Huichol Shamanism for the Modern Life
Just Beyond the Veil
By Joel Hersch
Life in the modern age moves fast—we communicate with immediacy, we travel with the intent of arriving at our destination as quickly as possible, and, with the help of technology, our daily experience is inundated with information. But with so much happening all around us so fast, all the time, and a world that asks us to constantly be moving forward—up a ladder, over the next hill, toward a better job, a new degree, the next societal objective—it becomes difficult for many to remember how to slow down and tune into the subtler, less tangible forms of learning.
Brant Secunda, the founder of The Dance of the Deer foundation and Shaman in the Huichol Indian tradition, works to help people integrate elements of traditional Shamanism into their modern lives. With Shamanic practices serving as a tool set, his aims are to help us create a deeper sense of connection with the natural world, which in turn, can help to form a greater degree of peace, balance and identity within ourselves, and ultimately inform us on how to live and work more effectively, sustainably, and with a heightened level of personal and interpersonal connectivity.
“One of my goals is to help people wake up and become aware of who they are and where their life is going,” Secunda says. “The idea is for people to be able to empower themselves, and when we do that, we empower the world. If we want things to be better in the world, we have to start with ourselves.”
In the 1970s, during two consecutive six-year apprenticeships alongside the late Don José Matsuwa, a healer, master ceremonial leader, and renowned shaman in Mexico’s Huichol Sierra, Secunda—a New Yorker—was adopted as a grandson by the elder, and through years of trial and study, became a sanctioned Huichol shaman. Don José, who passed away in 1990 at the age of 110, imparted to Secunda the importance of educating the outside world on the Huichol way of life, leading him in 1979 to create the Dance of the Deer Foundation Center for Shamanic Studies, with the aim to disseminate and preserve Huichol culture, practices, and traditions. This indigenous group, with a population estimated at approximately 34,000 in Mexico, is considered to be one of the last tribes in North America to have preserved their pre- Columbian traditions.
Today, Secunda teaches at seminars and leads spiritual retreats around the world, expressing the multi-faceted ideologies of Shamanism with groups such as the World Health Organization in Germany, doctors and psychologists, and a variety of people who’s jobs require high degrees human compassion, understanding, and empathy.
“I’m trying to integrate Shamanism into the lives of people from modern walks of life—the world of western medicine, lawyers, social workers—which will hopefully help them be better people, and better at what they do.”
Some of it is obvious—being a good person, an honest person, a loving and kind human being, but then there are aspects of becoming “awake” and “open” to these traits not by simply choosing to behave this way. Instead, Secunda describes Shamanistic practices that nurture a sense of being, rather than simply a way of behaving.
“We use the model of Huichol shamanism in order to take us there—as a vehicle to be a better person, or a more powerful human being,” he says. “Huichols say the role of Shamanism is to help us complete our lives, to find our lives and help us complete ourselves as humans. It helps us find out who we are as people, what it is we’re supposed to be doing here on the earth, which is one of the oldest questions we’ve ever asked ourselves. ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Why am I here?’ Shamanism is one of the tools we use to help people transform themselves and answer those questions.”
A key component of Shamanism is a belief in animism, that all things in the natural world— everything from fire, the earth, plants and animals—possess their own innate form of wisdom. A Shaman’s path cultivates the power to become wholly aware of the wisdom that exists there, which includes a wide spectrum of power, from simply feeling and expressing that relationship with nature, to a form of extra-sensory knowledge that allows a Shaman to manipulate reality, tapping into a spiritual realm, conduct healing, and communicate with an alternate reality.
The Dance of the Deer does not claim to offer or promote a pathway for students to become a Shaman—a journey that Secunda says many are interested in, but that requires a degree of such absolute commitment, time, energy, and spiritual resolve that very few are prepared for the journey—but that it includes many concepts and practices within Shamanism that Secunda believes people from all walks of life can learn and benefit from.
In an interesting juxtaposition to modern ideas of personal progress, a core concept in advancing the spiritual self is taking the time to do less, remembering to let silence sink in, allowing time for reverence of the world around you, being still, being quiet, and listening. In the realm of Shamanism, in countless ways, less is more.
“We sometimes forget because we’re so busy, sitting in front of a computer all day, or what ever it is that we’re doing, to connect with the sunrise or sunset,” Secunda says. “It’s a powerful way for us to be a part of nature and the spiritual world.”
Breath in the sound of the river. That sound makes your soul beautiful. And that has the effect of making you physically beautiful—literally, as well as metaphorically,” he says. “If you’re angry, for example, you carry yourself differently and it comes through you physically. While, if you listen to the river, and allow peace to grow inside of you, that will become a part of your outward physicality and expression.”
By cultivating peace within ones self, Secunda explains that a form of spiritual equilibrium begins to flourish, which reaches into every aspect of experience. And while people may pick up on those moments of something a tune to spiritual wakefulness—perhaps a sense of serenity, perfection, and a feeling of awe for the world coupled with clarity—all too often those experiences of bliss come and go without any deeper understanding of what created it, where it fades away to, and what summons it back. It might be summarized in the notion, to have a relationship with the moment, and remembering to grant it your awareness and presence.
Secunda says it comes down to truly listening, and quieting the mind of all the distractions the modern world throws our way.
Don José, Secunda’s teacher, used to tell him, in regard to all the commotion of the world and the noise it can create within the self, “How will they ever hear the ancient ones whispering into their heart and soul all of the wisdom of the universe.”
That whispering Don José used to describe to Secunda is what it all boils down to. The story and the peace and the beauty are there, all around us, but they are subtle—they are delicate ripples in the water that only the utmost intentional focus, and the continuous practice of fine tuning the senses, will unveil. One might consider the nature of a stereogram vision puzzle—a 3D image hidden within another image that will only come into focus when the viewer settles the mind. The trick to seeing the hidden picture is relaxing the eyes, focusing not on any one part of the picture but allowing the mind to passively take the whole page in. Sometimes the trick is doing less.
“We, in the modern world, so often think we have to do something to better ourselves. To speed up; to try harder,” Secunda says. But sometimes, paradoxically, the hurdle is slowing down.
Franz Kafka, the late European author who produced fiction of the philosophical and existential variety around the turn of the twentieth century, distilled the concept quite poetically:
You need not leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen. Simply wait.
You need not ever wait, just learn to become quiet and still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you, unmasked.
it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
“Don José used to say, ‘Just wait and see what the gods give you,” Secunda says of his old maestro. “Don’t even look. If you have a vision, don’t even take the first vision—wait. Be patient. See what’s behind it.”
