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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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Another Encounter… in Egypt
For last month’s column, I reworked some kahuna knowledge about the nature of the three souls and how they function to produce what we call ‘the self.’ I consider this information to be more than important because in order to experience authentic initiation, we have to know who we are…
…And secondly, when the three souls are in balance, in harmony, things work well. When they are not, there are lessons to be learned and challenges to overcome.
Allow me to offer you an example of how things may happen and doors may open when these three souls are in alignment.
Egypt
In January of 2003, I led a travel group to Egypt, an extraordinary adventure during which we visited the great sites of antiquity in response to which many of us had strong dreams as well as paranormal experiences. Here’s one of mine to compliment the encounter with the genie that I posted on the Meta Arts site in February 2005 (see their archives.)
January 9—Our guide and Eygptologist Emil Shakar picked us up at our hotel in Luxor in Upper Egypt at 600 AM. It was still pitch dark as we boarded our bus and headed for the famous temple complex known as Karnak. When we arrived at our destination, I could just make out the guards smiling as they recognized Emil and he suavely tipped them so we could enter the site at this early hour.
The temple of Karnak was and is the heart of Egypt. It is one thing to view photographs of this incredible place in oversized coffee table books at our leisure. It is something quite different to actually stand among the silent, massive stone pillars of this site in the darkness before the dawn, surrounded by the soft, warm earthy scent of the desert with the overarching stars as our companions.
This immense temple complex was constructed by its builders on a monumental scale fit for the gods themselves. How it was done continues to invoke a sense of mystery within us as it is doubtful that we could replicate it today, even with all our high technology.
For example, one side of the immense roof that stands many stories above the ground is built slightly higher than it’s opposing side, creating a natural form of air-conditioning in that warm air is drawn upward during the hot time of the day, allowing cooler breezes from the Nile to the west to flow downward. And this was conceived and executed by Egyptian architects and engineers while the peoples of Europe were still living in their barbarian villages far to the north a thousand years before the Greek Civilization arose.
We in the group stood humbled as we tried to take in the site’s full immensity and its power under the desert sky. Karnak, and its compliment the Temple of Luxor, is one of the wonders of the ancient world.
The light was just beginning to show in the east as Emil took us up the main avenue and into the small shrine that he told us was historically used by the Pharaoh to await the rising sun. Having come so early, we were almost the only visitors in the vast complex, and so this event carried a certain specialness… one could almost say ‘holiness.’
As the rising sun cracked the horizon and suddenly shafted across the altar, we felt our connection with eternity affirmed across more than three and a half thousand years… and we felt our unity with the great mystery that spawned us.
After witnessing the eastern light illuminate the altar, Emil led us quickly to the northeastern edge of the huge site, passing a small scrubby sycamore about eight feet tall that is more than 2,500 years old and is still alive. We then headed toward a small stone building housing the shrine of Ptah.
The word “Egypt” means ‘The land of Ptah’. This deity was (and forever will be) the archetypal force of creation who came from the stars and who formed the world by thinking it into being and by speaking it with his words. In his blue aspect—his blue skin or blue cap, Ptah then ruled Egypt for 8000 years according to myth. His consort (or compliment) during this age was (and is) Sekhmet, the great transformational lion-headed goddess.
After Emil greeted the guards and crossed their palms with a modest wad of Egyptian pounds, the iron grate across the unprepossessing shrine was unlocked and we stepped into the small stone building, entering a room in the center of which a raised dais bears a headless statue of Ptah. After taking in this desecrated sculpture, we gazed around at the reliefs on the walls that depict the great architect and healer Imhotep interacting with the deity Ptah, revealing this place to be a locality of initiation for healers.
Emil’s restless eyes darted toward a dark doorway to our right and in a hoarse whisper, he then told us that within this shrine is the only living statue of Sekhmet in Egypt—one that was placed in this crypt by the Pharaoh Thutmoses the Third in roughly 1450 BC. Emil then tipped the guards once again, and the gate across that door was opened, allowing us access to another small stone room.
As the group filed in, a small hole in the ceiling let in a dim shaft of early light from the sky. We stood blinking as our eyes adjusted to the darkness, and then there in the shadows before us emerged a standing black stone image of Sekhmet, a slender female human form complete with her lion’s head on top of which was perched the sun disc, the cobra uraeus before it. From her base to her apex, the goddess seemed to stand a good seven feet tall.
This was a dramatic experience, to say the least, and Emil then closed the door after us, effectively shutting us into the shrine with Sekhmet. There was only just enough light to barely make out the outlines of the powerful figure before us. But as our eyes continued to adjust to the dim light and the sky outside brightened with the dawn, the goddess seemed to magically take on form and density, manifesting herself in the small room and intimidating us into silent reverence for a good 5 minutes or more.
