I met Tom in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He was staying at my friends’ tipi camp. My friends are Bavarian and like many Germans, Austrians and Bavarians are crazy about the Lakota. These Tipi camps are all over the Black Hills and are swarmed by thousands of Germanic people every summer. Tom was different though. He wasn’t a tourist and he already knew a great deal about the Lakota for a young man of twenty six. Tom owned a store in Hamburg called Tate Topa or The Four W

I think of 'shamanic experiences' as both intentional; as when we go into ceremony or ritual and synchronistic; those things that happen to us shamanically when we are open intentionally and not. I'm often in the 'not' category and that's when it hits me... I was at the lowest point of my life. Cliche really. Wife ran off with best friend, took children. I am jobless, car is in the shop and I have no money to fix it. The people I am staying with are being evicted and they h