Don José Matsuwa

Honoring the memory of Don José Matsuwa

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Today we remember the passing of Don José Matsuwa. 29 years ago Don José transitioned from this world. His long life, which lasted 110 years, is such an inspiration and his vision continues to guide us at the Dance of the Deer Foundation in all that we do.

Born in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico, Don José grew up surrounded by many great shamans and healers; however, it wasn’t until he was a young man that he decided to dedicate his life to the way of the mara-akame (shaman). While his uncle, a respected shaman and ceremonial leader, and other shamans in his village were able to see the spirits and interact with nature in mystical ways, Don José felt blind, unable to see these mysterious energies. So he decided to dedicate his life to learning the ancient ways.

Don José spent 10 years living alone in the forest to learn the language of nature. He then underwent a traditional apprenticeship with a revered shaman, who could transform himself into the spirit of a jaguar during ceremonies. He went on many pilgrimages to sacred places of power and vision quests; his longest being an astonishing 15 days, without food and water.

Around 40, after completing his training, Don José married Doña Josefa Medrano, who later also went on to become a respected Huichol Shaman, healer and ceremonial leader. Together they had 13 children and many grandchildren.

Later in his life, a young white man from New York was found unconscious, after having hiked into the Huichol Sierra in search of the Huichol villages. A shaman from a neighboring village had a dream and sent his sons out to rescue the man, who lay dying in the remote mountains in the heat of the dry season.

Don José had dreamed of this young foreign man as well and summoned for him from the village which had rescued him. Upon meeting, he adopted the young bearded white man as his grandson and put him through a traditional apprenticeship. 12 years later Brant Secunda received the transmission of power ceremony and Don José told him that we would go on to share the ancient wisdom of the Huichol culture with people around the globe.

During the following years, Don José traveled to the United States and Europe approximately 15 times to announce that he was leaving Brant in his place to carry on the Huichol traditions.

Together Brant and Don José founded the Dance of the Deer Foundation in 1979. The mission of the foundation was and remains to share the teachings of Huichol Shamanism around the world and to support the spiritual heritage of the traditions by giving back to the Huichol people.

In 1989, Brant and his wife Barbara gave birth to their son Nico Secunda. Later that year, Brant, Barbara, and Nico traveled to Don José’s village in Mexico, where Don José blessed Nico and gave him his Huichol name, MATSUWA (pulse of life). Nico would go to be the first white person to graduate from the Drum & Harvest Ceremony at 6 years of age and he would follow in his father’s footsteps, dedicating his life to the way of the mara-akame and to supporting the Huichol people.

On November 6, 1990, at the age of 110, Don José passed away.

Before he died, he had a few words for those closest to him. To Brant he had a lengthy message. One of the things he said was, “Tell your people to follow the deer all the way to their heart.”

With sincere gratitude and love, we thank you Don José Matsuwa for your life and for the long journey you walked. Your vision continues to guide us each day.

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Brant Secunda with Don José Matsuwa and Doña Josefa Medrano

Journey into Healing

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In 1970 at 18 years old, intrigued by a book of Carlos Castenada. I left my hometown in New Jersey and set out on a journey to Ixtlan as a spiritual tourist in search of Don Juan. En route, I met a Huichol schoolteacher, who gave me the name of his family’s village – a five day walk away.

Soon, I found myself hiking through the Sierra Madre Mountains, in search of the mysterious Huichol natives. With the sun blazing down on me, I followed a narrow deer trail hoping I was still heading in the right direction. The Mexican towns, along with the rest of the modern world quickly faded behind me.

The Brazil Trees and the thick underbrush enveloped me, as I continued deeper into the Sierra. After three days and no sign of any village, I found myself hopelessly lost. I had drunk my last sip of water and tried to calm the panic rising inside of me. Pressing on in hope of finding the village, dehydration and sun exposure overtook me. The trees around me began spinning. I collapsed, sinking into unconsciousness, as feelings of disgust, anger and finally fear overtook me.

As I lay dying on the parched earth, I dreamt of circles full of light spinning in front of me. Visions of deer and an old indigenous man appeared. Suddenly, cold water hit my face. Startled into consciousness, my beautiful dreams and visions faded. Slowly opening my eyes, above me loomed the dark faces of three natives. They told me in Spanish of an old shaman in their Huichol village who had dreamt I was dying at this spot and sent them to save me two days earlier.

