High Sensitivity — The Ancient Perception Gift of the Touchable Ones

High sensitivity is an inborn perception constitution, not a disease and not a diagnosis. About 15 to 20 percent of people process stimuli more deeply and intensely than average — finer sounds, more intense emotions, stronger perception of subtle layers. US psychologist Elaine Aron first described the concept of the "Highly Sensitive Person" (HSP) scientifically in 1996. In shamanic traditions, this perception mode has been recognized for millennia as a gift — not a burden.

High sensitivity isn't in any diagnostic classification system — neither the DSM-5 nor the ICD-11. There's a reason for that: it isn't an illness. It's a perception constitution that every shamanic culture I've worked in has seen for millennia as an ability, not a deficit. In Japanese 密教 Mikkyō just as in shamanic Daoism, in Shugendō just as in the Wolf Shamanism lineage of the Ivory Coast that I took on over ten years ago via Baron Samedi. This page tries to show you what those traditions actually knew about high sensitivity — and what you can do with it yourself.

I'm Dr. Mark Hosak. I earned my PhD at Heidelberg University on Buddhist healing rituals, spent three years researching in the temples of Kyoto, practiced on the sacred mountains of Koyasan (Shingon) and Hieizan (Tendai), walked the Shikoku pilgrimage on foot, and in the decades since have had encounters with spiritual masters on travels through Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. I've worked with highly sensitive people for over three decades — as a researcher, as a practitioner, and as a highly sensitive person myself.

What High Sensitivity Actually Is

High sensitivity is an inborn deep processing of sensory and emotional stimuli. Highly sensitive people perceive more and process what they perceive more deeply. That's the core of Elaine Aron's DOES model, used in research for over 25 years.

Depth of Processing. You remember details others didn't store. You process impressions into subtle layers. In shamanic Daoism, this was the disposition teachers looked for in young students before passing on inner alchemy.

Overarousal. Loud environments, many people, intense sounds or lights — all of it costs more energy than for less sensitive people. That's not a failure of your system. It's the flip side of finer perception.

Emotional Reactivity and Empathy. Highly sensitive people react more strongly to their own and others' emotions. Often especially empathic because they perceive subtle signals others miss.

Sensing the Subtle. Mood shifts in a room, subtle bodily sensations, energetic atmospheres. This is the layer where shamanic traditions directly engage — they have their own terms, their own practices, their own schools for it.

The DOES model is the scientific description. It's a good approximation, but it's not the whole picture. What Aron's research has systematically captured since the 1990s was known in shamanic traditions for millennia — under different names, with different explanatory models, but with the same practical consequence: highly sensitive people are particularly suited for certain practices.

What High Sensitivity Is Not

Before we go deeper, let's sort out what high sensitivity is not. This matters because the English-language online world is full of confusion — and because highly sensitive people are often misclassified for years.

This needs to be said clearly because highly sensitive people are often misclassified for years — as "too thin-skinned," "neurotic," "introverted with problems." This pathologization wounds. The shamanic traditions I've worked in see it fundamentally differently.

High Sensitivity in Ancient Cultures — The Touchable Ones

In the shamanic cultures I've worked in over the last thirty years — Japanese Mikkyō and Shugendō, shamanic Daoism, the Wolf Shamanism lineage of the Ivory Coast via Baron Samedi, the Egyptian tradition via Eileen Wiesmann's research — highly sensitive people have always been recognized. They had different names. They had different explanatory models. But they were recognized, taken seriously, and systematically initiated into the paths of their tradition.

Japan: Receptivity to Kami. In the Shintō context, highly sensitive people were called those with special receptivity to Kami — the spirit beings that live in mountains, trees, waters, and stones. Certain children sensed Kami early — they grew unusually quiet at sacred places, dreamed differently, heard things others didn't. At some shrines, such children were recommended to the priests.

In the Yamabushi traditions — the Japanese mountain ascetics I worked with during my years in Japan — highly sensitive people were selected early as practitioners because they were particularly suited to the fine energetic layers of mountain practice. Anyone who could perceive the thresholds in the mountains was predestined for ritual work.

Mikkyō: Receptivity to the Subtle. In Mikkyō Buddhism — whose roots I researched at Heidelberg University — there's the concept of receptivity to the subtle, a disposition considered the basic prerequisite for visualization practices like Gachirinkan (see Full Moon page). Without subtle perception, you can't carry these meditations to their depth.

