Invitation
Around 2005, Don Eliot Cowan and Don David Wiley felt concern. They were active devotees and healers in ancestral spiritual traditions that experience the natural world as Divine. They saw the curative manifestations of Sacred Fire Healing as effective alternatives to Western religious culture and technology. They were concerned that this alternative knowledge and these practices would not survive. From this concern, in 2007, with Grandfather Fire’s guidance, the Temple of Sacred Fire Healing was founded as a home for Sacred Fire Healing. The Temple’s message, “through balanced relationship with our Living and Eternally Divine natural world we receive its healing blessings,” is fundamental.
This message reminds us of our birthright. Sacred Fire Healing wisdom and practices restore and support this birthright. As you read the following pages, we hope your heart will open to the Temple’s message. We hope that you will aspire to actively participate and support its stewardship of the precious healing gifts, sacramental endowments and devotional practices offered by Sacred Fire Healing. For those who are currently supporting parishioners, we thank you. Your participation secures Sacred Fire Healing gifts for our people. It ignites the flames of hope in a cold and disconnected world.
In the Spirit of Fire,
Don David Wiley, Council Elder
Don Eliot Cowan, Council Elder
Origins
Before recorded history, our spiritual ancestors lived in relationship with the Divine Aspect, the elemental God of Fire (affectionately called Grandfather Fire) and other deities according to protocols and ceremonies that created and maintained balanced relationships. Throughout the ages and across the globe, people gathered around Sacred Fire and received Divine Wisdom. These ancestral religious practices sustained balanced relationships between the Divine our Natural World and to the people Sustaining and deepening this balanced relationship was recognized as a fundamental concern.
By about the 2nd Century A.D., in Europe and surrounding regions, displacement of ancestral religious practices, as well as religious conversion, consolidation and expansion, gained momentum. From the 16th to 19th Centuries, European colonization spread this displacement to North America. Colonization ended or broke millennia old ancestral religious traditions. Despite pervasive colonization, in certain places in North America, ancestral religious practices were preserved as unbroken shamanic traditions.
Ancestral religious practices remained an unbroken shamanic tradition in the Sierra highlands of Mexico and continued to be active under the veneer of a foreign religion in the central highlands of Mexico. In these places, the traditions continued to be passed down (at great personal sacrifice) through transmissions. Elder shamans passed down teachings, shamanic healing and counsel, plant spirit healing, initiations, prayers, songs, stories, practices and ceremony. Through specially initiated elder shamans, the direct guidance of the God of Fire was maintained.
This legacy or Gift embodies wisdom from the earliest epochs of human connection with the Divine and accounts for the origin of mankind, this world, the sacred beings and all the realms.
Transmitted to the Temple’s founders through elder shamans and direct teachings of the God of Fire, these Gifts benefit of our people (the descendents of the colonizers and the colonized – the descendants of those who lost their ancestral religious practices).
Offered at consecrated fires through specially initiated shamans, including the late Huichol Elder Shaman Don Guadalupe Gonzalez Rios, then of Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico and the late Nahua Elder Shaman Don Lucio Campos Elizade, then of Nepopualco, Morelos, Mexico, direct teachings of the God of Fire re-established an ancient connection with the natural world as Divine.
The Temple of Sacred Fire Healing fosters this connection. Its teachings and practices place these Gifts at the center of daily life.
Activities
Beginningin the mid-1980’s, Eliot Cowan was spiritually guided to reintroduce plant spirit healing (called “Plant Spirit Medicine”) to people from modern Western culture. In the early 1990’s, Eliot Cowan was directed to elder shamans in the Huichol tradition of Mexico and Don David Wiley was guided to elders trained in the Huichol and Nahua traditions. Recognizing the imbalance of people from modern cultures, these elder shamans instructed Eliot Cowan and David Wiley in culturally relevant devotional practices that restore balanced connection with a Living and Eternally Divine natural world.