I stood facing her, leaning against the back wall behind the group, taking it all in, and I watched as the group began to respond, their hands slowly coming up and their prayers softly being offered. I considered what Emil had said—that this was the only ‘living’ statue of Sekhmet in Egypt. With that thought, I decided to try to access the expanded state—the same high frequency brain-wave state described in the books of my Spiritwalker trilogy.
There was no problem. As the first ecstatic surge of energy gripped me in its invisible fist and my breath caught in my chest, I reached for those sensations. In response, the power swept into me like a wave engulfing a beach. I stiffened physically, my mind abruptly expanding… and I suddenly felt the goddess’s awareness focused upon me. There was no doubt. ‘She’ was there.
I tried my best to remain still, controlling my tendency to shake by wedging myself against the back wall. The rest of the group was focused on the statue, and so we remained for another five minutes or more. When Emil finally opened the door, I remained propped against the back wall while my fellow travelers slowly completed their rituals and then quietly filed out the doorway.
Finally only I remained.
There I was, alone in an ancient stone room in Upper Egypt, standing in the presence of a goddess. I observed her feminine form closely… and it seemed that I could actually see her breathing. In those moments, I suddenly remembered that I had Jill’s little camera in my small pack, so I asked in a stifled whisper through clenched teeth if I could take her picture.
A brief snort of amusement jolted through my mind… and I felt her agreement. ‘Why not? Everyone else does and none of them ever asks permission.’
My blood was hissing in my ears as I brought the little metal box to my face with extreme effort. No sooner had I snapped the shot than I realized that I had filled her sanctuary with a flash of shattering light. In the shocked darkness that followed, I wondered if this had been appropriate, and almost in response, two words appeared in my mind.
‘Come closer.’
Astonished, I remained rooted to my spot, my back against the stone wall. I glanced to my right and to my left. I was alone with this leonine goddess. Then again, almost impatiently, the words came…
‘Come here…’
There was no denying this summons. Slowly, and definitely reverently, I managed to jump start my legs and feet, and I slowly shuffled forward until we were only inches apart. I stared up into her lion face and I could feel her cool breath upon my skin.
Then her words came one more time… ‘Kiss me!’
Again, I looked around me in the darkness, but I was alone with her. The group was outside the shrine. So I slipped off my shoes and stepped up onto the statue’s base and slowly reached around and took her into my arms, suddenly aware that her breasts had become warm and soft against my chest and that I could feel her breathing.
The New Yorker born ‘I’ who is very much a mainstream scientist was totally flabbergasted at this turn of events, and as my lips brushed across hers, I felt her face stretch thinly into a smile. And in that timeless moment, the room suddenly brightened, filling with a blue neon light. It was if an aperture behind her had opened—a doorway into the sky. Thoughts moved through my mind—hers and mine… thoughts that conveyed the awareness that there is an inter-dimensional portal here in this shrine.
Without thinking, my hand came up and caressed her face and brow, scratching her as I know all cats like to be scratched. She felt organic, furry, with the bones of her skull and the cartilage of her ears very much alive. In response, she pushed her face against mine, butting me with her forehead in a distinctly feline greeting and the cobra on her brow watched me with a flat stare. Did her free hand grasping the ankh come around and clasp me to her chest. I don’t know but it seemed so, or perhaps she generated a force that created this illusion.
In response, the feelings of power soared within me once more, virtually cutting off my breath. As I gasped for air, Sekhmet leaned down and breathed into my mouth, filling my lungs with her HA—her divine lion breath of life. The doorway shimmered behind her and once more her words appeared in my mind.
“You will return to me in your dreaming… in your dreaming while asleep and in your dreaming while awake. And you may use this portal with my blessing, whenever you wish, now that you know that it is here. Perhaps you will call upon me from time to time… I can be of service to you. Until then, may you fare well…” And then almost as an afterthought, “It is nice to see you again.”
I leaned my face against her breasts as a burst of sudden tears came, and then the softness of her breathing slowly stilled and once again she became a stone image. Simultaneously, the blue light ceased to exist and the crypt was once again in shadow.
I hastily disengaged and stepped back, wiping my face, concerned that Emil or one of the group would come in and find me embracing the statue. Yet I was still alone… so I bowed with reverence and digging in my pocket, I pulled out a small blue glass crow bead. I breathed my gratitude and my respect into the hole in the bead with a whispered prayer to her and tucked it into a crack in the wall where no one would see it, my ritual now complete, my offering made.
As I emerged blinking in the light, I saw that the group had drifted back to the sycamore and was taking pictures, and Emil was still joking with the guards. So I strolled slowly past the mute stone walls, alone with my thoughts as I considered what had just taken place.
Now… I have written before in these columns about how the existence of spirits is problematic for us Westerners. We do not live in a society in which connection with spirits is part of our experienced reality on a day-to-day basis. There are, as well, the mainstream philosophical theorists of our time like Ken Wilber and Jurgen Habermas and Jean Gebser who sidestep the whole issue of spirits.
