From Beignets to Breakthroughs
How a trip to New Orleans launched my spiritual awakening.
Dear readers,
I’m thrilled to announce my first guest post to the Mercurial Girl blog & newsletter! I’m partnering with Keisha of Liberated Creatives on a DIY oracle card workshop focused on the collage medium. In a moment of divine timing, Keisha pitched the workshop idea to me during when I had just started making my own collage oracle cards. I think there is such an accessible intuitive advantage to this medium, it just makes perfect sense. Here’s Keisha’s inspiration behind the workshop:
How a trip to New Orleans helped me with perfectionism and launched me into a spiritual awakening.
By Keisha McMillen, Liberated Creatives, 23 June 2025
Spring 2024 was filled with beignets at Cafe Du Monde, swamp tours, catching beads at the Mardi Gras parade, Zulu Coronation Balls, and mystic experiences. Ah, New Orleans! It was a bucket list trip for me. I could go on and on in greater detail about the trip, but I want to focus on the Wangechi Mutu solo exhibit that was displayed at the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Wangechi Mutu is a Kenyan visual artist known for her collage-based work that explores womanhood, animals, plants, and African diaspora cultures and traditions. Her work was mesmerizing, launching you into a narrative daydream. I investigated each artwork to discover the materials and how they were used. I compared my findings to the descriptions I studied. I didn’t know collage artwork could look like this while embodying someone’s life story, and yet, there was a feeling so familiar, as if I was one of the characters presented in the art.
Returning home from my trip, I did a deep dive reading articles, watching videos, and absorbing Mutu’s span of work. As a performing artist, I’ve never been comfortable with visual art like drawing or painting, but to my surprise, I found myself dabbling in collage and mixed media. I found it relaxing; it was like putting a puzzle together that allowed for various outcomes, and all were correct. The pressure and fear of trying to get my vision to be perfect were fading. While thrifting for materials, I found a card-sized piece of paper and thought, “I could do something with this.” I wanted to make a collage that represented leadership, courage, and authenticity. Like Mutu, I used images that incorporated womanhood, animals, and the African diaspora. On the back of the art, I wrote down my inspired keywords. When the piece was done, I asked myself, “Did I just make an oracle card?”
I had never used oracle cards before, but I know that they’re used for insight, guidance, and clarity through intuitive interpretation. Was that not my intention for this collage piece? While in New Orleans, I lowkey wanted a Harry Potter-like moment where a mystical being would say, “You’re a witch, Keisha!” But it’s on brand for me that an art exhibit would awaken a creative power that was already in me.
Register for Liberated Creative’s DIY Oracle Card-Making Workshop in collaboration with Astrologer, Misty Lane from Mercurial Girl Astro here!
