The widely different perspectives expressed during the recent Committee Hearing Testimony of Anthony Fauci with Chairman Rand Paul left me stunned. Lessons I learned as a homebirth midwife, around the same time Fauci became involved with the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, taught me about bodily autonomy, independence, and empowerment. In my view, Fauci is a white coat who stands for none of those things. Based on my own experiences and what I know about the Devouring Mother archetype, I watched the Committee Hearing and its social media aftermath unfold between those who acquiesced and those who rebelled.

The Devouring Mother is a shadow archetype that would have us believe we are sick and feigns to keep us safe. In this context, Mother is both literal and symbolic of the State, as represented by Fauci. Looking at things through an archetypal lens helps us see the universal, recurring patterns behind the stories we tell ourselves and gives them meaning. The child of the Devouring Mother has two available pathways: to acquiesce or rebel. To maintain control, she sets her children against each other, creating division that prevents them from forming a unified front. The constant competition distracts them from recognizing the Mother’s toxic behavior. Understanding these pathways, we can better recognize our own psychological patterns in relation to her.

It surprises me how strongly each side believes the other has been brainwashed. The acquiescent child thinks Fauci is a hero owed a debt of gratitude for helping to save lives, while the rebel thinks he committed murder. There seems to be no middle ground—people either like or despise him. All this political drama distracts us from what really matters, like coming into right relationship with ourselves, the Earth, the Divine, and each other.

The following is a personal story that illustrates how I came to see Fauci in his white coat as the symbol of a broken system.

I sat with the mother who labored at home through the night with courage and focus. Her pain was meaningful and purposeful, so she breathed on, leaning on those who loved her for support. When her baby slipped warm and wet from her strong, young body, she reached down, and I helped lift him to her chest. The expression on her glowing face was miraculous wonder. After months of preparation and hours of labor, she turned triumphant to the father. She had done this, given birth, and no one else. Then both mother and father turned to the infant, inspected fingers, toes and genitalia, and laughed with surprise when they discovered, before the days of routine ultrasound, that they had made a baby boy. Looking into each other’s eyes, they radiated smiles so loving it made me cry.

Birthing a baby at home can seem like a rebellious act. Still, low-risk women who acquiesce to a medical birth because of unresolved fear may miss out on the bodily autonomy that empowers a lifetime of mothering. Statistically, home birth produces better outcomes for low-risk women than hospital birth. Assessing a woman’s lifestyle, support system, beliefs, and fears is an effective risk-assessment and screening tool. Homebirth midwives are well invested in having good outcomes. They take the time to guide a woman through resolving limiting beliefs while encouraging her to face her fears so the stress of labor doesn’t become distress that needs intervention. My midwife did this for me, and I’ve done it for others. Fear serves us. Learning to discern grounded from ungrounded fear is essential to trusting inner guidance and intuition, crucial tools for mothering. Childbirth is an initiation where a woman faces her fears and gains inner strength. But far too many women have been robbed of this primal initiation by Western Mechanistic Medicine that directs us away from our intuitive abilities and capitalizes on fear.

As an educator and labor coach who has attended hospital births, I witnessed how a woman loses autonomy when she gives her power to external sources. Movements conceived by men, like the Lamaze and Bradley methods that emerged in the 1970s, offered some benefit but are still misleading. Lamaze taught breathing techniques that took a woman out of her body instead of helping her to be more present in it. Bradley trained husbands to be labor coaches, placing them in an unfair role to justify allowing them into the “birthing room,” previously a labor room that excluded fathers.

A man who is becoming a father also needs emotional and moral support. Making him a “coach” disconnects him from his own process of transformation. When it became his responsibility to keep his wife together during labor and taken out of his emotional process, he was set up to let her down at best, or to be her hero at worst. The hero that rescues the damsel in distress, or in this case from the travails of childbirth, is like the doctor who rides in on his white horse, in his white coat, and offers to alleviate her pain with drugs and surgical interventions. Being rescued in childbirth is not an empowering scenario. When a woman looks into the eyes of her doctor and says, “You saved my life!” instead of taking responsibility for her own choices and life, or when she looks into the eyes of her husband and declares, “I couldn’t have done this without you!” instead of saying to both her husband and to her baby, “I did this! We did this!”, then she will continually look outside of herself for validation and for someone who knows more than she does about her body and baby. She will look for someone she trusts more than she trusts herself. And that is exactly where the medical system and the Devouring Mother wants us—dependent.

This brings us back to Dr. Anthony Fauci and a medical establishment that keeps us in fear and gaslights us into thinking we are sick. He is seen as the doctor who arrived to save us, the white coat who came riding in on his white horse to rescue us from the travails of a dangerous world, one in which he participated in creating. When a generation is raised by mothers who feel powerless and no longer trust their intuition, and who run to experts for help but often find more problems than solutions, it can lead to future generations who also lack confidence in their parenting.

The Devouring Mother wears the mask of the Good Mother, and it is no accident that we find ourselves possessed in her devouring grip. Fauci brings us into awareness of this archetype as she pushes her way toward consciousness. The real problem isn’t Anthony Fauci; it’s the medical establishment that made him, elevated and protected him, and continues to celebrate him.

I first became aware of Fauci in the mid-1980’s, when I was married to a doctor who ran an AIDS clinic in San Francisco. The response to COVID followed a similar pattern. Over the past 50 years, many of Fauci’s solutions have sometimes caused more harm that the illnesses they were meant to treat. These stories are well documented and referenced in The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Fauci’s rise to power parallels the rise of the Devouring Mother archetype in the form of the State. The illusion is that he is a protective and loving hero, while we deny his shadow. When the State takes on the role of the Devouring Mother, as Fauci is seen to do, its protective actions can turn into strict control, treating citizens like children and limiting personal freedom in the name of safety. The bureaucratic shadow then rewards compliance and punishes dissent as it pushes its agenda of safety above freedom. It is a faceless womb that absorbs individuality back into the collective unconscious where the machine of bureaucracy digests personal agency. The repeated promise of “safe and effective” and the drive to eradicate risk eliminates the friction and failure necessary for personal growth in exchange for institutional stasis. The State’s offer of safety comes with an unspoken psychic cost: citizens must remain dependent. If someone tries to separate from the collective or questions the narrative, the State does not just punish them; it absorbs and dissolves the dissenter through censorship and social ostracization. It weaponizes the profound guilt and anxiety about leaving The Mother by framing self-reliance and independent thinking as “selfishness,” “betrayal,” or a threat to the collective family’s safety. Those who could see through Fauci’s edicts saw exactly that.

What, then, is pushing up through the very ground of our existence in its struggle to reach consciousness? I believe that when we give our power away to a person, system, or psychological pattern, we become a product of the Devouring State and complicit in creating an Anthony Fauci shaped by the same forces. How do we move beyond this polarized perspective, where we keep flipping victim-perpetrator roles and sustaining the illusion through a savior mentality that looks for someone like a Fauci to save us? What responsibility do we each bear in contributing to the present circumstances?

The attachment to The Mother in the form of the State is exemplified in children who acquiesce. Such individuals may adopt a framework of victimology, defining others and themselves as victims while playing the game of identifying and propping up victims. Victimhood absolves responsibility and creates a world defined by oppressors and victims. I observed this dynamic in the hospital birthing room, where women became the victims of an impersonal, mechanized system. I also recognized it during the Committee Hearing Testimony of Doctor Anthony Fauci. In these moments, I questioned how we might move beyond anger toward compassion for the roles individuals like Fauci fulfill. Are we not all sacred beings with a sacred purpose?

Whether you love or hate Anthony Fauci, or if you sing his praises or proclaim his evil, such polarized perspectives have always existed in this world of duality. I rarely watch Senate hearings, and at times I question why I pay attention to them at all. In these moments, I recall the guidance of Beverly Laughing Eagle, my late friend and mentor, who stills shows up from time to time in spirit. As I pondered on these thoughts, I distinctly heard her piercing voice: “Thea, what are you doing? It’s only a distraction.” She never paid attention to mainstream news or the likes of Fauci. Like an Eagle, she encouraged me to fly high and see the bigger picture. All experience serves our evolution, and we signed up for it—tyrant or savior, friend or foe.

When sensory information is unreliable, perception becomes distorted. If information cannot be trusted, the meaning assigned to experiences is also skewed. Various factors contribute to this distortion, with trauma being a significant cause that can lead to mental health challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic represents collective trauma. Trauma may also be generational, inherited and transmitted across generations, and addressing it requires considerable effort. For this reason, I am intentional about the sources I engage with and the individuals I follow. As one of my mentors expressed, “Who are you hanging around with and what do they have you doing?”

The perspective I am choosing to help me understand our current political situation is an archetypal one. Carl Jung suggests that all people share a collective unconscious filled with images and symbols that cross cultural and temporal boundaries. Not only has fear been weaponized, but the collective unconscious itself has, too. We are being programmed by other’s external projections to fight ourselves and each other. It’s how the Devouring Mother operates. She wants to keep us sick, divided, and dependent. My experience has shown me, however, that we can hold a healthy perspective when we’re not under the influence of an archetypal takeover. Maybe it’s time to sober up.

It’s Time - Free Download!

It’s Time Lyrics:

Met with a friend last night and she told me things I didn’t want to know

Met with a friend last night and the thing she said

Is that it’s time, it’s time, well it’s time

To get it memorized, line by line

You’ve got to recognize the signs

When it’s time, it’s time to fly

to the other side, in your mind

You’ve got to know it’s time

Met with a friend last night and she told me things I didn’t want to know

Met with a friend last night and the thing she said—It’s time to make a change

Look in these wild eyes and know it’s time to change

Can’t stay here in these chains

Gonna break away and I’m gonna make a change

gonna lay away my cane and I’m gonna walk away

I’m gonna make a change

Pickin’ up my medicine, I’m gonna walk again

and when I reach the sky I’ll know it’s time to fly to the other side

You’ve got to know it’s time when it’s time to fly

In your mind—You’ve got to know it’s time

People have always relied on networking for resources, trade, social connection and sharing ideas, long before Ethernet and the internet existed. We all need community, a sense of belonging, and connection with others. Networking comes naturally for me, but for forty years I said an adamant NO to multi-level and direct sales network marketing. It just didn’t feel right, evoking images of Neolithic peddlers, 19^th-century hawkers, door-to-door encyclopedia salespeople, and Tupperware home parties.

My aversion started in 1974, at the age of 19, when my stepmother, a pink Cadillac-driving Mary Kay Sales Rep, tried to recruit me. I have to give her credit­—she taught me how to care for my skin and put on makeup. I was happy to buy some products from her for a few years, and it brought us closer. Still, I wanted nothing to do with my name written across the back of a pink Cadillac. Cringe. Sometimes, we just don’t know what we don’t know.

Back then, I didn’t realize the power of network marketing or the value of the personal development training these companies offered. I did, however, consider myself a networker, and somewhat of a matchmaker, introducing friends who later got married. I loved connecting people and collecting names, addresses, and business cards, which I carried in a decorative organizer for decades before smartphones and the cloud.

In 1978, I learned about Shaklee. I liked the cleaning products and vitamins peddled by a neighbor and bought them for a few years, as I did with Mary Kay. But I still had no interest in becoming a distributor.

Flash forward twenty years to 1998. I was working as an office manager at a commercial FM radio station in Highlands, NC. The job included copywriting and traffic control. Our advertising sales rep also sold Melaleuca, another multi-level marketing (MLM) direct sales company. Once again, I liked the products, though expensive, and purchased them from her a couple of times. But unlike my stepmother or neighbor, the Melaleuca rep was a more aggressive recruiter. She wined and dined me at her beautiful lakefront home, but my answer remained a resounding NO to network marketing.

What followed was a resistance so intense that I refused to buy anything from anyone involved in an MLM. I didn’t like being hounded by zealous recruiters, wasn’t interested in selling to my friends, and the markup made product unaffordable for me. Even though I have spent some time working in retail, I never liked or fully understood the direct sales business model until I entered my late fifties.

When in the fifth decade of my life, during my Saturn return, I started looking back on the last thirty years of my life. I had no financial security because I had chosen artistic and “fringe” careers that paid under the table. The radio station was my best-paying job, but it only lasted four years. Social Security retirement income looked bleak. I realized I needed to face reality and find a way to secure my financial future.

That’s when I got a prospecting email from Craig, an old friend and former bandmate. He and his wife, both musicians, were two of the friends I had introduced to each other­ in the early 1990s that got married and started a family, so we had a long history. Craig was also a professional network marketer who had made good money selling LegalShield memberships, which he tried to sell me to my resounding NO. But I was getting older, hungrier, more open-minded, and honestly, a little more desperate. I had traded my long-term security for my short-term fun. Not unaware of the saying, “What you resist, persists,” I decided to have a look at what he was selling.

Craig had discovered a new company he wanted to share with my husband, Chuck, and me. It offered a way to travel the world and earn a good income. The product was “Dream Trips,” a travel club membership from a network marketing/direct sales company called World Ventures. We were sold on the company’s integrity, the promise of affordable travel, and the chance to earn real money. We jumped in, and for the next eight years, we gave it a “season of our lives”–traveling often for training events and taking Dream Trips. The personal development training offered by the company was top-notch, and we learned a lot.

So we fully committed, and providence moved. I also learned that “Your network is your net worth.” Over the years, I had built a significant network as a touring singer-songwriter, herbal educator, and published author. In Direct Sales, leveraging your network is how people earn money by signing up others who buy and sell products, and those people do the same. Sellers earn from their own sales and also get bonuses from the sales of those they bring in, and so on down the line. During those eight years with World Ventures, we built a team of more than 600 people, created an income, helped others have more fun, and met new friends and successful business leaders.

Then it all came crashing down. After years of steady growth, World Ventures filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on December 21, 2020. The company lost millions. Fueled by the proliferation of fake or duplicated websites in China and neighboring countries, these unauthorized copycat sites falsely recruited participants under the World Ventures name, siphoning funds and damaging the company’s global business, leading to widespread financial losses for the company, its reps, and travel club members. Pandemic-related travel disruptions during this same time frame forced the company to shut down. They eventually paid us what they owed, but some of our team leaders were left holding the bag. After all the time and money we had invested, it was heartbreaking, and I have no desire to try it again.

After losing that business, I kept writing, recording, and releasing new music. I also continued to teach and publish articles about herbal medicine on my blogs, Thea’s Kitchen and Wisdom of the Plant Devas. In addition, I contributed content to the work of other writers and wrote book blurbs at the request of certain authors and my publisher, Inner Traditions International, covering topics like spirituality, personal growth, and herbal medicine.

I needed to find a way to monetize my content rather than giving it away so I could afford to keep writing, and I began exploring different options for how to offer my expertise and best serve my network. Working from home, I created an online school to teach herbal medicine called Five Element Academy. I had already spent over ten years teaching at herbal medicine conferences, schools, and online, so it was exciting to see the Academy come together. My student base grew slowly until Teachable, the hosting platform I used, was acquired by a company in Brazil for roughly $250 million in 2020­—the same year, World Ventures went bankrupt. Three years later, in 2025, Teachable doubled the cost of hosting plans. I couldn’t afford it, so I had to close the school, archiving years of hard work on my computer hard drive.

Above all, I wanted to write about what matters most to me. I don’t write for the sole purpose of gaining subscribers, but rather for soul purpose. My experience in Direct Sales taught me about attrition–people come and go, subscribers join and leave. Still, I kept working at the craft of writing. Then Substack caught my attention.

Substack isn’t a traditional network marketing or MLM platform, although it has built-in networking tools that make it easy to connect with others. It fits better with my values because it focuses on building relationships that writers and entrepreneurs can use for thought leadership and to grow their audience. After years of blogging and sharing my work for free, I joined Substack and began publishing there in 2022, a year after they launched their app. As a Clinical Herbalist, New Thought Leader, Unity Music Minister, and Magdalene High Priestess, I chose the following categories, “Health & Wellness” and “Faith & Spirituality” (you can only choose 2), to help people discover my work. Substack gives me a place to share everything I do, including the music I write.

Substack doesn’t charge for hosting, which was a big plus for me. Since joining, I have consistently posted once or twice a month, sharing medicine stories, herbal wisdom, unreleased music, original art, archival photos, and informative PDFs. I don’t write in high-traffic categories like news, pop culture, or AI, so word-of-mouth sharing is especially important for my work, and Substack makes this easy with every post (hit the Share button!). You won’t see AI-driven content in Elder Wisdom & Good Medicine, because I believe it disrupts the reading experience. I mostly share original art and, on rare occasions, use AI images created in Shutterstock. I do use Grammarly to check for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. I care about my readers and want you to enjoy my writing without distractions. As a reader myself, there is no quicker way to lose me than through poorly written, difficult-to-read content riddled with mistakes.

Publishing and growing a free Substack newsletter does not cost me anything directly, but I do have some expenses. I pay about $100 a year for Shutterstock images, $240 a year for Adobe PDF and Photo plan to store, create and edit images, and $144 a year for Grammarly. Right now, I have 2,053 subscribers, with 25 of them being paid. Your support is what keeps me going.

Honestly, most of my posts do not have a paywall because I feel it is more important to put the content into the hands of my readers rather than limiting it. I have chosen the following pricing tiers to make a paid subscription cost less than one cup of coffee­–PER MONTH! A monthly subscription costs $5, a yearly subscription costs $50 ($10 savings), and becoming a founding member costs $100. I have three founding members.

Once someone becomes a paid subscriber (unlocking the paywall to receive exclusive content or choosing to simply support me and my work), Substack charges a processing fee that ranges between 13% and 16%. That means a $5/month subscription nets me approximately $4.20. On average, my Substack newsletter nets $1,200/year less the above-mentioned expenses ($484).

My goal is to grow Elder Wisdom & Good Medicine to 100 paid subscribers, generating approximately $430 per month. That would buy me enough time to start a regular podcast, and I know some very interesting and amazing people I would like to interview. I am currently a quarter of the way there. Reaching 1,000 paid Subscribers at $5 per month would bring in $4,350, which would be transformative.

You can help me grow my Substack newsletter by networking within the Substack App. This approach does not require any financial commitment. If you also publish on Substack, these strategies can help expand your own network. I appreciate platforms that foster collaboration among writers, which brings us to Recommendations and Referrals.

When I recommend publications I admire on my Substack page, like lending someone a book I love, my endorsement becomes visible to my readers. If I have written a blurb, it becomes visible as well. The same applies when others recommend me. We rise by lifting each other up.

Recommendations are public endorsements that drive 50% of new subscriber growth by prioritizing peer discovery over algorithms. This network-driven growth eliminates the need for ads. Peer distribution is especially valuable for sharing content such as YouTube links that platforms like Facebook may restrict. Substack lets me share freely and fosters a sense of community. Through Recommendations, I introduce readers to content that inspires me, offering insight into the influences shaping my world beyond my writing. I explore co-creation and cross-pollination in detail in my book Wisdom of the Plant Devas: Herbal Medicine for a New Earth.

Currently, nine Substack publications recommend me. These recommendations have brought in 50 new subscribers. I have recommended 12 publications, which falls within the sweet spot of seven to fifteen, resulting in 230 new subscribers for those writers. The blurb I write with my recommendation helps attract subscribers. As a published author, I know the importance of book blurbs for publicity and marketing.

I also support writers I admire through paid subscriptions, which creates reciprocity. If you are already one of my paid subscribers, I extend my deepest gratitude. Reciprocity enables us to achieve greater impact together.

Recommendations form the core of Substack’s distribution, emphasizing relationships. If you appreciate my writing and perspective, please consider promoting me to your readers through Recommendations. If you are a writer who wants to hook up with me through Recommendations, please reach out and share how our communities could benefit from each other’s work. I only recommend writers who consistently publish.

By hitting the share button in any of my Substack posts, you can introduce Elder Wisdom & Good Medicine to readers who may choose to become free subscribers or take a paid subscription for a complimentary test drive before deciding to stay if they like what they find behind the paywall. When you use the referral link below, or the “Share” button on any post, you’ll get credit for any new subscribers. As your friends use your referral link to subscribe (free or paid), you’ll receive special benefits from me, like a free subscription for a month or more. I will continue to write and publish content that informs and inspires, and that honors all of our journeys. May it be blessed.

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What subscribers are saying:

I very much appreciate the kind and encouraging comments below:

• “I love to read whatever you write!” ­—Emily S.

• “This article (Season of Croning) has so much wisdom. If I was still practicing in mental health I’d have all women read it.” —M. Reagan

• “Thank you for sending me your newsletter. The posts have been little gems of clarity in a sea of emotions. I purchased a subscription as a way of saying thank you for the blessings I have received through your writing. I feel so blessed to have this gift in my life.” —M. Beachler,

• “Because… you are a wise woman, a critical thinker, and my friend.” —D. Drewry PhD

• “May the power of our love and our life’s stories heal the people and the planet. I am blessed through your eyes.” —J. Oliver

• “You are light-filled, Madam. An Inspiration!” —M. Murphy

• “Thank you for sharing your wisdom!” —K. Hopper

• “This story (Homeland Security) touched me to my core.” —Wind Daughter

• “Brilliant, almost painful, real life triumph story (Homeland Security) of motherhood, sisterhood, a grand love. You’ve created art with words.” —A. Jabbour

• “THANK YOU for sharing this story (COVID Initiation)! Thank you for writing it, for sharing it, and for standing strong and calm.” —S. Sikora

• “Fabulous piece (COVID Initiation) and courageous journey… Thank you for allowing us to see a deeper teaching from this.” —Y. Scott

• “Wow! What an incredible story (We Have Moved!)! And thanks for sharing the incredibly beautiful artwork.” —S. Saunders

• “Thea, your writing is beautiful. I so enjoy your posts. Thank you.” —Ruby

• “Love the eloquence and wisdom of your writing, dear Thea. Thank you for sharing both your experience and your Self.” —S. F. Shreve

• “I have tried not to look squarely at this issue before but am now more aware. I fully agree with you and thank you for writing about it.” (Making Sense of Gender Identity)—M. Pilarski,

• “You are an amazing writer! Thank you for sharing this powerful article (Return of the Buffalo). You, and many others, are leading the way.” —J. Smolnik, N.D.,

• “Your writing resonates with my journey and is nourishing to me.” —T. Darnall,

• “What a beautiful tribute to your life, Thea, Georgia O’Keeffe’s life and the love of earth, beauty and the future. This is a balm for my heart. Beauty walks beside us.” (Georgia O’Keeffe in Shadow & Light) —EagleSong

• “Thank you for so eloquently sharing this beautiful story (La Llorona). Your writing is impeccable.” —P. McElvy

• “Thanks Thea, Always enjoy your writings & insights. Your article (As We Live, So Shall We Die) was especially helpful for me today.” —J. Kaiser

• “Wonderful writing. Always insightful. It is such a gift to reflect and express. Such a gift to behold your wonder and experience.” —R. Craig

Endorsements/Book Blurbs

It’s an honor to be asked for an endorsement. You can read my book blurbs on the inside cover of the following books:

• A Shamanic Herbal: Plant Teachers and Animal Medicines by Mathew Wood

• Activating Your 5D Frequency: A Guidebook for the Journey into Higher Dimensions by Judith Corvin-Blackburn

• Flower Essences from the Witches Garden: Plant Spirits in Magickal Herbalism by Nicholas Pearson

• Holistic Medicine and the Extracellular Matrix: The Science of Healing at the Cellular Level, by Matthew Wood

• Meeting the Melissae by Elizabeth Ashley

• Ponderings: A Collection of 144 Illumined Reflections by Sharon Fallon Shreve

• Sacred Medicine of Bee, Butterfly, Earthworm, and Spider: Shamanic Teachers of the Instar Medicine Wheel, by Linda Star Wolf and Anna Cariad-Barrett

• Sacred Messengers of Shamanic Africa: Teachings from Zep Tepi, the Land of First Time by Carley Mattimore and Linda Star Wolf

• Seasons of a Wild Life by Annette Nabler

• Shamanic Mysteries of Peru: The Heart Wisdom of the High Andes, by Vera Lopez and Linda Star Wolf

• Shamanic Wisdom for Pregnancy and Parenthood: Practices to Embrace the Transformative Power of Becoming a Parent by Anna Cariad-Barrett

• The Unknown Mother: A Magical Walk with the Goddess of Sound by Dielle Cisco

• Visionary Shamanism: Activating the Imaginal Cells of the Human Energy Field by Linda Star Wolf and Anne Dillon

Contributions

It is an honor to be asked to contribute to another author’s work. I have contributed chapters to the following books:

• Shamanic Wisdom for Pregnancy and Parenthood: Practices to Embrace the Transformative Power of Becoming a Parent by Anna Cariad-Barrett

• Rekindling the Inner Light: The Frank Waters Centennial by Barbara Waters

• Spirit of the Wolf: Channeling the Transformative Power of Lupine Energy by Linda Star Wolf, Casey Piscitelli

There was a time when I held my breath—a lot, frightened in anticipation of perceived threats, I would forget to breathe. It wasn’t conscious. Early trauma and abandonment left my nervous system on high alert, and breath-holding became a chronic habit. I felt sad and angry. I didn’t have a language for my bottled-up emotions, which I suppressed by holding my breath.