Shamanic Daoism: The Thin Veils. In Chinese shamanic Daoism, where Yin-Yang perception is central, highly sensitive children were traditionally described as thin veils — people in whom the separation between perception layers is unusually fine. Such children were often handed over to teachers of inner alchemy. They were the next generation of Daoshi.

Wolf Shamanism of the Ivory Coast: The Touchable Ones. In my Wolf Shaman lineage of the Ivory Coast, which I took on via Baron Samedi, highly sensitive perception has central significance. Whoever is suited for Vodou practice is recognized by the ability to feel subtle presences, perceive energetic shifts, and work with the thresholds between worlds. In the lineage's language: these are the touchable ones — people who feel what the Loa, the ancestors, the spirits want to say. That's nothing other than what Aron called "Sensing the Subtle" — only the shamanic tradition has been using it practically for generations.

Egyptian Tradition: Anubis and Threshold Perception. In the ancient Egyptian tradition that Eileen Wiesmann researches intensively, Anubis was the jackal-headed god of thresholds — accompanying the dead, weighing the soul, walking between worlds. Priests working with Anubis needed exactly the kind of fine perception we today call high sensitivity. The jackal form itself is the animal-symbolic embodiment of this threshold perception — Anubis smells what's coming, hears what's inaudible, sees what lies in half-light.

What these traditions share: they didn't pathologize highly sensitive people. They selected them. They gave them paths to work with their perception — instead of suppressing it.

What You Actually Sense When You're Highly Sensitive

Let's get concrete. What do you actually perceive that others don't?

First: finer sensory layers. You hear quiet sounds others miss. You see light nuances others overlook. You feel textures, temperatures, smells more strongly. If someone wore a perfume you don't like in a room, you'll still feel it an hour later. If a chair is uncomfortable, you can't "just sit through it." Your nervous system registers everything, unfiltered.

Second: emotional layers. You perceive moods others miss. When you enter a room, you immediately know if there's tension — even if no one says anything. You recognize when someone is sad even though they're smiling. You feel anger under polite words. This perception isn't imagination — it comes from reading fine body-language signals, micro-mimic movements, vocal coloring.

Third: energetic layers. This is where it gets interesting — and problematic for many science skeptics. Highly sensitive people often perceive layers that escape conventional sensory explanation. A particular atmosphere in a place. A presence that isn't physically visible. A connection to someone who has died. A premonition that later proves true. This layer is the bridge to aura perception and partly to spirit perception.

The scientific position is: maybe these are all unconscious sensory cues that consciousness interprets as "energy." Maybe. The shamanic position is: there are energetic layers of reality that highly sensitive people can perceive — and that practices like Mikkyō meditation or Wolf Shaman rituals make directly experiential. Which position you take is your call. What the shamanic traditions all share: they take highly sensitive perception seriously, instead of dismissing it as fancy.

Fourth: physical reactions. Highly sensitive people often react more strongly to medications, caffeine, alcohol. They tend to have more sensitive digestive systems. They're more prone to exhaustion in loud environments. That's not weakness — it's the companion phenomenon of deeper stimulus processing.

Fifth: creative and intuitive thinking. Highly sensitive people are often particularly creative, intuitive, empathic — precisely because they process more deeply. If you work in a field that demands exactly this depth (counseling, art, research, therapy, writing), your constitution can become a strength rather than a burden.

High Sensitivity as a Marker of Shamanic Calling

One observation from thirty years of working with highly sensitive people: those who find an entrance into a shamanic tradition blossom. They stop apologizing. They stop making themselves small. They stop talking their perception down. They start working with it.

There's a reason for that. In every shamanic tradition I know, high sensitivity wasn't the problem solved by initiation. It was the prerequisite that made initiation possible in the first place.

In the Wolf Shaman lineage of the Ivory Coast, successors aren't chosen by application. They're recognized by dreams and signs. Anyone with subtle perception can perceive those dreams and signs. Anyone without it never reaches the lineage. That's not mysticism — that's practical consequence: a tradition that works with the fine layers needs people who can perceive the fine layers.

If you grow up highly sensitive without finding this orientation, you know the pattern: self-doubt, withdrawal, exhaustion, the recurring question "why am I different?" If you find a tradition where this perception is meant, you experience a homecoming. That's not marketing copy. That's the regular experience of the people I've accompanied on this path.

I'm not saying every highly sensitive person is called to be a shaman or shamaness. That would be an overstatement. What I'm saying: if you're highly sensitive and feel drawn to shamanic tradition, take that pull seriously — it's usually not coincidence. The ancient paths have room open for exactly this kind of perception.

