Dr. Hank Wesselman over the years has brought his wondrous shamanic teachings to The Prophets Conferences and now Hank and his partner and co-teacher Jill Kuykendall will be leading a group of enthusiastic pilgrims into the mysteries of the power infused sites of Egypt. This will take place November 30 – December 12. For full information on how you can join this Prophets Conference Spiritual Sojourn in Egypt please visit www.greatmystery.org/events/egypt08.html.

Below is an exciting article recently published in Meta Arts (see their archives) about Hank’s mystical experiences during his last sojourn to Egypt.

My last month’s column — 2/08 (Encounter with Sekhmet) was focused upon an encounter that ‘happened’ during a travel group that I led to Egypt in January 2003. This in turn prompts me to share yet another unpublished encounter from that trip with you. I must admit to a few trepidations in offering this one as it is fairly far out, but those of my readers who have been with me for a while should be able to accept it with equanimity.

January 15, 2003: Toward the end of our trip, our Egyptian guides had arranged for us to enter the Great Pyramid at Giza. They also ensured that we had the King’s Chamber in the heart of this greatest of monuments entirely to ourselves for an hour and a half at high noon at my request.

Our group gathered at the base of the Pyramid in the late morning and stared upward in awe at its unimaginable mass. After a few words from our guides, we then entered the tight stone tunnel in the monument’s side, crouching low and scuttling through the first part. Then we straightened up as we began to ascend the long chamber of the ‘grand passage.’

Countless others have written about this long transit to the famous ‘King’s Chamber’, so I will add only that in viewing the unusual architecture of the walls and ceiling that I had seen many times in photographs, I was completely unprepared for the real thing. This passage was and is an engineering marvel for any time and place, but the sophistication and the strangeness of its design is totally out of place in a edifice that could be 5000 years old, or 10,000 or even older, depending on who you talk to.

What kept appearing in my mind as I sought to attach a cognitive label to describe the architecture of this strange passage was the word ‘alien.’ I wonder now in retrospect if that insight in some way set up what was to happen next.

When we achieved the top of the passage and entered the famous King’s Chamber, one of our group felt the need to go into lecture mode, gesturing toward the huge red granite blocks that lined the chamber’s floor, walls and ceiling, informing us all that the stone itself is actually 55% crystal.

This implied that we were standing inside a crystal room that is slightly off-center in a precisely designed and engineered mountain of stone—a pyramid that could be pointed directly at someplace beyond the sky… at some star system out there in the universe, depending on the season and time of day or night, of course.

As members of the group examined the room and even lay down in the well-known red stone ‘sarcophagus’ located to one side of the chamber, testing it out, I allowed my conscious awareness to expand in the shamanic way, taking in the details of our surroundings with enhanced clarity. I also began to engage in what I think of as ‘deep listening’ about which I will say more next month.

Although most mainstream Egyptologists proclaim with their full authority that this great monument was a tomb for the Pharaoh Khufu, my insights in those moments revealed that the pyramid is not, nor was it ever, a tomb.

But if this was true, I wondered, what was it? The great pyramid must have taken generations to build so it’s exact dimensions, its positioning, as well as its design, was obviously pre-eminently important to the builders.... but why? And what was it designed for?

Science is not adept at dealing with ‘why’ questions, but I had brought my drum into the chamber, and so while my fellow travelers continued to proclaim this and that from their own background reading, I quietly lit a candle, placed it in the exact center of the floor in a small tin can to catch any wax due to a passing breeze (fat chance). Then I lit some incense to honor the builders of this great stone complex, whatever it was.

This act, I might add, was much in keeping with the rituals of the ancient Egyptians, for one can see individuals offering incense carved into stone on the walls of every temple in Egypt. Incense was, and is, an offering of our profound respect, as well as our love, to the Gods… those same transpersonal forces we have been talking about in many of my monthly columns, and the ancient Egyptians knew this.

It was just after high noon as I knelt on the stone floor and lit the incense from the candle, smelling the wonderful pinon scent of the American southwest rise into the air of this sacred chamber in the smoke (maybe a first). I was aware that one of the mysteries of the pyramids is that there is not a single hieroglyph carved into any of the stones of this edifice. This has given rise to the hypothesis that maybe the Egyptians didn’t build the Pyramids—that the builders were actually members of an earlier culture—an idea that has generated an avalanche of well-intentioned but usually misinformed new age books.

As members of the group continued to try out lying in the ‘sarcophagus,’ others sat down on the floor, leaning back against the stone walls of the chamber, and they began to ‘tone.’ The acoustics of the room were quite extraordinary, and slowly, slowly, I began to work in the drum… until the toning came to an end and only the drum was sounding.

A most interesting thing then happened. The only way to describe it is that the drum, in some unknown manner, seemed to create, or perhaps summon, a sound much like the wind. As the drum continued a steady theta rhythm beat of perhaps 4-6 beats per second, a whispering rushing sound could be clearly perceived. It seemed to sweep through the space, from one side to the other, now here, now there, bouncing off the walls and ricocheting around the stone room, rushing by me with hissing sweeps.

At one moment, it was above me, then it was around me, then to the right corner near the ceiling, then to the left near the floor. Then it seemed to be making figure 8s in the air in the center of the room. All this time, the candle flame was utterly still. Almost everyone heard the whispering, hissing, rush of sound and exclaimed about it afterwards. What happened next exceeded all my expectations. Click here for part 2 of Encounters on the Shaman’s Path - In the King's Chamber

HANK WESSELMAN, PH.D., is an anthropologist who holds advanced degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Colorado at Boulder. He served in the US Peace Corps in the 1960s, living and working among people of the Yoruba tribe in Western Nigeria, where he first became interested in indigenous spiritual traditions. Since 1971, he has conducted field research with an international group of scientists, exploring eastern Africa's Great Rift Valley in search of answers to the mystery of human origins--scientific investigation that has allowed him to spend much of his life living and working with traditional peoples, rarely, if ever, visited by outsiders. He is also a shamanic teacher and healer now in the 26th year of his apprenticeship. Dr Wesselman has taught for the University of California at San Diego, the University of Hawaii at Hilo's West Hawaii campus, California State University at Sacramento, American River College, Sierra College, as well as for Kiriji Memorial College and Adeola Odutola College in western Nigeria. His published books include Spirit Medicine: Healing in the Sacred Realms (2004, with Jill Kuykendall), The Journey to the Sacred Garden (2003), as well as his autobiographical trilogy: Spiritwalker (1995), Medicinemaker (1998), and Visionseeker (2001). Hank is also the author of a children's book: The Story of Little Ruth Reddingford and the Wolf.
www.sharedwisdom.com

Click here for part 2 of Encounters on the Shaman’s Path - In the King's Chamber