In the mid-1970s, I discovered East Indian philosophy. I followed a guru for over ten years and meditated on holy breath. It helped, but didn’t break the habit. Then, I pursued a career in midwifery where every firstborn breath reminded me that we are all born in original blessing, not original sin.

I didn’t find a language for my emotions until I left Miami, Florida, where I was born and lived the first 30 years of my life. In the spring of 1985, I moved to San Francisco, married a doctor specializing in Behavioral Medicine, and began practicing Native American spirituality. Wanting a more affordable and supportive spiritual community, we moved to Tucson, Arizona, in 1989. Through prayer and ceremony, I finally felt safe enough to let out the scary feelings inside me: dark emotions, ugly tears, anger, and hurtful words. I learned that what is said carries just as much weight as what is not said. It was messy, and so was the divorce. I wanted more than anything to heal.

I lived in the Sonoran Desert for twelve years, working hard to heal my past. I drew on the land’s yang energy to pursue a career in music as a singer-writer, a mostly male-dominated field. Singing strengthened my lungs after years of childhood asthma. Writing songs helped to free my emotions and feed my soul. Performing allowed me to be witnessed. I found a voice I never knew I had.

Then I moved again, this time to the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and the Blue Ridge Divide. The cool, moist, yin energy of the land helped me to recover from the burnout I felt after a decade on the road as a musician.

In spring 2012, Star Wolf and her team in Western North Carolina invited me to sing at Isis Cove near Cherokee for the Wise Wolf Women’s Council, a group of women choosing to step up powerfully and globally to challenge old beliefs, welcome a new era, and support each other. As their songstress, I performed my version of Warrior Goddess, a chant for empowerment during this time of global transformation. The song was ahead of its time when Susan Haist wrote it in 1988, and my friend Lisa Thiel recorded it on her 1994 “Journey to the Goddess” CD.

Accompanied by a Native American rattle made for me by Beverly Laughing Eagle, I invited everyone to join in as I shook the Medicine rattle and chanted, “Warrior Goddess, Warrior Goddess, Rise in me, I need your wisdom for this age.”

One woman at the Council was so moved by the song’s power that she insisted I record it. Other women also began asking for a recording of the song, which inspired me to take action. That week, I went into my studio and started laying down tracks. Soon after, two musician friends from Canada, Rama & Aston, called and needed a place to crash for the night. I offered them the studio floor in my small rented home, and they accepted. After hearing my tracks, one night turned into three, and we went to work. They suggested adding a Pacific Northwest tribal chant at the end of Warrior Goddess, which they sang live in the studio. My daughter added background vocals, and the song came together in a magical way.

After I released Warrior Goddess on my CD, “She Loved Horses,” I moved again. This time, I returned to the Southwest and settled in New Mexico, weaving the yin I had gathered in the Appalachian Mountains back into the yang of the high desert.

When Star Wolf heard the recording of Warrior Goddess, she shared it with HeatherAsh Amara, who also lives in New Mexico. Ash is a firewalk instructor and the author of Warrior Goddess Training: Become the Woman You Are Meant to Be. After she listened to the song, I received the following from her in an email:

“Thank you so much for recording the Warrior Goddess song! We just used it at a Warrior Goddess gathering; imagine 50 women singing as we walked on fire! It was magical.”

I invite you to join me and to sing, dance, and listen to the song Warrior Goddess ~

Warrior Goddess, Warrior Goddess, Rise in Me

Warrior Goddess, Warrior Goddess, Rise in Me

I need your wisdom for this age, I need your wisdom for this age

Warrior Goddess, Warrior Goddess, Rise in Me

Warrior Goddess, Warrior Goddess, Rise in Me

Great strength and courage I need. Infinite courage I need.

Warrior Goddess, Warrior Goddess, Rise in Me

Warrior Goddess, Warrior Goddess, Rise in Me

Reveal my spirits vision to me. Open my heart and mind to see - the Warrior Goddess in Me.

Warrior Goddess, Warrior Goddess, Rise in Me

Warrior Goddess, Warrior Goddess, Rise in Me

I need your wisdom for this age, I need your wisdom for this age

We all walk through the fire in one way or another–through abandonment, abuse, betrayals, family secrets, and lies. With so many fires burning, it can feel safer to run away. But if we want to truly know ourselves, or someone else, stepping into the fire becomes necessary. Fear of vulnerability and chronic conflict avoidance are destructive.

I have heard it said that instead of dying by fire, as in angry, explosive arguments, many relationships slowly “die by ice” as emotional distance and resentment build over time. People avoid these necessary, fiery conversations out of fear of rejection or abandonment, trauma and family dynamics, people pleasing tendencies, and lack of communication skills. I have had to work on all of these within myself, including fear of anger itself. It seems to me that people run from difficulty because our modern culture prioritizes immediate emotional comfort and values superficial peace over the lasting peace that results from resolving conflict. My marriage of over 25 years is a testament to the latter.

Now more than ever, we need a language for our emotions. The illusion of digital distance allows us to break up, fire an employee, or quit over text and email. We are losing the ability to handle emotional tension in real-time, making us less able to tolerate discomfort. People have become polarized, angry, and fearful. The emotions are strong, and we’re not talking about them constructively.

Recently, I invited a new friend with shared interests to lunch to get to know her better. During our conversation, a difficult subject arose. When I tried to broach it, she froze. I later received a text from her stating that she didn’t like talking about politics or religion and that it made her feel uncomfortable because her views differed from mine. How could she know what my views were? I certainly didn’t know hers because we never had that conversation. I made up a funny saying about myself, which is “politics is against my religion, and I don’t have a religion.” But still, it hurt my heart. Polarization is making it increasingly hard to communicate, leading people to shut each other out.

As a Warrior Goddess who has been through many battles and much heartache, I reflected on how best to protect and support my nervous system and gather my heart for the work that still lies ahead. This recent interaction, along with many strained relationships over the last few years, has made certain conversations difficult. We must choose our battles wisely.

A Warrior Goddess is a spiritual warrioress who challenges her wounded belief system based on projections, assumptions, and false fears–fears of being judged, not good enough, and ungrounded fears–which create unnecessary suffering and unhappiness. To transform the war-torn emotional battlefield and its subsequent trauma into a landscape that supports the integration of Heart-Mind takes patience, practice, persistence, courage, and commitment. That challenge also requires sobriety, awareness, and clarity that personal freedom is attainable beyond the struggle.

• Sobriety – Clear headed and discerning what is me and what is not me, not under the influence of the “other,” and using common sense. It takes self-control.

• Awareness – Perception without interpretation or opinion and that allows discernment. Self-awareness is the clarity to know who and what you are. It is presence without projection or self-importance. It takes practice.

• Courage – To question and challenge one’s own beliefs, to continue on the path in spite of life’s challenges, disappointments, and failures, and to self-motivate and not be controlled by the opinions of others. It takes discipline.

• Personal Freedom – To love and serve who and what we are called to love and serve, to have the freedom to choose what we want to do when and with whom. It takes courage.

It doesn’t really matter which road we go down ideologically—there is one truth that remains: we all drink the same water and breathe the same air in a closed system called Planet Earth. I thank God, Goddess, All-That-Is, for the music in my life that has allowed me to experience a universal language, a language of the heart. One that calls us to dance, sing, shout, laugh, or cry. I no longer pray for change in the world because the old cliché “the only constant is change” is so true. If I were waiting for the world to change, I would still be holding my breath.

Please enjoy this video of the Wise Wolf Women’s Gathering ~

Recommended Reading:

• Original Blessing by Mathew Fox

• Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Bruce Patton, Douglas Stone, and Sheila Heen

• Spirit of the Wolf: Channeling the Transformative Power of Lupine Energy by Linda Star Wolf & her son Casey Piscitelli with a chapter by Thea Summer Deer.

Resources:

Download the song Warrior Goddess from Thea & The GreenMan

Learn more about Star Wolf and her work at: Shamanic Breathwork

Learn more about HeatherAsh Amara and her work at: Warrior Goddess

Paid Subscribers receive the following Premium Content below: Photographic Fine Art Nudes of Warrior Goddesses by Thea Summer Deer and Marion Z. Skydancer.

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A father reads to his daughter by her bedside. The years go by, she becomes a teen, and Dad is no longer cool. But in his heart, she will always be his little girl. And in her heart, she will always be a Daddy’s girl. Then, one day, she grows into a woman and learns how to love and show appreciation for her father in ways she couldn’t at an earlier age. I know, because I have witnessed the love of this man for his children, for my children, and for their children, too. Please enjoy this lullaby written by a father for his daughter.

Good Night Laura

by Thea & the GreenMan - Unreleased

Written by Chuck Willhide, Thea on background vocals and guitar, John Keane on pedal steel guitar. Produced by Thea for StarPony Productions.

Sometimes I wonder if I would have felt more prepared for the changes in my body if Mom had shared her own experiences with aging. She never felt comfortable discussing things like menstruation, pregnancy, menopause, or getting older. I believe that came from how she was raised and her mother’s European sensibility, with both women living well into their nineties. Now that I am in my seventies and my mother is gone, I can’t ask for her advice anymore. Instead, I am reflecting on my own experience and thinking about how to openly talk with my daughter about aging, so she feels prepared in ways I wasn’t.

When I look back, I realize that Mom’s morning bathing ritual is one of the reasons she stayed healthy for so long. As she got older, I worried about her slipping while getting out of the tub, but she persisted. She would take a bubble bath, dry off, and then use a lightly scented floral talcum powder with a big, soft powder puff she kept in a peacock blue vanity jar with an elegant ball-shaped handle on its glass lid. As a girl, I found her ritual alluring. It was also her way of combating the oppressive South Florida heat and humidity, and her depression. I want to help my daughter see that even small daily acts can help us face the changes brought by age.

After her bath, Mom would ride her tricycle around Eastridge Village, her adopted mutt, Lucky, trotting beside her. The 76-acre resort-style retirement community, with its Art Deco villas, garden homes, and “Old Florida” landscaping, including a natural hammock with native orchids, was designed in partnership with Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. Mom loved gardening, and plants meant a lot to her. She also valued exercise, as did her mother, who was one of the first women in the US to earn a degree in physical education.

I watched Mom grow older, and she did so with grace. I didn’t think much about it at the time because she stayed mentally sharp until her final stroke, which left her half-paralyzed. The nurses who bathed her said that her skin was supple and beautiful like that of a much younger woman. In respect of Mom’s wishes, my sister and I removed her from life support, and she passed away ten days later at ninety-four.

We all go through a natural decline as we age: bones grow thinner, eyes dim, ligaments lose their hold, and muscles weaken. It’s part of a cycle on which we all depend. Even as these changes happen to me, I don’t see myself as “weak.” I go to the gym three times a week, hike, garden, soak in the nearby hot springs, and drink raw goat milk and herbal infusions. Still, I wonder: should I share more about these health challenges with my daughter, or would that just worry her? I also wonder if Mom felt the same way.

Mom grew up on a horse-and-chicken farm before moving to the Miami River, where she lived among the Seminole Indians at the Musa Isle Indian Village. Early exposure to Native culture made me realize that European ways, with their material comforts and scientific assertions, overlooked something vital. We are losing the ability to vision a sustainable future for the next seven generations and a world that has intrinsic value beyond what can be taken, destroyed, or sold for profit. Because Mom stayed connected to animals and plants throughout her life, she remained mindful of the seasons and slowed down appropriately, letting go of things when she could no longer do them, like driving or cooking for herself.

These lessons from Mom help shape my own perspective. I believe we should embrace all of life’s seasons. By learning to communicate with nature, that has a language all its own, we step into co-creation with the Elementals from which our world is made and grow attuned to the phases of transformation. Who are we in this process choosing to become?

Sometimes I think about calling my daughter to talk about the physical challenges that come with getting older. My knee, injured years ago, sometimes gives out and makes me worry about falling down the stairs. By evening, a bunion makes walking painful, and I often need a nap or to stay near a restroom. Still, I hesitate to share all the gory details with her. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining or becoming one of those people who only talk about what’s heading south. She will make her own journey, different from mine, just as mine is different from my mother’s.

I’ve healed many things in my body by turning to natural medicine, but aging isn’t something that needs to be healed. It’s a process we need to accept, to surrender to. That means also doing our best to protect our life-force energy at any age.

As a holistic childbirth educator and midwife, I learned a saying from Gayle Peterson’s book Birthing Normally: “as we live, so shall we birth.” Getting to know a woman and how she lives helps us understand how to support her in giving birth naturally. I think the same idea applies to dying: as we live, so shall we die, and that means we need to understand ourselves. I’ve watched friends and family with terminal illnesses fight until the end. But what were they fighting for? A few more moments of this precious life, even if it meant prolonged suffering? Sometimes, time itself feels like an illusion. Einstein said that time isn’t always the same for everyone. Shakespeare wrote, “The time is out of joint,” and Leonard Shlain, in his book The Alphabet vs the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, interpreted this to mean that those who first acquired the printing press ahead of the rest of the world could tear the wholeness of nature into small bites.

Those bites have turned into bytes, and they keep getting smaller. On Facebook, I see your face on a flat, 2-D screen and watch you age over the years, not in real time, but in digital bytes. The loss of connection is real. We rarely call to hear each other’s voices or sit together to read facial expressions. Instead, we tap out symbols on a screen that add together to form words, which make a sentence, and then multiply into a paragraph. Shlain argues that this adding together of symbols, which we call letters, uses the left side of the brain and can weaken the creative, feminine right side. We are losing the ability to discern what is real and what is generated by artificial intelligence. When I hit send on my computer, it is up to you to decode my symbolic message. Decoding symbolic language is a function of the nervous system and the Fire Element in Chinese Medicine. When you read my message without any sensory cues, it disrupts the Fire Element and the nervous system’s ability to imbue meaning to information gathered through the senses. As we become increasingly programmable by 2D, we are losing the ability to decode symbolic language. If Leonard Shlain is right that image is the language of the goddess, then what does it mean when our symbols are interpreted for us? Symbols allow our brains to process meaning, build community, and share knowledge across generations. They are the building blocks of human communication and transcend language barriers. The disconnect is real. The loss of sensory input is real. Our voices are becoming disembodied.

As I get older, I find myself less interested in fighting against the system. I’m simply tired of fighting—whether it’s with the deer in my yard that eat my plants, the foxtails that didn’t get weed-wacked in time, or the neighbor’s cats hunting and killing birds in my junipers. I’d rather direct my energy toward personal growth and transformation. Carl Jung once said that what we fight against only grows stronger. Chasing and yelling at the deer made no difference. The foxtails always return, and hurting the cats isn’t an option and would only upset my neighbor.

When I was a young girl, I remember Mom chasing a bunch of Indian kids out of our yard because they wanted to play on my swings and slide. They were mischievously good at sneaking in through the chain-link fence, and honestly, who could blame them? She looked ridiculous running after them, her pale bare feet peddling like a push mower through freshly mown Bermuda grass, and her flightless arms flapping like a peacock. No one can run faster than little Indian boys.

So what if we simply stood in the divine acceptance of what is? I imagine the Egyptian Goddess Isis, considered to be the Mother of us All, wrapping me in her rainbow wings in a reminder that I.S.I.S. stands for “it IS what it IS.” I want to share this with my daughter, along with what I’ve learned about aging, so if it’s true that “as we live, so shall we die,” I will have lived my life fully. Maybe by living our lives to the fullest, we can help create a new system that makes the old one obsolete. And so it is.

Starlight from Thea’s She Loved Horses CD

~ a song about Isis, Mother of us All

Learn more about the Elementals in Wisdom of the Plant Devas: Herbal Medicine for a New Earth.

Learn more about the Fire Element in Heal Your Heart: Nervous System Health & the Fire Element.

One late spring evening in 1991, the century plant was dying. Grandmother Beverly White Wolf and I stood before its magnificence in my circular gravel driveway, contemplating its demise. The ultimate desert outlaw and a loner, it does not play by the rules. Rather than blooming each spring, for decades this guilty survivor hoarded every drop of moisture it could find within its large, thick, serrated, silver-blue leaves. In one final act of defiance, armed with thorns and sharp spines beneath the sun’s unforgiving eye, the century plant triumphed by giving birth to a towering, sterile flower stalk. The effort to produce such a massive bloom literally drained the plant of life and symbolized the end of a cycle. I, too, was nearing the end of a cycle and my fertility years. Pre-menopausal and bleeding profusely, the life was being drained out of me.

The air was miraculously chill in the Tucson desert that day as I grieved the losses of my life without knowing their purpose. Soon, I would leave this big, beautiful rented house overlooking the Rincon Mountains for a small casita two blocks from my day job near the University of Arizona. After my third divorce, I could no longer afford the rent on Avenida de Belleza, the “beautiful avenue” above Old Spanish Trail. When my husband left with just a suitcase and a computer and never came back, I took in two roommates, but it wasn’t enough. They had since moved out, and White Wolf came to help me pack. I received no financial support from my soon-to-be ex, who was constantly traveling for work and rarely home. This would be my sixth move in six years, leaving me emotionally and financially depleted. Each move felt like another death–the loss of home and stability. The unspoken shame beneath my grief came in large doses. I was a failure and flat broke. I fell apart in a world that I could no longer hold together.

My moon time had brought on a flood of heavy bleeding, exacerbated by packing for the move and heavy lifting. “Menstrual flooding,” a wise elder had called it. I flooded in the desert dry as a bone. I remember seeing the high water signs when I first moved to Tucson, “DO NOT ENTER WHEN FLOODED.” I could not imagine where all that water could mysteriously come from in a place as dry as this. But when the monsoons finally came, then I understood.

On the evening that White Wolf and I gazed up at the century plant, I pondered what its dying meant to me. Then Grandmother’s voice broke gently through my introspection.

“My dear, Thea,” she said. “The sun will be setting soon. Soon, the century plant will fall.”

We stood at the edge of miles and miles of open desert as the sky began to turn an agonizing shade of pink and crimson. My body bled and my spirit collapsed. The finality of it all—the end of my marriage, yet another move, and now the century plant was dying—overwhelmed me. What lesson did I need to learn? I needed a healing story.

“Tell me a story, Grandmother, about the wisdom of the century plant.”

White Wolf nodded, drew out her tobacco pouch, and rolled a smoke. She prayed in whispers. I studied her strong hands, her humble posture. We sat on the ground in silence for a few moments. Then looking up at the century plant she began:

“She has seen so much standing here for so long without going anywhere. We think that if we do not go here and there, we will miss out on something important. We keep grasping for the missing pieces, traveling great distances, going faster and faster. It’s when we’re not still that we’ll miss out on what’s really important. That is what she teaches us.

She has her protection in place and reaches out her arms to receive the gift of water from Sky Father in the brief moments when he opens himself to her. Her roots are not deep, though she endures for ages. Once in her lifetime, she blooms, lifting her face to the desert sky as if for one last kiss, and then she dies. If only we could know a love like this. Slowly growing, withstanding great drought, heat, storms, and floods, she witnesses the passing of time like wind and blooms her crowning glory at the very end. Oh my dear Thea, she is so very wise.”

When Grandmother finished, tears wet my face. I wished to lay my sorrow down, returning it to Mother Earth one tear at a time, where it could water the new life yet to come. I couldn’t carry the weight of it anymore, the regret, the bitterness, the clinging to pain. It had made me weary and caused me to bleed.

“Thank you for this, Grandmother,” I said.

“Yes, my daughter,” she replied. “Take only the stories with you on your journey. Leave the rest behind.”

The story of how I became Thea started with White Wolf giving me that nickname, short for Cyn-thia, only with an “e.” Around that same time, one of my herbal medicine mentors, Susun Weed, began calling me Thea. With both medicine women using this new name, I adopted it as a way to start over and remake myself.

Susun’s editor, Betsy Sandlin, lived in Tucson, so when Susun came in the spring of 1992 to put the finishing touches on her manuscript, Menopausal Years: The Wise Woman Way, Betsy called and invited me to go hiking with them. I hadn’t seen Susun since leaving Miami in 1985, where I had been a practicing midwife, and she had come to teach the midwives about the use of herbs during the childbearing year.

The following morning, we met at Betsy’s and then drove to the trailhead. The three of us hiked a moderate four miles in Bear Canyon on the south side of Mount Lemon, past sycamore and cottonwood trees. The trail wound past large boulders and offered great views of the desert landscape. At one point, I stepped over a large rock to discover a venomous Gila Monster on the other side, slowly making its way across the path. Thankfully, I had brought my walking stick and managed to avoid stepping on it.

A few years earlier, I killed and skinned a couple of problematic rattlesnakes, which gave me the uncanny ability to smell them while hiking. That day, as Susun, Betsy, and I climbed the trail past an area where water occasionally flowed, the unmistakable scent rose from a clump of low-growing shrubs. I stopped and told the women I could smell a snake. The look on their faces registered doubt. We paused as I scanned the nearby brush. Sure enough, a rattler was coiled beneath a brittlebush, happy to be left alone as we passed.

