What is a Mermaid?

The Mermaid, half-woman, half-fish, is a powerful archetypal figure common to mythologies and folk legends throughout the world. While sacred inland springs and rivers were believed to be ruled and inhabited by water deities, sprites and nymphs, seafaring and fishing cultures across the globe associated the Mermaid with the sea. She is indeed an Icon, an enduring symbol of uninhibited sensuality or translucent innocence. Even today children-of-all-ages flock to films and animations about her, weaving new interpretations into her romantic watery web.

Countless times, sailors and fishermen have returned home to tell breathless stories about how they actually saw a Maiden-of-the-Deep. Are these stories mere fish tales? Are we who stride on two legs, careless with our garbage, air and water, forgetting so often to nurture other living creatures and so often cruel to each other, are we prepared to discount these stories as mere myth? Are these countless tellings only the drunken hallucinations of lovesick sailors? Can we discount them as mistaken sightings of dolphins' silvery play or graceful seals sunning on rocks?

Or are Mermaids real? Call it the Collective Unconscious, or call it the faint but compelling memory of Magic Times, the Mermaid has an indelible mystique! Some speculate that she might be the still-living remnant of an ancient race that Evolution, Alien Travels or Magic placed in the untrammeled ocean waters. What do you think? You are here for a reason.... and you have come to the Right Place!


We would love to hear your stories about mermaid encounters. Often, one has met and been entranced by a mermaid and may not realize so. For those of you brave enough to shake off the enchantment and send us your story, it may be posted on this site. Write to us for details on how to submit your story Here...

Whether real or not, the Mermaid serves to remind us of something we seem to have lost and that we long for at the core of our being: An intimate relationship with Nature, as intimate as being immersed in water itself, a synergy between consciousness and the physical universe, between thinking and feeling, as wafting and free and stormy and unpredictable as Mother Ocean herself. These needs are real, these longings are real, even if unsatisfied. And so the Mermaid has come to embody the ethereal feminine element, whose habitat is the powerful realm of intuition, so elemental and yet so wise.

But some cultures have seen the Mermaid as a dangerous presence, beckoning men to a watery death with songs and flirtations just as did the Sirens in Homer's Odyssey. However, most often the Mermaid is portrayed as free and innocent, having been raised far from the greedy tedium of earthbound ways. But always, whether innocent or dangerous, Mermaids have exerted a powerful allure that has intrigued us in every outpost and every isle, throughout time immemorial.

What evidence is there that such creatures really exist?


  Artist Meets Mermaid

The Wandering Artist herself, in her personal quest to search out the icons that symbolize the Eternal Feminine, swears she has come to know personally (in surprising turns of event) more than a dozen Mermaids around the World and that they are her friends. She insists they have entrusted her with creating their accurate and telling portraits and, tired of always hiding away from us, have shared with her pieces of their remarkable history and their soothing language --- all of which you can explore at this site!

Welcome to Mermaid Mystique!


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