Yet the fact that shamans claim that they are able to come into relationship with spirits and accomplish various things cannot be denied. There exists historical depth for this claim in anthropological ethnography across several hundred years, like it or not… and then there are my own experiences described in my Spiritwalker trilogy…
We discussed the four levels of spiritual unfolding for a Meta Arts column (9/07 in the archives), and we distinguished between magical and mythic belief systems on the one hand and the authentic transpersonal experiences of the subtle and causal realms on the other.
If we were to categorize Sekhmet in a mythic sense, ‘she’ has two polarities. In Egyptian mythology, Sekhmet represents the warrior as slayer in the negative polarity, the goddess of plagues and pestilence and all sorts of nasty stuff (directed at the enemies of Egypt in days gone by of course). Yet in the positive polarity, this leonine female is the warrior as healer—an archetypal force that expresses fierce compassion—a quality that comes through Sekhmet’s willingness to stand with us while we are embodied mortals in the fires of transformation. She offers this so that we may become who and what our destiny holds out to us.
Now—aside from these mythic beliefs (which can be greatly supportive and sustaining in the short term), it is my understanding as one who walks the shaman’s path that this archetypal force called Sekhmet does indeed exist in the subtle realm of things hidden. As such, ‘she’ is one of those dense concentrations of energy plus awareness plus intelligence that possesses certain qualities and abilities that may be of use to us. Indeed, in reviewing her words to me in the shrine, this is what ‘the agreement’ seems to be.
In fact, it may very well be that these deities of Ancient Egypt (and elsewhere) embody and express the myriad aspects of Nature as archetypal forces that have ‘overseen’ the human experiment from the very beginnings of our long journey across eternity. And in this sense, each of us has the potential to be partnered by many such benevolent forces that are hovering just offstage of the human drama, willing to constellate within us and through us to manifest effects that can be truly life-transforming and very far-reaching.
We’re not talking about religion here in which our priesthoods and scriptures demand worship and deference to some monotheistic father figure in the sky. That’s a belief system, and an archaic one at that. We’re talking about authentic transpersonal experience of the subtle and causal worlds in which we can come into relationship with forces that are real. But how those forces are experienced depends on how we, as individuals, are focused.
When we consider the societal games that we all seem to be playing with each other, it could be observed that many if not most of us are anchored in the negative polarity. We may proclaim that we are not… we may say that we are compassionate beings devoted to the greater good, that we pray to God in church or synagogue or mosque… and yet if we achieve success at the expense of others failure, if we injure others with our words or deeds or thoughts, if we operate through competition, coercion, zeal or deception, we are most definitely in the negative polarity.
If on the other hand, we deal with our family members, friends and co-workers through cooperation, persuasion, with compassion and authenticity, our anchor is in the positive polarity. This ‘law of polarity’ is most important because the archetypal forces do not judge us. They simply exist in the spiritual realms and express themselves through us.
And since we live in a world in which the dominant emotion is fear, a world in which the negative polarity is presented to us as entertainment, whether through endless meaningless sporting events (essentially gladiatorial games) or through Hollywood films and television shows focused within the dark side of human nature, it is not too difficult to see how these mini-and macro-epics reinforce that negative polarity in which our anchor rests.
This reveals that the archetypal forces essentially expand our experience of whatever polarity we inhabit.
As I write these thoughts to you today, this amazing quote came into my inbox from some unknown source.
I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field reveals to a man his own folly and despair, and victoryis an illusion of philosophers and fools.
William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury
Time… one of my spheres of operation as those who have read my trilogy will know.
Thinking back to that encounter in Egypt five years ago now (in time), I spent the rest of that day thinking about this. I visited the Luxor museum in the afternoon where I saw a magnificent black stone statue of the Pharaoh Thutmoses the Third, and as I gazed at his face across three and a half millennia, I wondered if he had had a similar encounter with Sekhmet… if he had also thought about the law of polarity.
Over the past five years, the archetypal force of Sekhmet has come to me many times during the shamanic healing rituals that I facilitate in each workshop. And she is always the black leonine woman who exudes qualities of fierce compassion and dark grace… the warrior as healer.
When I visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (one of my favorite places), I always walk through the Egyptian collections in that vast building. And there, in the huge room housing the temple of Dendur, brought stone by stone from Egypt, there sits a series of images of Sekhmet, all in black stone, facing the temple. They were brought from the garden of Mut at Karnak.
And although they are not ‘alive’ as was the image in the shrine of Ptah, I sit in contemplation of them for awhile and then I make my prayer to her while holding a small glass bead in my hand… and when the guards are looking elsewhere, I breathe my love for her into the hole in the bead and tuck it into a crack in the image that attracts me. It’s one of my responsibilities… and it’s part of what it means to walk the shaman’s path.
And so until next month, allow me to invoke the spirit of Chief 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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