We talked as we walked, and I shared my concern with Susun about the heavy bleeding. She reassured me that I was in pre-menopause and suggested two herbs for hormonal support: evening primrose oil and chaste berry (vitex). She also offered to send the chapter, “Flooding” from her soon-to-be-published book. A couple of weeks later, I received photocopied pages with a note asking for feedback, along with a handwritten note in the margin:

“Betsy & I discovered we both thought of you as anything but ‘cynthia!’ Hope you don’t object to my shortening your name to “goddess.” = thea.”

Curious about who this goddess, Thea, might be, I went to the University of Arizona library to learn more. I read that Thea, a Greek Titan Goddess, married her brother, Hyperion. Thea is a moon goddess, and Hyperion is a sun god. She bore him the sun, the moon, and the dawn. Pindar, an ancient Greek lyric poet, praises her as the “Mother of the Sun,” and calls her “Thea of many names.” She is a goddess of illumination, guided by her inner sight and vision.

Cynthia is also the name of one of the many moon goddesses, and I am ruled by the moon, born in the sun sign of Cancer. Much of what I read resonated, especially the part about being married to my brother. Many of the men I had loved in my life, including my second husband and the father of my children, felt like spiritual brothers to me. I liked the idea of being called Thea.

I took the herbs that Susun recommended for three months, and they did their job, supporting my endocrine system so that I no longer bled heavily. It felt like a miracle and deepened my trust in the plant medicines and in myself. I not only had more energy and clarity of vision, but also a new name from which to create a new story to carry forward on my journey. The story of a century plant that withstands drought, scorching heat, storms, and floods, and with the passing of time, like the wind, blooms her crowning glory at the very end.

This year, I turn 71, and feel blessed to share Elder Wisdom and Good Medicine with you as it has been shared with me. Thank you for subscribing to Thea Summer Deer.

Wilderness of Rocks by Thea from Eagle’s Gift

Are you struggling with hormonal imbalance, inflammation, chronic dehydration, asthma, or autoimmune conditions ending in “itis,” like bursitis, arthritis, or gastritis? There is a chlorophyll and mineral-rich healing herb that can help restore the deep feminine, watery yin and support your body’s systems. This plant is a high-protein superfood, stress buster, and brain-boosting adaptogen. Whether you want to improve your skin or nourish your nervous system, you might find this plant growing right in your backyard. Meet the humble, powerful Stinging Nettle.

Join me and nineteen expert herbalists as we gather to share our personal experiences with Nettle at the Nourishing Nettle Virtual Conference, May 4-12, 2026. We will explore everything from its traditional uses and lore to current research and clinical applications. This is an excellent opportunity to begin or deepen your relationship and understanding of this longevity-promoting green ally. Nettle is the ultimate adaptogen, affectionately known as “Sister Spinster,” and she has a way of weaving herself into the lives of those who seek true vitality.

Come take a walk with me in the woods and discover the Secrets of Wood Nettle through Wise Woman and European herbal traditions, and the energetic perspective of Chinese Medicine. I am excited to join Susun Weed as a presenter and will share insights on The Secrets of Wood Nettle. We will discuss how Nettle relates to the Chinese Elements of Water and Wood, and how it supports immunity and hormone health. Get ready to be inspired, to taste, to heal, and to connect. And don’t be afraid to get hands-on!

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Thea Summer Deer, D.S.P.S., is a clinical herbalist, author, educator, licensed minister, and former midwife who holds a doctorate in Philosophy and Shamanic Psychospiritual Studies. Her involvement in Alternative and Holistic Medicine spans over four decades. She currently teaches Energetic Medicine and Chinese Five Element Theory online at Wise Woman School, and at herbal medicine schools and conferences. Thea’s book, Wisdom of the Plant Devas: Herbal Medicine for a New Earth is a spiritual guide book that bridges botanical medicine with plant spirit medicine. Published by Inner Traditions International/Bear & Co..

During Women’s History Month, we appreciate, honor, and celebrate the strength of women and their gifts to our world. Yet, there is one female archetype often overlooked, her voice and rage both physically and metaphorically silenced and locked away. She is known as Crazy Woman, and she suffers from a madness born of grief and the inability to function in a restrictive society. I encountered her at the crack of dawn in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the early 1990s. The experience left me unsettled. Her insanity brought unexpected healing, shaping a new appreciation for the spirit of Crazy Woman.

That morning, as carpools prepared to leave for the drive from the conference hotel in Santa Fe to Cañoncito, a small woman in a motorized wheelchair, her body twisted and deformed, accosted my partner, Matohikan, and me in front of the hotel. We were taking a group of doctors and psychologists who had attended the Creativity and Madness Conference to a post-conference sweat lodge ceremony and workshop on sacred land one hour away. Over the past two days, this woman had been pleading with Matohikan to be allowed to attend the ceremony that he would lead. . Up to that point, I only felt pity, but her ongoing unreasonable demands showed her determination. Still, it had not been my decision to make.

“You could carry me to the lodge,” she insisted, not grasping the impossibly steep and rocky terrain.

“There are no facilities, only an outhouse,” Matohikan told her gently.

“So what?” she retorted, “You are healers, and you will take me to the lodge!”

“I am so very sorry,” replied Matohikan, “but we will have to refuse because access to the site is just too difficult.”

She sat dressed fashionably in her wheelchair, wearing slacks and a colorful blouse beneath a navy blazer. A beautiful scarf draped her short neck, and attractive earrings dangled from her ears. She had not dressed for the backcountry. The conference attendees were professionals in their fields, but the woman acted belligerently. She demanded that we make arrangements for her to attend the sweat lodge.

One by one, as the cars began to depart, she threw her arms around people, begging that they take her with them. This made for a dreadfully uncomfortable and embarrassing situation, further intensifying the earlier tension. Her emotional instability and physical weakness would not have allowed her to withstand the rigors of such a ceremony. But that did not make it any easier to refuse her. Matohikan, Barry, the conference organizer, and Michael Belshaw, the land’s owner, had all told her an adamant “no.”

The ceremonial site became a flurry of activity on the morning we arrived. I would not participate in the sweat because I had too much work to do in preparation. Matohikan would lead two lodges back-to-back to accommodate the number of people. Michael and I shuttled people arriving in carpools from Santa Fe, where they parked at an abandoned airfield in the nearby village of El Rito, to the ceremonial site in our four-wheel-drive vehicles. The rugged dirt road leading to the site was too difficult for a regular car to navigate, and the land was not suited to motor vehicle traffic. Shuttling took the better part of the morning.

By midday, the smell of the campfire, mixed with pine, sagebrush in full bloom, and Northern New Mexico’s crisp, clean air, infused the event with an air of excitement bristling with transformation. A local v Native woman, with the help of her family, had set up a campfire kitchen and would serve Indian tacos. But no one would eat until after the ceremony. Traditional ways required a fast before a sweat lodge ceremony to prepare oneself for cleansing of body, mind, and spirit. Through the intense heat of the lava stones and the powerful prayers offered to Great Spirit, the sweat lodge experience is like dying and being reborn. I saw my work with the sweat lodge as another form of midwifery, facilitating a spiritual birth.

After my first shuttle run, I parked and partially descended the steep, and rocky hill everyone had to go down to reach the lodge. Halfway, I decided to sit for a minute, catch my breath, and watch the human activity below me. That unique vantage point allowed me to observe two ravens flying toward the lodge from the west. They landed in a particularly tall pine tree and watched the makings of men. Then they took off, flying back in the direction they had come. I stood to climb back up the hill to begin my next run, wondering if they would return.

After the last shuttle run, I returned to the same spot on the hillside where I had previously sat and watched the preparations. That is when the ravens returned. For some time, I watched them flying back and forth. One would sit very high up in a pine tree while the other would fly west to some hidden place. I could hear them calling back and forth to each other. Then they would trade places. One would fly off as the other returned. Sometimes they would come and go together. I imagined they were gathering some unseen thing to hide in some unseen place, as ravens do when they cache objects or food. I had a familiar, undeniable sense that there might be something more to these ravens.

I closed my eyes and allowed my perception to travel with the ravens. I felt lifted above the day’s activities. I felt the wind in my face and saw the tops of trees as I sailed with an infinite azure blue desert sky above. I looked into the iridescence of my blue-black wings.

My awareness jolted back to the hillside where I sat. These were not ravens but shapeshifters! They were men and women who knew how to shift their consciousness into another form and use it as their own. The land we were on lies between Abiquiu and Ojo Caliente and is in a 160-acre inholding surrounded by National Forest inhabited by witches. Locally, they are called brujos or brujas, and that day, they had come disguised as ravens. I sensed they were not pleased with our presence. They had been practicing and perfecting their Shamanic arts on that land for centuries, and we were uninvited. I felt a “disturbance in the force” and remembered an earlier incident.

While we were preparing the site for the sweat lodge, Michael discovered a giant rattlesnake coiled beneath a nearby bush. Disturbed by our activity, it commenced to rattle. He wasted no time killing it with the pistol he carried on his hip. I marveled at his swiftness, for this was no small snake but a grandfather rattler. I felt both protected and uneasy. Michael defended his actions. He declared that he would not have people endangered by poisonous snakes on his property. At least not in the areas where activities were taking place. We were a long way away from the nearest hospital. I skinned out the snake and asked for its forgiveness, but I couldn’t help feeling that it had been an old guardian spirit and someone, or something unknown, would be angered by its death.

When I got to the bottom of the hill, I shared my observation of the ravens with Matohikan, but he was too far into the ceremony, half lost in the spirit world. He could only acknowledge that ravens were indeed messengers between the worlds.

The first lodge began, and with it came overwhelming exhaustion. I needed a quiet moment away from the activity, so I hiked back up to the Land Cruiser, opened the rear side door, and climbed in. I had only intended to lie down for a moment, but ended up passing out in the back seat. I felt myself weighted and falling through layers of confusion and darkness. In a lucid dream, I fought the deep sleep that threatened to possess me until I fell asleep within the dream. Unconsciousness overtook me.

Hours passed until a half-naked, overheated, soaking wet Matohikan stood over me, shaking me awake. “What happened to you? Where did you go?” He said, in an angry voice, while continuing to try to wake me. Matohikan rarely got angry, and it shocked me back into my body.

“The lodges are over, and we’ll be eating soon. I need you down there, right now!” he yelled, his shriveled finger pointing down the hill. He looked awful, like death warmed over; his eyes hollow, his face pale, his skin wrinkled from hours of sweating. He smelled like acrid smoke. Two lodges, back-to-back, had taken their toll.

I felt drugged as I pulled myself up and out of the Land Cruiser. I felt ashamed for not doing my job. I felt like someone had given me a potent elixir and taken me on a mystical journey into an underworld I did not fully comprehend. If Matohikan hadn’t come and awakened me when he did, I think I might have been lost in some in-between world – forever. I fought with a force more powerful than my own will as I struggled to wake up from the dream within a dream. It felt like a self-locking knot. The harder I pulled, the tighter its hold. Whatever prayers I may have imagined protected me, they were no match for these brujos.

I stumbled down the hill after Matohikan. It appeared as if the lodges had been very intense. The stones must have been very hot, and a lot of purification was needed. I wondered if the dream that wouldn’t release me could be related to the participants who were vomiting, crying, and walking around half dazed. I had never seen anything like that before. The spirits in this place were too much for me, let alone these medical professionals, not used to experiencing the world outside of concrete reality. The powerful visions given to them in the sweat lodge had shifted their consciousness and hit them hard. I knew these people and their lives, as well as mine, would never be the same.

I vaguely remember eating Indian tacos, as if I were still half asleep. Then it was time to begin the shuttles back down the rough road to the cars waiting in the abandoned airfield. We were, after all, deep in the forested canyons, miles from a paved road, even more miles from the nearest village, which was approximately another hour from Santa Fe. Cañoncito was not a place you would want to be with a snake bite, a medical emergency, or lost in the spirit world.

A feeling of foreboding returned as I began the descent from Cañoncito to the abandoned airfield in El Rito for the final round of shuttling. The long, exhausting day had left workshop participants eager to return to their cars, their Santa Fe hotel rooms, the Albuquerque airport, and, finally home. For those who chose to remain in Santa Fe, Matohikan would do a follow-up session in the morning to help them process the ceremony. I can only guess how those who did not remain would integrate the lodge’s intense experience into their daily lives.

A shadow hovered like an unkindness of ravens flying above pine and sage-studded hills. It seemed to block out the sun. But in reality, it had been the pines offering a brief respite of shade before the dirt road reached the desert’s unprotected openness. I opened all the windows in the Land Cruiser to exhale the feeling out and inhale the pure breath of sage. At my passengers adamant request, we stopped to fill our bags with the purifying, pungent herb to take home. I offered a pinch of tobacco with a prayer of thanks for the medicine gift we harvested. Sagebrush grew here as far as the eye could see, but was expensive to buy as “smudge sticks” in gift stores. None went untouched by the sweet smell of it.

If nothing evil or unclean can exist in the presence of burning sage, why did I feel the lingering weight of the day’s shadows? Everyone remained silent as we returned to the airfield. My thoughts turned to the incident that had occurred early that same morning with the woman in the wheelchair, and it upset me. I tried putting it out of my head.

Approaching the airfield with a Land Cruiser full of exhausted participants, the sun hung just above the western mesa, and the shadows of rock and tree had lengthened around us. The drugged feeling I experienced earlier had not yet completely worn off. The foreboding and darkness prevailed.

I unloaded the passengers and watched them make their way toward their cars. Then the scene exploded.

“My God!” I heard a woman scream. “This can’t be!”

I jumped out and ran to where she stood, with my hand over my mouth and eyes gaping at her car’s windshield. The glass appeared to have been blown out by a shotgun. My mind went racing from the snake to the ravens. Someone wanted us to know we were unwelcome here. I had little to offer the woman in the way of consolation.

Wearily, I drove back up to Cañoncito. Dusk turned the hills a silver sage gray. I would pick up Matohikan so we could descend that miserable, bumpy, dirt road for the last time and head back to Santa Fe. On the way, I began telling him about what had happened at the abandoned airfield. Eeriness filled the car. Before I could finish my story, a large owl flew right in front of the windshield and startled us into a unified scream. What did it mean? What few nerves remained now lay shattered somewhere in the vicinity of the car floor. I needed to get back to the safety of my air-conditioned hotel room with its clean sheets, toilet, and bathtub, far away from snakes, owls, and ravens.

But the dark feeling did not go away with the dawning of the next day. Matohikan concluded his follow-up session with the remaining participants, and we prepared to leave the hotel. With suitcase in hand, I stepped out of our room to find the woman in the wheelchair waiting for us. Surprisingly, Matohikan looked scared as he scurried down the hallway, trying to leave her behind. I followed him, and she followed us to the front desk, cursing under her breath. I turned to look at her more closely. Her wild curly hair obscured her face. Deformed and fleshly from whatever illness had stricken her body and determined to give us grief, I thought, who could this woman be? Then, in a flash of recognition, I realized that I had been seeing the spirit of Crazy Woman.

I tried to ignore her while watching from the corner of my eye. When I saw her carefully reach into her bag, I became fear-stricken and imagined she had a handgun and would pull it out and shoot us. Before Matohikan could finish checking us out from the hotel, I headed for the car. He averted her as best he could. We watched as Crazy Woman sat in her wheelchair, shouting obscenities and angrily shaking her fist as we drove off into the blazing New Mexico sun.

We drove to the Albuquerque airport, and I dropped off Matohikan so he could catch a flight that evening to another speaking engagement. I sadly hugged him goodbye and thanked him for a transformational week at the Creativity and Madness Conference. Alone and exhausted, I steered the Land Cruiser south and headed home to Tucson with a bulging bag of desert sage.

The sense that dark spirits followed me lasted the entire journey home. I couldn’t seem to shake it. Every time I looked up and into the rearview mirror, I saw Crazy Woman shaking her fist at me. I wished I could have taken a plane home instead of making the tiring drive alone. But we had needed the Land Cruiser, and it had been my job to drive it. That night on my long drive south and west beneath the desert stars, I thought about many things. I thought about Matohikan and how hard he worked and how rarely he came home. I thought about the spirits I had encountered, the weight of the ceremony we had performed, and the long-term repercussions.

After seven hours of driving, I was even more exhausted than before. Shortly before dawn, I experienced the short-lived release of arriving home. However, as I pulled into the driveway, I immediately sensed something wasn’t right. Still weary, I exited the car and walked through the carport to the door that led into the living room. After unlocking it and stepping inside, the wolves rushed to greet me. My panic rose as I discovered them loose in the house, while the house sitters were nowhere to be found. What also greeted me was a scene of complete and utter chaos: someone—most likely the wolves—had raided the altar. Bones, beads, ceremonial objects, and crystals lay scattered throughout the house, along with animal pelts and an Indian blanket that had been shredded and dispersed. They had left behind a trail of devastation.

Panting and thirsty, the wolves needed water. I carefully crossed the living room floor to avoid stepping on valuable objects and opened the sliding glass door that led to an indoor garden patio with a fountain that the wolves eagerly ran to for a drink. A long, six-foot-high plate-glass window at the back of the room had been shattered. It led to the backyard and appeared to have been blown out by a shotgun. Glass shards lay strewn everywhere. The back patio door lay wide open, and the wolves quickly ran out of it. I followed to find even more items, including a skull decorated with leather and feathers that had been hanging on the wall.

Some expensive and rare items were ultimately lost, but nothing was missing. I tried to piece together what had happened: First, the wolves had been locked in the house. However, the items ended up in the backyard. If the sliding door wasn’t closed–though it was–perhaps they could have escaped. Even then, breaking out through the high window seemed impossible for even a Houdini wolf. The back door was found wide open, but this didn’t explain how the wolves got back inside the house. Concerned that they might have injured themselves, I checked them closely for marks, but found none. The only thing that made sense was that dark spirits had followed me all the way back to Tucson. Spirits do not possess the same time and space boundaries that we have.

I closed all the doors, leaving the wolves outside. Something else was at work here. The spirits have a thousand eyes. I remembered the message that came to me when Michael killed the grandfather rattler. I heard my own words reverberating in my head: An old guardian spirit and someone, or something unknown, would be angered by its death. Angry spirits had preceded me. And I needed them to leave NOW!

I ran to the car and grabbed the large bag full of sage from Cañoncito. I quickly emptied it into the fireplace, lit it, and closed the damper. Slowly, the room filled with thick smoke.

“I am whole, and I am healed,” I chanted. “Grandmother! Grandfather!, I need your protection,” I prayed. “Nothing may enter without my permission,” I said out loud, casting a circle of protection around myself.

“You will leave now!” I demanded in a thundering voice. “You are not welcome here.” I continued directly addressing the invasive spirits, “Your work is finished here. LEAVE NOW!”

I must have looked like a mad woman jumping up and down, waving my arms, and yelling in a house filled with sage smoke. Then I heard a door slam, but I had left no doors open. I shook first with fear and then with anger, and then I collapsed.

I couldn’t get ahold of Matohikan, or the house sitters in those days before cell phones. I called the house sitter’s parents and learned they had left the night before, knowing I would be home first thing in the morning. They knew nothing about what had happened. Alone at the edge of the desert, at the edge of another reality, at the edge of madness, I crawled into bed and slept.

And then I woke up, gathered all the scattered pieces from around the house, rebuilt the altar, and dedicated it to Crazy Woman. That week, I fashioned a fat little goddess out of clay with sticks pushed into her head for wild-looking hair. I placed her on the altar alongside a picture of Mom and fresh flowers. Then I added a small bottle of gin, my mother’s spirit of choice, and various trinkets that reminded me of my crazy mother. Mostly, I wanted to honor the spirit of Crazy Woman within myself. Even though she scared me and appeared ugly, I knew she, too, was sacred. I feared that if I kept pushing her away as I had done in the past, she would only keep coming back to remind me of my inner darkness and confusion. So I chose instead to embrace her in her turmoil and her pain, and to hear Crazy Woman’s messages despite the ranting and raving. She would be my teacher, holding space for the deepening journey into my own shadow.

Mom left her fertility years as I entered mine. I had a very strained relationship with her during puberty. Desperately menopausal, she became depressed and started drinking heavily and using prescription drugs. About that time, my father started having an extramarital affair. Things went from bad to worse. Mom started acting hysterically and became physically abusive. She hit and scratched me, and one time she pulled my hair in front of a friend. I felt ashamed for her as much as I did for myself. That is the Crazy Woman I feared inside of me. And reasonably so, as I approached my menopausal years and my daughter neared her first menses.

A living portal, that altar helped me externalize the confusing feelings I had about my mother and myself. It helped me accept those deep, dark, ugly places I had become so good at hiding, and ultimately transform them. We can only be who we are in the present moment, even if we want to be different. Ugliness, once freed, can be seen as a beautiful thing when released from the body. At the altar of Crazy Woman, I bowed to those ugly parts of myself, no matter how emotionally difficult. And in the process, I came to like myself better.

My mother’s generation saw women condemned and institutionalized for being labeled emotionally inappropriate. Is it no wonder women go mad when robbed of their sovereignty and power? Much damage occurred to the female psyche with the disempowerment of the feminine by the masculine. Perhaps our emotions are the last unexplored wilderness of the human psyche, so grossly misunderstood and feared. Wilderness, both within and without, like Cañoncito in Northern New Mexico, is a place where we can have a radical and intimate encounter with the divine.

I will never really know what traumas shaped my mother, or the woman who chased us down the hall. But at the altar of Crazy Woman, I wept and prayed that we all would be healed. Because when you heal, I heal, and when I heal, you heal. Crazy Woman reminded me that I, too, am a sacred being. And so, I give thanks to the broken and twisted form of a woman, in a wheelchair, in Santa Fe.

Bones & Feathers by Thea - written in Santa Fe at Georgia O’Keeffe’s last residence and released on Eagle’s Gift

Resources:

Creativity & Madness Conferences on Facebook

Women and Madness by Phillis Chesler

Valley of Shining Stone: The Story of Abiquiu by Leslie Polling-Kemps

Inflammatory names whose suffix is ‘itis’ are turning up way too often these days, even in casual conversation. What follows is the comparison to a disease. Gastritis is one of those words I’ve been hearing a lot lately, and it involves the loss of one of our most precious and protective barriers, the stomach lining.

Western Medicine would have you believe that this mucosal lining might be inflamed due to an infection, faulty diet, or digestive hormone imbalance, and these may very well be contributing. Gastritis results when the immune system detects a threat to the mucosal barrier. It is an autoimmune response that triggers inflammation. But there is an important underlying mechanism involving the vagus nerve and the enteric nervous system.

What Chinese Medicine has understood for thousands of years through a gestalt view, Western Medicine is just beginning to understand through a reductionist view. One example would be how the immune system (Water Element) relates to the nervous system (Fire Element). Each tempers and controls the other. When in excess, the yin of Water (immune system) extinguishes the yang of Fire (nervous system), and when in deficiency, Fire is allowed to burn out of control (inflammation), which further dries and depletes Water’s deep, feminine yin reserves, creating a vicious cycle of inflammation.