More on the Shamanism page and the Wolf Shamanism tradition of the Ivory Coast.

Mark's Own Journey as a Highly Sensitive Person

I'm telling this here because it belongs to the authenticity of this page: I'm highly sensitive myself. My whole path — Heidelberg studies, research years in Japan, Shikoku pilgrimage, taking on the Wolf Shaman lineage — is the answer to a perception I had as a child without being able to name it.

Childhood. I was a child who watched Japanese ninja films and knew, while watching, that there was something the other kids didn't see. Not magic in the Hollywood sense. A kind of attention, a presence, a connection to layers that are hidden in daily life. I couldn't explain it. I just knew: something is there. That perception was lonely — nobody in my surroundings could tell me what it was.

Studies. When I went to Heidelberg University, on the outside it looked like an academic choice. Inside it was the answer to that early perception. I studied Japanology and East Asian art history because I wanted to go where tradition took those fine layers seriously. My dissertation on Buddhist healing rituals was the academic form in which I could understand what I had felt since childhood.

Japan. Three years in Kyoto. Temples of the Shingon, Tendai, and Zen schools. Calligraphy practice with a Zen monk — the ritual form of writing in which ink becomes transmission. First encounters with Yamabushi in the mountains. What opened up to me there wasn't primarily academic — it was a deepening of perception in a culture that treats high sensitivity as a virtue, not a defect.

Shikoku. The 88-temple pilgrimage on foot. 1,200 kilometers. What happens on such a walk with a highly sensitive nervous system can only be hinted at here — it's not describable in wellness vocabulary. It's deeper.

Baron Samedi and the Wolf. Over ten years ago came the two dreams I tell more fully on the Full Moon page. In the first, Baron Samedi rubbed me with a wolf pelt. In the second, I was part of a wolf pack. My friend, a Vodou practitioner of the Ivory Coast lineage, had been searching for a successor for five years. My dreams were the sign. That those dreams could even happen — that they were perceived, remembered, taken seriously — has to do with high sensitivity. With the ability to receive information in dreams that doesn't arrive in waking life.

Today. I work with highly sensitive people — in live events, in daily practice, on the Wolf Shaman Master Path, in writing together with Eileen Wiesmann on the new Shingon Reiki book. And I know: anyone who's highly sensitive and finds a path where this perception is meant comes home.

That's not a therapeutic healing promise. That's experience — my own, and that of the people I've accompanied.

Anime Bridge — Why Spirited Away Hit You

If you grew up with Japanese animation — Millennial, Gen Z — you know the pattern: certain anime films touched you in a way you couldn't explain. Spirited Away. Princess Mononoke. Inuyasha. Demon Slayer. Yu Yu Hakusho. There was a recognition that went deeper than ordinary liking.

That's not accidental. These stories work with characters who are highly sensitive — even if the term never appears.

Chihiro in Spirited Away. A girl who can see another world because she hasn't yet been dulled. Her perception of the spirit world is what carries her through — and at the same time what initially overwhelms her. Highly sensitive perception as plot mechanism.

Ashitaka in Princess Mononoke. A young man who hears the voices of forest Kami and feels the disease of a raging boar god before others see it. Sensitive perception of the spirit world, embedded in Shintō imagery. Ashitaka is a highly sensitive shaman in anime form.

Kagome in Inuyasha. A modern girl who falls through an old well into a past world because her spiritual perception draws something to her that's closed to others. Highly sensitive perception as gateway between worlds.

Yusuke in Yu Yu Hakusho. A boy who, after his near-death, takes on shamanic tasks — because his sensitivity makes him suited to them. Shamanic calling begins with sensitivity.

Tanjiro in Demon Slayer. Smell as a highly sensitive perception layer. Tanjiro smells emotions, smells history, smells thresholds. That's almost a clinical description of what Aron calls "Sensing the Subtle" — played out in anime form.

Why do these characters work? Because they come from a Japanese culture that has understood high sensitivity since Shintō and Mikkyō as a spiritual disposition. The writers didn't invent it — they drew from a cultural depth that's been alive in Japan for centuries. What you recognize while watching is that ancient perception tradition.

The anime-socialized generation has learned something important without knowing it: that there are stories where high sensitivity isn't the problem but the gift the story hangs on. Anyone who's seen that can't go back to wellness-pathologization.

Self-Check: Ten Reflection Points

This isn't a clinical test. It's a reflection aid. For a scientifically validated self-test I refer you to Elaine Aron's official HSPS scale, freely accessible online. What follows are ten points from my counseling practice — if you recognize yourself in many of them, the probability is high that you're highly sensitive.