Still weak, I was led through the mountains to a clearing with mud and stick huts, the smell of tortillas cooking and sounds of children playing. Amazed at this scene and that I was alive; I was taken to their shaman Don Juan (of the same name, but not the one of Castenada fame). I remained there for two weeks. The people told me of another shaman, Don José Matsuwa, in a nearby village who had also dreamt of me: He summoned me to his rancho. The same three natives who had originally saved me led me to his hut.

Shortly after meeting Don José I was put in a cave for five days and five nights with no food or water. I was told this was my initiation. If I lived, I would continue as an apprentice to this renowned shaman and healer.

12 years later I completed my apprenticeship. I had been adopted as Don José’s grandson. He had taught me the ancient wisdom of healing and ceremony and we had become close companions on the path of the shaman. Following my training, I was sent back to the modern world, to help share the secrets of the Huichol, to heal those in need and to conduct ceremonies to bring balance to the Earth.

Since that time I have been traveling the world, striving to fulfill the vision of my teacher. Thousands of people have come to me for healing. From every corner of the globe and from all walks of life. Many of them have tried everything western medicine has to offer before finally resorting to shamanic healing. It seems to me that people today are more in need of healing than ever before.

Personal Stories of Healing • from Marilyn Del Duca

I was diagnosed with Lyme’s disease, and antibiotics were not helping.
I went to Brant to ask for help.  He did a series of healings for me that
healed the Lyme’s with no residual effects.  Years later when I suffered a
bad fall and tore my MCL, his healings made it possible for me to avoid
surgery.  These are just two of the ways his healings have  helped me over
the years.

Another time, my niece was trying to get pregnant.  I told her not to worry – if she wasn’t pregnant by the following June, I would take her to meet Brant at the Summer Solstice, as I knew he had good luck with women’s issues.  He did a fertility healing for her, and she was pregnant within a month.  Her first baby was born the following April, and she had a second baby 20 months later, blessing me with two beautiful great-nieces.

Shamanic healing searches out the root of illness. Often a person’s ailment stems from something much deeper than what is felt on the surface. This is common with psychological and spiritual trauma, but also with physical ailments. The shaman strives to find the source of the illness and to extract it from the individual.

For many, shamanic healing may seem far-fetched or simply archaic; however, I have witnessed time and again its relevance for those very people who don’t even believe in it. I have had numerous people come to me after trying “everything else” and searching desperately for healing. One such man came to my office in Santa Cruz, California for a healing over 15 years ago. As soon as I met him, he asked if he needed to believe in the shamanic healing I was about to conduct. I said “no” and he replied, “Good, because I don’t.” His doctors had given him two weeks to live with his pancreatic cancer. He ended up in remission and lived another ten years.

I am so grateful for my journey to the Huichol. I am thankful for the countless healings I witnessed while studying with Don José, which allowed me to believe. I remember one of the first things he told me. He said, “Until you learn to believe, you will never really learn.”

You can be told the earth is sacred or that shamans can dream of the future or heal terrible diseases, but until you experience it yourself, you can never fully believe. Experience is one of our greatest teachers.

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Brant Secunda with Huichol

Journey to the Heart

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“Is your heart happy?” Don José asks the children at his rancho. “Dance with all your heart. We are following the example of the gods and the way they have taught to us. This is our life.”

Shamans throughout the world, from Tibet and Mongolia to the Americas, have been involved in healing for thousands of years, dating back to Paleolithic times. Perhaps as old as consciousness itself, shamanism is an ancient healing tradition that has reflected the changing cultures of the surrounding world throughout the ages.

The shamanic tradition involves healing through personal transformation as well as healing our family, community and environment. Central to this healing tradition is the belief that we must heal and honor our mother the earth, who is viewed as a living, conscious organism. Shamans say this sacred female Goddess, the earth, who nourishes our very existence, must also be nourished with our prayers and ceremonies.

The Huichols of Mexico are said to be the last tribe in North America to have maintained their pre-Columbian traditions, little disturbed by colonialization and Christianization until very recently. I feel fortunate for having been able to study with such an amazing group of people, as an apprentice for over a decade with Don José Matsuwa, a Huichol shaman-healer who lived to the age of 110.