An introductory crash course in the Chinese Five Elements and their phases of transformation would not fit in a Substack post, so let’s suffice to say that the Chinese have been at this for a lot longer than we have in the West. Traditional Chinese Medicine is an elegant model for viewing and restoring whole bodily systems, including the gastrointestinal system. Gastritis gives us the opportunity to explore this relationship between Fire and Water, the nervous system, and the deep immune system.

The enteric nervous system (ENS) directly connects the brain to the gastrointestinal tract and is often called the “second brain.” It is an autonomous network of over 100 million neurons embedded in the gut wall, from the esophagus to the rectum, responsible for transforming psychological and emotional stress into physical inflammation and pain. I learned that lesson over 50 years ago as a sensitive and anxious teenager. One night while attending a rock concert with a bunch of friends, I became surrounded by older kids doing drugs. I felt unsafe and out of control, and became anxious and overwhelmed by the social pressure to be “cool.” To my utmost horror and embarrassment, that night after the concert, I became overtaken in the parking lot by unbearable cramping pain. I had to lie down. And so there I lay in a sea of people, clutching my side and writhing on the asphalt, waiting for the gas to pass. And so began my journey with irritable bowel syndrome triggered by emotional stress.

Today, kids are suffering from stress-induced gastritis in even greater numbers from the immense social pressures amplified by social media. Chronic stress causes the ENS to release hormones that trigger inflammation and impair nerve function in the gastrointestinal tract. Stress-induced neural dysfunction leads to deficiencies in acetylcholine and impaired gut motility, leading to worsening gastritis. Acetylcholine is a vital neurotransmitter in the central and peripheral nervous system and is essential for the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which is responsible for “rest and digest.”

When we live in the sympathetic nervous system’s “fight or flight” response, we exhaust our adrenals and diminish our digestive qi. Psychological and physiological stress cause the body to withdraw blood supply from the digestive system and redirect it toward more vital organs. This decreases the stomach lining’s defenses, making it more vulnerable to stomach acids and complications. The PNS also enhances immune function.

The vagus nerve is the main component of the PNS that activates digestion. It is the longest nerve in the autonomic nervous system, extending from the brain stem to the abdomen. The stimulation of receptors by acetylcholine drives PNS actions, such as increased gastrointestinal motility and glandular secretion. The source of acetylcholine ACH is from the vagus nerve. Additionally, the vagus nerve acts as a major anti-inflammatory pathway by releasing acetylcholine, which inhibits the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, lowers systemic inflammation, and modulates intestinal permeability, which is essential for protecting the gut lining. The vagus nerve regulates inflammation throughout the body. It innervates the gut and spleen, relaying information from these areas and activating the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, contributing to reduced inflammatory responses. Poor vagal tone is associated with chronic inflammation and autoimmune conditions. Are we seeing a pattern here? By restoring the nervous system with Chinese herbs, vagal tone is improved.

The ENS and the vagus nerve form a crucial bidirectional communication link between the brain and the gut, known as the brain-gut axis. While the ENS, or second brain, is autonomous and controls digestion, the vagus nerve governs the primary highway upon which sensory data is sent to the brain, and motor instructions that regulate digestion and motility are sent to the gut. When information coming in through the senses is unreliable due to stress and trauma, we see a serious disruption of the Fire Element. The ENS relies on the governance of the vagus nerve. The nervous system in Chinese Medicine is under the governance of the Fire Element.

When the stomach lining is worn down to where it can’t protect itself from its own acids and enzymes, symptoms include severe indigestion, bloating, and upper abdominal pain that can lead to ulcers. Inflammation causes the symptoms of gastritis. Acute gastritis goes away when the acute cause resolves, but chronic gastritis takes longer to heal. Chronic gastritis affects about 2 out of every 10,000 people in the U.S., and over half of the world’s population has gastritis associated with the widespread, chronic bacterial Helicobacter pylori infection. Once H. pylori has been ruled out, identifying the sources of chronic stress and reducing or eliminating them will begin the healing process. Note: if you need to be tested or are positive for H. pylori, please read my post Think You Have an Ulcer? Think Again: H. pylori and Mastic Gum.

The good news is that Chinese Medicine offers very effective nervines and adaptogenic tonics to assist the body in healing from long-term stress. Chinese Medicine and Five Element Theory, which studies relationships and patterns, addresses the underlying causes of a chronic condition, while Western Medicine offers drugs that may relieve symptoms but allow imbalances to persist and may cause more harm than good in the long run.

One strategy employed by Chinese Medicine is the restoration of the Water Element’s deep feminine yin (kidneys/adrenals/deep immune system) that has been under assault by our masculine, over-driven, yang society. When the adrenals corresponding to the Water Element become depleted, we also see a depletion of endogenous glucocorticoids. These essential steroid hormones, secreted by the adrenal glands, regulate stress responses and immune function. We see extensive use of synthetic corticosteroids in Western Medicine for their anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive properties in the treatment of asthma, allergies, autoimmune diseases, and other inflammatory conditions. Synthetic hormones are known to disrupt the HPA axis and create hormone imbalances.

Permanent lifestyle changes to reduce chronic stress and anxiety may be necessary. When I was 19 years old in 1974, I followed an East Indian guru and practiced meditation, which set me on a healing path. Today, there are many options for managing stress, including yoga and mindfulness practices. When stress and anxiety are high, the production of acidic digestive juices increases, and the mucus and prostaglandins that protect the stomach lining decrease. And with prolonged, chronic stress, changes can occur in the autonomic nervous system, including the parasympathetic and sympathetic systems. Chronic stress often leads to hypersensitivity of the sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system, which can cause the onset of pathological symptoms at the gastric and intestinal levels. If left untreated, it can lead to gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), ulcers, and malabsorption of vitamins and minerals, specifically vitamin B12 and iron.

Herbal Strategies for Restoring Gut Health

• Mucilaginous herbs act as a demulcent to coat the stomach and intestinal lining and are used to soothe, protect, and hydrate irritated mucous membranes and inflamed tissues. These include: slippery elm bark (Ulmus rubra), marshmallow root (Althea officinalis), Aloe vera, oatstraw (Avena sativa), and plantain leaf (Plantago major).

• Oatstraw (Avena sativa), used in an infusion to moisten, hydrate, and as a nervine tonic. May be combined with Nettles, which helps to restore the deep feminine yin of the Water element.

• Oat gruel – Gently simmer a handful of old-fashioned oats and a handful of slippery elm bark (approx. ¼ cup each) in 1 quart of beef bone broth for 30 minutes, strain, and drink ½ cup as needed. The broth contains collagen and, combined with the herbs, coats, warms, and protects the stomach lining.

• Adaptogens & Nervine Tonics – Adaptogens provide significant benefits to help relieve the negative impact of constant worry, overwork, inadequate sleep, and unsustainable lifestyles. A nervine tonic is something you take consistently over a period of time. The longest-lasting results from herbal medicine is in its tonic ability to restore whole bodily systems. Nervines are complementary herbs for adaptogens. Adaptogens alone will not make up for a lack of sleep, a poor diet, or a lack of exercise. Most Americans are sleep-deprived, and adaptogens can help, but the most important thing in restoring the adrenals (Water element) is to sleep. Nervines enhance the effects of adaptogens. Nervine tonics are calming herbs that are mildly relaxing without being overtly sedative. This type of herb restores emotional balance and nourishes the nervous system, allowing it to do what it was designed to do. Nervines help calm anxiety and gastrointestinal tract symptoms caused by stress, lack of sleep, irritability, and hypertension. Some adaptogens are also used as nervines, including ashwaganda, eleuthero, reishi, rhodiola, and schisandra. Other nervine herbs include: chamomile, fresh milky oat, hawthorn, lemon balm, motherwort, and skullcap. A great way to begin is by having a cup of chamomile tea one hour before bed each night.

• Vital Adapt by Natura is an adaptogenic tonic that I regularly recommend. It nourishes adrenal and endocrine function and optimizes stress protection. Vital Adapt includes Eleuthro‚ Rhodiola‚ Schizandra, and Ashwagandha.

Lifestyle

• Ensure that you are getting between 7 and 9 hours of good sleep. Take naps and rest when tired. Sleep and rest are the most restorative things you can do for your nervous system. Without this, the body simply cannot restore itself. Additionally, be sure to retire around 10pm. Your liver does the bulk of its work between 11pm and 3am, and if you are active during this time, you are robbing the Liver of the energy it needs to do its work of filtering blood and hormone signaling. People who stay up to work past 11pm often experience a “second wind.” This is Liver energy that you are siphoning off, and it comes with a price.

• Regular, moderate exercise

• Manage your stress, favoring relaxing physical activities such as mindfulness yoga, Tai Chi, or Qigong.

• Mind-Body Techniques: gut-directed hypnotherapy, biofeedback, and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help manage digestive symptoms by addressing the stress response.

• Vegas nerve stimulation can be achieved by singing and humming!

Supplemental and Dietary

• Prebiotics and probiotics – gut flora influences the ENS and can contribute to or alleviate neuroimmune dysregulation and inflammation. It is well established that the gut is one of the most important components of the immune system and is influenced by microflora. Regular intake of probiotics can help maintain a healthy intestinal flora. Take an acidophilus supplement, eat fiber-rich and fermented foods, and drink organic, raw, unflavored kombucha, which is a potent source of probiotics and antioxidants that aid gut health by fostering a balanced, healthy gut microbiome, improving digestion, and reducing inflammation. It introduces beneficial bacteria that may help alleviate gut-related issues and improve nutrient absorption.

• Eat small and frequent meals and chew well to facilitate digestion and reduce the time food spends in the stomach.

• Bone broth is rich in collagen and an easily digestible form of protein that supports the gut lining by reducing inflammation, repairing the gut lining, reducing leaky gut by maintaining the integrity of the intestinal barrier, and fostering a healthy, diverse microbiome. You can find my bone broth recipe using Chinese herbs on my Wisdom of the Plant Devas blog: Chinese Herbal Chicken Soup for Optimal Health

• Multi-Stress B vitamin supplement, specifically B12, B1, & B6, which work together to support nerve cell survival, remyelination, and repair damage. Vitamin B12 is essential for nerve regeneration, maintaining the protective myelin sheath, and addressing peripheral neuropathy, while B1 and B6 support metabolism.

• Vitamin D: From fish oil, supports nerve health and myelin sheath maintenance.

• Vitamin E: Functions as an antioxidant that protects nerve cells from damage.

• Magnesium: Helps manage nerve pain and excitability

• Omega 3s: Found in fish oil, support nerve cell structure.

• Reduce irritants – Don’t feed the fire! Minimize intake of alcohol, sugar, and processed foods. Don’t use artificial sweeteners.

• Stay hydrated – drink sufficient water daily, approximately 2 quarts.

• Seek professional guidance: Consult with a knowledgeable herbalist, acupuncturist, or alternative practitioner for tailored advice.

Paid Subscribers receive the following herbal monographs from the desk of Thea Summer Deer, DSPS, Clinical Herbalist below: Milky Oats (Avena sativa) and Marshmallow (Althea officinalis).

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Let me tell you what heaven is. Heaven is the sweetness of honey from the hive. It is the sacred scent of roses, pure and unadulterated in the garden. Heaven is the hush of newly fallen snow. The smell of ponderosa pine and balsam fir, the warm touch of a new baby’s skin. The stillness of a peace that surpasses understanding.

Heaven has always been here on earth. And while it may be the field of energy we call pure love, a fullness that lies beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, but it also holds a void that we must all pass through. Where we come from and where we return is something we can experience and know in the present, a place known by many names, and by some as Sunyata, the seamless void. It is not nothingness but rather an emptiness of belonging to that which we already inherently belong. It is the end of separation and the beginning of illumination.

Be still, breathe deep, let your heart and mind come to rest. Know that you are safe and already home. Home in your body and on this heavenly earth. Everything is in divine order. All shall be well. There is a light to guide you, and it lives right inside of you.

We live in a Garden of the Gods, and I’m not talking about the awe-inspiring National Natural Landmark in Colorado. If you have grown tired of the makings of men, return to the Goddess. She awaits you at the end of desire.

And you who think to seek for the Goddess, know that your seeking and yearning shall not avail unless you know this mystery:

…if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without thee.

For behold, I have been with thee from the beginning; and I am that which is attained at the end of desire. —Charge of the Goddess, Doreen Valiente

Heaven has always been a choice, even before you were born. Choice is empowering. Wasted beauty and grace are devastating to witness. Why not celebrate, love, and protect it within ourselves, in each other, and in the world, whether it comes from leaders in the Oval Office or from the universe of stars above? If you are surrounded by chaos or in a living hell of your own choosing, you can still choose love, peace, gratitude, and forgiveness.

Travelin’ by Thea from Plant We Ride

Read more about our relationship to the divine in the spiritual guide book, Wisdom of the Plant Devas by Thea Summer Deer.

The use of the derogatory term Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), regardless of political affiliation, or to suggest that Trump is the one who is deranged rather than those who criticize or support him, confounds me. Polarization is confusing.

I have witnessed judgment becoming impaired when people abandon all logic and reason due to their intense hatred of the president. This also happens at the other end of the political spectrum with evangelical Trump supporters. What I don’t understand about TDS, in the context of negative reactions to the president, is if you hate the guy so much, why do you give him so much energy? Energy follows attention, and form follows thought.

Relentless expressions of negativity only reinforce that which we despise. Being uninterested in politics for most of my life and politically naïve, I couldn’t make sense of what was happening during Trump’s first term, so I simply turned him off. I didn’t want to see, hear, speak, or read anything about him. I chanted, “This too shall pass.” But turning it off this go round hasn’t been so easy.

Neuroscience has shown that the way you speak and think shapes your mind. Frequent complaining and constant criticism activate stress circuits in the brain, releasing chemicals and weakening the neurons responsible for focus, clarity, decision-making, and emotional regulation. Negative speech patterns train the brain to stay in a defensive state. This state reduces prefrontal cortex activity, which is responsible for higher-level attention and thinking. The more you complain, the more your brain defaults to negativity, creating a vicious loop. Neuroscientists also warn that being around people who constantly complain has a similar effect. Limiting negative conversations can protect our mental health. I choose thoughts that support mental clarity, not those that weaken it.

Being exposed to the vitriol and hatred toward Trump and his administration in his second term has become inescapable. That is why I have unfriended so many on social media who relentlessly post negativity. I choose not to consume it. What goes in is what comes out. To get a better sense of who people are, I have started listening to long-form podcast interviews and discussing them with my husband and a few select friends. I prefer to get my “news” straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. I watch and listen to information delivered in White House press conferences, Senate hearings, public addresses, and the occasional documentary, and interpret it for myself rather than relying on talking heads. I haven’t watched TV since I was a kid over 50 years ago, and it is only since COVID that I’ve turned it on again, selectively. It has been difficult, I confess, to feel solidarity in people’s suffering who are falling apart around me. TDS, after all, is not a terminal medical diagnosis. I choose instead to focus on what is positive, solution-oriented, and brings results. I applaud the Trump team’s wins, and there are many of them. My mental health thanks me.

Recognizing the difference between excuses and results becomes easier as our world grows more transparent. We have never had a more transparent administration than we do now. Excuses promote stagnation. Reasons lead to growth and provide an understanding. You have only to identify the patterns of stagnation, no different than in Chinese Medicine, to make a diagnosis. An excuse shifts focus outward and is a justification to avoid responsibility or blame. Excuses become a self-serving story to escape consequences. The key difference lies in accountability. All of the angry protesting and crying, in my opinion, is a huge distraction from looking within and owning our shadow projections. Where are you getting your information from that is making you so outraged? Is it true or valid?

People are outraged about ICE. Is it unconstitutional? Probably. The way I see it, Trump is challenging us to take ownership of our own power. Being a victim, identifying with victims, and shaming and blaming, is not an empowering position. If you are not the victim but want to rescue the victims, that is called co-dependency. Does the explanation for what is happening take ownership or cast blame? Does it offer a path forward or justify inaction? If the intention behind an excuse is to get out of trouble, then I would say that people exhibiting Trump Derangement Syndrome are seriously in trouble.

I get it. People are discouraged, frustrated, angry, sad, and depressed. You are entitled to those negative emotions. But there is no empowerment in projecting them onto a perceived other when you need a target to blame or feel that you are a victim of another’s actions. When you throw curses at someone, you curse yourself. If you expect negative outcomes and project a hateful attitude, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Negative emotions can be expressed without resorting to name-calling or attacking. Name-calling reduces you to the third-grade playground and puts you on the same playing field as the one you despise for name-calling. Name-calling is what people do who don’t have a good argument to back their position.

Adam Gopnik, long-time staff writer for The New Yorker who writes extensively about gun control and gun violence in the U.S., takes a strong anti-Trump position. In 2019, I had the pleasure of meeting Adam in San Miguel de Allende at a writers’ conference upon the publication of his book, A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism. I found his keynote inspiring and downloaded the book.

Gopnik responded to the assertion of being anti-Trump by saying that it is a “huge and even fatal mistake for liberals (and constitutional conservatives) to respond negatively to every Trump initiative, every Trump policy, and every Trump idea”. Arguing that Trump’s opponents must instead recognize that the real problem is “Deranged Trump Self-Delusion”, Gopnik defined the “Syndrome” as President Trump’s “daily spasm of narcissistic gratification and episodic vanity”. But is Trump a narcissist? Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist, best-selling author, and former professor at Harvard and the University of Toronto, doesn’t believe that Trump has a narcissistic personality disorder.

The Paradox of Trump’s Personality

CNN’s editor-at-large Chris Cillizza called TDS “the preferred nomenclature of Trump defenders who view those who oppose him and his policies as nothing more than the blind hatred of those who preach tolerance and free speech.” He also suggested that “the rise of presidential derangement syndromes is a function of increased polarization.”

Trump represents and mirrors the good, the bad, and the ugly within ourselves. Recognizing that what you thought was out there in another person is not out there at all, but inside yourself, is an agonizing process. Shadow projections are everywhere on the world stage, especially evident in the polarization between “liberals” and “conservatives.”

It is a known fact that negativity increases online news consumption. When we use social media and watch mainstream news, algorithms reinforce our existing beliefs, trapping us in ideological echo chambers. This increasing isolation from broader perspectives encourages a soulless state, leaving us vulnerable to external influence and reducing our ability to think independently. To change this, we must anchor ourselves spiritually, reclaim our humanity, learn to govern our emotions, and rise above our dependency on governmental parents. Ultimately, I believe we must strive toward personal freedom. And while this current administration, too, shall pass, I pray for serenity, courage, and wisdom in these transformational times. If you don’t like what you are seeing, don’t promote the negativity; turn it off! Or better yet, look for the positive results that are being delivered. What is your mental health worth?

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Mom passed her recipe books down to me when she was ninety. Some recipes are handwritten, others clipped from newspapers and magazines, and glued, scotch-taped, or stapled onto pages in a spiral notebook. The pages are faded and the cover worn, but like her, I’ve collected favorite recipes over the years; unlike Mom, I have neatly handwritten them on decorative recipe cards protectively stored in a recipe organizer.

The five recipes below are ones I have shared with my daughter, whose culinary skills make me proud. We compare notes and text recipe photos of our gastronomic creations in a fun exchange we jokingly call “food porn.” Now, as she teaches her own daughter, I hope this spirit of sharing continues through future generations. That is why I share these recipes, photos, and stories.

As a rule, I use local, fresh, organic ingredients. Eating food grown from heirloom seeds or foraged in the wild feels like a kitchen revolution. We’re each responsible for what we bring home from farm to table and consume. Whenever possible, I buy fresh produce, dairy, and bread from my local farmers’ market. Even when traveling, I make a point of visiting local markets and buying food there. The best way to connect with the spirit of a place is to taste its dirt from which our bodies are made. Minerals, aided by microorganisms in the soil, make their way up and into roots and vegetables, leafy greens, fruits of the vine, and local wine, allowing regional flavors to nourish body and soul.

1. Artichoke Almond Dip

Artichokes, native to the Mediterranean, are known for their medicinal properties, such as supporting healthy blood sugar and cholesterol levels. This flavorful dip makes a healthy, inviting finger food for holiday gatherings.

Artichokes are thistles, and I have a thing for them. It began with Mom’s Quarter horse, Duchess, who went crazy for thistles. She would take the bit in her mouth and pull her rider from the path to pursue its purple head. Mom thought it strange that a horse should like thistles. Years later, I learned that horses seek out thistles as a cleanse to prevent colic, or as a liver protector (hepatoprotectant), just as milk thistle benefits humans.

The story of thistles continues beyond my family’s experiences. The thistle has been Scotland’s national emblem since the era of King Alexander III, and coincidentally, Mom’s Scottish father bore the middle name of Alexander. So, no wonder she rode a horse named Duchess who liked to eat thistles! Beyond their symbolism for Scotland, thistles are also commonly used in Christmas holiday decorations alongside holly, ivy, and mistletoe. Even the Virgin Mary is linked to the flower. According to legend, when the traveling mother of Jesus became overcome with thirst, she came across a cow. Plucking the broad leaf of a thistle and folding it to use as a cup, she quenched her thirst on the cow’s sacred gift of milk.

Ingredients:

14 oz. can artichoke bottoms

¼ cup water

¼ cup olive oil

¼ cup lemon juice

lemon zest

1 cup almonds soaked overnight

¼ cup chopped red onions

½ tsp sea salt

4 cloves garlic

Directions: Process until smooth. Eat with chips, crackers, or fresh veggies.

2. Straccciatella ~ Italian Spinach Soup

I was lucky to marry two Italian men in a row, both with mothers and grandmothers who cooked from scratch, as in the ‘old country.’ These women, my mothers-in-law and their mothers, became my mentors, and I learned much about food and life in their kitchens. Since both my children are half-Italian, I felt it was important to carry on the tradition. My son later married an Italian woman, who, like her mother, also loves to cook. The recipe for this light, nourishing soup comes from my children’s Italian family and is served as a Christmas Eve first course.

Ingredients:

2 quarts of simmering, full fat chicken bone broth

I large yellow onion thinly sliced

2 bags of organic spinach, washed, dried, and coarsely chopped

3 free range fertile eggs, beaten

3 Tbs. fresh lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 teaspoon white pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano

Directions: Bring broth, onion, and spices to a boil and simmer until onions are transparent. Add spinach and reduce heat to low. Separately whisk egg yolks adding lemon juice slowly, then slowly add a few ladles of hot broth skimmed off the top to equalize the temperature. Add egg mixture back to the pot slowly while gently whisking the broth. Adjust spices to taste. Simmer slowly for another 5 to 10 minutes. Whisk in cheese and serve hot.

3. Maple Roasted Pecans

Sweetened with maple syrup, these pecans make a crunchy, festive gift and a special topping for sweet potatoes, squash, desserts, and salads. A dash of cayenne pepper adds a gentle spicy warmth.

Ingredients:

1 lb fresh raw pecan halves

1/3 cup maple syrup

1/4 teaspoon Celtic Sea Salt

1/2 teaspoon organic Fair Trade Cinnamon

dash cayenne pepper

coconut oil spray

Directions: Massage ingredients into pecans. Spread evenly on baking sheet sprayed with coconut oil. Bake at 350º for 20 minutes turning once. Remove from baking sheet when done and put in large bowl to cool completely.