1. You can't think clearly in loud rooms — you need silence to process.
2. You remember details others overlook — moods, words, faces, atmospheres.
3. You're more strongly moved by films, music, books than others — sometimes so strongly you need time afterward.
4. You sense when someone is hiding something — even when you don't know what.
5. You need withdrawal after intense encounters — hours or a full day.
6. You react more strongly physically to caffeine, alcohol, medication, or certain foods.
7. You perceive atmospheres at places — some rooms feel different to you, without you being able to say why.
8. As a child, you often had the feeling of being "too much" — too sensitive, too pensive, too emotional.
9. You notice small changes others don't — when someone sits differently, breathes differently, looks differently.
10. You sometimes have impressions you can't explain — a premonition that comes true, a feeling that later makes sense.

If you recognize yourself in six or more points, it's worth reading the Aron book or talking to someone who understands high sensitivity. If you recognize yourself in all ten and notice that your perception isn't exhausted by the psychological description, the path through a shamanic tradition may be a fitting entrance for you.

High Sensitivity and Aura Perception

Most highly sensitive people already perceive aura without knowing it. That's one of the most common experiences in my counseling.

Aura — the energetic field that surrounds a person — is described in many shamanic and tantric traditions as a real perception layer. It's not primarily visual. It's sensed as atmosphere around a person, as emotional impression before the first word, as "this person does me good" or "this person drags me down," without you being able to say why.

If you're highly sensitive, you already have this perception. What's missing is the language and the frame to take it seriously. On the dedicated Aura page I go deeper into the tradition, the layers, the practice. Here just the hint: if you're highly sensitive and wonder whether you "really perceive aura" — the probability is high that you already do. The question isn't whether — but how you cultivate it and whether you want to cultivate it that way.

In my Wolf Shaman lineage, aura perception isn't sold as supernatural. It's treated as refined sensitivity — which any highly sensitive person can develop given the space.

High Sensitivity and Spirit Perception

This gets touchier. Not all highly sensitive people perceive spirits. But some do — and often spend years thinking they're crazy. They're not crazy. They're untrained in a perception layer that has no vocabulary in modern Western culture.

Spirit perception — the perception of those who've died, of place spirits, of beings from other layers — belongs in almost every shamanic tradition to the normal spectrum. In Japanese folk magic and in Wolf Shamanism of the Ivory Coast, in the Egyptian Anubis complex and in Chinese shamanic Daoism.

What you can do as a highly sensitive person if this layer opens for you: don't panic. Don't drift into esoteric vagueness. Earnestly examine what you're perceiving — and take up protection practice before you go deeper. More on this on the dedicated Spirits page and in the protection practice from the Wolf Shaman lineage.

Important: anyone with severe symptoms — persistent voices, persecution feelings, clear reality shift — belongs in qualified clinical care. Shamanic practice complements clinical care, it doesn't replace it. Separating these things is part of a responsible path.

High Sensitivity and Lunar Cycles

If you're highly sensitive and reasonably awake in your life, you've long noticed: the moon cycle affects you.

At full moon you're often hit hardest. Dreams become more intense, sometimes unsettling. Sleep gets restless. Emotional perception intensifies. The energies around you become more palpable.

At new moon you often feel the opposite pole — need for withdrawal, quiet melancholic shadings, a clear inner listening.

In waxing moon energy and perceptual clarity grow. In waning moon come tiredness, release impulses, the urge to cleanse.

All this is worked out more deeply on the Full Moon and Moon Phases pages. Here just the hint: if you're highly sensitive, it pays to braid your self-knowledge with the moon cycle. A moon-phase journal over six months often gives you more self-knowledge than any personality diagnostic.

Seasonally another layer comes in: in the Twelve Sacred Nights between Christmas and Epiphany, perception intensifies once more for many highly sensitive people. If you experience the same effect every year — heightened dreams, increased sensitivity, thin veil — look at the Twelve Nights page more closely.

Mikkyō Tools for Highly Sensitive People

From my Heidelberg research and decades of practice in Mikkyō traditions, I can name concrete tools that are particularly effective for highly sensitive people. They're not healing promises — they're ancient perception tools that you can translate into your own practice.

First: Breath Gathering. The simplest form: ten minutes daily of consciously breathing deeply, with no other goal than the breathing itself. In the Shingon tradition this is often combined with sitting before a simple anchor (a candle, an image, a moon disk). Over weeks, the general arousal level sinks. Overarousal becomes rarer.

