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Medicinemaker: Mystic Encounters on the Shaman's Path
Hank Wesselman
The second book in Hank Wesselman's "Spiritwalker" trilogy, a first-person account of a working scientist's plunge into shamanic experience. Wesselman, a paleoanthropologist with genuine field credentials, describes spontaneous altered states in which his awareness seemed to merge with Nainoa, a Hawaiian mystic living some five thousand years in the future, in a world remade after civilization's collapse. *Medicinemaker* continues that story while deepening Wesselman's own apprenticeship on the shaman's path, weaving together visionary narrative, Hawaiian spiritual tradition, and reflections on consciousness. The hook is the author's dual identity: a hard-science researcher taking his own inner experiences seriously enough to report them in detail. Readers open to non-ordinary states tend to find it compelling and sincere; skeptics will read it as vivid subjective experience rather than evidence—more on that below.
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The author
Hank Wesselman (1941–2021) held a PhD in anthropology and took part in fossil-hunting expeditions in East Africa connected to the search for human origins, giving him real scientific standing. Alongside that career he described a decades-long shamanic apprenticeship and became a popular teacher and author on the subject, leading workshops at places like the Omega Institute.
The book
Structured as memoir, Medicinemaker recounts Wesselman's continuing psychic connection to Nainoa and his own initiation into shamanic practice, drawing heavily on Hawaiian kahuna tradition. It sits in the trilogy between Spiritwalker and Visionseeker.
How to read it
As sincere personal testimony, not as science—a distinction worth keeping even though the author is a scientist. Wesselman never claims laboratory proof; the visions are his reported inner experience, unverifiable by their nature, and readers of a skeptical bent will treat them as such. Taken on those terms—as spiritual memoir and an unusually articulate bridge between academic and shamanic worldviews—it is engaging and heartfelt.
For more context
Best read within the trilogy; compare with Michael Harner's work on core shamanism for the broader movement Wesselman belongs to.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Hank Wesselman
- Publisher
- Bantam Books
- Place of publication
- New York
- Year
- 1998
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Spirituality & Philosophy
- Location
- Colorado