The Huichols taught me that healing is a way of life, a way of being that permeates our very existence. Healing is something to be practiced constantly, not just when we are ill. Moreover, the shamanic tradition of healing does not limit itself to healing of the physical body, but rather involves the maintenance of the harmony and balance of the universe. We must consciously make contact with all life, see our life in all things, so that life and health are embedded within our hearts.

Upon our first meeting Don José spoke of our mother the earth, who nourishes and speaks to our heart. The shaman learns to listen with their heart as well as their ears, and thus shamanism, as a healing art, makes a person whole and complete, a whole system integrated fully to the surrounding environment. Shamanism focuses on all life as being majestically and mysteriously inter-related and sacred. Plants, rocks, two- and four- legged creatures all have personal identities with whom the shaman develops a personal relationship. When the shaman prays, he prays not only for himself but also for his sacred relatives: our mother the earth, our father the sun, our grandfather and giver of light the fire, our grandmothers the eagle and the winged ones. Don José often told me never to forget that my relatives are the earth, sky, rivers, birds, animals, stones, gems, mountains, caves, springs and lakes. According to various shamanic mythologies, there was a time when paradise existed and all life was one. For example, fire communicated freely with people. Now this is lost and for this reason the shaman acts as a bridge, drawing upon lost lines of communication with all life that surrounds him both visibly and invisibly. Shamans thus act as intermediaries between people and other life forms: the gods and goddesses and all creatures who co-inhabit the earth. Shamans also have the ability to transform themselves into a spirit entity, almost as if they had the key to the process of metamorphosis. Thus the role of a shaman has been vital to the community in which he lives, as he acts as a vital link to the surrounding world.

Shamanism as a healing art seeks to maintain or restore balance, both for the individual and for the planet. All life is ultimately one, and the responsibility of a shaman is to bring the forces of balance, harmony and intuition into resonance with one another. If we celebrate our life as one with our environment, then our environment will give thanks to us with the proper amount of sunlight and rainfall.

Embedded within the traditions of shamanism and healing are techniques of achieving ecstasy. Ecstasy is sought by shamans to experience unity with all things. Ceremonial celebration for the attainment of ecstasy utilizes ancient forms of ceremony and ritual. The Huichols perform ceremonies throughout the year to maintain the delicate balance of our environment, of our universe, so that one may know one’s heart and feel the ecstatic joy emanating from one’s very being. The “Dance Of The Deer”, a most beautiful and intense sacred dance of the Huichols, is employed so the participants of the ceremonies may enter into a trance state of joy and ecstasy. The shaman and his assistant chant the ancient songs as the others dance about them. All enter together as one heart into a sacred doorway known to the Huichols as “Nierika”, face of the divine, or link to other realms of consciousness and being.

At ceremonies, the Huichol shaman calls upon their ally or spirit helper, Kauyumari, the magical deer spirit person, to assist them in the task of transporting the ceremonial participants through the nierika (spiritual doorway), into the realm of ecstatic joy and harmony. The dancers also assist the shaman as they too, like the deer, become messengers of the gods. Through ceremony, participants allow themselves to be transformed, renewed and life force itself is transmitted in a sacred manner. The shaman and participants in the ceremony are provided a medium for reaching the realm of the gods and the heart source of life itself.

Students of shamanism must endure many hardships and show much strength, both inner and outer. Pilgrimages to “places of power” (caves, springs, oceans, mountain tops) form an important aspect of shamanic healing, as pilgrims are said to receive power and many blessings for having arrived at such places.

At the same time shamanism involves what is often seen as the more mundane and down-to-earth aspects of the shaman’s day-to-day life. Many Huichol shamans, as well as many shamans from other cultures, are farmers, who in working daily with the earth, develop a special relationship with their sacred mother.

The wisdom of ceremonial celebration, pilgrimages to sacred spots and proper daily living to achieve balance between ourselves as human beings and our environment has been lost to many people of the modern world. For this reason Don José adopted me as his grandson and trained me in the ancient art of shamanism and healing. “You are an educated person who knows and understands your world”, he told me. “Now you will know our world too and use the two so that modern people may once again know what we have tried never to forget. There is a balance between our two worlds, grandson: that’s the way it is.”

“Is your heart happy?” Don Jose often asks the children at his rancho in the Mexican Sierra. “Dance with all your heart. We are following the example of the gods and the way they have taught to us. This is our life.”

Originally published in SHAMAN’S DRUM I FALL. 1985

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