For a little more than a decade, these devotional practices developed under the direct guidance of Grandfather Fire.At special consecrated fires, Grandfather Fire offered and continues to offer wisdom, teachings and guidance through specially initiated shamans trained in the Huichol tradition. These elder shaman include the late Huichol elder shaman Don Guadalupe Gonzalez Rios, then of Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico, Don Jose Sandoval de la Cruz of La Laguna, Jalisco, Mexico, and Don David Wiley of Tepoztlan, Morelos, Mexico.
Hearing Grandfather Fire’s wisdom, teachings and guidance, increasing numbers of people developed a conviction that life is meant to be lived in balanced relationship with a Living and Eternally Divine natural world.
Inspired by Grandfather Fire’s wisdom, teachings and guidance, Sacred Fire Healing practices, including Plant Spirit Medicine, shamanic healing and counsel, ancestral activities, life transition ceremonies, selfless community service, individual devotional practices, and consecrated teaching fires, became part of daily life for a core group of people.
By about 2005 through 2006, this core group was composed of participant devotees.These devotees included pilgrims, apprentices, Plant Spirit Medicine trainees and healers, shamanic healers, weather workers, elders and teachers. Collectively this core group and other interested participants became known as the “greater sacred fire community”.
As the greater sacred fire community grew, it included over 600 participating people (in 5 countries, including the United States, Mexico, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom).
Then, in late 2007, with Grandfather Fire’s guidance, Don Eliot Cowan and Don David Wiley organized the Temple of Sacred Fire Healing.
Founded on Sacred Fire Healing practices, this sacred assembly is a home for Grandfather Fire’s wisdom, teachings and guidance. It preserves these Gifts not only for the greater sacred fire community of today and tomorrow, but for any person, who has lost connection with our ancestral birthright; living in balanced relationship with our Living and Eternally Divine natural world.
Activities
Then & Now.
Today, the greater sacred fire community makes up the
“spiritual community” served by the Temple. The Temple recognizes forms of worship and devotional practices that provide access to Grandfather Fire’s wisdom, teachings and guidance. It promotes Sacred Fire Healing practices that reconnect people with our Living and Eternally Divine natural world. It holds three training seminaries.: The Plant Spirit Medicine Seminary, the Blue Deer Seminary and the Granicero Seminary. These seminaries administer, guide and oversee and training in Temple-recognized Sacred Fire Healing traditions; the Plant Spirit Medicine, Huichol and Nahua traditions. This training is offered through authentic elder-teachers, who are initiated in their Temple-recognized Sacred Fire Healing tradition.
Seminary graduates devote themselves to serving the Temple’s
“spiritual community” and others.
Children & Youths
Learning involves baptisms and attendance at life transition ceremonies.
It includes attendance at the general audience portion of Consecrated Fire Services at which Grandfather Fire appears, attendance at teaching fires offered by elders, and attendance at Devotional Fire Services.
Participation in facilitated youth oriented Sacred Fire Community fires, and age appropriate atendance or participation at certain ceremonial occasions is encouraged.
Learning is accomplished through opportunities to receive age appropriate shamanic and plant spirit medicine
healing, parental training, and to participate in the Sacred Fire Community Lifeways sponsored youth initiation
into adulthood program.
Declaration
At the beginning of humanity, the Divine Aspect known as Sacred Fire foreseeing the suffering and illness to come, granted the Original Peoples healing practices and teachings to maintain divine joy and balance. Sacred Fire still holds these teachings and practices as the sacred healing traditions of humanity.
In the interest of humankind in this time of deep and dangerous
imbalance, Sacred Fire has ordained the founding and maintenance of the
Temple of Sacred Fire Healing, so that Sacred Fire Healing wisdom,
teachings and practices granted to our ancestors may be supported and
continue for the benefit of all beings.
The Temple is a home for the Sacred Fire Healing wisdom revealed by and the Sacred Fire Healing traditions guided by Sacred Fire. It is a home for the Divine Gifts of Sacred Fire Healing and devotional practices. It fosters a spiritual community that embraces these gifts.
At Consecrated Teaching Fires, Sacred Fire has offered a human voice through specially initiated shamans and transmitted Sacred Fire Healing wisdom to restore the connection between modern peoples and the Divine manifesting as the Living and Eternally Divine natural world. This Divine Gift nourishes humanity and sustains the spiritual community that embraces this wisdom.