Henry Barnard Wesselman (1941-2021) was an American anthropologist known primarily for his Spiritwalker trilogy of spiritual memoirs. In them, he claims to have been in contact with "Nainoa", an ethnic Hawaiian kahuna (shaman) living some 5,000 years in our future. The books envision the imminent collapse of Western civilization as a result of global warming. On a more positive note, Wesselman perceives an ongoing "wide-spread spiritual reawakening" which he dubs the "Modern Mystical Movement."[1]

Together with his wife Jill Kuykendall, Wesselman led shamanic training workshops for the Omega Institute and other, similar institutions. They divided their time between northern California, Oregon, and Captain Cook, Hawaii. Hank died peacefully near his home in Hawaii on February 15, 2021 after a short illness. His beloved Jill was at his side. He was 79 years old.

Professional background

Wesselman is a native New Yorker who received his undergraduate degree in zoology from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and his doctorate in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley. During the 1960s he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nigeria, among the Yoruba. He has participated in paleoanthropology research in east Africa's Great Rift Valley.[2] His research speciality is involved with the reconstruction of the paleo-environments of early man sites (See Science magazine, Oct 2, 2009) and the cover story of National Geographic, July 2010.

He was an instructor at American River College and Sierra College, both in California, and has also taught classes for the University of California at San Diego; the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo; the Kiriji Memorial College in Igbajo, Nigeria; and Adeola Odutola College in Ijebu Ode, Nigeria.[3][4][5] The Omega Institute Faculty.

He is the author of the Spiritwalker trilogy—Spiritwalker (1995), Medicinemaker (1998), and Visionseeker (2001)—as well as The Journey to the Sacred Garden (2003); Spirit Medicine (with Jill Kuykendall) (2004); Awakening to the Spirit World (with Sandra Ingerman), The Bowl of Light (2011), and The Re-Enchantment: A Shamanic Path to a Life of Wonder (2016)

Publications

Spiritwalker trilogy

Describes an ongoing series of spontaneous dream-like visions beginning in the early 1980s, in which Wesselman seemed to connect with and see through the eyes of "Nainoa", a man of Hawaiian ancestry living on the western coast of what is today North America 5000 years after the collapse of the "Great Age" of technology. Nainoa, a member of a Hawaiian-based society which has re-peopled America's west coast. The series begins as Nainoa is sent into the continent's interior on a mission to seek out the descendants of the "Americans" and, if possible, find horses. On the journey, Nainoa explores his shamanic calling, learns of his relationship with Wesselman, and makes contact with the "Ennu", a tribe of hunters and gatherers descended from Canadian Innuits. The Spiritwalker trilogy explores Wesselman's struggles with what to make of these experiences, and records an extraordinary story as the anthropologist is drawn into the shaman's world of mystery and magic.
The future California-Nevada region is depicted as including rainforest and an inland sea inundating the central valley, as well as a wide variety of exotic megafauna such as elephants, lions, longhorn cattle, and several monkey and ape species. Wesselman speculates that the ancestors of these animals may have escaped from zoos or been released from circuses during the collapse of Western civilization. Both human populations shown in the book live at a neolithic level of technology, with some metal artifacts such as knives and fishhooks.
The sequel books (below) are often compared with the writings of Carlos Castaneda, and reference the work of Michael Harner. Besides Nainoa's future world, Wesselman describes various spiritual experiences, including cosmological visions as well as encounters with spirit beings. (See magical realism.)

Spiritwalker has been published in 15 languages abroad.

Continues the story with Wesselman's 1989 return to academic life in California, and Nainoa's c. 70th-century return from the American interior, back to his own society and homeland. There he studies to become a kahuna; makes an enemy in one of the other priests; and meets a love interest, the spiritually-aware Maraea (possibly a descendant of Wesselman's wife, or perhaps of them both). Nainoa inadvertently kills the enemy by calling upon "spotted tiger man", a spirit familiar--identified with a "leopard man" which Wesselman had encountered and painted.
Continues Wesselman's story from 1995 to 2000 around a series of eight visions, which Wesselman and Nainoa gradually come to experience together. A key concept is that of the dorajuadiok, a powerful spirit-being which Wesselman describes as a minded "energy field". Much attention is given to Wesselman's exploration of neo-shamanism and other spiritual interests. At one point he learns that his father had experienced similar time-shifts, and was convinced that he had been a seventeenth-century French swordsman.
"Meanwhile", in the far future, Nainoa marries Maraea. Thanks to Maraea's political connections (her grandmother is a "governor"), he is assigned the task of starting a new colony on the eastern shore of their inland sea (i.e., a future, inundated version of California's central valley), with the ultimate goal of building a road which will allow the importation of horses from the Ennu land in the interior.
This volume contains several references to Jesus, including a visionary experience of him by Wesselman. During his training as a kahuna, Nainoa is taught a shamanistic version of the Lord's Prayer which his teacher attributes to the ancient "Americans."

Other books

2008: "Hawaiian Perspectives on the Nature of the Soul." The Journal of Shamanic Practice 1: pages 21–25.

2014a: Australian Aboriginal Wisdom. A Journal of Contemporary Shamanism 7 (1): pages 6–8.

Contributions

Selected Research papers

And more...

References

  1. ^ The Modern Mystical Movement, Hank Wesselman, 2002
  2. ^ "Authors Notes - Hank Wesselman". www.sharedwisdom.com. Archived from the original on 2002-08-08.
  3. ^ Omega Institute faculty profile
  4. ^ Hay House author profile
  5. ^ Random House authors profile See also book flaps.
  6. ^ "My First Encounter with Sekmet". realitysandwich.com. 16 June 2017. Retrieved 28 July 2017.

External links

Neoshamanism
Authority control databases
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