Hank Wesselman

Henry Barnard Wesselman (born 1941) is an American anthropologist known primarily for his Spiritwalker trilogy of spiritual memoirs. In them, he claims to have been in contact with "Nainoa", an ethnic Hawaiian kahuna (shaman) living some 5,000 years in our future. The books envision the imminent collapse of Western civilization as a result of Global Warming. On a more positive note, Wesselman perceives an ongoing "wide-spread spiritual reawakening" which he dubs the "Modern Mystical Movement."

Together with his wife Jill Kuykendall, Wesselman leads shamanic training workshops for the Esalen Institute and other, similar institutions. They divide their time between northern California and Captain Cook, Hawaii.

Wesselman is a native New Yorker who received his undergraduate degree in zoology from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and his doctorate in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley. During the 1960s he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nigeria, among the Yoruba. He has participated in paleoanthropology research in east Africa's Great Rift Valley. His research speciality is involved with the reconstruction of the paleo-environments of early man sites (See Science magazine, Oct 2, 2009) and the cover story of National Geographic, July 2010.

He was an instructor at American River College and Sierra College, both in California, and has also taught classes for the University of California at San Diego; the University of Hawaii at Hilo; the Kiriji Memorial College in Igbajo, Nigeria; and Adeola Odutola College in Ijebu-ode, Nigeria. The Esalen Institute Faculty.

He is the author of The Spiritwalker Trilogy—Spiritwalker 1995, Medicinemaker 1998, and Visionseeker 2001—as well as The Journey to the Sacred Garden 2003; Spirit Medicine (with Jill Kuykendall) 2004; Awakening to the Spirit World (with Sandra Ingerman), The Bowl of Light 2011, and The Re-Enchantment: A Shamanic Path to a Life of Wonder (2016)

Spiritwalker trilogy

• Spiritwalker: Messages from the Future. Bantam, 1995 (HC) and 1996 (TPB). ISBN 0-553-37837-6

• Medicinemaker: Mystic Encounters on the Shaman's Path. Bantam, 1999. ISBN 0-553-37932-1

• Visionseeker: Shared Wisdom from the Place of Refuge Hay House, 2002. ISBN 978-1-56170-828-4

Other books

• The Omo Micromammals: Systematics and Paleoecology of Early Man Sites from Ethiopia—December 1984
• The Journey to the Sacred Garden. Hay House, 2003. ISBN 1-4019-0111-5

• Spirit Medicine (with Jill Kuykendall)- July 2004 and experiential CD)

• Little Ruth Reddingford and the Wolf - September 2004—for children.

• "Awakening to the Spirit World: The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation" (with Sandra Ingerman) - March 2010. This book was awarded the gold medal first place award by the Independent Publishers Association in 2011 for the best body Mind Spirit book of the year. It was also given the first place award by the COVR—The Coalition of Visionary Resources. In this book, two accomplished shamanic teachers join forces to present a modern upgrade of the shaman's practice and worldview for modern people. Includes an experiential CD.
• "The Bowl of Light: Ancestral Wisdom from a Hawaiian Shaman" - May 2011. in which Dr Wesselman records his friendship with the Hawaiian elder kahuna Hale Makua over the last eight years of his life, including their philosophical discussions. Hank Wesselman's account of his eight-year friendship with the Hawaiian elder and kahuna nui Hale Makua includes previously unpublished kahuna wisdom and Polynesian philosophy.

The Re-Enchantment: A Shamanic Path to a life of Wonder (2016) includes many of Dr. Wesselman's "field notes" of his visionary experiences including his observations about the unseen forces that affect our lives—spirit helpers, spirit teachers, the spirit guides and the masters of deception who attach themselves to our political, economic, military and religious leaders.

Contributions

• Hawai'i: True Stories of the Island Spirit - Page 216, "Spiritwalker", July 1999, ISBN 1-885211-35-X
• The Spiritual Gifts of Travel: The Best of Traveler's Tales - Page 99, "Spiritwalker", March 2002, ISBN 1-885211-69-4

Research papers

• "Of Mice and Almost-men: Regional Paleoecology and Human Evolution in the Turkana Basin". in Paleoclimate and Evolution, with Emphasis on Human Origins, eds. Elizabeth Vrba et al. Yale University Press, 1995, pp. 356–368.
• Asa Issie, Aramis and the origin of Australopithecus, Nature 440, 883-889, ISSN 0028-0836, E-ISSN 1476-4687, April 13, 2006. [1]
• "Small Mammals" in Ardipithecus kadabba: Late Miocene Evidence from the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. eds. Yohannes Haile-Selassie and Giday Woldegabriel. University of California Press, 105-133, 2009.
• "Taphonomic, Avian, and Small-Vertebrate Indicators of Ardipithecus ramidus Habitat", Science 326 (issue 5949), 66, October 2, 2009.

And more...