Second: Gachirinkan — the Moon Disk Meditation. Detailed description on the Full Moon page. In the high-sensitivity context, Gachirinkan is a tool that strengthens the inner center. Anyone who can visualize a stable inner moon disk has an energetic anchor that holds even in loud environments.

Third: Writing Meditation. The old Japanese tradition knows meditative writing — Kanji or simple strokes with ink, slow and conscious. What you write is secondary. What matters is the act of conscious, slow doing. For highly sensitive people this is often an entrance into a quieter perception layer.

Fourth: Incense as Cleansing. Mikkyō tradition uses sandalwood, aloeswood (Jinkō), and other incense woods as energetic cleansing. For highly sensitive people who take on much foreign energy, regular incense burning is a simple tool.

Fifth: Pilgrimage. Whoever can, makes a small pilgrimage experience — not necessarily the Shikoku path, but a conscious longer walk with inner attention. The rhythmic movement and nature connection calibrate the highly sensitive system deeply.

Protection Practice from the Wolf Shaman Lineage of the Ivory Coast

My Wolf Shamanism doesn't come from Germany. Not from Germanic-Celtic tradition. It comes from West Africa — more precisely, from the Ivory Coast, via Baron Samedi. This clarification is laid out in full on the Full Moon page.

What this lineage offers highly sensitive people is a concrete protection practice. Highly sensitive people often take on more foreign energy than is good for them — on crowded trains, in conflict situations, in emotionally charged rooms. The shamanic answer to this isn't pathology diagnosis. It's protection work.

In my daily practice with Baron Samedi and the Great Wolf, the protection function is central. When I need general protection without an acute attack situation, the protection ritual at new moon and full moon is enough. With acute energetic strain, daily practice.

If you don't yourself carry this lineage — and most readers of this page won't — the full ritual isn't translatable for you. But the principle translates into your own spiritual vocabulary:

Conscious Thresholds. When you leave a charged room, make a conscious threshold. A few deep breaths at the door. A brief inner cleansing visualization. A conscious turning away from what remains in the room.

Protection Anchor. Identify a force that protects you — a spiritual figure, a place, a memory, a symbol. Let this force regularly pass through you, especially before and after intense situations.

Energetic Cleansing. At the end of an intense day: ten minutes of incense burning, a conscious shower, a brief meditation in which you name what doesn't belong to you and symbolically return it.

More on the lineage and tradition on the Voodoo page. For those considering initiation in this lineage: the entrance is through the Wolf Shaman Master Path.

Highly Sensitive Children

If you're highly sensitive yourself, you probably also have a highly sensitive child. High sensitivity is largely genetic — twin studies show about 47 percent genetic share in sensitivity traits.

Highly sensitive children show themselves very early:

In infancy: They cry more quickly, are harder to soothe, react strongly to new environments, sounds, touches. They want longer and more intense bodily closeness.

In toddlerhood: They're often shyer in new situations — not because they're anxious, but because they have to process the new situation deeply before they can engage with it. They ask astonishingly deep questions, observe closely, have astonishing memory for detail.

In school age: They can be overstimulated by classroom volume. They have deep friendships but also need withdrawal. They react strongly to injustice because they perceive emotional dynamics in the room exactly. They can show strong compassion reactions when someone is hurt.

In adolescence: They can be especially sensitive to conflict, social hierarchies, bullying. They often have pronounced preferences for quiet, deepening activities — reading, music, art, animals, nature, anime. They can feel deeply into characters of fictional stories.

What you can do as a parent of highly sensitive children — not as a therapeutic recommendation but as general guidance:

Don't pathologize. The child isn't "too sensitive" or "too difficult." They're highly sensitive — a perception mode that deserves respect.

Create withdrawal spaces. Highly sensitive children need silence times when they aren't stimulated. A nook in the kids' room, a quiet favorite spot, a withdrawal ritual after intense days.

Design transitions with time. Rather than "pulling the child through" loud environments, give them time to arrive, process, take leave. That saves hours of later overstimulation reactions.

Honor the perception. When the child perceives subtle layers — moods in the family space, energies at certain places, dreams with depth — honor that perception. Don't explain away what the child experiences.

Pay attention to nature connection. Highly sensitive children come to rest in nature more quickly than in urban environments. When possible, regular time in the forest, by water, with animals.

For deeper engagement with how shamanic traditions accompany highly sensitive children, Eileen Wiesmann and I offer encounters and initiation experiences — not therapy sessions, but spaces in which this perception mode is respected and strengthened.