4. Homemade Egg Nog

Let the party begin!

Ingredients:

12 free range (preferably fertile) eggs, separated

1 cup powdered sugar

4 cups whole milk

1 cup dark rum

1 cup brandy

2 tsp. fair trade vanilla

1/2 tsp. sea salt

2 cups whipping cream

1 tsp. ground nutmeg

1 tsp. fresh organic orange peel

Directions: Beat egg yolks until blended. Gradually add 1/2 cup powdered sugar beating at high speed until thick and lemon colored. Whisk in milk, alcohol, vanilla and salt. Set in fridge to chill. Meanwhile, whip the cream gradually with another 1/2 cup of sugar. Beat egg whites separately in a large bowl until soft peaks form. Fold egg yolk mixture and whipped cream into egg whites. Add nutmeg and orange peel and stir lightly. Store in large mouth quart glass containers overnight in fridge. Shake well (nutmeg and orange peel will settle) and serve. Makes approx. 1 gal.

5. Maple Sweetened Pumpkin Pie

This is an original recipe developed over time from a love of growing and processing pumpkins and of natural maple flavor. Since homemade pie crusts are a bit time-consuming, I will make two at a time and double the filling recipe. You can also buy very good, ready-made whole wheat or gluten-free pie crusts in the freezer section of your health food supermarket.

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups pureed pumpkin (I make it from fresh pumpkin, but you can use canned)

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup whole milk

½ cup maple syrup

1 ¼ tsp cinnamon*

1 ¼ ginger*

¼ tsp nutmeg*

¼ tsp cloves*

(*or 3 tsp pumpkin pie spice)

½ teaspoon salt

You will also need 1 nine inch, deep dish, whole wheat pie crust.

Blend all ingredients and pour into pie shell and bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for an additional 50 minutes or until knife comes out clean.

Kitchen Goddess Wisdom Tip ~

Use Wooden Utensils!

Use wooden utensils oiled with a good vegetable oil, and they will become long-lasting and well-cared-for friends. Wood keeps kitchen vibrations high and is one of the Chinese Five Elements. The spirit of Wood (Hun-Ethereal Soul) embodies vision, direction, imagination, and flexibility. The hun are said to enter the body shortly after birth and escort the spirit of our physical form after death back to the stars. May the spirit of Wood bestow its blessing upon your kitchen!

Remembering Nance Pettit

Slicing Potatoes from Out Beyond Ideas: Songs for Peace Project

Last month, Nance Pettit passed away after a long decline with Parkinson’s. Nance left behind her husband of 40 years, David Wilcox, and their son, Nate. My husband, Chuck and I, have been fans of David’s music, to which Nance contributed her voice. Nance was also an alternative medicine healer, and her loss is deeply felt.

I first met David at the Tucson Folk Festival in the early nineties. Chuck met and studied with him at the Swannanoa Gathering. After moving to North Carolina, where David and his family also lived, we had the opportunity to see him in concert many times. I remember hanging out one evening with David, Nance, and Nate in David Goldhagen’s art glass studio, where Thea & the GreenMan performed for Goldhagen’s Hot Summer Nights concert series. David and Nance sang unplugged that night and were on their way across the country and down into Mexico in 2 Airstream RVs to give Nate a homeschool education. Travel, in my opinion, is the best education. The last time I saw David and Nance was just a few years ago. He gave a moving performance for the Meher Baba Sahavas event in Asheville, NC, and she shared with me about her decline. It broke my heart to see her struggling just to walk. If you would like to support David, who cared for Nance during the last ten years of her illness, please consider donating to his GoFundMe Fundraiser.

Clay speaks through Renya’s hands. She is a clay artist who molds the universal language of symbolism and archetypes into divinely inspired pieces of wearable art. So who better than Renya to approach me with her hazel eyes, declaring, “You have Bear Medicine!”? We had only recently met.

In that moment, I felt a mix of emotions. At first, a little defensive—how could she know this about me? Yet, Renya’s intuition was strong, and it was evident that she trusted it. Her forwardness caught me off guard, and something tugged at my solar plexus. I felt a pang of recognition, followed by a rush of fear at the thought of carrying a Medicine that big. What truth did Renya see in me that I had not yet discovered within myself?

Native American animal medicines have spiritually guided me throughout my life, especially those of Wolf, Raven, and Deer. In this context, “Medicine” refers to anything that enhances our connection to the divine and fosters a deeper understanding of what it means to walk in harmony with the Universe. These are profound Medicines that we may be called to honor and carry on the Great Medicine Wheel of life. Sometimes we choose them, and sometimes they choose us.

I would like to share a few of these Medicines with you, along with my process of discovering Bear Medicine, in the hopes that you will journey well with your own Medicines. They are much needed in these challenging times.

Wolf Medicine first came to me forty years ago, and I am a woman who has long run with the wolves. Wolf is a pathfinder and visionary teacher. I have lived with wolf-hybrids and with Medicine teachers in a wolf clan community founded by my friend, the late Brad Collins, and his then-wife, Linda Star Wolf, in the Cherokee Qualla Boundary in Western North Carolina (Qualla is a Cherokee word that means “old woman”). My “Wolf Tales” essay detailing the experience of owning and breeding wolf hybrids is published in the beautiful coffee-table book “Spirit of the Wolf: Channeling the Transformative Power of Lupine Energy”

The symbiotic relationship between wolves and ravens has always fascinated me. Raven is the bringer and carrier of ceremonial magic, and I have written many stories about them. It was Raven who called me back from the Great Smoky Mountains to the Southwest and greeted me when I first arrived in New Mexico two years ago. I was standing in my newly acquired magical garden when a raven landed at the edge of the neighbor’s roof and called out, tilting his head as ravens do and eyeing me curiously. My Corvid friend hasn’t done that since, but he often flies over, seemingly calling to me, and I echo back his name: “Raven!” Ravens can imitate human language, and this one has come to recognize the simple name I have given him and his friends. He has become familiar with my voice.

Deer Medicine, with which I also dance, has led me down some interesting paths through the woods, both literally and metaphorically. Deer represents the Medicine of gentleness, teaching us a great lesson about fear:

Gifted with the name Summer Deer, I am still learning how to honor and carry Deer Medicine. This becomes especially challenging when a stag from the neighborhood herd breaches my garden fence to eat my vegetables, or when I find a dozen deer fertilizing my front yard and leaving droppings on the front porch steps. I have given up trying to fight them, feeling as though I was resisting an aspect of myself that needed to be accepted. So, I reinforced the garden fence, raked the droppings, and swept the porch. Now, I admire the deer rather than yelling and waving my arms to chase them away. Earlier this fall, I came upon two spotted fawns leaping through the forest like characters from a Disney movie, and it truly melted my heart. I couldn’t help but surrender to their beauty. Like the dappling of their skin, both the light and the dark may be embraced as we learn how to love ourselves and others as they are.

Recently, I received a beautiful gift of Bear Medicine from Renya, a soul sister whose vision illuminates the path for the awakening New Earth. She gifted me with one of her clay bear pendants this week. For the past two years, Renya has reminded me that I carry Bear Medicine. The pendant is carefully crafted from micaceous clay, a traditional material used in New Mexican Pueblo pottery. To me, the Bear symbolizes a powerful spiritual force.

On the Great Medicine Wheel of life, Bear Medicine resides in the West, where she dreams within her cave. I have prayed with tobacco to Bear in the West during many ceremonies when making prayers to each of the seven directions. It feels synchronistic that this Medicine would arrive in my life after moving back to the Southwest, as the West is my spiritual home.

In reality, Bear has been a part of my life for a long time. Years ago, while living in the Appalachian Mountains, I wrote a song called “Silence of the Bears.” This song is about the grief and anger I felt when bear hunters hunted in the woods behind my farmhouse. I heard the bear dogs and the sound of the guns as they took out two bears. I am not against hunting, but that hit too close to home.

When my son was going through puberty, I took him to see David, also known as the “Bear Man.” David lived on top of Mount Lemmon in the Catalina Mountains, which rise 9,000 feet above Tucson. I asked him if he would mentor my fourteen-year-old son, and he agreed. David then gifted him with a piece of black bear fur, along with a lesson about Ursus americanus. As a visiting lecturer in public schools, David educated students about the bears that inhabit the isolated mountain ranges of the Southwest, known as Sky Islands. I stitched that piece of bear fur onto my son’s puberty rites shield, which I made by stretching and stitching a piece of buckskin over a round hoop.

Traditionally, Native women crafted these symbolic shields for men to carry into battle, not only to protect them from enemies, but more importantly, from their own egos. I learned about this practice from a Ute Medicine Man and shield maker in Arizona, who guided me in creating my son’s shield, symbolizing his journey through puberty and into manhood. The Bear Man also gifted me a piece of black bear fur for my own shield and a blue suitcase with brass hardware for my music gear. Inside the lid of the suitcase, there’s a bumper sticker that reads, “Support Your Local Bear,” featuring Smokey the Bear. I still use that suitcase to this day. They don’t make them like that anymore.

The synchronicity of Bear in my life has been remarkable. I once lived on Honey Bear Mountain, then I moved to Bear Mountain Road, and now I work at Bear Creek Cabins in Pinos Altos, New Mexico. My daughter lives on Bear Creek Road, and recently, a bear visited my car, leaving paw prints on my window after I accidentally left an empty sandwich bag on the floor behind the front seat. So what is this Bear Medicine that I carry? Why has it taken me so long to acknowledge it, and why is it important for these times?

As I gather the medicine of Osha root (Ligusticum porteri), which can be found in parts of northern New Mexico, I am reminded of Beverly Laughing Eagle, a medicine woman with whom I worked for over twenty years until her passing. She taught me by example to keep Osha, also known as Bear Root, in a medicine pouch around my neck. She said this would “provide spiritual protection.” Beverly also instructed me to chew on a piece of it if I wasn’t feeling well—and it really works!

The word “Osha” is of Native origin and means “bear.” It’s referred to as “bear medicine” because Native Americans have observed that bears eat it when they are sick. Osha is a powerful medicine that contains a small amount of oxytocin, which fosters feelings of love, trust, and cooperation. I would never want to be without Osha root tincture in my apothecary. It has both antimicrobial and antiviral actions, and is used to treat chronic and acute respiratory infections, coughs, and sore throats. Every medicine woman knows that to get to the root of a problem, you must seek the medicine of roots.

Medicine women are the keepers of the roots, and Bear symbolizes the spiritual strength needed to follow a Medicine path. Bear Medicine is a looks-within medicine, inviting us into the cave of introspection and self-reflection where our answers reside. When Winter’s death blankets the earth, Bear retreats into the silence of her womb-like cave to hibernate, dream, and process past experiences. The Dream Lodge serves as a space for intuitive inner knowing and female receptive energy, where visionaries, mystics, and shamans dream the future into form.

This is a crucial teaching for our times, as we have forgotten how to enter the silence in search of answers to our current dilemmas, and how to trust our inner wisdom. It is why “Do Nothing” is the first step in the six- stages of healing in the Wise Woman Tradition (Susun Weed).

Step 0 - Do Nothing (sleep, meditate, unplug)
Step 1 - Collect Information (research, support groups, divination)
Step 2 - Engage the Energy (prayer, self-reflection, ceremony, affirmations)
Step 3 - Nourish and Tonify (nourishing food and tonic herbs)
Step 4 - Stimulate & Sedate (activator herbs)
Step 5 - Use Drugs (pharmaceuticals)
Step 6 - Break & Enter (surgery)

West is also the direction we turn to face our fears. Standing at the entrance to the cave, we must gather the courage to enter the unknown. We pray to Bear, who resides in the West, for assistance in making this journey without being consumed by our fears.

In today’s world, we face mounting fears—fear of speaking our truth and of discerning the truth beyond the illusion of AI-generated images, fear of death and loss of bodily autonomy due to mandated vaccinations, fear of real or imagined tyrants, fear of monster storms, collapsing systems, and burning bridges—leading us into an unprecedented unknown. Yet amidst this chaos, there remains a constant: a set of original instructions that is holy and unwavering. This wisdom is always within reach; it is we who often stray from it. It is as constant as the cycles of the seasons, bringing us back to stand in awe of the Great Mystery, trusting in the re-emergence of spring.

One of my biggest fears is feeling unworthy of carrying such a big Medicine. What did I do to deserve this incredible life that I have been given? Unworthiness is an old pattern of belief that I continually work on.

While death is inevitable, I will embrace that adventure when the time comes. Still, I dream of having certain things: a dream kitchen, an adobe home with a kiva fireplace, and a deck that faces West. These are the dreams waiting for their dreamer. Although the future is not yet in form, I know that my future self envisioned this day when I would be an old woman sharing these stories with you.

Paradoxically, I have already reached a point in my life where I have everything I need in this moment, and I give thanks for that blessing. I will continue to confront my fears as I sink into the thick, warm, black fur of Bear, whose beating heart guides me in the Dreamtime, allowing me to seek a vision and receive answers to questions I am afraid to even ask.

Sun Bear, Medicine Chief of the Bear Tribe for decades, passed away in 1992. Still, his teachings continue to assist many, including myself. According to Sun Bear’s Earth Astrology, I was born under the sign of the Flicker. Flicker people tend to be dreamers. When Flicker individuals develop their mystical inclinations and ground their sensitivity by connecting with devas and positive spiritual forces, they can become vehicles for universal love, possessing an ability that serves as a healing balm for others. When I reflect on how my musical duo, Thea & the GreenMan, touches people’s hearts through our music, and how many have been reached and helped by my book, “Wisdom of the Plant Devas”, I take a deep breath of gratitude and affirm my self-worth. We are worthy of the best that life and love have to offer.

What is Sun Bear’s suggestion for Flickers to awaken their magical nature? I was surprised to learn that it is to wear a pendant aligned with your personal medicine, helping to keep your heart attuned to its highest vibration of love, and to repeat affirmations such as:

- I am worthy of expressing myself with joy, love, and success now.

- I am worthy of succeeding in my own intuitive way.

- I don’t depend on people or situations for my good; this certainty empowers me to release people and situations that are not in line with my highest vision now.

Renya’s intuition is strong, and I am grateful to her for the reminders to embrace the unknown and be willing to walk through my fears. Fear can be paralyzing, and many have become trapped in a nightmare by their own choosing. As I wear the bear pendant around my neck alongside my medicine pouch, I pray that humanity can once again learn to trust intuitive guidance. May fear give way to humility as we stand before the guardian of the West and rediscover ourselves as the medicine men and women we were destined to be. Aho.

A Song…

Shaman I Am

by Chuck Willhide featuring Thea and the late Gary Stamper on background vocals—available as a single release. Purchase and download the extended version at Thea & the GreenMan.

A Poem…

Silent Virgin Forest

by Thea Summer Deer

The silent forest, virgin,

mossy tendril roots spread wide,

all she ever wanted was for the Earth to be her lover,

and to drink of her sky father’s tears,

the hardest part was now behind them,

after millennia of destruction,

the forest-silent-virgin.

Reclaiming her birth right,

returning to the sun’s light

through misty shadows where weary saviors tread,

parting curtains of fog in the craggy bottoms of their fiddle heads,

where a voice, now, barely heard in the distance; singing,

is carried in the silent Virgin forest of our being.

This returning is never easy,

it has always been a death,

the test of winter in the darkness of our depths.

We descend as we’re declining

upon this circle we call time,

rooted to the inner space of the sublime.

Space, the Virgin Mother

of a shining Virgin daughter,

shining in the heavens as a billion brilliant suns,

births a son, a savior,

from the darkness of her void,

and feeds him on her mossy breast,

drunk on his Father’s tears,

he falls to Earth where he recovers

the essence of our fears.

And so begins the journey

through the parting of the mists,

until he hears the singing

of the Virgin in our midst,

and takes her as his lover

So he may once again restore

The silence in the forest

The silent singing forest

The silent Virgin forest

Now, and forever more.

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References:

Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams & David Carson

Dreaming With the Wheel: How to Interpret Your Dreams Using the Medicine Wheel by Sun Bear & Wabun Wind, Touchstone 1994

The Medicine Wheel: Earth Astrology by Sun Bear & Wabun Wind, Atria Books 1980

The Path of Power by Sun Bear & Wabun Wind, Touchstone 1992

Sign of the Flicker by Crystal Pomeroy

Resources:

Renya Creations - Please visit my friend Renya’s website to learn more about her Pendants, Ceremonial Art, & Home Accents.

For the Wild & Feral - Please visit my friend Jamie’s website to learn more about her amazing herbal products including Dream Elixer.

Sun Bear - Please visit my friend Wind Daughter to learn more about Sun Bear who led the Bear Tribe Medicine Society from 1971 until his death in 1992. Wabun Wind worked as Medicine Chief until 1996, when other responsibilities called her away. The chieftainship was then passed to Wind Daughter in 1996 who still leads the Bear Tribe today as Medicine Chief. In 2006, Wind Daughter moved The Bear Tribe into a new era to join her own Panther Lodge Medicine Society. In 2019 both have amalgamated together as the new Panther Bear Tribe Medicine Society. Its new Ceremonial Home of West Winds is in Mobile, Alabama.

Paid subscribers receive the following premium content below:

Silence of the Bears - by Thea, performed live in Highlands, NC with Thea & the GreenMan (unreleased ) Free mp3 Download!

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The Hermetic Principle of Polarity is one of the seven ancient laws of alchemy. It states that all truths are but half-truths, and the difference between seemingly opposing things is merely a matter of degree. I first learned about this principle in 1970 when I was fifteen, after reading Aleister Crowley. I became interested in the occult at a young age, which led me to his books. Crowley was a ceremonial magician, and his image of the “witches’ goat,” a symbol of duality and spiritual alchemy, fascinated me.

I spent hours sketching the unsettling bestiality of that goat’s head with a body that was half male and half female. It had three eerie horns, angelic wings, and satanic eyes with slits for pupils, all drawn with a No. 2 pencil meant for schoolwork. School felt boring compared to the study of alchemy. Although I had no interest in black magic or Satanism, au contraire, my main takeaway from Crowley was an understanding that both masculine and feminine exist within each of us. I learned that a universal reconciliation of the opposites is achieved through the Principle of Polarity, a concept that resonated with a sense of spiritual transcendence.

Alchemy, in its Hermetic context, encompasses a spiritual-scientific worldview that serves as the foundation of modern science, religion, and medicine. I have studied, practiced, and taught along this same vein for over fifty years, following paths through East Indian and Native American spirituality, Christian Mysticism, Taoism, and Science of Mind. I have also embraced the Hermetic Principles in my work as a midwife, herbalist, educator, musician, and kitchen witch, with a love of cooking and gardening. There is much to learn by getting our hands in the dirt.

My inner cauldron of fascination with the occult first stirred in 1963 when my father began working as vice-president of the Coconut Grove Bank in South Florida. At the age of eight, I received an Ouija Board and Eight Ball from Sylvia, a bank teller who worked with my father and became a friend of the family. She recognized that I had hidden origins, having been adopted. Sylvia possessed a joie de vivre impossible to duplicate, leaving a lasting impression on me. Born in Germany and raised in Berlin during World War II, she immigrated to the U.S. in 1947. With her tell-tale bandanna and long black hair, Sylvia embodied the dark, mysterious essence of a Gypsy fortune teller.

My father, a staunch, conservative and right-wing Republican, adopted money as his religion, rebelling against his Catholic upbringing and leaning more toward the satanical. I loved my father, but hated his political views and bigotry. His atheism and the Vietnam War in the late 1960s fueled my rebellion; I rejected money and swore off politics for the next fifty years. I adopted the song “Ain’t Gonna Study War No More” as my anthem, choosing not to vote in elections and avoiding taxes by getting paid under the table. I didn’t want my tax dollars funding the military or being used to build bombs. I was politically naïve and didn’t see myself as either liberal or conservative; however, my father called me a communist.

Paradoxically, my parents loved Nat King Cole, who released “Ain’t Gonna Study War No More” in 1959, and I grew up listening to some great jazz. The music I loved emerged from the folk music scene of the 1960s and 1970s, alongside the Beatles. My father hated the Beatles. You guessed it—he called them communists.

Today, as division runs rampant throughout our society, I find myself returning to Hermetic philosophy, which includes the Principle of Polarity. This principle suggests that there are many degrees between two extremes. Extreme polarization, however, weakens the tension between the opposites, eventually leading to a pole shift or collapse.

Having gone through the “shift of the ages” on December 21, 2012, marking the end of the Mayan calendar, we are witnessing numerous shifts in consciousness and our physical reality, including shifting magnetic poles. One of these political shifts has been the reversal of ideals, where conservative became liberal and liberal became conservative: right became left and left became right. Those who once fought for free speech have become the same individuals advocating for censorship and the silencing of those who dare to speak outside the approved mainstream narrative. It is confusing and destabilizing, and lowers our collective vibration.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the concept of polarity is explained through yin and yang. This principle illustrates how opposites coexist within one another, constantly flowing into each other, never static, ever moving, giving rise to excess or collapsing into deficiency. As one descends, the other ascends. In alchemical terms, the tension of the opposites is what holds everything together in third-dimensional reality. We live in a dimension ruled by duality, and this tension is loosening as we become more polarized. It is a paradox that needs reconciliation.

Current events reflect this polarization in an unprecedented manner. Taking a side, requiring alignment with that side’s ideology, has led us to a point of fundamentalism. A rigid adherence to one’s beliefs represents fundamentalism, no matter which side of the fence you sit. It is tempting to align ourselves with one side or the other, loudly proclaiming moral superiority from platforms that profit by weaponizing language. Ironically, those who criticize others today may find themselves guilty of similar behavior tomorrow. We have become overly identified with our own narratives and have lost sight of the importance of seeing both sides (“and-and”) in favor of a more divisive “either-or” mentality. This shift has hindered our ability to engage in constructive disagreements and risks turning us into what we claim to oppose.

Although Hermetics faded with the rise of modern science, its esoteric knowledge gives us the keys to interpret the times we live in. Earth-shattering world events are the very stage where Hermetic principles reveal their wisdom, guiding us to discern truth from falsehood. The Principle of Polarity explains the divisions and opposites we witness daily; it is Law.

So, how do we reconcile these opposites? One way is by walking the middle path. There is a fork in the road, a bifurcation known as the choice point or empowerment point. By choosing the middle path, we discover the still point at the swing of the pendulum—a calm at the center. What we resist persists, and what we fight against only grows stronger. Through surrender to a higher power and laying down our arms, we stand stronger and can achieve lasting peace. Practices like Qigong can direct us toward this center, helping us cultivate our energy within an indivisible field and move us toward the positive.

A live performance from the Meistersaal, Berlin on the 10th September 2007 filmed and broadcast by German TV station, RBB.

