Liane Haynes believes in angels. The 35-year-old banquet manager from Burbank, Calif., doesn`t think her faith is flaky, funny or odd. Angels guide her and work miracles in her life, she says, and that`s that.
In contrast to some enthusiasts, Hayne`s only angel-related item is her good friend Alma Daniels` ”Ask Your Angels” (Ballantine, $10). But nature abhors a vacuum, and into her cherub-free space glide the angels themselves.
”I don`t see them in visions like some people do, but I believe there are people here on Earth whose bodies the angels step into,” she said.
Haynes recently found herself stranded at 3 a.m. at a street corner, her car broken, several young men loitering at the corner.
”I was scared,” Haynes said. ”It took me a few minutes to figure it out, but I said to myself, `Angels, I`m in trouble . . . help me please.` ”
Less than five minutes after her S.O.S., a cab drove up to her car.
”What was a cab doing in that area at that time of night?” she asked.
The driver listened to her car, told her she was out of gas, took Haynes to a gas station, purchased gas for her, returned her to her car and got it running again.
”I tried to pay him and he refused. I asked him what I could do, and he said to just say a prayer for him on Sunday,” she said, pausing for an instant.
”That was an angel.”
Haynes is not alone in her belief. From Angels Gate to the Angeles crest, interest in the city`s celestial namesakes is taking wing. According to a Gallup Poll, 50 percent of the U.S. population believes in angels as increasing numbers of future-shocked Americans are turning to the angelic realm for respite and peace of mind.
Angel enthusiasts say hard times and changing values have caused the renewed interest. Skeptics point to the heavenly profits that angelic merchandise brings in as the cause behind their renewed popularity.
To believers, angels are ethereal Secret Service agents and every human being is president. Angels can comfort us when we`re sad or frightened, heighten our pleasure when we`re glad, protect us from evil and danger or help us accept the consequences of bad news, enthusiasts say.
In the last two years, angel artifacts have enchanted shoppers. Books that purport to teach how to get in touch with your angel, how to talk to your angel once you locate it and how to find the angel within you have sold briskly. Add that to angel catalogs, angel seminars, angel pins, angel newsletters and angel sightings, and it looks like the winged ones have left the cosmic back lot for the forefront of popular consciousness.
`Never the same again`
The seraphim, however, do seem to have some earthly shortcomings.
For an angel believer like Haynes, increased interest in angels is good news. As an African-American woman, however, she is troubled by the almost universal depiction of angels as white, blond and blue-eyed.
”It bothers me very much, but I think people will wake up and it will change,” she said. ”I have a friend who`s an artist, and I`ve asked him to do a black angel for me.”
Venice-based Terry Lynn Taylor, whose book ”Messengers of Light” (H.J. Kramer, $9.95) will make its appearance in January, said her experiences with angels involved African-American men. She shares Haynes` concern that popular art depicts heaven as a whites-only bastion. Of even greater concern is that the mass-market approach to angels could obscure their true message.
”They are not entertainment,” Taylor said. ”When all is said and done, though, angels really do have an effect in our lives. Once someone has become aware of angels, they`ll never be the same again. The world will change for you. It may not happen overnight, but your awareness of the unseen world will be different.”
Spirited affairs
Angels have a recreational purpose, as well. Angel teas are all the rage in Marilynn Webber`s Riverside home on Celeste Drive. People make the drive to look at Webber`s collection of more than 2,000 angels; browse through the merchandise offered in her catalog, ”Marilynn`s Angels”; and pay $4 a person for groups of 4 to 10 to have tea with a saintly twist.
Janet and Jasper Teague of Burbank took friends from Australia to tea at Webber`s home. They sat at a table set with angel plates and angel napkins and made their way through several courses, including angel food cake.
”It was very charming,” Janet Teague said. ”We thought our Australian guests would enjoy something so unusual.”
As for angel experiences, Teague says anyone with a driver`s license can claim that honor.
”When you make a trip on the freeway and make safe lane changes, I`d say your angel is watching,” she said.
For Karen Goldman, a West Hollywood angel author, peace of mind unexpectedly became a piece of the action. A near-spiritual experience at a 1981 Simon and Garfunkel concert in New York City left her exhilerated.
”I was floating when I got home,” Goldman said. ”I wrote that Simon and Garfunkel were angels, and a light bulb went off in my head.”
For months, Goldman was bombarded with angel thoughts, which she recorded in a notebook. In June 1991, Goldman took her rough draft to a Sir Speedy copier service and made one copy. Urged on by a friend, she walked into the Bodhi Tree bookstore in West Hollywood with ”The Angel Book.”
”You can`t just walk into a bookstore and try to sell your book,”
Goldman said. ”But the owner ordered 10 copies. I had to go right back to Sir Speedy and have nine more made to fill the order.”
The book sold with amazing grace. Goldman peddled it to some 50 bookstores nationwide and sold 10,000 copies in the first year, she said.
”It was the quietest book you`ve ever seen-46 pages, printed on one side, no illustrations, just black print and white pages,” she said.
In May, Simon & Schuster won a bidding war to put ”The Angel Book” into the mainstream. With a hard cover, thick paper and richly colored drawings by Anthony D`Agostino, the book`s newest incarnation retails for $17.
”I never expected this,” Goldman said. ”It`s all happened so fast, I know the angels are behind my efforts.”
Heavenly light
Eileen Freeman`s newsletter, Angel Watch, is a labor of love, she says. The Mountainside, N.J., woman says her publication helps keep everyone interested in angels in touch with each other and aware of each other`s work. ”This is unpaid work,” she said of her bimonthly newsletter, for which several hundred subscribers pay $16 per year. ”That covers costs, nothing more. That`s all I want it to do. The angels don`t want me to make money on this.”
As for her celestial resume, Freeman has a dramatic story.
After her grandmother`s death, Freeman at 5 was too afraid to sleep lest she be taken to heaven also.
”I looked at the foot of my bed and realized there was a light growing slowly. It became opaque, I couldn`t even see my doll`s bed beyond it,” she said. ”If a diamond were made of silver and the moonlight and sunlight were shining from behind it, that`s the closest I can come to describing the angel. It was scented, it was almost musical. I could have reached out and eaten it.”
The light revealed her angel.
”I looked into his eyes and he looked at me with eyes so incredibly mesmerizing and piercing, I felt the fears begin to drain out of me.”
Death ceased to scare her, she said.
On guard
What can it all mean?
”People need protection, and they`re scared,” said Rabbi Susan Laemmle of the USC Hillel Center, who describes herself as an amateur student of culture. ”They don`t have a community, they need friends, and so they`re reaching out.”
The nation`s mobile society, in which people who live and die in their home towns are the exception rather than the rule, has a chilling effect, she said.
”The world is a dangerous place, and anything we can do that will give us a sense of protection is attractive,” Laemmle said.
A glance at ancient art and literature shows angels have been around for ages.
”Basically, you`re not looking at a new trend. People are more open now to a plurality of ideas. That`s why they`re willing to look at angels,” said Carol Lozoff, whose New York-based Everything Angels catalog is in its first printing. Cards, charms, pins, posters, T-shirts, recordings and statues are selling well.
Said Lozoff: ”Economic times are hard, and things seem less stable. People are looking for something to fill their lives with joy, serenity and peace of mind.”
