shaman

Rahelio – Shaman, Astrologer

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Rahelio LargeI have been here in Sedona the past 26 years arriving on the summer solstice of 1987.  It was a very exciting time to be in Sedona especially because of the Harmonic Convergence prophecy from the Toltec lord Quetzalcoatl for August of that year. By 1988, I began working as a vortex tour guide and eventually started my own company in 1990 as Sedona Nature Excursions with my specialty Mystic Tours.   I offer private shamanic healing sessions and astrological consultations.

During the 1990’s I worked with many people very eager to experience the energy of the Sedona red rock country and its famous vortex energies.  And this gave me the opportunity to develop my own unique way of teaching and sharing shamanic wisdom and healing methods while out in the beauty of the sacred landscape of Sedona.

My approach has combined wisdom teachings from both eastern yogic traditions, Christian mysticism and Native American shamanism.  I was especially drawn to the teachings of Toltec wisdom that has come out of Mexico, and to the practice of Kriya yoga.  Since I was already very deep into the practice of western astrology, I was able to merge this perspective into the teachings of the Medicine Wheel as taught to me by Sun Bear.

Artist and the Shaman Trailer

My Native Indian ancestry is via Mexico (although I was born in the Midwest of the United States where I grew up) and I recognize myself as an American born Toltec. My awakening to the shamanic path was preceded by a number of  mystical experiences I had beginning in my teenage years that jolted my reality.  And these types of experiences continued throughout my life where I had some profound encounters with Spirit Powers and intelligences from alternate realities.  At the age of 21, is when I was telepathically contacted by my ascended Master teacher and began my conscious journey onto the spiritual path.

Back in the late 70’s when I attended the College of Marin in northern California, I was involved as head of a Native American student organization that worked for public awareness to the issues of Native American political rights and land disputes, etc.  At that time this opened my eyes to the struggles of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas and the world.

Later while living on Maui, Hawaii, I pursued spiritual and metaphysical studies, and had experiences that facilitated my becoming a professional astrologer and mystic.  During that time I had a close encounter with a UFO that opened me to the presence and message of the Star people.  The Star people that contacted me are extraterrestrial /galactic human beings and are here to assist in this time of  changes we are going through even if they remain hidden to the public.

Since I was working as a spiritual guide, astrologer and healer, I was invited to be ordained as a minister into the Order of Melchizedek on Bell Rock in 1988 by the Reverend Dan Chesbro.  And since 2012 I am a legal member and medicine person of the Oklevueha Native American Church, as well as, the head of my own Native American church, ‘Toltec Sun Ministries’.  I conduct Native American style weddings, Sweat Lodges and blessing ceremonies, as well as share shamanic teachings and energetic practices including Medicine Wheel empowerments with sacred drum, flute, songs and chants.

My private shamanic healing sessions are designed to clear anxiety, stress, phobias, emotional and mental creative blocks, bringing healing and balance back into mind and body. Astrological consultations allow understanding of soul patterns as mapped in birth charts and insights into manifesting creative purpose in life via career, relationships and spiritual dynamics. I apply the use of various predictive methods and specialize in relocation astrology as seen in astrocartography and local space mapping.  Energetic movement and healing practices include tantric Kriya Yoga with Cobra breath and other special breathing modalities.

This Trippy Plant May Heal You

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The Life-Altering, Psychedelic Ayahuasca Plant

Author: Rak Razam

Ayahuasca is a plant medicine that has been used by the indigenous people of South America for millennia to heal physical ailments—and, they claim, to cleanse and purify the spirit. It was discovered

by the West in 1851 when the legendary British botanist Richard Spruce explored the Rio Negro Basin and was introduced to the vine by the Tokanoan Indians. Spruce gave the vine its scientific name, Banisteriopsis caapi; in different areas of South America it is also known as yagé or hoasca. For a while in the mid-twentieth-century chemists who isolated the active properties of the vine called their compound “telepathine.”

Research showed it contained various harmala alkaloids, which are boiled up in a brew (also called ayahuasca) with a multitude of other plants, one being the leafy Psychotria viridis, which contains the powerful hallucinogenic chemical Dimethyltryptamine, also known as DMT. On its own the vine is only orally active at very high doses, but it also contains potent MAO (mono-amine oxidase) inhibitors that overpower the body’s own enzymes and allow the DMT to potentiate.

Science has made cautious forays into the jungle to study the vine in its native setting or, as with the “Hoasca Project” in the 1990s, to study church members of groups like União doVegetal (UDV) who drink ayahuasca as part of their syncretic Christian-jungle religion. What they found was that regular ayahuasca use flushed the brain clean and improved receptor sites, suggesting the vine could be a medicinal goldmine.

But what science cannot explain is the psychic effect of this “mother of all plants,” the sense of the numinous and the spiritual world it reportedly opens up. Those who drink say that each ayahuasca journey is unique. They say that the spirit of the vine comes alive, it guides and teaches, and on the other side nothing is ever the same. Or so they say.

The native men and women who safeguard the knowledge of the vine and of the spirits it is said to reveal are the curanderos and curanderas—or, as the West would call them, shamans. Their role has been that of healer, priest, and traveler between worlds, acting as intermediaries between the spiritual dimension and this world on behalf of their patients.

Yet the demands of the work and the rise of Western materialism throughout South America have seen a fall in prestige—and customers— for the curanderos. The profession, usually hereditary, was in danger of extinction before an unprecedented wave of Western gringos started coming in search of ayahuasca and the healing it can provide.

Over the last twenty years or so a new gringo trail—this one a journey of the soul—has been blossoming in the jungles of South America. Seekers and thrillseekers alike have been coming from theWest for a reconnection to the deeper reality shamanism connects one to—and bringing back amazing stories of hallucinogenic trips, healing, and enlightenment.

FlowerIndigenous shamanism has quickly become the most profitable business in town and numerous jungle lodges and retreats have sprung up across South America to cater to the influx of rich tourists. This has spilled over onto the internet as hundreds of ayahuasca websites, chat rooms, and forums have emerged to crystallize a global subculture engaging with an indigenous spiritual practice and seeding it back into theWestern world.

As well as being used by hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of indigenous peoples throughout South America, ayahuasca has also become one of the world’s fastest growing religions, with branches of Brazilian churches like Santo Daime and União doVegetal springing up in Europe, Britain, Australasia, America, Japan, and elsewhere. In January 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a New Mexico branch of the UDV, saying they had a constitutional right to be allowed to legally practice their ayahuasca ceremonies under the freedom of religion law. The U.S. government immediately appealed, but the genie was out of the bottle.

The mystery of ayahuasca had left the jungle and entered the cities, via religion, media, and the web. And what did it say about the growing Western need for an authentic reconnection to the planet?

Author: Rak Razam
Permissions: The following is an excerpt from Aya Awakenings: A Shamanic Odyssey by Rak Razam (North Atlantic Books, 2013)