's just confused and not listening. They won't interfere with free will."

The Inner Peace Movement has been around since 1964, exploring the supernatural. The nonprofit movement claims more than 80,000 participants who attend study groups to learn how to get in touch with their "inner gifts."

Inner Peace psychics have incorporated angels into their gift box of tarot cards, auras, crystal balls, palms, personal objects and tea leaves to be read for glimpses into the future.

The angels do the work, Wimer says, through the spiritual gifts we all share: prophecy, vision, intuition and feeling.

Wimer explains it this way: "Basically, we get impressions from our angels, who get impressions from your angels."

But you don't necessarily need a psychic to deliver the message.

Personal angel-mail is delivered dozens of times a day, Wimer says. Remember when the phone rang and you knew it was your brother before you answered? Remember that brilliant idea you had at work? Or the dream that seemed so real? Or the hand that came out of nowhere and shoved you out of danger?

Everyone has hunches and moments of intuition. Fortune magazine, in its Aug. 22 issue, says business leaders have to learn a new skill. Fortune calls it "reflexion," or listening to "the voice within."

Wimer calls it angels.

Angels are pure energy, believers say, and their messages are usually like business hunches. But they can get physical if they have to.

A push from an angel

It was a shove that first got Janet Sierer's attention. Sierer, national promotional coordinator for the Inner Peace Movement, says she was walking along The Ave in the University District one day when she felt a hand push her across the street. When she looked back where she'd been, she saw a man with a gun.

"I knew he was going to shoot the next thing he saw," she says, "and it would have been me."

Sierer also had a visitation, at the foot of her bed, by an angel who said - in that clipped voice of authority that has marked angel messages throughout history - "Your timing is off."

For the next week Sierer experienced odd little chills - tingles, really - up her arms. When she'd open her Bible, meaningful phrases would leap out at her. She envisioned herself on a farm, pitching hay, something she'd never done.

Within a year, Sierer says, she was in Iowa, at a country retreat, learning about her spiritual side.

While there, she pitched hay.

"I had to have a visitation," she says, "because I was ignoring my spiritual realities."

Such stories abound in meetings with believers. Angels have shown them the way, performed medical miracles and rescue operations, consoled them through near death experiences.

"You just learn to trust these things," Wimer says. "It's usually not a big thing. It's subtle. It happens quietly. You just have to listen for them."

------------ PSYCHIC FAIR ------------

The Inner Peace Movement will have a psychic fair from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. tomorrow and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday in the Snoqualmie Room at Seattle Center.

There's a free introductory lecture every half hour, but it will cost $15 for three readings from a psychic of your choice.