On the Mental Plane, love and hate are often seen as completely opposed and irreconcilable. However, when we apply the Principle of Polarity, we realize that there is no absolute love or absolute hate—these are merely terms used to describe two extremes on the same spectrum. There are varying degrees of love and hate, and a middle path exists where like and dislike become so blurred that they are nearly indistinguishable. The same rule applies to courage and fear; one mental state can be transmuted into another along the lines of Polarization. Nature tends to favor the dominant activity of the positive pole, such as love and courage. Allowing ourselves to be dragged into negativity by social media algorithms designed to amplify outrage and feed confirmation bias—thereby directing our attention toward hatred and rage—goes against our true nature.

In addition to changing the poles of one’s mental state, this principle may also be extended to embrace the influence of one mind over another. This can be potentially dangerous if one is not aware of how this principle works. Mental induction can polarize a particular mental state and be communicated to another person, thereby changing their mental state.

We often observe the negative effects of media propaganda for financial gain, as well as the imposition of liberal values that lack boundaries or any form of excessive restraint. However, I see a positive shift occurring. Not only because the positive is dominant, but we also have the ability to raise the vibrational frequency of others simply by raising our own frequency through intention and disciplined will. We are entering a new metaphysical reality, where the shifting magnetic poles of our Earth are guiding our inner compass toward a greater awakening.

Understanding the Principle of Polarity enables us to gain better control over our mental states, allowing us to become masters of our minds rather than servants or slaves to them. On the middle path, the illusion ultimately consumes itself.

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Thea’s song Starlight inspired by the Shamanic Mysteries of Egypt and the inner marriage of the sacred feminine and divine masculine that birth a sacred third.

Archival photos by the late Marion Z. Skydancer, an award winning photographer, from Thea’s private collection.

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I allowed the forbidden word to slip from my fingers and into the post. That four-letter word got me banned from a Facebook group that claimed to be “a group of hope and a group of sharing stories.” The group focuses on an autoimmune disease called lichen sclerosis, which has no cure and whose cause is unknown. Predominantly, women suffer from this disease, including myself at one point. By sharing my personal healing story and using the disallowed word “cure,” I found myself restricted from commenting or posting in the group. I must have been perceived as a threat, even though I had aimed to inspire others with my story regarding this so-called “incurable” disease.

After years of struggling with painful symptoms, being symptom-free felt like a miracle cure to me. However, the posted rules stated, “We do not use the word ‘cure’ in this group.” The accepted term was “remission,” and it would be remiss of me not to say so. Nevertheless, I received no explanation for why the word “cure” was prohibited.

We all face health challenges, and I choose to approach mine with a holistic mindset and faith in a higher power. I trust my body’s ability to tell me what it needs to heal. Having recovered from several serious illnesses with the support of practitioners to whom I am eternally grateful, I did so without resorting to drugs or surgery. Taking responsibility for one’s health in this way can be challenging, but I find the alternative even more daunting.

Being reprimanded for using the word “cure” triggered memories from this lifetime and possibly from past ones when faced with ostracism, censorship, cancellation, disownment, and even being burned at the stake. I recognized my mistake in not adhering to the rules, but the incident evoked a strong reaction in me. “How dare I share my story and claim to ‘cure’ myself of a disease that Western medicine deems incurable?” I surmised.

The only assistance I received from the doctors I consulted regarding my “incurable” disease was a prescription for the topical corticosteroid, Clobetasol. They warned that my condition could potentially develop into cancer if I didn’t keep it under control. Clobetasol is merely a symptomatic treatment, and I learned, through experience, that its side effects can be severe and damaging to the adrenals. No doctor should have prescribed that medication; they would not have done so if they had taken a thorough health history and asked the right questions to understand how compromised my adrenals have been since childhood. Unfortunately, many doctors today literally can’t afford the time to do this. The strong medications I was prescribed as a child for a similar autoimmune condition—a mold allergy that eventually progressed to Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome CIRS)—are primarily responsible for exhausting my adrenals.

When my adrenals crashed after using Clobetasol, I was unaware of the connection to the topical drug and didn’t know what was wrong with me. Even after a battery of tests, the doctors were still uncertain. Eventually, I learned that I had Cushing’s syndrome, caused by an adverse reaction to Clobetasol. I figured this out by doing what every doctor and patient should do—reading the packet insert.

Many people have become disillusioned and frustrated while navigating our current medical system. It is not uncommon for a pharmaceutical or surgical intervention to necessitate a subsequent medical intervention to deal with complications from the previous intervention. Once you are in that system, it can be hard to get out. After becoming ill with Cushing’s from using the steroid, I was able to cure my acute symptoms by addressing the underlying cause. I resorted to Eastern medicine—acupuncture and Chinese herbs—which is something that Western medicine doesn’t understand or offer, as the former operates within an energetic model, while the latter follows a mechanistic one.

Historically, to cure meant to show care or concern. However, around the 13^th century, it shifted from women-centered care to meaning spiritual care under the guidance of a pastor or priest, or as a heroic physical remedy that restores health and is administered by a male physician. How dare I proclaim to have cured myself when I am neither a priest nor a physician? I will claim this, however, because I am a High Priestess in the order of Magdalene in the lineage of Nicole Christine. Our sovereignty and medical freedom are at stake.

A Native American medicine man once taught me, “When you heal, I heal. And when I heal, you heal.” To me, healing is about addressing the underlying causes of an illness through good nutrition, herbal medicine, lifestyle changes, meditation, and prayer. When all symptoms are gone, terminado, and have disappeared, I do not expect a recurrence, nor do I think of myself as being in “remission.” I consider myself healed. I also believe in the biblical proverb that says, “Physician, heal thyself.”

However, there is prevailing belief that the gods of artificial intelligence (AI) espouse, “Even if a condition is in remission, it’s not necessarily cured, as there is always a possibility of relapse.” Why are we being programmed to expect a relapse?

I found the following statement about word usage confusing: — “The word ‘cure’ is appropriate when a disease is demonstrably eradicated and not expected to return, such as in the case of a cured bacterial infection.” I take issue with this example. Since when is a common bacterial infection considered a disease? Have our immune systems become so dysregulated that we now label infections and their symptoms as diseases? My illness was, indeed, “demonstrably eradicated,” and I did not expect it to return, yet it was deemed inappropriate to say so according to one group’s rules. This is particularly concerning given that this group influences over 14,000 members. Those who the story did manage to reach in other groups thanked me profusely.

Furthermore, another definition states, “A cure implies the eradication of a disease or condition, returning the body to its pre-disease state. It's often associated with medical interventions like medication or surgery that eliminate the underlying cause of the illness. For example, antibiotics can cure a bacterial infection, and surgery can remove a tumor.” To me, this sounds ludicrous! How do antibiotics and surgery eliminate the underlying cause? Are we being purposefully confused?

While antibiotics can be lifesaving, they serve primarily as a symptomatic cure. According to Wiki, a symptomatic treatment is “A drug that only calms the symptoms of a disease, but does not stop the disease itself.” Antibiotics are known to weaken the immune system, making individuals more susceptible to recurrent infections and leading to what is referred to as Antibiotic-Induced Immunosuppression.

Infection is not an invader to be defended against; it only serves to expel the offender. When our immune system is suppressed, an acute symptom can develop into a chronic pattern. A healthier approach would be to see an illness through to its natural conclusion, which is a restoration of health, just as the earth is restored after the hard, cold expression of winter and the erratic unpredictability of spring. The earth doesn’t defend herself against winter; she merely makes adjustments.

When the body is not supported to heal itself disease results, and sometimes this can occur through generations of genetically encoded imbalance. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), “Curing is often a more direct, medical intervention, while healing is a more gradual, internal process.” If curing is disease-focused, while healing encompasses the whole person, why shouldn’t we pursue both possibilities? I wholeheartedly agree that healing is possible, even when a cure is not. But the opposite is also true.

I once lived with a roommate named Meg who had a brain tumor and was given only a few months to live. Through hypnosis and visualization, she miraculously cured her cancer, surprising her doctors with her scans. While she managed to eliminate the tumor, she did not heal the underlying emotions and trauma related to her diagnosis. Meg had surrendered her two-year-old son for adoption and never recovered from that loss. Within six months of being declared tumor-free, she was dead. Not due to the cancer, but from tragically taking her own life. Meg drove her car off the edge of a California cliff at 100mph into the ocean. She had achieved a cure, but she had not found healing.

The definitions of healing the body and curing a disease are not entirely clear, as they overlap. Healing encompasses the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of the body, while curing may involve medical interventions such as medication and surgery. In my personal and clinical experience, the key factor in determining the path toward health or dis-ease is how we are in relationship with our illness. The study of relationships and patterns in Indigenous ways of thinking and knowing is not new.

Growing up at the Musa Isle Indian village surrounded by Native Americans, I experienced numerous childhood infections from running barefoot and handling a variety of animals in a sub-tropical environment. None of these infections would ever have been labeled a “disease.” Perhaps the tendency to redefine an infection as a disease is not much different from how the WHO altered its definition of herd immunity, or how the CDC changed its definition of vaccines during COVID. These changes may have helped gain FDA approval of mRNA gene therapies masquerading as vaccines, which were later mandated on an indoctrinated public.

A cure implies the eradication of a disease or condition, returning the body to its pre-disease state. We know that this is possible without relying on drugs and surgery. There are countless stories and books about miraculous cures. While Western medicine is only a few hundred years old, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) provides an elegant model developed over thousands of years through empirical observation in an unbroken lineage. Western medicine’s life-saving tools are drugs and surgery. When we seek medical solutions within an orthodoxy entrenched in a mechanistic model and reductionist viewpoint, we often elevate its doctor-priests to the status of heroes and saviors. This can lead us to lose sight of the spiritual dimension that connects us to a higher power and our inner knowing.

In the healing story I wrote about my autoimmune disease, Sheela-na-gig & Lichen Sclerosus, my intention was not to fix others through herbal remedies. Instead, I focused on guiding people to navigate the terrain of their own bodies and leading by example. It is crucial to learn how to ask the right questions (a form of prayer) and to listen to and trust our inner navigation system, which will lead us to the answers we need. One person’s medicine can be another’s poison, making it vital to have a sound navigation system. While I have healed many aspects of myself on various levels, the health challenges that come with aging are very real. I am grateful to say, however, that at age 70, I take no medication and continue to build yin reserves.

Currently, my health challenge is a bone spur at the volar base of my thumb, which developed from an injury due to excessive hand drumming. After a friend’s passing, I entered a trance while drumming my way into the spirit realms, unaware of how hard and long I had been playing. Some may claim that surgery is the only solution for a bone spur, dismissing alternative methods found online. However, I know from personal experience that it is possible to dissolve a heel spur that was so painful I could barely walk. For me, drinking raw goat milk, adding 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar to a glass of water, and soaking in nearby mineral hot springs facilitated my healing. Do I dare use the word “cured”?! I am still curious about what may or may not work for others.

Don’t let anyone or anything convince you that your body doesn’t know how to heal. We simply need to listen and provide the right support, which can include Western medicine. Health challenges offer us opportunities to learn how to trust our inner knowing. When you heal, I heal, and when I heal, you heal. Trust yourself—you have the ability to heal, regardless of the language or terms you use to describe your condition and your beautiful goddess-given life.

Comfrey Quote:

“Comfrey teaches us that healing, knitting together what has been torn apart, is not a linear process but a spiral journey. Millennia of indoctrination have taught us well about the linear path of cause and effect. We have spent many years on our evolutionary journey reasoning our way through illness and looking for its causes. In the most recent of these years, we have explored the possibility that our thoughts might be making us sick, but you can’t have a debate with illness. Neither is an illness something that comes and lands on you, and poof, you are sick. Multidimensional healing cannot be approached from the limitation of the mind. The mind is the servant of the ego, not the higher dimensional self.” —Wisdom of the Plant Devas

TCM Wisdom:

TCM emphasizes that each individual’s experience of disease is unique. Recommendations are tailored to the individual’s needs. This means that a treatment that is effective for one person may not be suitable for another, even if they have similar symptoms. All medicines, whether plant-based or pharmaceutical, can be poison or cure. Ancient texts written 2,000 years ago used the Chinese word for poison to denote potency, or the ability to both harm and heal. There was no categorical distinction between poisons and non-poisons in TCM. They acted in a continuum defined by level of potency. A key message is revealed in this: No essential, absolute or unchanging core characterizes a medicine. Instead, the effect of any given drug is always relational, contingent on how the drug is used, its interaction with a particular body, and its intended effects.

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“Listen—to the song I am singing in your soul…” Footprints of a Wayfarer music by Thea & the GreenMan, poetry by Rose-Mary Hatfield

A soul in need of redemption, Mom held hope for me in hers. Filled with anticipation one early Christmas morning, I rose, sleepy-eyed from my bed, and headed toward the living room to see what gifts awaited me beneath the pagan tree. The Christmas lights cast a warm and colorful glow across the room, and to my upmost delight, I spotted a guitar that Mom had left there for me. At the age of eight, it was a morning I’ll never forget. Music saved my soul.

As I held and strummed that beautiful instrument, a Spanish classical guitar, I admired the ornamental etchings on the brass hardware that held the carved, lacy tuning pegs, glistening like mother-of-pearl. I fell in love with the sound and the wood.

Mom promptly signed me up for guitar lessons at the local music store, taught by the motherly Mrs. Montoya. I begged the maestra to teach me the popular songs of the day, such as “Red Rubber Ball” and “Louie Louie.” She reassured me that we would get to those songs eventually, but insisted that I first needed a solid foundation. I watched as Mrs. Montoya remove a lyric sheet from her briefcase and placed it before me. “I will teach you Guantanamera,” she said with conviction and a Spanish accent. She then began to draw little boxes on the right side of the page, with vertical lines representing the strings, horizontal lines representing the frets, and dots indicating where I should place my fingers. It was Miami, Florida, in 1963, and with my first song, I had discovered a lifelong love.

The famous folk song Guantanamera (Girl from Guantanamo) was written in 1929 by Cuban singer-songwriter Joselito Fernández, inspired by the words of the prolific poet, José Martí, or so the story goes. Made famous by Pete Seeger, the song tells the story of a truthful man who desires to share the verses of his soul before he dies. The man’s poems are compared to a wounded deer seeking refuge in the forest. I could relate.

Guantanamera exposed me to a flavor of music and a melody so beautiful that it became infused under my skin, like a delicate fish marinating in fresh-cut herbs. The taste lingered and did not fade. In Guantanamera, I heard a spiritual love song. For many Cubans, it is a patriotic anthem, an expression of love for Cuba and solidarity with the world’s impoverished people. But this girl has never felt patriotic towards any country, being an island unto myself.

Fifty years later, while writing my book, I incorporated song lyrics and poems into the chapters. The publisher categorized Wisdom of the Plant Devas: Herbal Medicine for a New Earth under Spirituality and Nature, something I had initially resisted. In essence, it functions as a spiritual guidebook, an oracle; however, I had hoped it would be classified under Herbalism to gain credibility within the herbal community. Unfortunately, the book is shelved in a completely different section from the books on Herbalism in the bookstores. It did not afford me the recognition my ego craved from a community divided between Western Medicine and Folk Medicine. Herbalists trained in Medical Herbalism are forgetting their alchemical roots. Although the book has gained a cult following and continues to provide me with insights into spiritual evolution, I have become less ego identified with being an herbalist or a musician. I am still learning from the mystical teachings of the Devas and have come to accept both the book’s spiritual nature and my own.

We live in a world that needs spiritual guidance and in these challenging times, it is essential to remember our spiritual nature and to seek out the voices that reassure us. One such poetic voice that gave me refuge was Rose-Mary Hatfield’s. Rose-Mary envisioned and founded the Wayfarer’s Unity Chapel, which my husband, Chuck, a truthful man who sings from his soul, introduced me to. It is the place where we shared our music ministry for over a decade, and where my son got married.

In 2011, the church released a CD compilation of music inspired by Rose-Mary’s life of love and devotion to God, as well as her Wayfarer’s ministry. The musicians on the recording had all been part of the 25-year musical ministry at Wayfarers Unity. Drawing inspiration from Rose-Mary’s words, much like Fernández drew from Marti, I wrote the song Footprints of a Wayfarer. The message is timeless: We are all, in our vulnerability, being carried by a higher power.

Yore

Biting on a piece of bread,

A crumb, now three upon the floor.

The six-year-old was talking on

About the days of yore.

Last summer at Grandpa’s

I had a pile of fun

Pickin’ up the chicken’s eggs

An’ pitchin’ hay and huskin’ corn

An makin’ horses run.

Sometimes I’d slide among the trees

Down a grassy slope

An’ once I found a path that ran

—I could be runnin’ still

I want to go back to Grandpa’s

When summer comes again.

I’ll get in Grandma’s cookie jar

An’ play with cousin Ben.

—a poem by Rose-Mary Hatfield, April 4, 1964 from the chapbook, Footprints of a Wayfarer

Note: Footprints of a Wayfarer is the result of Thea & the GreenMan's music ministry at Estatoah Wayfarers Unity Chapel in Dillard, GA. The church's founder, the late Rose-Mary Hatfield, wrote poetry, and it was from her words that Thea found the inspiration to write and produce the song Footprints of a Wayfarer, featuring Chuck Willhide, also known as the GreenMan. The song is a tribute to the memory of Rose-Mary, who restored the church's original 1935 cabin, situated on a branch of the Tennessee River that descends from Estatoah Falls. When the congregation outgrew its humble roots, they built a larger church next door. Rose-Mary offers her words to us, her fellow Wayfarers, as a blessing for our journey along the way.

As the rallying cry of “Drill, baby, drill” echoes across the nation among proponents of non-renewable fossil fuels, we find ourselves in an era of transformation. I can feel its power deep within my marrow bones; it feels like dying and like a return to the past. I recall the protests against strip mining on Native land in the 1980s, the artists who spoke out, and the song “Shadow of Life,” Kate Wolf wrote about it. If we were to gaze into the Great Smoking Mirror, we would see a reflection of our shadow—a part of ourselves that holds immense potential for spiritual growth and development.

Ancient traditions rooted in holistic thinking can help us to navigate this current impasse. I have learned this in part through Native American spirituality, which teaches us to learn from the past while holding a better vision for the future. A vision that doesn’t involve finger pointing, blaming, shaming, or hating others. Instead, it encourages us to reclaim our personal power by focusing on the solutions we truly desire rather than denying our own strength. Our addiction to energy is an old story, but we have the opportunity to write a new one.

My journey began in California in 1985 after I moved from Miami, FL, to Berkeley, CA, to join medical doctor and behavioral scientist Matohikan, in pursuit of Native American spirituality. Matohikan had sent his secretary, Mary Lou, to pick me up at the San Francisco airport, back when you could meet someone at the gate without going through security lines. Mary Lou, whom I had never met before, approached me with a vinyl record in hand and a serious look on her face. She thrust it toward me and said, “If you are going to live and play music in California, then you best learn some Kate Wolf songs.” I set my guitar down and gratefully accepted the LP from her. The title read “Give Yourself to Love.”

In Miami, I was a devoted listener of Michael Stacks’ long-running Folk & Acoustic Music show on WLRN 91.3 FM. Through his program, I became familiar with Kate Wolf’s music, and the title song “Give Yourself to Love” was already in my repertoire. l thanked Mary Lou and assured her that I would be delighted to learn more of Kate Wolf’s songs.

I moved to San Francisco not only to be with Matohikan but also to pursue a career in music. Mom warned me that it would be a hard road to travel and a difficult way to earn a living, and she was right. As a woman trying to “make it” in a male-dominated industry during the 1980s and 1990s, I faced both challenges and rewards. My travels took me down some lonely yet beautiful roads, and along the way, I met many interesting people.

Three years after relocating to California, Matohikan and I moved to Tucson, AZ, where he took a job at Canyon Vista Medical Center while also collaborating with Dr. Andrew Weil at the University of Arizona. In Tucson, I met Pamala Ballingham and her husband, Tim. Pamala, a singer-songwriter known for her Earth Mother Lullabies, became a good friend and was also a close friend of Kate Wolf.

Pam has a beautiful voice, and she sang harmony vocals on my Planet We Ride CD. From that experience, we formed a duo called Amber Wind, performing on acoustic and electric guitar, as well as native percussion. We performed at the Creativity and Madness Conference in Santa Fe, for the Menninger Foundation’s Council Grove Conference in Kansas, and at the Mesa Verde Symposium in Colorado, where we had the honor to open for R. Carlos Nakai. Additionally, we participated in the 5th Annual Tucson Folk Festival.

One of the songs we performed was “Shadow of a Life,” which Kate wrote for their mutual friend, the Apache medicine man Phillip Cassadore. Although Kate never released the song, she gave it to Pam, who recorded and included it on her album “Voyage for Dreamers.”

Kate was deeply involved in Native American issues and studied with Doug Boyd (Rolling Thunder), and Pam and Tim Ballingham, who worked with Cross-Cultural Studies, an organization involved with Native American ceremonies.

Rolling Thunder had explained at Council Grove that his training was experiential. He said that the truth cannot be expressed verbally, that it can only be experienced: You have to live it and be part of it and then you might get to know it.” –Doug Boyd, Rolling Thunder

In the same year that I moved to California, Kate and Pam traveled to Big Mountain, also known as Black Mesa, located on the border of the Hopi and Navajo reservations in Northern Arizona. They went there to protest the relocation of Navajo people from their tribal lands, a situation rooted in a heartbreaking history.

A court decision opened Black Mesa to industrial development, and in 1966, the Interior Department granted leases to the Peabody Coal Company, which had already caused devastation in Appalachia. Peabody began strip-mining Black Mesa in 1968, extracting an average of eight million tons of coal per year while emitting more pollutants into the air than both New York and Los Angeles combined. Subsequent legislation in 1974 divided the land, leading to the forced relocation of Navajo families. The discovery of approximately twenty-one billion tons of coal, along with vast reserves of oil, gas, and uranium, on land legally belonging to both the Navajo and Hopi tribes ignited a conflict between them.

The rape of Black Mesa, with its devastation of land, depletion of water resources, and air pollution, aroused a storm of public protest. Kate and Pam felt compelled to lend their voices to the cause. Despite his age and declining health, Phillip Cassadore conducted prayers and ceremonies that week to honor the sacredness of the Mesas and to support the Indigenous people in their fight to remain on their land.

When Amber Wind performed “Shadow of a Life,” Pam would introduce the song by sharing a personal story about what inspired Kate to write it. After the ceremonies concluded, Kate and Pam drove south toward Phoenix that night. Kate would catch a flight back to California, while Pam would continue on to Tucson. Exhausted from days of ceremony, the women pulled over halfway, near the Rim of the Grand Canyon, to sleep in the car.

In the early hours of the dark morning, as they resumed their journey, a great horned owl suddenly flew directly across their path, startling them and nearly hitting the windshield. Instantly, they thought of their ailing friend, Phillip Cassadore. Later, they received the heartbreaking news that Cassadore, the Apache Medicine man whom Kate had met through the Ballinghams, had died that same morning.

From ancient times, the owl has been seen as a spirit messenger. The Apache people consider the Superstition Mountains (Tseh’-Hos-keet) in Arizona to be a sacred place. The words to the song, Shadow of a Life, tell about how the owl represented Phillip’s spirit as he flew from the south, heading north from the Superstition Mountains on his way to join the ancestors. Phillip carried the people’s prayers with him, returning to Great Spirit from which we all come and to whom we all return.