Scientific Framing and Honest Critique

An honest treatment of high sensitivity must also say what the research skepticism is. The HSP construct has been criticized scientifically. Main points:

First: The self-report scale (HSPS) is susceptible to self-confirmation effects. People who see themselves as highly sensitive answer the scale accordingly. That makes measurement soft.

Second: The sharp two-group split (15-20% HSP vs. rest) is questioned in newer studies. Sensitivity appears continuously distributed, not binary. Differential Susceptibility research suggests sensitivity is more gradual than categorical.

Third: Neurobiological evidence is mixed. Some fMRI studies show heightened activity in empathy and perception regions in HSP subjects, others find the effect weakly or not at all.

Fourth: A proximity to the neuroticism construct of Big Five personality research is being discussed. Some researchers argue that HSP partly measures nothing other than emotional instability under a new name.

What does it mean? Research is open, not closed. Aron described a useful concept that has helped many people understand themselves better. But the concept isn't a hard scientific finding like, say, diabetes or hypertension.

My position on this, academically and practically: the construct discussion in psychology has its legitimacy. But it falls short because it doesn't take cultural-historical depth into account. Mikkyō, Shugendō, and shamanic traditions have described this perception constitution for centuries — with their own terms, their own tests, their own practices. Research that doesn't take those traditions into account sees only a section.

When Shamanism, When Therapy?

An important clarification that's rarely made at this depth: shamanic practice complements clinical care. It doesn't replace it. Confusing the two risks harm — for yourself and for the people you accompany.

When clinical support is indicated

• With persistent depressive states beyond ordinary low phases
• With anxiety disorders that significantly limit daily life
• With trauma aftereffects that don't subside untreated
• With persistent sleep disorders without recognizable external trigger
• With signs of acute psychiatric crisis
• With clear reality shifts that don't fit into a culturally established frame
• With physical symptoms requiring medical clarification

In all these cases, the first port of call is a qualified professional — family doctor, psychotherapist, counseling center. Not the shaman. Not spiritual support.

When shamanic practice is useful

• As a complement to clinical support, not as replacement
• For questions of meaning, calling, life direction
• For deepening your own perception and self-knowledge
• For finding a frame for highly sensitive perception beyond pathology
• For spiritual searching that finds no home in mainstream religious offerings
• For working with transitions — death, birth, life-change — in old ritual forms
• For schooling perception in a tradition that takes this perception seriously

What shamanic practice isn't: medical treatment. Disease healing. Diagnostic replacement. Anyone offering that has misunderstood something.

Those who walk both paths in parallel — clinical care for what's therapeutic, shamanic practice for what's spiritual — usually go furthest. That's my experience from thirty years of accompaniment.

Practice Entrances for Highly Sensitive Seekers

If you've come this far and recognize that this page means you, there are three entrances — sorted from low-threshold to the full path.

First Step · Newsletter and Self-Check Quiz

The easiest entrance. The short quiz "Are you highly sensitive?" — based on the ten reflection points above. After the quiz you can subscribe to the Shamanic Worlds newsletter. There I share in small steps what has helped highly sensitive people in the ancient traditions — Mikkyō breath, lunar rhythm, protection practice.

→ Start the quiz and subscribe to the newsletter

Deepening · Japanese Grimoire Society on Skool

For those who know that concrete practice is the right thing, Kuji Kiri offers a tool from the esoteric Buddhist tradition that's particularly load-bearing for highly sensitive people. Kuji Kiri — the "Nine Cuts" — bundles several practice layers in a single form: moon meditation (Gachirinkan), breath meditation, the practice that opens space for letting go of karmic entanglements, meditation for releasing anger and hatred, and the Kuji Kiri ritual that's experienced as clearing of foreign influences and the cultivation of unshakable presence in the sense of Fudō Myōō.

For English-speaking seekers, the gateway is the Japanese Grimoire Society on Skool — my dedicated community for this practice. There you find guided practice, weekly live calls, and a circle of seekers walking the same path. The related project Shingon Reiki offers the healing-practice side of the same tradition.

→ Japanese Grimoire Society on Skool

Depth Path · The Wolf Shaman Master Path

For those who want to take on the lineage themselves — Wolf Shamanism of the Ivory Coast via Baron Samedi, with everything that belongs to it — the entrance is the Wolf Shaman Master Path. That's the full path: daily practice, initiation experiences, accompaniment in the lineage. Not a beginner's entrance — for people who know that this perception constitution seeks a frame in them that's serious enough.