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Past Issues
Encounters on
the Shaman's Path
with anthropologist Dr. Hank Wesselman, PhD.
by Dr.Hank Wesselman, P.h.D.
The Spirit Helpers


In our February 2005 column, I wrote about something unusual that happened while I was leading a travel group in Egypt--a unexpected encounter with one of the Jinn. In my experience, the Jinn (known as genies in the West) fall into the same general taxonomic category as the Faeries of Celtic-Anglo-Saxon tradition. Unlike the angelic forces and the guides found in the Upper Worlds, or the spirit helpers, power animals and elementals found in the Lower Worlds, the Faeries and the Jinn live in this world right here.


Shamans don't usually try to initiate contact with the them because recorded myths and oral traditions alike reveal that they have to make connection with us first. We have to be invited--that's correct protocol. That's the way it happened in my encounter with the Jinn.


The capacity for "spirit vision"--the ability to see or sense spirits--can be problematic for many Westerners because we live in a society in which the unseen worlds, and the citizens who reside within them, are not part of our everyday experience--except of course in dreams. For the shaman, however, the ability to perceive the spirits while very much awake is the experiential centerpiece of their practice--an ability that determines and shapes their view of reality.


The rich legacy of rock art all over the world reveals that shamans have been seeing and interacting with spirits during their explorations of the inner worlds for tens of thousands of years. We know from the last Australian aboriginal elders and from the last traditional !Kung bushmen of the Kalahari, that to make the rock art was in itself an act of magic. The pictographs and petroglyphs provided the doorway through which the shaman could approach the spirits of the animals that they wished to hunt. The shamans of antiquity learned how to journey through that symbol on the stone wall into the great dreaming of nature where they sought connection with the spirits of the animals that provided them with food, clothing, shelter, and by association with their continued existence.


But rock art had another all-important function. Our ancestors knew that the animals they hunted and killed had souls, and they understood that they had to maintain correct alignment with them so that the animals would continue to allow themselves to be hunted. This involved ceremony combined with correct intention. The making of the rock art--the symbol for bison or horse, elk or deer-- was part of that ritual, part of the protocol. It was in this way that the beauty of nature was maintained and furthered. It was in this way that all of our ancestors survived and thrived as part of that beauty across hundreds of millennia.


The shaman is the holy woman or holy man who serves as the intermediary between their people and the spirits of nature. They know from direct experience that one or more of the animal or plant spirits may decide to serve us as a spirit helper, and here we must make an important point. This sacred dynamic is not about worship. It's about relationship--one that allows us to connect, through the spirit helpers, with the power that infuses everything everywhere with vitality and life-force, enabling us to maintain, and even increase, our own personal supply.


In considering the nature and function of the spirit helpers, certain observations can be made.


Firstly, the compassionate spirits are more inclined to come into relationship with people who express high levels of personal integrity and who operate predominantly in the positive polarity on a moment to moment, day to day basis. The spirit helpers tend to avoid those who are untruthful or disrespectful in their everyday lives, who pillage and plunder in the marketplace six days a week and then pray very mightily on the seventh.


Secondly, the indigenous people know this and so they tend to live each day in the arms of the sacred. They know that each moment is a sacred moment, infused with extraordinary potential for connection with the great mystery and the making of magic.


Thirdly, the spirit helpers may take many forms. They may appear to us as moving lights or orbs, as luminous beings with sentient awareness, or they may take the archetypal shape of that animal or tree for which you have always felt a strong attraction. In doing so, they become symbols for us--symbols with associations such as the powerful lion or the magical deer, the serpent of wisdom or the eagle who brings messages from the Upper Worlds. Like our stone age ancestors, we can use these symbols as doorways through which to connect with the power and the magic, the wisdom and the message, as well as with those qualities that the spirits invite us to embody.


This statement requires a leap of faith from most Westerners because it implies that the spirits are autonomous beings with their own agenda, quite separate from the one who perceives them. The ethnographic literature confirms this to be true, revealing that the shamans in all societies hold this understanding in common.


Finally, it is also generally known and accepted that connection with these wise beings confers power to the one with whom they choose to come into relationship--and for the shaman, the name of the game is power.


Increasing numbers of Westerners in our time are choosing to explore these ancient human experiences for personal empowerment and healing, and this has given rise to the popular term "power animal." However, spirit helpers may also appear to us as the transpersonal essence of a plant or tree, the spirit of the oak (who loved the Druids) or some favorite medicinal herb. It could be an archetypal elemental being such as the water woman, grandfather fire, the wind-keeper, the earth mother, or even the cosmic sun. And speaking of grandparents, your spirit helper could just as easily be a wise old indigenous medicine woman or medicine man, or even one of your own ancestors.