There is an owl, flying from the South,

heading North from the Superstition Mountains.

Like the Shadow of a Life,

fading in the dark surroundings.

While we who travel on the Rim,

seeking love and finding understanding,

go safely on our way, like - the river running in the canyon.

—Kate Wolf, Shadow of a Life

Kate was becoming a pipe carrier of the Miwoks, a Northern California Indian tribe. Her spiritual path gained public recognition in 1983 when she toured the western states to promote the Academy Award-winning film “The Four Corners: A National Sacrifice Area?” This documentary highlighted the devastating effects of U.S. energy policy on the Southwest and the Native Americans living there. Late that year, after the release of her record “Give Yourself to Love,” Kate decided to take a sabbatical, stating, “The road is wearing me down. I feel my health slipping….”

Kate was born in San Francisco, but I never had the chance to meet her. I moved from San Francisco to Palo Alto in April 1986, the same month she was diagnosed with leukemia. She passed away eight months later, on December 10^th.

Before Kate died, she compiled a ten-year retrospective album titled, “Gold in California,” which was released in January 1987. That spring, she became the first musician inducted into the National Association of Independent Record Distributors (NAIRD) Music Hall of Fame. “Gold in California” was also awarded NAIRD’s Best Folk Album of the Year.

Matohikan had offered to do some healing work with Kate while we were still living in the Bay Area. After her passing, her devoted son, Max, kindly sent usq the Kate Wolf Songbook in appreciation of Matohikan’s offer. Max had supported Kate while she was on tour, taking a semester off from college to serve as her driver, tour manager, and record salesman. He continues to manage her legacy through Owl Productions and Owl Records. Many of Kate’s songs were about California, and these became my early companions and introduction to the West Coast. There was something synchronistic about my arrival in California; it marked the beginning of my new life and music career while coinciding with the end of Kate’s.

Indeed, I took her up as a study, learning many of her tunes, which I still include in my repertoire today. It feels good to know that I have played a small part in keeping her music alive, long before artists like EmyLou Harris, Kathy Mattea, and Nancy Griffith recorded her songs. Her legacy has even inspired the creation of an annual festival held at Black Oak Ranch in California, to honor her life and music. In essence, Kate created her own genre of music, and posthumously, her own Kate Wolf Radio Station has been established on Spotify. In the moments when my voice echoes hers, I feel a certain closeness to a woman I will never meet or get to know but who has touched my soul with her magic, just as she has for so many others.

Kate’s songs were haunted with prophetic verse. She dove deep into the mysteries, writing “An Unfinished Life” before knowing she would die young. She had only felt like she was dying on the inside. Her words, music, and unfinished life continue to inspire many songwriters and musicians with their raw and simple honesty. Society has the power to either uplift or destroy an artist, which was a central theme of the Creativity and Madness Conference. There, Amber Wind performed a concert featuring “Miwok Indian Woman,” a song written by Pam and inspired by Kate.

Kate’s experiences are not so different from those of many women who navigate the challenges of motherhood, divorce, and careers in a world dominated by men. Perhaps more sensitive to these struggles than most, she managed to emerge without the hard-edged bitterness that is all too common in the music business. Kate sought intimacy through the sharing of her music and encouraged me to seek the same with mine. Those of us who are sensitive often bear the weight of the world’s injustices. My beloved aunt, a sensitive artist in her own right, also died young from leukemia, a fate exposing the rawness of loss. Losing someone to leukemia doesn’t get any closer to the marrow bone.

As the reflection of our shadow continues to emerge, let us not grow bitter or lose heart. We need to ask better questions, such as: Can nature supply our energy needs without causing mass destruction? Can we listen, and are we sober enough to hear the answers conveyed by whispers on the wind instead of relying on talking heads? Can we learn to trust ourselves and write a new story—one in which we Walk in Beauty? I believe we can. I feel it every time I sing, Give Yourself to Love.

Thea’s daughter, Lauren Loiacono, sings Give Yourself to Love accompanied by her father Robert Loiacono, recorded by Thea.

Thea & the GreenMan Live - Shadow of a Life

Of special note:

The Menninger Foundation was an organization with hospitals, clinics, the world’s largest training center for Psychiatrists, and a research department, all concerned with problems and solutions in the area of mental health.

Coal mining has ended on Black Mesa. What happens now? KNAU News Talk - Arizona Public Radio | By Melissa Sevigny. Published November 21, 2022

Our flight from San Francisco landed mid-afternoon at Lihue airport in Kauai after a brief change of planes in Honolulu. Although the flight from Honolulu to Kauai may have been short, it was long on worry. Traveling with a baggage-checked guitar, I always fear that something might happen to it. After disembarking from the small plane with my partner, Martin, we quickly made our way to baggage claim. I stood nervously by the carousel, biting my fingernails. The hard-shell case was easy to spot, covered in stickers collected over the years. To my horror, it arrived with signnificant damage for such a short flight. The case was bashed and torn, and when I opened it, I found that the guitar had a few minor dings and scratches but remained intact. Furious, I filled out the necessary claim forms in hopes of getting my hard shell case replaced, but the airline never followed through. So, I wrote off the loss and joined the ranks of traveling musicians with damaged goods.

As we exited the small airport, golden-skinned natives dressed in colorful Hawaiian prints welcomed us warmly. It was impossible to stay angry.

“Aloha,” a young woman greeted us with a smile. She was a kama’aina, a local girl or child of the land, while I was malihini, a strange new visitor. She looked lovingly into my eyes as she draped a lei made of frangipani and gardenia around my neck. The word “ha” in both “alo-ha” and “Ha-waii” means breath, symbolizing our connection to the spiritual breath of the universe. The salty air and scent of tropical flowers reminded me of the sweetness of my South Florida homeland. Hawaii is not only spiritually and physically beautiful but also a place with the power to heal.

I arrived in Hawaii with the intention of performing a ritual taught by Voodoo Priestess Luisa Teish. I had met Luisa in Oakland, California, during my time living in San Francisco. Luisa worked with ancestral spirits, and by following the instructions in her book “Jambalaya: The Natural Woman’s Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals,” I hoped to receive guidance and healing from Yemayá-Olokun.

Yemayá is a West African deity, and the ritual is intended to invoke her spirit. Known as the mother of the sea and dreams, she nurtures the child in the waters of the womb. Midwives call upon her for assistance during birth, which is why I felt a deep connection to this goddess. I needed her help to clarify whether Martin and I should have a child of our own. He had two children, as did I, and we both experienced significant losses in our homes and families due to our divorces. While there was a strong animal desire within me to have a child, I didn’t want my pain and loss to be the motivation for that decision. So, I would pray to Yemayá for clarity.

The ritual would take place by the ocean at sunrise. After arriving at our paradisiacal resort village in Hanalei, I dumped the bags in our room and headed for the water. There would be enough time left in the day to scout for a location to perform the ritual. Lured by the sound of waves, I approached a sheer rock cliff that dropped straight down to the water below. That would not do. I needed to be closer to the water.

Returning to the village, I petitioned the first resort employee I encountered.

“Do you know if there is a way down to the water?” I inquired of him.

“Yes, there is,” he replied, directing me toward a trailhead. “The trail will take you down to some large lava boulders, which you can walk across at low tide.”

I thanked him and wasted no time returning to the cliff’s edge in the afternoon’s fading light in search of the trailhead. As I neared the cliff’s edge, I came up behind a Black man sitting cross-legged on the ground, facing the ocean that stretched out before us. He appeared to be meditating. I hesitated for a moment. Unexplainably, a wave of fear crashed over me, and I didn’t feel safe enough to proceed alone beyond where the man sat. Confused by the emotions and paralyzed to go any further, I chose to also sit cross-legged on the ground near the cliff’s edge. Sitting slightly behind and to the left of the man, I closed my eyes and drew in a few slow, deep, calming breaths. Silently, I asked Great Spirit to show me the source of my unexplained fear.

As I sat with my eyes closed, the image of the man lingered in my mind’s eye. It was not unfamiliar for me to feel fear in the presence of a Black man, though I couldn’t explain why. I had been cared for by Alice, my parent’s African American housekeeper, whom I loved. I had also studied African drumming and dance. On the surface, my fear seemed baseless. I had never voiced this fear to anyone, actively resisting it along with my parent’s prejudiced views. I considered myself too “liberal” to label a Black man as “unsafe” solely based on the color of his skin. I had never had any negative encounters with Black men.

Focusing on my breath, I made a conscious effort to relax. I asked again to understand the source of my paralyzing fear.

Then, a voice spoke inside my head. I recognized it as the voice of an ancestral guardian spirit known in Hawaii as Aumakua. I felt directed to send my consciousness into the man’s physical form, which required intense concentration. I sought permission from his Aumakua to enter his energy field. As I began to feel a sense of oneness and well-being, I knew that permission had been granted. With each slow breath and as my body relaxed, I became aware that his heart was beating the same as mine. His eyes saw as mine did. We breathed the same air and touched the same earth. Gradually, I felt myself merging with the stranger.

As we sat with the waves rhythmically crashing below us and a salty breeze on our faces, the ancestor spirits transported me to another lifetime. Suddenly, I found myself on the mother continent of Africa, where drums pulsed through the earth and into my body. I observed myself lucidly, as if in a dream: a small child playing on the ground with women dancing all around me. I saw that child through the eyes of the man whose body I had entered. He watched from his vantage point on the escarpment, then shifted his gaze to the ocean below. There, he spotted a large vessel slowly floating toward the shore, its white, cloud-like sails undulating above the waves. Hidden from sight by the dense jungle, he observed the ship as it released pale-skinned men into smaller wooden boats. With sticks like insect legs that dipped in and out of the water, these men crawled toward the beach of a neighboring village. When their pale feet touched African soil, the world as we once knew it ended.

The pale-skinned men moved quickly. They captured women and infants as bait to lure the African men and older children into their nets. Some were roped like wild horses and thrown into cages like monkeys, while others were caught in fishing nets as they tried to flee or fight, becoming hopelessly tangled.

The white intruders dragged their terrified captives—wide-eyed and fearful—to the edge of the sea, where they tossed them into the smaller boats. These boats slowly made their way to the cloud-like ship hovering in the distance.

The man whose body I had entered could not have known what I now understood as I sat on a similar cliff’s edge by the sea. Those European boats would sail to distant lands with their human cargo: men, women, and children, who would endure lives of enslavement if they survived the harsh journey.

Triggered by the disturbing image of white men ensnaring Africans for the slave trade, a long-forgotten memory surfaced in my mind like a faded black-and-white Polaroid. In the Indian Village and zoo where I grew up, my White father and his hired Native American men captured escaped spider monkeys using large nets. The monkeys, long-limbed and adorned with shiny black coats, were terrifying when they bared their sharp white teeth. I felt traumatized by their prolonged screams and barks directed at their captors. Mom stood nearby, wringing her hands, worried for my father—it was a dangerous job.

Tears rolled down my cheeks as my chest tightened and my breathing became labored. I remained focused on the African child in my vision. The European boat was drawing closer to our village now. From his hidden post, the man who was watching sounded an alarm with the voice of his drum. The women began to scatter, and their shrieks paralyzed me with fear. I remained helpless and wailing as the chaos erupted around me. The drums beat incessantly, their rhythms swift and far-crying. They sent a warning and told a story.

After sounding the alarm, the man who kept watch ran back toward our village and scooped me into his arms. The realization dawned on me: that man had been my father in another lifetime. My African father who had seen the boat people coming. That is whose body I had entered in my vision through the guidance of the Aumakua ancestral spirits.

Tucking me tightly beneath his left arm, he held me close to his heart and with a speed that only an African man who has lived the whole of his life in the jungle can achieve. I could hear his heart beating through his chest, echoing the drums receding behind us. He never stopped running until, like a graceful leopard, he leaped over the cliff’s edge.

We clung tightly to each other, falling and spinning through empty space. Swirling through shades of blue and green, we plummeted to earth and to our death. It was his gift to me—to be free.

I jolted awake as if I had just died in my dream. Through tear-clouded vision, I looked over and found the man was gone. At such a close distance, wouldn’t I have heard him get up and leave? How long had I been sitting there? I stood up, stretched, and looked around. The man was nowhere to be seen. The sun was setting fast, casting its golden light on a small gate I hadn’t noticed before. Beyond that gate lay a path leading down to the water.

I began to descend through the gate. Halfway down the narrow path, a Black woman startled me as she made her way back up. It couldn’t be just a coincidence. I stopped and struck up a conversation with her. I needed to know if she was related to the man I had seen on the cliff.

“I think I just saw your husband waiting for you at the edge of the cliff,” I ventured, pointing back up the path toward the gate.

She responded in a friendly and calm manner, confirming that she was traveling alone with her daughter. I quickly warmed to her and, despite feeling flustered, I asked if she knew the way down to the water.

“It’s not too far, maybe five more minutes,” she said, turning slowly and pointing down the path. I thanked her, but I didn’t want our conversation to end. Since she didn’t seem in a hurry, I made some small talk.

“So, what brings you to Hawaii?” I ask boldly. She smiled in response.

“I’m on sabbatical, vacationing in Hawaii with my daughter,” she said. Her round, motherly face radiated sincerity, but her eyes held something deeper, something mystical. “What about you,” she asked.

“My partner is a doctor, and we’re on vacation as well,” I tell her. Curiosity got the better of me, and I asked, “What are you taking a sabbatical from?”

Her answer surprised me. She teaches Women’s History and Black History at UC San Diego. “Do you believe in the paranormal?” I inquired.

“Funny you should ask,” she replied, her eyes reflecting the fire and wisdom of a lioness. “I have experienced what some may call ‘psychic phenomenon,’ and I’ve even written some papers on it.”

“May I share something that just happened to me up on the cliff?” I asked, pointing back up the path.

“Please,” she said, giving me an encouraging nod.

Though I had never seen this woman before, there was a comfort that passed between us. I wondered if she thought I was strange, but the Lioness remained open and warm, her voice soothing and kind.

“I’ve had this unexplained fear of Black men,” I confessed, looking shamefully away from her golden-brown eyes and down at my feet. “When I saw that man on the cliff, he scared me, and I needed to understand why.”

“Go on,” she urged gently.

After I finished my story, she acknowledged and affirmed what I had seen in my vision. “Now you can be free from your fear,” she proclaimed, her smile knowing. I paused, nodded, and accepted her words.

“Perhaps you will share your story with others to help them remember who they are,” she said, tearfully as my own emotions began to surface. But what she said next captivated me.

“I was there too, in that village when the slave traders came and took us away.”

In that moment, I recognized her from that past life. As sychronicity would have it we had found each other again. She then revealed that earlier that afternoon, she had gone down to the ocean seeking guidance about her daughter from whom she had been separated. As she returned up the path, she encountered me—a White woman going down and a Black woman coming up. Both of us were seeking guidance along the same path.

The woman didn’t provide any details about the difficulties she was having with her daughter. Still, I shared that I, too, had been separated from my daughter due to a divorce. I understood that pain all too well. Then, this wise woman, with a gaze full of wonder, asked if I could have been her daughter in a past life in Africa. I looked deeply into her eyes, my heart opening wide and exposing a pain that had been lodged there for lifetimes. In that moment, we seemed to be healing one another as years of separation dissolved into the expanse of time, where ultimately, no separation exists, and everything eventually comes to completion.

The day had grown so late that we could barely see the path as we ascended to the gate. We hugged and said our goodbyes, and I never saw her again.

The following morning, I woke with the alarm before dawn and gathered my ritual supplies: pineapple, dimes, knife, candle, matches, cornmeal, and molasses. Martin wearily accompanied me to the cliff, where he would wait and hold vigil. After hugging me and sending me on my way, he sat cross-legged in the same spot where I had seen the Black man the previous afternoon. Martin understood the importance of ritual and promised to keep a candle burning until I returned.

I zipped up my windbreaker and pulled up the collar. With a flashlight in one hand and a paper bag filled with supplies in the other, I carefully made my way down the dark path. I hoped the tide would be favorable. The air felt cold in the pre-dawn hours, and the dark sky held no moon. Below me, the waves crashed, and the air carried a devilishly sulfuric smell.

I descended onto lava boulders that seemed to have been slung there by giants. The tide had receded, working in my favor and revealing cold, shiny black rocks that once flowed blood red-hot from Pele’s body. Pele, the volcano goddess, had explosively discharged her fury, leaving the earth trembling at her feet. When her molten fire met the cooling ocean water, it formed the black boulders that had smoothed over time. I found a spot to sit just above the rolling waves.

The wind blew strong off the ocean as I took the ritual instructions from my blue jeans pocket and began to follow them step by step. First, I removed the top of the pineapple with my knife. Then, I cut into the fruit to create enough room for the candle. Once I secured the candle inside the pineapple, the wind wouldn’t be able to blow it out. I wrestled with the sticky, sweet fruit and the now slippery knife in the darkness, trying not to cut myself.

Sitting in front of me was a pineapple, surrounded by a pool of molasses that I had poured around its edges. I sprinkled cornmeal over it, then placed seven dimes in a circle around the fruit to represent the full moon. Finally, I struck a match to light a dark blue candle, symbolizing Yemayá.

By that point, I had created quite a sticky mess with the pineapple and molasses—a fitting metaphor for my life. I faced the ocean and began to share my troubles with Yemayá. Becoming emotional, I started to sing along with the rhythm of the waves. As I drifted into a trance, I felt myself being carried away by the magic of the sunrise ritual, sinking deeper as though I were submerged beneath the ocean’s surface. For a moment, panic set in as I experienced a distant memory—the sinking of Atlantis. Then, as if in a surreal dream, I found myself breathing underwater.

In my vision, recalling the scuba diver I once was, I discovered a sense of comfortable familiarity. Just as the panic began to subside, a giant sea turtle approached and beckoned me to ride on its back. I cautiously climbed on, gripping the rigid rim of her shell as she began to descend. She carried me all the way down to the ocean floor. When we reached the bottom, the disturbance caused the silt to rise and swirl around us, reducing visibility. The sea turtle continued to move forward slowly, and I could feel the water growing colder—as if we had passed through a doorway.

As the particles of silt began to settle, an underwater city was revealed. Beams of refracted light from the surface illuminated coral rock castles adorned with precious gemstones. The sea turtle began to communicate with me telepathically about our surroundings. Graceful creatures swam by us; I spotted the largest sea horse I had ever seen, as well as manta rays with indigo wings. Some fish displayed vibrant, multicolored fins, including the brilliantly painted Clown Trigger, known in Hawaiian as humuhumunukunukuapuaa. Surrounding me was music like nothing I had heard before: pure frequencies emanating from everything, blending into an enchanting underwater symphony.

The energy required to reach that place involved tremendous effort and forced me to focus, especially on my breathing. I listened as the sea turtle revealed the secrets of that lost and hidden world. I didn’t “hear” the words exactly; instead, I had the strange sensation that the sea turtle was communicating with me through images, which I then translated into words.

As I rode on the magnificent creature’s back, she shared stories about seaweed beds that could feed the entire world. She showed me an endless power source in the ocean’s currents. Everything in her world vibrated at an incredibly high frequency. Whatever was taken or used was returned in some other form. I observed a world in harmonic resonance: the coral reef, alive and breathing, nourished the fish, and in turn, the fish provided waste that fed the coral. Nothing was wasted in that balanced and symbiotic relationship.

The sea turtle wanted me to see more, but I was reaching my limit of concentration. Sensing this, she began to maneuver back toward the surface. Her massive body rose slowly, causing every cell in my body to tingle as if waking from a long sleep.

I sat on the lava boulders for a long time, tingling with my eyes closed, aware that the sun had begun to rise. When I finally opened them, the water sparkled so brightly that it almost blinded me. It took a minute to adjust. As my inner eye opened, I perceived a new world and my place within it.

Offshore in the distance, I noticed some objects bobbing up and down, which appeared to be coconuts. Hypnotized, I watched them for some time. Beneath a pastel sky at dawn, the ocean reflected a beautiful palette of blue and green, contrasting sharply against Pele’s black lava skin. Slowly, the coconuts began moving closer. The tide must be coming in, I thought. As they approached, their numbers increased, holding my curiosity. The sun glimmered on their shiny, wet surfaces, and I studied them intently, wondering why there were so many coconuts.

The moment lingered until they came close enough for me to see their true identity. To my surprise, the approaching coconuts turned out to be a herd of sea turtles! I jumped up, raising one sticky hand to shade my eyes against the sun’s mounting glare. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I did both. While I was unsure of its meaning, I felt I had received an affirmative sign.

I thanked the sea turtle for taking me on my journey to the underwater world. I also thanked Yemayá and asked her to protect them, knowing their species is endangered. Human commercial development of their nesting sites poses a significant threat to their existence: eggs are taken for food and aphrodisiacs; they are killed for leather and meat; they are ground up by dredges; run over by pleasure boats; poisoned by pollution; and strangled or drowned by fishing lines and nets. I prayed with hope in my heart for these ancient creatures and the wisdom they embody. I gathered those moments protectively close, along with the ritual supplies, into their paper bag. With one last glance at the sparkling sea and bobbing turtles, I climbed back up the path to the cliff where Martin waited, holding silent vigil.

The answer I received from Yemayá regarding my desire to have a child with Martin came to me in the form of images, similar to how the sea turtle had communicated with me. These images revealed a home here on Mother Earth where we learn to harmoniously harness the power of nature, within and without, ensuring there is enough for all her children. The emptiness I felt from losing my home and custody of my kids no longer felt so vacant. Surprisingly, I realized that I didn’t need to conceive a child with Martin; we already had four beautiful children between us. There would be many others who would come into my life whom I could love. Most importantly, I learned to carry my home in my heart, much like the sea turtle carries hers on her back.

When we learn to read the guiding signs of nature and are willing to delve deeper into the truths of our lives, we will discover that these truths are never any further than a breath away. There are other worlds beneath the sea and within our minds. We create this.

Aumakua (ancestral spirits) - please enjoy this chant sung by Kaleo Wheeler

Back in the early 1990s, I drove through the high desert Plains of San Agustin in New Mexico, completely unaware of what I would see. Shimmering in the distance, the remote windswept plains just north of the Gila Wilderness appeared otherworldly as I passed enormous satellite-like dishes pointed at various angles toward the sky. After miles of dry, dusty roads, it was hard to imagine that the plains were once submerged under 250 feet of water from an ancient ice-age lake. Millions of years have transformed this desolate place where desert grasslands meet mountains and mesas, and all the reference points have changed.

Decades later, after my husband and I opened StarPony Electronics, a Radio Shack franchise store, I learned that the National Radio Astronomy Observatory operated those dishes. Their massive antennas comprise the hardest-working telescope in the world and are part of what is known as the Very Large Array (VLA). To me, they looked like something straight out of a sci-fi movie. In fact, they gained fame in 1997 when they appeared in the film “Contact,” starring Jodie Foster and based on the 1985 novel and screenplay by Carl Sagan, which involved radio telescopes.

