Most of what I do today as a shamanic healer came from visionary experiences I have had in ceremony, while fasting – taking no food, no water – and dancing.
Some, however, I learned growing up at Picuris Pueblo, where all of the children – boys and girls alike – were taught as if they were someday going to be shamans or sun priests or heads of different clans. The power of healing that came to me during that time has shaped my life. I learned to trust the healing power and to discern what practices were to be kept and used in healing. My awareness of this started when I was about twelve years old. I began to figure out why certain experiences, certain potentialities, were coming into my life. I found I could use some of my visions in healing ceremonies. The ceremonies that came first in vision were always successful.
As a member of the Thunder-callers Clan, it would be my particular responsibility to do ceremonies to call the rain to come water the crops. Grandfather trained me. I took part in kiva ceremonies with other young people for extended periods of time. It used to take us six weeks to bring the rains in the spring. The Spanish-speaking people surrounding our Indian village would ask us to come call in the rain, and Grandfather Simbola would lead us on a run – fifteen miles down from the top of the mountain – as part of the rain ceremony. In spring we brought the rain, and in autumn we brought it again for moisture to help the fruit to ripen.
Preparation
During one autumn ceremony when I was about thirteen, I was in the kiva with two young men, sixteen or seventeen years old, and other boys my own age.
We were getting ready to go and bring the thunder. As part of the ceremony we had to go up into the mountain and then run back down. There were some plum trees near the ceremonial chamber, and one of those days just before we went up to bring in the thunder, one of the older boys said, ‘Well, I know the elder said we're not supposed to eat this, but look at these plums. They look so good.’
I looked at one and I just couldn't resist, so I took a bite and I liked it really well. I said, ‘I'll eat just a little bit of it. I won't eat a lot of it.’ So, I just ate part of one plum, not quite half of it – a small wild red plum with a bitter skin. Then, we did our run up the mountain and back down to the kiva. When we got back, the next part of the ceremony was to blow through a reed into a bowl of liquid. Usually, when we blew through the reed, lots of foam would come out of the bowl. I started blowing into the reed and into the bowl, but nothing happened. No foam. Of course, the elder looked over and he said, ‘I bet you ate a plum. You been eating plums?’
At this point I decided I might as well tell the truth. I always had difficulty not telling the truth anyway. So I told him, ‘Yes, I have eaten a plum.’
He said, ‘Well, we're just going to have to wait around here another week or two.’
Invocation
So, we waited another two weeks and then we went up the mountain. We walked up about fifteen miles. At the top, the elder covered us from head to toe with mud and got us ready. Just as the sun was coming up, we started running down the mountain. He stayed right behind us yelling, ‘Ah mah pia! Ah mah pia!’ which means, ‘Hurry! Hurry up! Run faster!’
After maybe six or seven miles, I was starting to feel exhausted because we were going up and down rock trails. Then at some point there was a shift and I had the sense of something like wings above my head. I didn't see any wings, just the other boy who was in front of me, running. Behind us, Grandfather kept shouting, urging us to go even faster. He knew it was necessary for us to run to the very limit of our capacity to achieve a certain level in the ceremony. At that level power would enter, a power that was required to bring a blessing to the village.
Of course, the blessing is not just for the village; it's for the whole world. Ceremonies at Picuris were never done for just one individual or tribe. Each ceremony was done for the whole world, for everyone, the dancers included.
Now I was not sure whether I was still running or whether I was the eagle flying. As we descended the mountain and ran into the village, I remember the villagers shouting, urging us on. They were overjoyed to see us come down the trail. We ran all the way around the village and then over to the place where the race ended. Here two stones stuck up from the ground and we were to feed them with cornmeal. I remember reaching into a pouch on my side and taking out some cornmeal even before I got to the stones.
Consummation
When I got to them, I fed the shrine by sprinkling the cornmeal on the rocks, and as I did, I fell backward suddenly, as if thrown to the ground. The people were yelling and shouting because we had put in the effort that was required. As we runners lay on the ground, exhausted, the people of the village started ‘feeding' or blessing our bodies by sprinkling us with cornmeal. I was in another dimension.
And as they fed our bodies in the same way we had fed the stones, we could feel thunder rolling in. Then finally it was really present, and we could see it – lights like static electricity crackling and sparkling about eight feet above our heads. An electrical mist hung over us like a cloud, and a yellow light was present inside it. I don't know how long we were there, maybe half an hour. Then, just as it came, the sparkling mist suddenly went away. The thunder had come for as long as it needed to, and then it left. It never stayed longer than it was supposed to; that is to say, it left after the prayers were finished. We could see it crackling as it receded above us and then it was gone. I came into ordinary reality.
From House of Shattering Light, copyright 2003 by Joseph Rael, published in the United States by Council Oak Books.
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