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Encounters on
the Shaman's Path
with anthropologist Dr. Hank Wesselman, PhD.
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by Dr.Hank Wesselman, P.h.D. |
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The Bead
My narrative this month is for this Christmas season, and it is inspired not by our ongoing political hoo-hah, but rather by something that happened in my life almost 37 years ago—something that has remained with me as a spiritual focus since that time—something that utterly changed my life.
In sharing this with you, the reader, this is my gift to you in this holiday season. And I might add that it has never been shared before. So it is special…
We might begin by observing that what we bless with our creative acts, as well as with our thoughts and our words, blesses us in return. In this vein, we might also say something about prayer, for these are words of power that we may speak aloud or in our hearts when we wish to talk to the gods, including our own immortal self-aspect.
Interestingly, the word for ‘prayer’ in Old English is ‘ bede’ or ‘bed’—the origin of our word ‘bead.’ When you string your beads, your string your prayers, and the beads then become objects of power imbued with your words and intentions. This, of course, is no news to anyone who uses a rosary or prayer beads, but allow me to share a short account about how a bead of great power came into my life in an interesting way.
In the early 1970s, I was a member of a scientific research group called the Omo Research Expedition that was based in Nairobi, Kenya, and on a blazing afternoon in the fall of 1972, I arrived at a Maasai trading post (known as a dukka) down in the Great Rift Valley in the company of a fellow graduate student from Berkeley. Outside the dilapidated building, there stood a cluster of Maasai moran (warriors) dressed in their best (a blanket thrown around their shoulders) with red ochre in their braided hair, clutching their long-bladed spears and rungus (wooden cudgels with a large knob at the business end), in the hope that tourists might show up and take their pictures (for money of course.)
I parked my Land-Rover in the non-existant shade, and upon entering the dukka, I saw a plethora of newly-created crafts mixed in with old and authentic ethnographic objects displayed there for sale, much like the Indian pawn found at trading posts in the American Southwest.
Among them there was an old beaded necklace hanging on a peg on the wall. It was disintegrating with age, many of the small blue seed beads missing, but right in the center was an old bead carved of white warthog ivory about the size of the end joint of my finger. It expressed a simple, yet powerful design, much like a medicine bag, and it had a thin crack along one side. I felt an immediate attraction for it, and my eye kept returning to this bead as I sifted through the various other ethnographic objects for sale.
My visit lasted for much of that long afternoon as I bargained for this object and that, intending to give them as gifts to my friends and family when I returned to the US before Christmas. My interactions with the Hindu proprietor were cordial, and at the end, my purchases complete, I was served tea and cookies just before my departure.
On impulse, I pointed at the old necklace on the wall and asked the proprietor about it. He looked skeptically at the bedraggled object, beginning to fall apart, then he took it off the wall and observed it at length… and then he handed it to me with the words “Here… You can have this,” he said with a smile. A gift!
The necklace itself was a loss, the blue seed beads scattering even as I handled it, but I sensed the power within the old bead at its center, so when I got back to California, on impulse, I strung it around a leather thong and hung it around my neck. I was wearing it when my wife Jill Kuykendall and I fell in love 34 years ago, and I still wear it today. It was many years later that I decided to journey on it to see if I could learn more about it, as well as my attraction for it. This is what I was shown.
At sometime in the past, most likely several generations ago, a young Maasai man had accrued enough cattle to acquire the bride of his choice from her family, but in addition, he had carved this bead from a fragment of warthog tusk as a symbol of his love for her. He had then done ritual, infusing the bead with the power of his love, and then he had given it to her with a prayer for her love in return.
This was love magic at its best, much like the symbol of the engagement ring or wedding ring in Western culture.
I was also shown that the magic had worked. The young Maasai girl had accepted the bead as well as his love, and she had fashioned the blue-beaded necklace with the ivory bead at its center that she had then worn throughout the rest of her life. As if in confirmation, the little knob on the bead’s end had worn down on one side where it had rubbed against her dusty chest. I was also shown that all this had happened long ago and that she and her husband had now passed into eternity.
Not surprisingly, I was quite moved by these revelations as I finally understood the power of the bead. My guess was that her family, perhaps her grandchildren, had brought the old necklace as part of a cache of other objects to sell to the proprietor of the dukka. And there it had hung on the wall for many years, for who would buy an old necklace that was disintegrating?
Yet the love magic with which the bead had been imbued was still there… and is there now.
Today, every time I feel the bead against my chest under my shirt, or at those odd times when I catch a glimpse of it in the mirror, I remember that day down in the Rift Valley so many years ago, and I feel its magic, for this bead is a prayer for love. And the magic still works for my wife Jill and I are still deeply in love with each other, just as we were so many years ago.
So allow me to share this story with you during this holiday season. And allow me to invoke the spirit of the kahuna nui Hale Makua, my great Hawaiian friend… and with his blessing (and his words), I 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 the strongest force in the Universe… your Aloha.
With warm thoughts—Dr Hank
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Dr. Hank Wesselman, P.h.D
Anthropologist, Shamanic Teacher, Healer, & Author
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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
email:
hw@sharedwisdom.com
Notes & Updates
from Dr.Hank
Descriptions of the workshops and presentations offered by Hank Wesselman and his wife Jill Kuykendall, as well as the website links to the centers where they will be held in 2007, are now taking form on their web site:
www.sharedwisdom.
com
Soul Catchers
I discovered, quite by accident almost 15 years ago, that I am married to a great soul catcher. My wife Jill Kuykendall was trained in the Western medical paradigm and has worked as a physiotherapist in acute care rehabilitation in hospital as well as home health settings for more than 25 years.
Today, Jill works primarily in transpersonal medicine and has a private practice devoted to soul retrieval. Clients come to her from all over the country, as well as from abroad and she is usually booked up months in advance.
Interestingly, the transpersonal nature of this work means that it is “nonlocal’ and is just as effective when done long-distance, revealing that Jill can still do the work on behalf of those who cannot travel to meet with her in her office.
Jill is the co-author with me of Spirit Medicine and wrote the chapters on soul loss, soul retrieval and more. As you may be aware, we have a website <www.sharedwisdom.
com> where Jill has a page describing the nature of her work in soul retrieval.
For those interested, there are also two hour-long interviews with me posted on the Broadband Learning Channel <www.bblc.tv>, one of which is focused upon health, illness and healing the soul in the indigenous perspective.
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