Rise and Fall of the Plastic Shamans, Sweat Lodge Deaths in Arizona
Posted By Omar W. Rosales on October 17, 2009
First off, I wanted to thank everyone for their excellent support of Elemental Shaman. Its been an amazing journey, and everyday has required a bit of faith
, but the work is now manifesting in the lives and experiences of others. I wanted to address two things in this entry, the account of events in Elemental Shaman and the recent tragedy with the sweat lodge deaths in Sedona, Arizona.
Writing Elemental was definitely a challenge, living the experiences and operating as a Dream Oracle was arduous, difficult, stressful, and dangerous. The experiences were real and the account is real. I can tell you exactly what the streets of Santiago Atitlan smell like, because I was there. I can describe to you the rooms that house the Holy Boy, the Rij Al Mam, the Maximon. I can tell you who was in that room, what they were wearing, what they were saying because the memory is etched in my mind like an old phonograph, the needle of remembering passing over the grooved and ridged valleys and peaks.
I can tell you what Bhutan is like, the crisp Himalayan air, the endless switchbacks over the Black Mountain Range, the hidden and occult inner chambers below the altars in Monasteries housing 30 foot statues of Guru Rinpoche.
And I can tell you the layout of Sedona, Arizona, the effects of the positive and negative vortexes, and the mystical aspects of the land. I can tell you all these things because I was there. Elemental Shaman is a true story. And I have pictures, recordings, and notes: all the things required of an ethnography. My background is Anthropology. This is what I do, this is what I live for: learning about cultures around the world.
The problem with a lot of Shamanic accounts and literature is that most of it is fake. Most of it is make believe. Marlo Morgan never found a lost tribe in Australia when she wrote ‘Mutant Message Down Under’. Carlos Castaneda never found a shaman named ‘Don Juan’. Castaneda’s writings are a mishmash of local accounts, historical retellings, and pure fiction. Today, there is even a self-proclaimed ‘International Maya Elder’ who is 100% Caucasian and was born in Illinois. I’m sorry, but there’s no such thing as an International Maya Elder. You’re either born Maya or not. The ‘Mayan Code’ is just another elaborate account of a misinterpretation of 2012 in the Maya Calendar. There is no Apocalypse on December 21, 2012 because the Maya Calendar never ends.
Which ties into my second point, the Rise and Fall of the Plastic Shamans. The recent deaths in Sedona, Arizona illustrate this point of a New Age or Plastic healer or ‘Medicine Person’ attempting to misappropriate culture for their own selfish reasons. It is a complete tragedy that Multi-millionaire self-help guru James Ray didn’t take the most basic precautions to prevent his participants from coming down with heat stroke and heat exhaustion. Charging sums in excess of $9,000.00 USD to sit in an oven and go through a so-called spiritual awakening is obscene and wrong. A traditional native American sweat lodge never operated like this.
The sweat lodge is a ceremony developed by Plains Indians to purify the participant’s spirit and commune with the spirits of the land and ancestors prior. The sweat lodge consists of a lean-to (a type of shelter), constructed with willow branches, ash branches, or other light tree limbs that can be bent into a dome shape. The branches are then covered with blankets. A small pit or depression is dug into the ground. In this pit, heated stones are placed. The leader of the ceremony will then pour water over the stones. Sacred invocations (and sometimes the smoking of tobaccos) are used to call down the spirits. The maximum number of participants in the sweat lodge is 5 to 7, no more.
The participants will stay in the lodge about 20-30 minutes, go outside for air, and then come back in. At no point are the participants forced to stay in the lodge. At no point, are the participants staying in the lodge for 2-3 hours. And at no point, does the Medicine elder charge the participants $9,000.00 for this unique experience, let alone stack 50 people into this hot place.
With the New Age Oven of 50 people, any visions experienced are undoubtedly the result of heat stroke as the body shuts down its organs to preserve the temperature of the brain. As the temperature of the brain increases, the body’s regulatory system begins to malfunction further, causing even more disorientation in the person. As the brain cooks, even more organs began to fail, until eventually the body goes into cardiac arrest. The utter and complete tragedy is that these instances of heat stroke can be prevented with two things: 1) Water and 2) Fresh Air. There is absolutely no excuse for heat stroke either in sweat lodges or High School football fields if people are provided one thing – Water.
And where was James Ray during this episode? Near the entrance to the lodge, enjoying the fresh air. There are so many potential claims against Ray, the landowners, the builders of the sweatlodge, the advertisers. Would you want your son or daughter in this oven? What about your Mom or Dad? And all of it could have been prevented, with a single glass of water.
If you want to learn about Native American traditions, ask. Ask a Native American. Our nation is replete with excellent sources on the traditions and tribal custom
s of our First Nations brothers and people. Go to a museum, pick up a book, study an Ethnography of the Kiowa, or the Sioux. Learn about the dispute over the Black Hills. Find out more about these tribes.
But please, be a bit skeptical when a Plastic Shaman, shows up at your door with a New Age rattle, driving a Mercedes, and offers to cure your ills and take you on a spiritual journey for $9,000.00
Regards,
Omar W. Rosales, J.D.
Author, ‘Elemental Shaman’
Director Heaven in Exile