For as long as I can remember, I have looked up at the stars and wondered where I came from. Being adopted may have contributed to a powerful longing for understanding my ancestral lineage and on a cosmic level. Visiting the VLA with my husband for the first time this past month sparked even more questions.

The first thing I noticed upon our arrival was the request to turn off all electronic devices capable of broadcasting radio frequencies, as their use is strictly prohibited. Consequently, we switched our cell phones to airplane mode for the duration of our visit. Fortunately, digital cameras were allowed. Airplane mode disables Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular data, preventing these devices from transmitting radio signals. Even low-emission devices can interfere with the VLA’s ability to detect faint radio signals from distant astronomical objects in faraway galaxies. This interference made me wonder: if cell phones and personal electronic devices can disrupt the radio telescope’s capacity to listen to the universe, what effect are they having on us? Are our abilities to receive transmissions from higher realms also being diminished?

The VLA is a powerful telescope tuned to detect invisible light in the form of radio waves. All objects, including humans, emit electromagnetic radiation, which includes radio waves. Quartz crystals, used to keep track of time and to transmit and receive radio signals, can create a resonance and emit an electrical signal, just like the human body. Crystals can be programmed to vibrate at specific frequencies, aligning us to those frequencies.

We are sensory beings just beginning to understand the phenomena of resonant fields and how our thoughts can influence the world around us through sympathetic resonance. Electromagnetic pollution dulls our senses and diminishes our ability to receive and interpret information from our environment. It raises an important question: what happens when we can no longer receive transmissions from the Star Beings, which are part of our internal navigation system? Could this leave us more vulnerable to propaganda that is broadcast into our energy field and to external programming?

What genuinely concerns me is the situation of children raised in a world that has normalized Autism, dismisses chemtrails (geoengineering) as a conspiracy theory, and allows electronic devices to program minds and distract us from meaningful connections and interactions. Yet, as with every generation, the reference points have once again changed.

Over the next few years, the number of broadband satellites is projected to increase significantly, from approximately 2,000 to 20,000. This growth will lead to a greater exposure of the Earth to extremely high frequencies. As electronic or “artificial” intelligence, which relies on these satellites, becomes more integrated into our daily lives, it raises important concerns. NOAA scientists have detected aluminum and other exotic metals, such as titanium, chromium, and lithium, in the stratosphere, resulting from vaporized rockets and satellites reentering Earth’s atmosphere. This discovery links stratospheric pollution to aerospace debris, which could potentially affect the ozone layer. The practice of mining these metals from the Earth and launching them into space is unsustainable. Scientists are also investigating the implications of seeding the stratosphere with millions of tons of sulfur aerosols as a geoengineering approach to slow the rate of global warming by reflecting sunlight back into space.

What will happen when we can no longer receive full-spectrum light from our sun or the billions of other stars in our galaxy? Or from the approximately 200 sextillion stars in the observable universe? Growing up under the subtropical sun in Southern Florida, I led an adventurous outdoor lifestyle, swimming, biking, and riding horses without the need for sunglasses or sunscreen. The light, encoded with information, filled my eyes, bathed my body and nourished my mitochondria on a cellular level, serving as a substrate for cellular memory and part of our inner navigation system. This mitochondrial motherline reconnects us to our ancestors, including those who may have come from the stars, allowing us to remember our origins.

While visiting the Very Large Array, I perceived it as a masculine extension of ourselves. It requires that kind of energy and thrust to launch rockets into space or to create technology like the VLA, which is based on physicist Karl G. Jansky’s 1933 discovery of radio waves emanating from the Milky Way. The masculine energy seeks expansion and projection, while the feminine energy seeks contraction and receptivity. The former acquires knowledge of the outer world through exploration, while the latter gathers intuitive knowledge through receptivity. We all originate from a mother and a father and carry both masculine and feminine energies within us.

By harmonizing these energies, we can deepen our understanding of our place in the cosmos. The masculine energy rises, projects, and penetrates, whereas the feminine energy descends, reflects, and receives. A problem arises, however, when the dominant masculine energy unsustainably extracts rare minerals from the Earth Mother’s body and projects them into technology meant to uncover what already exists within us as an internal technology. Our internal landscape still holds many mysteries, and leaves much to discover as we explore our divine origins. We stand at the edge of an unexplored frontier. It is time to look within.

Listen! Music of the Spheres. Recorded live by Thea

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I slept in Frank Waters’ bed, if you called that sleep, beneath the Cheyenne war shield that hung from the ceiling, surrounded by ancient kachina dolls on shelves in a room full of spirits. Frank’s bed was so high off the ground that it took a step stool to launch into its crushing softness. Frank, a tall man with leonine eyes, had a floor beneath his bed that had been sealed by hand with ox blood, in the old way. He and I shared a bond as mutual admirers, kindred spirits, and lovers of the Desert Southwest. I met Frank in his last days, although these days have certainly not seen the last of Frank.

Frank had been deceased for twelve years when his widow, Barbara Waters, invited me into their home to house-sit and to sleep in their bed. My work with the Frank Waters Foundation, whose motto is Sheltering the Creative Spirit, brought Barbara and I together after Frank’s death. Barbara encouraged and supported my writing, and the Foundation published one of my essays about Frank in a book titled Rekindling the Inner Light. Frank Waters authored Book of the Hopi and many other works, earning him the title Grandfather of Southwestern Literature.

Frank gave me hope that I, too, could become a writer. More broadly, he offers hope not only to those who read his works or are touched by his life, but to the entire literary world. Through his writing, Frank provided me with a way to step into a different world—one that exists in the past yet remains timeless.

Most references to the Blue Star Kachina come from Book of the Hopi (1963). It was in 1991 that I felt the spiritual call to journey with the Blue Star, and I didn’t meet Frank Waters until 1994, just one year before his passing. His writings on Hopi mythology reveal that the Blue Star Kachina signifies the beginning of a new world by manifesting as a blue star. I witnessed this star and followed its beckoning light into the wilderness and up to the Hopi sacred mountain.

In Tucson, in December 1991, an uncertain bright blue star sparkled above the southeastern horizon as I made my way home along Old Spanish Trail. Night had not yet fallen, and the sky displayed a gradient of dusky rose and turquoise. Recent gentle rains had transformed the prickly pear cacti into glowing shades of silver-green and violet. Winter had arrived in the Sonoran desert, and I fixed my eyes on the horizon, captivated by the mesmerizing blue star.

Within that same month, a multinational coalition led by the United States initiated a massive air campaign known as Operation Desert Storm, following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Tucson’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base deployed A-10 pilots, whose takeoffs and landings soon became a daily spectacle. The roar of war machines agitated me, and the name Saddam Hussein echoed like a deranged mantra. The dismal state of affairs in the Middle East was impossible to ignore.

One chilly January morning, I stepped into the feed store for supplies and noticed a group of men standing to one side, playing darts. They aimed at an enlarged photocopy of Saddam Hussein’s face. The darts they threw, fueled by hatred, struck me as sorely missing the mark. Something had gone terribly wrong in our world.

When the shimmering blue star first appeared, I perceived it as a sign, a messenger, a shining presence from a distant realm. After several nights of stargazing, I began to lose my consensual hold on reality. The drums of war triggered my sympathetic nervous system, compelling me to flee. I yearned for a renewal of hope, faith, and love to combat the overwhelming negativity. In a moment of impulsive determination, I left my job and devised a plan to leave town and venture into the wilderness. My boyfriend, Jesse, needed no convincing to join me. A self-proclaimed Druid and survivalist, he had been preparing for this moment his entire life.

With the world in chaos, the sanctity of the wilderness beckoned. Jesse packed our survival gear into the Land Cruiser: waterproof matches, a tent, an ax, tarps, rope, twine, flashlights, extra batteries, emergency blankets, extra blankets, knives, a knife sharpener, canned goods, and a can opener. I brought along my guitar, sacred pipe, ritual supplies, and grabbed a book off the shelf as I headed out the door. We secured skis and ski poles on the roof rack. I threw the rest of my ski gear in the back in case it snowed, and we made our way to the slopes.

We headed out at midnight after my gig at the Riverside Inn in Benson, AZ. Our destination was New Mexico’s 3.3 million acres of Gila Wilderness. Jesse and I planned to camp at a primitive hot spring on the San Francisco River, sheltered by canyon walls in the Gila National Forest.

I needed to escape the devastation of Operation Desert Storm; the name itself felt like an abomination. I loved the natural desert storms that herded clouds from the west, driving them across the mountains to the east, bringing much-needed relief and the smell of chaparral. In that vast land, I could hear the sound of my heart beating in rhythm with Mother Earth. The land did not exist for me; I existed for it.

As the Land Cruiser climbed the winding road to the snowy ridge, we reached the mountain pass that leads from Arizona into New Mexico. Compelled by its beauty, I pulled over and cranked up the stereo. Jesse and I threw open the doors and danced wildly beneath the light of a billion stars, listening to the sounds of Native flutes and percussion playing in the moonless night. The song that played, Land of Skin and Sorrow by Eliza Gilkyson, was inspired by a Hopi Indian prophesy predicting the time when humanity would climb out of the Fourth World of Separation and into the Fifth World of Illumination. It all felt prophetic.

We arrived at the remote hot springs canyon before dawn. The Frisco springs are primitive, hand-dug pools a few feet from the San Francisco River that runs west to east. Exhausted from our exodus, Jesse kept me warm as we slept curled up together in the back of the Land Cruiser. By late morning, the desert sun beckoned us to water. Jesse crawled out first from under our sleeping bags. Moments later, we stumbled down to the river and slipped naked into a pool of warm mud and hot healing water, surrounded by volcanic deposits over 20 million years old.

The Canyon Cathedral is the only church I will ever need. Surrendering to deep relaxation next to the sound of wild, rushing water while gazing up through ancient Miocene epoch stone walls beneath a brilliant turquoise blue sky is a profoundly spiritual experience.

We set up camp in the early afternoon. Jesse forded the river upstream in search of firewood and returned with an armload, looking very much like a Druid with his dark curls loosely pulled back in a ponytail.

A short distance away, two men and a woman were also camping. Jesse struck up a friendly conversation with them, and I learned they were collecting wood for a sweat lodge. Curious, I began asking questions: What would they use for lodge poles? Had they ever built a lodge before? And the most important question: Who would lead the Inipi ceremony?

Their answers amazed me. None of them had ever built or led a lodge. However, they shared that they had seen an unusually bright blue star and felt called to the wilderness to pray for peace. Was this synchronicity? We listened to each other’s stories, and when they learned I was a pipe carrier, everything started to make sense. There was a reason we had been brought together at such an unsettling time.

The next day was dedicated to preparation. It required teamwork to construct the lodge. Jesse and the men used his ax to cut lodge poles and tied them together with twine to form a dome. A shovel, which had been left at the hot springs for digging silt out of the pools, was used to excavate a pit in the center of the lodge where the stone people would be placed. The other woman and I set up an altar and covered the lodge with blankets, towels, sleeping bags, and tarps. I realized I would need to lead the ceremony since no one else was qualified, and the others were greatly relieved. The Great Spirit put me in that position to ensure there was no doubt in my mind. This would be my first time leading an Inipi ceremony since becoming a pipe carrier.

I had everything I needed in my medicine bundle for the ceremony: a sacred pipe, tobacco, sacred objects, feathers, crystals, a sage bundle, and an abalone shell. Spirit had called me to be of service in a role I had prayed for and been prepared to fulfill.

Dusk settled over our camp as Jesse lit the ceremonial fire. The wood caught easily and burned hot. Twelve lava rocks, gathered in the canyon, were placed beneath the burning pyre made of cedar and pine. When the time came, four of us entered the lodge to listen for the messages hidden deep within the stone’s ancient bodies. We would pass the sacred pipe and pray. Jesse remained by the fire as our firekeeper, using the shovel to carry four stones for each round into the lodge and placing them in the center pit.

As we gathered our resources as strangers, we began to feel like family, discovering a sense of belonging to an even greater community. Tears filled our eyes as powerful prayers washed away the pain from our hearts. The womb-shaped lodge above us promised a new birth. We sat with the souls of our feet touching Mother Earth. We gave thanks for hearing the call of the divine and the courage to follow its guidance—to soak in healing waters, build a sweat lodge for prayer, and share our food and medicine stories in order to understand the place where peace begins.

After emerging from the lodge, we sat around the campfire to share a meal. I strummed my guitar as we lifted our voices in song. Since my days as a Girl Scout singing around the campfire, music had become something I needed most. The emotional and heart-felt Lakota prayers spoken during a traditional sweat lodge ceremony did not entirely belong to me. I was still searching for healing from past wounds and for a sense of belonging. But the music was my own, and it had given me a voice.

That night, I dreamed vivid medicine dreams—the kind that feel so real you can’t tell whether you are awake or dreaming. They are the dreams you can dream while lying next to a running river under a blanket of stars, where the air is sweet and clean, and you feel at peace.

In the morning, the five of us gathered around the campfire to close the ceremony and say goodbye. Jesse and I felt called to continue our journey north. As we drove out of the canyon, a group of ravens, illuminated by the morning sun, flew alongside the car as our escort. When we reached the two-lane at the end of the long, bumpy dirt road, they swooped up and flew away toward the rugged mountains of the Gila’s Blue Range Wilderness. Magic was in the air.

With Jesse behind the wheel, I saw an opportunity to catch up on my reading. I reached for the book I had grabbed off the bookshelf before leaving Tucson. The title read Predictions and Prophesies. I flipped it open and landed on a page about the Hopi Indian prophecy of the Blue Star Kachina. Was it a coincidence? The pieces started to fall into place.

According to the prophecy, the appearance of the Blue Star Kachina would signal the start of the “last and final great war,” a conflict between matter and spirit. The Blue Star Kachina represents a blue star, far away yet invisible, predicted to appear “soon,” heralding the emergence of the Fifth World of Illumination. It describes a time when “the Blue Star Kachina would take off his mask and dance in the plaza.” What did it mean?

I grabbed the cassette with Eliza’s song and shoved it back into the deck. I needed to hear that song again. “Climbing out is never easy on this ladder rung by rung.” I hadn’t grasped the whole story before opening that book. It accurately predicted the war as it was unfolding: A conflict started by Islamic nations in the Middle East, which would evolve into a spiritual battle over material matters. At the time, I didn’t fully understand it significance. I only knew that a war was raging in the Middle East, a blue star had appeared on the horizon, and we listened to lyrics inspired by the Hopi prophecy.

By the time we reached Albuquerque, it had begun to snow heavily. We were lucky to have a place to stay in Santa Fe with a friend for the night. By mid-morning the following day, the skies had cleared enough for us to leave. We continued through the dead of winter to Durango, where my good friend and former midwifery partner, Mona, lived. I could feel the mountains calling. Fortunately, we had the Land Cruiser, as it got stuck in Mona’s driveway for two days in two feet of snow.

Mona and I were thrilled to see each other, especially with the world at war. Her home felt like a warm oasis. We didn’t have to go anywhere or do anything. However, after camping out in her living room for an entire week with the TV tuned to war coverage, I began to feel depressed. The images of burning oil wells painted a vivid picture of a living hell, contrasting with the power of our prayers and a Hopi prophecy. How could I know what was real? To visually integrate our journey, I began drawing with pastels on the sketch pad I always carried with me. I sketched a shield of the New Mexico sun, enclosing a snow-covered mountain beneath a blue star. Ravens, which had guided us out of the canyon, perched above the shield. This image reminded me that we were on a mission, even though I had no idea what that mission entailed.

By the end of the week at Mona’s, the reality that the world would continue, and we would eventually need to return to Tucson, began to sink in. While the other side of the world burned and would never be the same, Jesse and I hoped that jobs would be waiting for us when we got back. But I still needed to go to the mountain. So, we decided to pass through Flagstaff on our way back to Tucson so I could indulge in a little downhill skiing. We spent the last of our money on a room for the night and a lift ticket for me, allowing me to enjoy my day on not just any mountain. The San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff’s Coconino National Forest is a sacred Hopi mountain. Rising more than a mile above the surrounding pine forest, the San Francisco Peaks are the mythological home of the Hopi Kachinas.

Jesse didn’t ski but seemed happy to hang out at the bar at the bottom of the ski lift, drinking beer until I had my fill of white powder. I gleefully headed up the slopes, excited to bond with the sacred mountain. I studied the trail map carefully, planning to warm up on the green runs for about an hour before tackling the blues. However, after catching the next lift to the top, I miscalculated and ended up on the wrong run. To make matters worse, I had forgotten to put on my goggles. It happened so quickly — blinded by the snow, I hit a patch of ice and flew off the trail. I lost control, fell hard, hit my head, and momentarily blacked out. A passing skier who witnessed my crash glided over and offered a helping hand. I felt nauseous and suspected I had a mild concussion. Carrying my skis to the small lodge perched halfway down the mountain took every ounce of energy. All I could do was sit and wait until my head cleared.

I wandered onto the deck behind the lodge on a clear, blue, sunny day and found a quiet place to sit. Frustrated that my time on the mountain had been so rudely interrupted, I closed my eyes and reflected on the events of the previous weeks. As I sat halfway up this sacred mountain, which was imbued with power, I opened my eyes and gazed out at a stand of Ponderosa pines.

To my disbelief, a large, human-like figure emerged from the shadows beneath a magnificent pine tree. I rubbed my eyes and reached up to feel my head, wondering if I was hallucinating. The figure moved again, revealing a strong masculine presence. As he stepped into view, I noticed that he was entirely blue—like the paintings I’ve seen of Krishna—but this figure had a big, luminescent blue star on his chest.

“He can’t be a kachina!” I thought to myself. Kachinas are usually small, but this being was huge! He looked so serene, and I felt a warm sensation in his presence. Was this the reason I had fallen? To slow down long enough to see the spirit of the mountain? A sudden premonition struck me: the appearance of the Blue Star Kachina confirmed what I had recently learned—we had entered the final great war. This war would become the never-ending war against terror. Just as slowly as he appeared, he faded back into the pines.

My feelings were further validated when I learned that two astronomers at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, AZ, had discovered evidence of a blue star “brighter than a million suns.” An article published about a blue supergiant in the Cygnus constellation appeared in New Scientist Magazine around the same time as Desert Storm. Cygnus, known as the Swan, symbolizes “the power of woman entering sacred space.” In Latin and Greek, Cygnus means “circling and returning,” and it is also referred to as the Northern Cross. The name of the blue star in the Cygnus constellation is Deneb, which is one of the most luminous stars known. Just as the stardust from which we are made binds us to one another, we too are gravitationally bound to each other.

Following Desert Storm, The Oil for Food program failed, and the subsequent embargo led to the deaths of 500,000 children under the age of five. According to prophecy, a new cycle begins when faith in the current systems is lost; only then will the land be rejuvenated. Did the Blue Star Kachina remove his mask and dance in the plaza before “uninitiated children,” as described by Frank Waters in Book of the Hopi? The answer is yes because we cannot see what we have not been initiated to see. The Blue Star Kachina may not be the only one who needs to remove his mask. Today, we are witnessing an unprecedented unmasking of the underworld, where unconscious collective memories are coming to light. We are leaving the Fourth World of Separation and entering the Fifth World of Illumination. Our emergence has begun.

The changes occurring on Earth in our times have been predicted by more than just the Hopi prophecies. The Blue Star prophecy warns that a "gourd of ashes" will bring destruction to the United States, while Hopi Land in the Four Corners region will serve as an oasis for refugees. The Blue Star Kachina is considered the ninth and final great sign before the "Day of Purification," which is described as an apocalypse involving a "world-engulfing cataclysm" leading to widespread destruction. This shamanic death represents our transition from the life we once knew.

Apocalyptic images of fires and floods are pervasive, being constantly fed into our consciousness through negative social media and sensational journalism. It is important to be mindful of what we consume, lest we become consumed. We are currently engaged in a spiritual battle—the last and final great war—where we will discover how powerful we are as both creators and destroyers within a dimension governed by duality.

In this dimension, peace cannot exist without war. The battle between spirit and matter has always taken place within ourselves, as we are spiritualized matter. Through the integration of these opposites, we become complete and emerge from the Fourth World of Separation. As without, so within. Understanding that we are in the final battle means recognizing that one world is coming to an end while the new world being born is not of this dimension. Prepare to ascend!

There is much discussion these days about a “New World Order.” If it’s true that the Blue Star Kachina signified the coming of the beginning of the new world by appearing in the form of a blue star, then that time is now. Why do we protest against that which has been prophesied?

The truth emerges when we remove the mask. The process is not solely about destruction; it also involves purification, transformation, and renewal. Learn to endure as the Earth endures. Be Emissaries of Light. Keep your hearts open, alive, and awake as we shift into our light bodies. Come to a place of renewal and be blessed.

About the main art image:

BLUE STARFIRE (#126) by Bryan de Flores is an accelerator image. These channeled art pieces are energetically infused with many levels of information and etheric templates. The “accelerators” operate at subtle levels of consciousness, reactivating the “empowerment program” of our true nature while dissolving old patterns and thought forms no longer in alignment with our highest good.

BLUE STARFIRE also known as “The Blue Essence” and “The Flame of Creation,” this legendary and very elusive substance appears during all initial creational moments. This includes the births of all beings, planets, and universes. The Blue Star still remains a mystery to even the most advanced races in our universe and usually is only detected through the Third Eye vision.

Working with this image and energetically infusing it within your body and consciousness will summon the purest primal aspects of yourself and creation. Through these aspects you will be able to access your galactic origins and align with the gifts and talents you have known in former incarnations. In addition, this accelerator should be present during the initial stages of the creation of any project or physical birth. It will infuse and awaken the new creativity within all who view and use it.

Blue Star Intention

Written in my journal in September 2011, this story is only now being shared, and my intention is coming to fruition thanks to you and my paid subscribers' support.

I, Thea Summer Deer, stand at the dawn of a new age of consciousness, when the world as we have known it is passing away. I intend to remain open and receptive, holding the Blue Star energies of peace, in whatever way I am guided to receive and carry them. Additionally, I plan to share the stories and messages that I have received, and continue to receive, from the Blue Star energies through my work and writing. May we weave together an even greater story with the unique pieces that each of us carries as we step into the brightest of sun-star lights.

References:

San Francisco Hot Springs by Michael O’Connor

Rolling Thunder: The Coming Earth Changes by Joey R. Jochmans

Book of the Hopi, by Frank Waters

Note:

Barbara Waters, beloved writer, teacher and patron of the arts, died Jan. 11, 2015 at her home in Arroyo Seco. She was 83. Frank Waters died at his home in Arroyo Seco on June 3, 1995. He was 93.

Frank Waters Trivia:

Frank passed away on my son Sean’s birthday, which coincidentally is also Aldo Leopold Day. Leopold advocated for the preservation of over 700,000 acres of the Gila National Forest as a wilderness area. Additionally, my grandmother was born in Cheyenne, which is believed to be part of Frank’s heritage. Interestingly, both Frank and I have Venus in Cancer.

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Archival photos from Frank & Barbara Waters historic home in Arroyo Seco and two original songs by Thea

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