The spirit helper may also take the form of a mythical creature such as the dragon or the griffon, the unicorn or Pegasus, the great winged horse who serves humanity as the deity of inspiration. In addition, the rock art of prehistory reveals that some helpers assume forms that are combinations of animal and human--the antlered humanoid deity of Les Trois Freres cave in France (15,000 BC), the minotaur of ancient Greece, the antelope men in the rock shelters of the !Kung bushmen, the jaguar man of the Olmecs, and the bird people in the art of many, many traditions.


I once heard the mythologist Joseph Campbell observe that when a new religion replaces an older one, the deities of the old religion become the demons in the new. It was in this manner that the new sky god religion of the classical Greeks replaced the old earth-focused spiritual traditions of the country folk. This is why Theseus, the Athenian hero of myth, had to journey through the labyrinth into the lower world to kill the minotaur, the (demonized) half human, half animal being who had served us for so long as a spirit helper. The image of the minotaur appears first on the cave walls of Grotte Chauvet in southern France, dated at 32,000 years ago to the Aurignacian tradition.


Scholars have suggested that it was in this same manner that the archetype of Satan (originally an angel) acquired horns and hooves in the Middle Ages--a deliberate political act on the part of the church to demonize Cernnunos, the ancient antlered or horned deity so revered by the European paleolithic hunters and later by the neolithic farmers. Cernunnos (his Gallic name) was also the masculine personification of Nature, and as such, he served as the consort of the goddess whose body was and is this sacred Earth herself. In classical Greece, this horned god was known as Pan, the All that is, a being of enormous power who was progressively marginalized and diminished by the sky gods of Mount Olympus until he became a comical drunken, lust-filled character in the myths and stories.


In considering the varied forms that we humans ascribe to the spirits and deities, gods and goddesses, I am always reminded of the French writer Anais Nin who once observed that "We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are."


This insight is reflected in a wonderful story from Tom Cowan (in his book Yearning for the Wind) about a Third Century chieftan named Brennus who invaded Greece to pillage and plunder with his army of Celtic warriors. When he saw Greek statuary depicting strong, beautiful men and women for the first time, he asked the citizenry what they were and was told they were images of the Gods. His response was to roar with laughter and proclaim "That's not what Gods look like."


No matter how the gods/spirits are perceived, the job of the spirit helper is to provide you with power, protection, and support upon request, and our collective mythologies reveal that they have been doing this on behalf of humanity for a very long time. In the initial stages of our relationships with them, they may also serve us as teachers, conveying knowledge to get us going in the right direction. The indigenous peoples know that power and knowledge are connected. When you have knowledge, you have power. And when you have power, you have knowledge.


It is necessary to make another important point here. The spirit helpers are NOT the spirit guides. There is confusion about this in the transformational community in which the word "guide" is used in a kind of generic way to refer to the spirits. The guides, correctly defined, are master teachers who live in the Upper Worlds. They are figures of grace who we will discuss in future columns.


Many who come into my shamanic workshop groups discover that they have more than one spirit helper. This is the norm rather than the exception. Shamans collect spirit helpers much like we collect possessions. This is because the more spirits we have in our "personal employ," the more we can do and experience. The helping spirits have qualities and abilities that distinguish them from each other. Some are great at providing protection; others may serve as teachers or as sources of information; still others may help with healing work. You will discover what your spirits' abilities are through relationship with them.


My small book The Journey to the Sacred Garden includes a CD with two 30 minute tracks--one of monotonous drumming in the theta brain wave frequency, and the other recording the dry, rhythmic whisper of the rattle. Both tracks are designed to help you learn how to expand your conscious awareness so that you can enter the dreamtime and find connection with your spirit helper(s). The book contains helpful instructions in doing so.


Rest assured that if you have asked specifically for a helping spirit, that is what your intentions will draw toward you. This means that you don't have to worry about any jokers or negative spirits showing up. You get what you ask for, and your spirit helpers may have been waiting around for a very long time for you to become aware of them and invite them back into your life once again. They have your well-being at heart, and one or more of them may have special knowledge about the nature of your personal destiny. If you ask them to do so, they may impart this knowledge to you.


Those who have read my autobiographical trilogy Spiritwalker, Medicinemaker, and Visionseeker, know of my relationship with a spirit I have called the Leopard Man. I gave "him" this name because of "his" tendency to assume an upright bipedal posture when in my presence, becoming a curious composite of human and leopard. Although a Western psychologist might claim that he is a projection of my own creative imagination, I know with absolute certainty based in direct experience that the Leopard Man is the group oversoul of the large species of cat known to science as Panthera pardus--the leopard.


In Spiritwalker, I wrote about how this spirit initially came into my life during childhood as an imaginary friend at New York's Central Park Zoo. I also recounted how he returned as a spirit helper in my early 40s, connecting me across time with the one known as Nainoa, my once and future descendent self. In Medicinemaker, I elaborated upon my relationship with this spirit in a chapter titled The Leopard Man. My painting of him graces the cover of my third book Visionseeker (go to <www.sharedwisdom.com> and click on the gallery page.)


