Shamans

• Maile Lama is a Tamang shaman, married to a Tamang lama and the mother of a son. She was born in 1949 in Chhipchhipé, East Nepal. By the age of nine she was abducted by Ban Jhankri, the mythical ancestor of all Nepalese shamans and became a well known shaman by the time she was twelve. To escape the burden of frequent consultations, due to her reputation as a powerful shaman, she fled to Kathmandu, where she worked in a carpet factory. Soon enough her powerful healing capabillity was discovered. Today, Maile supports her family with her shamanic art, which she is able to do thanks to the support of the Shamanic Studies and Research Centre.

• Parvati Rai is a Kirati shaman, married since the age of fifteen and mother of ten children only four of whom survived. She was born in 1946 in Bjojpun Chhinakhu, East Nepal. She had her first initiatory experience at the age of nine and by the age of sixteen had become an acknowledged shaman. She now lives in Kathmandu where she is the authorized shaman of the Kirati-community. She supports her family with her shamanic skills, thanks to Mohan Rai and the Kirati foundation.
Like all Kirati-people, she has no religion but only reveres nature. The Kirati are among very few ethnic groups in which shamans occupy a central ritual role from birth to death.

• Danashin Tamang is a Tamang shaman, born in 1953 on the slopes of Kalinchok, the famous shaman’s mountain. Since age 16 he followes his family tradition and became a shaman. He is married and father of two children. His second son was killed by the Maoists in 2004. It took Danashing years to slowly recover from this terrible lost during which he was deprived from his shamanic capacities. Fortunately, he regained his healing powers. He lives with his family as a regarded shaman in his ancestral home in the Kalinchok-region and is connected to Mohan Rai’s Institute of Nepalese Shamanism.

• Dawa Sherpa is a Sherpa shaman. He was born on the slopes of Kalinchok, the famous shaman’s mountain. At an early age his shamanic forces became apparent. For many years he was a disciple of Myingmar Sherpa, the famous “king of the Kalinchok”. After Myingmars’s sudden and unexpected death he became the follower of his teacher. He lives and practices as regarded shaman in the Kalinchok-area. Dawa Sherpa is also connected to Mohan Rai’s Institute of Nepalese Shamanism.

• William ‘Kajuyali Tsamani’ Torres

Is an anthropologist turned shaman. Having a typical Columbian mix of indigenous and latino background, he was attracted from early childhood by his grandfathers stories about the tribes from the Putumayo. As an anthropological student he studied the Kogi of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the north of Colombia. He was allowed to stay and was after several years initiated as a coca shaman. It was the start of a fifteen year long apprenticeship with shamans from all over Colombia in which he learned to work with Coca, Tobacco, Yopo and Ayahuasca. His teachers were shamans from the Muinane, Kamsa, Inga, Huitoto and Sikuani.
Kajuyali Tsamani lives with his wife and two children close to Pasto, the capital of Nariño Province, in the south of Colombia. In his center ‘Nabi Nunhue’ (House of the Jaguar) he works with plants and the healing energies of Pachamama (Mother Earth). For him, the shamanic path is a quest of learning and experimenting. That is why he is grateful for the opportunity to encounter his Himalayan colleagues in Nepal. He heads the Fundacíon de Investigaciones Chamanistas and wrote a book about his initiation as an Ayahuasca shaman: Ayahuasca – Yagé, Der Schamische Weg zu neuen Erkenntnissen.
He will come to Nepal together with his son Federico.

Presenters

• Mohan Rai is the founder of the Shamanic Studies and Research Centre in Kathmandu, dedicated to providing authentic information on shamanism. He was born in 1928 into a Kirati family in Taplejung, East Nepal, and raised in Bhutan where his father was a renowned shaman in the royal palace of the father of the present ruler of Bhutan. He became the first alpine guide of Nepal, with licenses from Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Germany, and guided the first expeditions of famous alpinist Reinhold Messner. He speaks sixteen languages and supported the investigations on shamanism in Nepal published by Mueller-Ebeling and Raetsch. Mohan lives in Kathmandu with his two wives, many children and grandchildren.

• Arno Adelaars did sociographic fieldwork on problematic drug-users in the red light-district of Amsterdam. He did research on early Ecstasy users in Amsterdam between 1988 and 1991. He wrote the first book on MDMA-users in the Netherlands and in 1997 the first Dutch book on psilocybian mushrooms and is co-author of Ayahuasca – Rituale, Zaubertränke und visionäre Kunst aus Amazonien. He is a writer, lecturer and activist in the field of drug-legalization. Since 1995 he has been involved in the European Ayahuasca-scene. In 2007 he was initiated as a shaman by Kajuyali Tsamani.

• Claudia Mueller-Ebeling is anthropologist and art-historian specialized in shamanism and visionary art. She wrote her doctoral thesis on French 19th century visionary art and examined the tradition of nature demonization as represented in Western art. Also, she did extensive fieldwork-researches on shamanism mainly in Nepal, but also in Korea and the Peruvian Amazon. She is co-author of many books including Witchcraft Medicine, Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas and Ayahuasca – Rituale, Zaubertränke und visionäre Kunst aus Amazonien. She lives in Hamburg, Germany, as freelance scientist, author and lecturer.

• Christian Raetsch is Germany’s leading expert on ethnopharmacology. He lived for three years in total with the Lacandón indians in Chiapas, Mexico and wrote his doctoral thesis on their spells and incantations. Raetsch is author of numerous books, many of them translated in many languages. Including The Gateway to Inner Space, Plants of Love, Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants and co-author of Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas and Ayahuasca – Rituale, Zaubertränke und visionäre Kunst aus Amazonien. He works and lives in Hamburg as freelance author and internationally renowned lecturer.

Painters

• Surendra Bahadur Shahi, born in 1956 into a Newari family in Kathmandu, was trained as a thanka-painter from the age of fourteen by a Tibetan lama, who also taught him the buddhist tradition. With his dear business-partner he is the owner of three thanka-shops in Thamel, Kathmandu, providing work for some 600 painters through international orders. He lives with his wife, four children, his father and the family of his younger brother in Kathmandu. Surendra is an expert on the traditional iconography of Tibetan and Newari thankas as well as different artistic styles of various ethnic groups producing thankas.

• Wolfgang Maria Ohlhaeuser is an outstanding German visionary painter. In his early career he was a regarded technical designer. Later on no minor than Ernst Fuchs – outstanding member of the famous Vienna school of magic realism – tought him the technique of the old masters. Following invitations as assistant teacher of Bangkok art-schools Ohlhaeuser travels since many decades to Asia.
His deliberate landscape-paintings are inspired by Asian art and reflect his visions of the invisible world. Ohlhaeuser’s painting are present in many public collections.
He lives as free-lance artist in a castle nearby Heidelberg.