Tending Fire

08/26/2026

The hunger for transcendent experiences and transformational healing is creating a demand that is being exploited by poorly trained and unscrupulous practitioners leading to bad trips, r**e, and even death.

Not even discussed in this article is the understanding that traditions using what we call psychedelic "substances" relate to them as powerful spirits that must be dealt with respectfully. That means participating in ritual by people who are authorized/initiated to do so in those traditions. Without the former, the most scientific and ethical of standards will yield some improvement, but longer-term, such treatments will be of little benefit--and still potentially great harm--to those who receive them.

See:

Participants, often in vulnerable states, have little recourse if mistreated or injured.

08/22/2026

A momentous day begins in Olympia, WA. I arrived two days ago to support a Sacred Fire 'Fire Speaks' event hosted by my old (We all seem to be showing our age these days!) friends Peter and Sharon Brown. Tonight, we have an audience with Grandfather Fire or 'Tatewari' in the Wirárika (Huichol) tradition that I follow.

Some shots that include a glimpse of Mt. Rainier as we made our approach to Sea-Tac on Thursday evening. Peter and Sharon have done extensive work to cultivate a good relationship with that great Divine Being that watches over this area–including a shrine on their property that allows ceremony to be 'telegraphed' from their land to Rainier.

Shots also include the land down to the council house that will be the site of tonight's event. A very auspicious sign as I approached the council house this morning: I saw three deer moving just beyond the opening to the woods--including a beautiful fawn that kept staring at me for the longest time. In the Wixárika tradition, the deer happens to be the most sacred animal!

Peter and Sharon have been delightful hosts, but I was a little sad not to be with Jessica and other loved ones for my birthday yesterday (and thanks again to all who honored me with their good wishes here). But it is a great honor to be able to support my mentor, Don David Wiley (Don David Wiley's Consultorio) and Grandfather Fire. Not likely to get much sleep tonight and so I am all the more grateful that one of the great virtues of the Northwest is lots of good coffee!

08/21/2026

"The map is not the territory." Coined by philosopher Alfred Korzybski in 1931, (and referred to me here before), it's an elegant insight that is even more critical to acknowledge nearly 100 years later.

What does it mean? Simply that our mental 'maps' of the world are not the world itself. And as we increasingly rely on digital technologies to form those maps, our conception of reality becomes all the more abstract and removed from the complexity of the "blooming, buzzing confusion" of nature–to borrow a phrase from the psychologist William James.

Where the mental maps become even more simplistic and distorted is when we engage in "self-diagnosis." As Tanya Byron and other psycho-therapists are attesting (Coincidentally there is a very similar perspective in a current New York Times piece–albeit more about young women), people are being influenced by social media to self-diagnose themselves as being traumatized, having autism, being anxious, depressed--you name it.

Everyone seems to be searching for a diagnostic label to justify...well, that life can be tough sometimes.

While Tanya Byron seems to be 'triggered' by the overuse of the word 'trigger,' (!) my pet peeve is trauma. It seems that everyone who is offering any kind of workshop about self-improvement has to organize it around the 'T word.'

As Byron points out in this interview, it's not that there aren't real mental health issues to deal with in modern life. Indeed, as we are less connected to our bodies, our emotions, other people, or the natural world–in general, more isolated–we are showing signs of less resilience and some very real signs of dysfunction. This has impact on people of all ages, but it seems to be most devastating for younger generations brought up on devices.

When we sit around a sacred fire, we get beyond the mental maps (and the digital 'ghosts' of the mental maps) to the felt experience of being with other people. We bear witness to each other as we share our joys and sorrows. As we let go of or at least soften our ideas of ourselves and others, we begin to experience our common humanity.

It’s simple practice and yet quite profound. And it has a good track record–at least about 800,000 years!

When suffering, we should always seek help. But sometimes the help is as simple as gathering with others, and bearing witness as we share what matters. That’s ‘thinking out of the box.’ Or more aptly, getting beyond the mental boxes that are often the very source of our suffering.

See:

The clinical psychologist has had enough of people adopting mental health labels to describe normal feelings such as grief, disappointment and sadness

08/16/2026

Talk about 'gallows' (chopping block?!) humor...