In my next column, I am going to share a story with you--the account of an encounter with the leopard man that reveals how these spirit helpers may be of great service to us, and to others.


Until that time, I would like to invoke the spirit of my great Hawaiian friend, Kahu Hale Makua, and extend to each of you the light and the love of the ancestors, The Source of Life, rejoicing in the Power and the Peace, braided with the cords of Patience, revealing the tapestry of Aloha.

--and warm thoughts--Dr Hank


Dr. Hank Wesselman, P.h.D
Anthropologist, Shamanic Teacher, Healer, & Author

Dr Hank Wesselman PhD., holds advanced degrees in anthropology and zoology from the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Colorado at Boulder.


Since 1971, he's conducted research with an international group of scientists, exploring eastern Africa's Great Rift Valley in search of answers to the mystery of human origins--fieldwork that has allowed him to spend much of his life living and working with traditional peoples, rarely, if ever, visited by outsiders.


During this time, he has worked with many notables including Prof F. Clark Howell, Dr Don Johanson, "Lucy's" discoverer, as well as members of the famous Leakey family.


He is currently engaged in fieldwork in northern Ethiopia with the Middle Awash Research Project headed by Prof Tim White, where he is reconstructing the paleoenvironments of sites dated between four and six million years old that have yielded the fossilized remains of humanity's earliest ancestors.


Dr Wesselman has taught anthropology for the University of California at San Diego; the University of Hawai'i at Hilo's West Hawai'i campus at Kealakekua; California State University at Sacramento; American River College and Sierra College in northern California; and Kiriji Memorial College and Adeola Odutola College in Western Nigeria, where he first became interested in indigenous spiritual traditions while living among people of the Yoruba Tribe as a US Peace Corps Volunteer during the 1960s.


Dr Hank (as his students call him) is also a shaman in training, now in the 23rd year of his apprenticeship. His autobiographical trilogy Spiritwalker, Medicinemaker, and Visionseeker describes an ongoing continuum of visionary experiences that began spontaneously out in the bush of southern Ethiopia in the 1970s, resumed in Hawai'i in the 1980s, and continue to the present day.


Combining the sober objectivity of a trained scientist with a mystic's passionate search for deeper understanding, Hank's books and teachings contain revelations about the nature of reality, the self, as well as the shaman's spiritual worlds.


Since 1994, he has offered seminars and training workshops at many internationally-recognized centers such as the Esalen Institute in California, the Omega Institute near New York, and the New Millennium Institute in Hawai'i.


Hank's newest books include the Journey to the Sacred Garden: A Guide to Traveling in the Spiritual Realms, and Spirit Medicine: Healing in the Sacred Realms (co-authored with transpersonal medical practitioner and soul retrieval specialist Jill Kuykendall).


He currently serves on the advisory board of the Society for Shamanic Practitioners, is a member of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, the American Anthropological Association, the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness, and is featured in Traveling Between the Worlds: Conversations with Contemporary Shamans by Hillary S Webb.


In addition to his scientific publications, he is at work on a book about his expeditionary field experiences in Africa.


He has also written a small book for children: Little Ruth Reddingford and the Wolf.


Contact info and workshop schedule:

www.sharedwisdom.com





Notes from Dr. Hank


My wife Jill and I will be leading another PowerPlaces Tour duringthe first two weeks of June in 2005.


This trip will be to Greece where we will stay in wonderful hotels while we celebrate life and and travel to the famous oracles at Dodona, Delphi and several other less well-known sites. It is my hope that we will be able to connect with the fields of power and knowledge that still permeate these sacred localities. We will also visit the temple of the great healer Aesklapios at Epidauros, one of the first holistic treatment centers in the ancient world, where we will attempt toconnect with his great soul as I did with the Jinn.


 We will also spend time in Athens, of course, before heading out into the Aegean Sea to the island of Mykonos and to Delos, the ancientcenter of the Greek spiritual world, for more inner fieldwork. Then we will head south to the mysterious island of Crete where we will culminate our travels visiting other well-known places of power. Allow me to say that these tours are simply life-changing. They are also tremendous fun. If you are interested in joining us, please connect with PowerPlaces Tours at 800-234-8687.

There is also a direct link from our site
www.sharedwisdom.com
to their's.


Also of note--Jill and I will be offering two of our week-long Visionseeker training retreats before the Greece trip. Visionseeker 1 will be held on the Big Island of Hawai'i April 3-9 (call 808-885-2181 or email <nmi@aloha.net> for info). The Visionseeker 2 Spirit Medicine workshop will be held at the famous Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California (831-667-3003) the week before Easter March 20-25. These workshops are not prerequisites for the Greece trip, but they will certainly add to it... and they will expand your world considerably.They tend to fill quickly so please consult your schedules.











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