Community Fires, Men's Fires
and Women's Fires at the BDC
With Dan Sprinkles and Annie Eagen

Flickering firelight, the smell of smoke, the sound of laughter, songs and stories...People have been sitting around the fire for hundreds of thousands of years. The fire provides protection, warmth and a place for us to connect with one another and share our common human experience. At the heart of the Blue Deer Center is the fire - the fire of our hearts, the fire of transformation, and the fire burning at the core of all ancestral traditions.

Community sacred fires are offered monthly on the grounds of the Blue Deer Center. Dan Sprinkles and Annie Eagan, our resident shamans, are both initiated Fire Keepers of the Sacred Fire Community. They host community fires, usually on the 3rd Friday of the month, and all are welcome. Potluck suppers often precede the fire when we share good food and good company with new friends and old. Dan and Annie also host men's and women's fires frequently.

The Blue Deer Center is pleased to offer the healing help of two resident healers (shamans).

Dan Sprinkles and Annie Eagan have both completed 6-year apprenticeships and are initiated Markames, or shamans, in the ancient, ancestral tradition of the Huichols of the Mexican Sierras. Additionally, they were initiated eight years ago in the Nahua shamanic tradition as Weather Workers. Through these two lineages they are able to offer deep shamanic healing for those in need. Dan has also been a life coach for many years and offers a unique program designed to enter a more appropriate relationship with the mind. It is called, "The Enemies of Learning." For the last eleven years, Annie has been providing healing help to humans and animals with Plant Spirit Medicine. Through their Weather Working lineage and training, they are both able to offer healing sweat lodges called Temazcals, in the ancestral Nahua tradition.

Plant Spirit Medicine
Practitioner Training Course
With Eliot Cowan and Alison Gayek

Humans and plants have lived together for countless generations. We are family. Our plant relatives are generous and helpful, offering us food and medicine. Like us, plants have spirit, and their spirit can nurture and heal us. Plant Spirit Medicine brings us into balance and harmony. It is the shaman's way with plants. A millennial practice known to all peoples, it was rediscovered in the West by Eliot Cowan, and has proved just as effective in today's world as in times past.

The Plant Spirit Medicine practitioner training course is designed to teach the lay person how to use plant spirits for healing. The course consists of six one-week teaching sessions spread over approximately a year and a half, followed by a year of supervised clinical study and practice. Graduates will be eligible to become full members of the Plant Spirit Medicine Association, and to receive certification as lay spiritual healers of the Temple of Sacred Fire Healing.

In this course, students will learn:

? Chinese Five Element Theory
? Pulse Taking
? Household Shamanism
? Making a direct relationship with the plants
? Clinical work, both in the course and upon completing the course.

This course is offered by the Plant Spirit medicine Seminary of the Temple of Sacred Fire Healing. The instructors are Eliot Cowan -- the Founder of Plant Spirit Medicine -- and Alison Gayek.