We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brandie “East” Miracle a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Brandie “East”, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I have been creating art for over twenty years but only pursued the avenue full time three years ago when I signed with an independent publishing company. I left a healthy salary and stable benefits to walk into the unknown. I would have like to have started a bit sooner. I personally wasn’t ready for this in my twenties. But, I really think I could’ve made a good go at this full time in my thirties. However age forty was the magic number. What prevented me from taking that leap earlier was stability. I had a job that in the eyes of the world that was traditional with a promise of longevity. What I came to discover is that I would push myself to work hard to create my own version of that stability. I adapted. I learned the importance of being a problem solver.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am an Appalachian Mystic, Diviner, educator, artist, and author of occult fiction trilogy “Mercy’s Quest” and future non-fiction publication “Mary Magdalene: Through the Eyes of an Appalachian Mystic”. I am a cosmic being, born in a small Kentucky town that sits inside a meteorite crater. My childhood was spent studying under a strong matriarchal family that imparted its intuitive gifts and Appalachian Spirit practices from prior generations. One of my highest callings and greatest gifts in life is to share threads of divinity and intuition through teaching and facilitating sacred ritual spaces. Every class I teach whether it’s movement based, creative writing, or divination focused, are all rooted in sacred intention. A wild past of wonderful and sometimes unspeakable experiences, and decades of empowering others to seek their own quests, has called me to share my observations of the sacred feminine through embodiment. I’ve been reading Tea Leaves, Bones and Tarot Cards for divination since I was child. I enjoy sharing these resources with anyone who feels called to seek them. I also travel around the world sharing that knowledge through creative workshops like “Story Crafting with Tarot” or “Embodying the Queens – A Sacred Movement Series”. My debut novel is the first in an anthology that reimagines the Spirit world, the human condition, and the necessity of both evolution and devolution within our lifetimes. We live in a world full of folks seeking different pathways with this longing of simply trying to understand our purpose in this world. I feel like being from deep in the Appalachian Mountains give me an incredibly unique lens that’s slightly different than what most encounter in the wellness or creative community. I have no religious studies degree, no fancy formal education to platform from. The Archetype that is the Appalachian Mystic Woman is the feet of which I gathered my knowing. Our history is steeped in hardship that in certain ways still reflects the present. Lack of employment opportunities and county wide poverty tells a darker side of Appalachian Mountain life. Sprinkled like stars in that dark night are the people, true salt of the earth dwellers that wear their ability to survive like a badge of honor. I didn’t read about progress or betterment from a book. I watched it in real time right before my eyes. It was here I would begin to understand character development, something that would be a reoccurring theme not only in my writing but in the faces of the people who would sit at my divination table. I would see it in the bodies of my students as they would carry their triumphs and their heartaches in the way they moved. The town of my birth and it’s magnificent character would prep me to interact and create with people in ways that helped me understand and value the human experience.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

There’s a question that runs through my mind in the quiet moments. Why am I doing this? The answer always reflects what space my life is currently trying to breathe through. Somedays those answers are positive, “because it brings me joy,” “I know without a shadow of doubt this is my calling,” or “I love helping people find their own light through creative practices.” The truth of the matter is most days the answers aren’t so shiny. Choosing the pathway of artistry is accepting that you are a vessel. This open channel that feeds the art by what truth your holding close at the moment. Even the difficult moments. It’s the difficult moments that find most of us, or at least I believe, having to actually make a choice to move through that space. The truth is no one creates continuously through joy. You have to choose to move through some painful moments at times and still find that space that needs to speak through you in your art. I have created from anger and sorrow as much as I have created from Peace and love. Stagnancy has also found me often in my depths, and every time on the other side, I had a realization that I still had to “choose” to move through it. Book Two of my trilogy “Mercy’s Quest” missed the deadline for publication due to my partners diagnosis of colon cancer in 2023. I am published with a small indie press. I had an incredible amount of fear surface while navigating requests for extensions. I feared that the time and the grief would impact the outcome of the project. Well, that was kind of silly because inevitably it did. But, I wasn’t thinking about it properly. Life is always moving. I cannot control that no more than I can control the way that story was meant to continue. I felt like I was showing up half human at times barely tethered to reason. Looking back on 2023 it gifted me the ability to see my worth. It gifted me an easiness that I needed to have regarding my self and the care I put into my own soul. Fear and grief made that story something it would have never been otherwise. In the end, as most things do when you choose to persevere, it became something more extraordinary then I had initially hoped.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Fiction or non-fiction, my writing always leans heavy into character, the hero’s journey and the archetypes that support those spaces. I grew up idolizing American mythologist, writer and lecturer Joseph Campbell. I first discovered him on our local public broadcast network in the early nineties. I began to notice that the Fools journey throughout the Tarot system was remarkably similar to the things that he would speak about. I realized that patterns and the way we move through life isn’t as complex as it sometimes seems. We start as Fools with nothing finding ourselves after our first steps becoming the Magician learning how to work within the elements of the World. We become the High Priestess learning the importance of the higher mind and observation. After understanding that we have an external conscious along with an internal subconscious experience, we evolve into the Empress. It’s in that moment we begin to collaborate with the Universe to create the worlds we envision. We become the Emperor and we lock those dreams down and allow them to grow. Those dreams get thrown out into the space of the Hierophant and becomes challenged by the law of institution and man. That challenge teaches us how to move in the world and grow from that space. This is just a brief glimpse of what I talk about in my creative lectures. Whether it’s in literature with the Hero or Tarot with the Fool we are all on a journey that moves like a system through time. My goal is to show through creative writing, movement , divination readings, that we can learn that system and let it be a tool in our toolbelt of life. Given the right resources we can discover our own inner wisdom and practice recognizing these movement patterns in everyday living.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://theartisteast.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/east_s.m._author/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorEastSM/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@east_sm_author

Image Credits
Mallory Bertrand Photography Aw Snaps Photography