08/14/2026

Happy to be hosting a community fire in Carrollton on Saturday at the very same time as our brothers and sisters in Asheville. See:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19emcUJjUZ/

Sacred Fire Asheville - Firekeepers

08/10/2026

Modern life is characterized by the "atomization" described in this New York Times article–an accelerating phenomenon in the U.S., but also being experienced to some degree throughout the world. The good news is that Fire, heart, and connection are at the core of the traditional healing work that I offer. To see what's we're up against these days, see:

A nation of us versus them and them and them.

07/27/2026

Nature is alive, aware, and there are some locations–considered particularly sacred–that can support healing. Over the next week or so, I will be part of support staff for a healing intensive at one such place: The Blue Deer Center. Running through the land is the river that was known to the native Mohawk and Oneida people as the ‘River of Peace’ or ‘Saskawhihiwine.’

Here some images from that river yesterday morning just after I made offerings to the River to thank it for its gifts.

07/25/2026

I wasn't able to make it 'across the pond' this year, but I was fortunate to attend the last two Fire Speaks events in that region of the world. This is a wonderful effort to raised funds for next year's Fire Speaks in the U.K.– an amazing experience of wisdom, tradition, and transformation.

See: https://gofund.me/f2edaa091

07/17/2026

...and speaking of Greek tragedy…(!)

Like many of you, I can't wait to see Christopher Nolan’s new film.

It strikes me that in many ways, even Nolan’s earlier film “Oppenheimer” was the perfect modern version of a classical Greek tragedy. For like “The Odyssey” and all Greek tragedies, “Oppenheimer” is about a brilliant and yet obviously flawed tragic hero.

The "Achilles’ Heel" of all these tragic heroes is always “hubris” or what can be translated as excessive pride or arrogance.

You can see why Nolan would finally want to tackle "The Odyssey"– in which the particular flavor of hubris was cunning.

For it is indeed cunning that is the predominate form of hubris so widely celebrated in our modern world–and was embodied by Robert Oppenheimer as an individual. It is cunning that leads us to think we can “harness” nuclear energy or even open what may be the ultimate Pandora’s Box: A.I.

But not to go to far down that rabbit hole... (Or maybe I already did!)

What this post is really about is one of the great hubristic conceits of the modern world: That we are very smart and earlier peoples were just "primitives" who were engaged in child-like anthropomorphic projection on a world they couldn't possibly understand as we cunning/clever modern people do.

Never mind that living elders of still intact indigenous traditions (some of whom I have been honored to get to know and learn from) are in no way “primitive.” Sure, they may have a child-like wonder about the world, and they can even laugh and be playful like children. But you can feel their solid presence. And when it comes to important matters–like the well-being of their people, or the direction of modern life, or the inescapable duality of all human nature—well, they can be deadly serious and quite perceptive.

Similarly, when you really step back from that assumption and think of how real the possibility of death was in pre-historic times, the modern hubris seems down-right ludicrous. In fact, as many of my elders point out, we nowadays simply have a lot “insulation”: technologies and other forms of artifice that make many stupid, unsustainable ideas seem like they work…for a while at least.

This is something that living indigenous elders from cultures around the world realize: They know that in general, the modern world-view and way of life cannot possibly survive very far into the future.

Indeed, many of looking at all of the turmoil in the world right now see what some have called "The Great Unravelling."

Pre-historic peoples did not have the luxury of any kind of “insulation”–literally or figuratively–from what could sometimes be a very harsh reality. For survival’s sake, they had to be astute observers of the natural world around them. Their survival also depended on a deep level of inter-dependence.

If our ancestors did stupid stuff, they died very quickly. (And the corrollary that their form of religion or spiritual practices were just “make believe” is also ridiculous. They only did stuff that worked! But that’s a subject for another post!)

The video below illustrates the brilliance of pre-historic peoples and the importance of fire at the center of it all. Yes, there is great irony here in that the video is AI-generated and has some distracting AI 'hallucinations' that make some of the tools look suspiciously modern, not to mention the features of the people. The title is way too melodramatic. But the story is one that is increasingly documented by anthropology.

Let me know what you think of this or any of my meandering above. ***And many thanks to my mentor and friend–don David Wiley–for passing this along to me.***

See:

What was it really like to survive a freezing night in prehistory?...