Initiated Granicero (Weather Worker) August 2001
by don Lucio Campos de Elizade, Nepopualco, Morelos, MX
Initiated Quiapequis (Tepahtiani Healer) November 2020
by don David Wiley, Amatlan, Morelos, MX
Nahua tradition
Initiated Mara' akame September 2008
Initiated Mara' akame (second site) September 2014
Santa Maria del Oro, Nayarit, MX
Huichol tradition
As an initiated mara' akame (“one who knows”) in the Huichol tradition and both a granicero (weather worker) and quiapequis (healer) in the Nahua tradition of Mexico, I have pilgrimaged, apprenticed and sacrificed to build my relationships with the living world and the Gods.
These traditions have a relationship with the Gods and Spirits for healing, ceremony, ritual, counseling and weather. The Divine brings about healing in our physical realm. I call upon the deities that have assisted me through years of pilgrimage to sacred sites and ask for their assistance to heal.
Initiation into the traditional ways of the Huichol and Nahua people of Mexico bestows permission and duty to engage with the beings of the unseen realms to help individuals and community. It is through these years of service and initiation within these two ancestral traditions that I have been allowed and required to help people.
Being identified as a granicero by don Lucio Campos de Elizade, I was crowned in a ceremony. This ‘marriage’ to the Weather Beings consummated a life-long relationship with weather, community, healing and sacred sites. Through many more years of building relationship with the weather beings, I started my apprenticeship as a quiapequis (healer). Pilgrimaging to sacred sites and completing my cycle, I was given permission and responsibility and relationship to heal.
After more than six years of apprenticeship and pilgrimage to sacred sites within the Huichol homeland and apprenticeship with a Huichol marákame, I was initiated in a ceremony on the shores of Santa Maria del Oro in 2008. Passing through this doorway started me on my next cycle—bringing my gifts into the world from these sacred sites.
After completing my first Huichol initiation, my elders offered a second apprenticeship and pilgrimage to a new constellation of sacred sites. I completed five more years of preparations and was initiated in the ways and gifts of the deities of these new sites in 2014.