Author Topic: Sean Hightower "medicine songs"  (Read 4545 times)

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Sean Hightower "medicine songs"
« on: September 14, 2020, 06:34:34 pm »
Sean Hightower is a phony who has been practicing stolen ayahuasca "ceremonies" and apparently now also adding in his own made up version of stolen Lakota "ceremonies and rituals".

This is his website: medicinesongs (dot) ca

There are two other people mentioned on his team: Stephanie Rose and Arron Aguila.

Sean Hightower claims to offer "Traditional Indigenous Ceremonies, weaving Shipibo and Lakota Ancestral Lineages". He claims to offer "ceremonial rituals and sweat lodges".

As far as I know, he mostly operates his scams out of a place in robert's creek on shíshálh Nation's unceded land. He rents places wherever in locations mostly in occupied Coast Salish territory around shíshálh Nation, K'òmoks First Nation, and S?wx?wú7mesh Úxwumixw  (sunshine coast/vancouver island (courtenay)/Squamish Nation and lower mainland). I think he might also go further north sometimes in so-called BC. He charges ($250/night) for his stolen ayahuasca "rituals", sells them for 3-night 'retreats', and if I had to guess is probably aiming for 10-20 people? So somewhere in the range of 10G's per fake ceremony, probably.

I think he advertises mostly through word of mouth via ignorant nuage crystal people - which is how I originally found out about it his mailing list (by being ignorant). And he's been up to this for probably more than 5-7+ years doing his own stolen ayahuasca and fake Lakota ceremonies healing bullshit.

He claims to "study under the lineage" of Kesten Betsa aka Guillermo Arevalo. There are two women who spoke out about Guillermo Arevalo raping and sexually assaulting them during his own 'ceremonies' both in Peru and somewhere canada (bbc news article). There is some information about Guillermo Arevalo's organization on this link but I'm having trouble attaching it so here it is - https(://)peoplepill(dot)com/people/guillermo-arevalo-valera/.
« Last Edit: September 15, 2020, 11:52:49 am by educatedindian »

cheeseburger

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Re: Sean Hightower "medicine songs" and Guillermo Arevalo aka Kestenbetsa
« Reply #1 on: September 14, 2020, 06:37:01 pm »
the bbc article with sexual assualt claims, i had trouble linking it, the title is "I was sexually abused by a shaman at an ayahuasca retreat".

Offline Sparks

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Sean Hightower and "Medicine Songs" with Stephanie Rose and Arron Aguila.
« Reply #2 on: September 15, 2020, 03:34:52 am »
He claims to "study under the lineage" of Kesten Betsa aka Guillermo Arevalo.

I found this on the website you referred to (http://www.medicinesongs.ca/):
Quote
SEAN HIGHTOWER
Curandero in the lineage of Kesten Betsa.
Devotion to Spirit, weaving ancestry blood lines of prayer.  Shamanic studies with Kesten Besta, to Lakota Ceremonial Studies and Rituals.
Quote
STEPHANIE ROSE
Apprentice of Kesten Betsa lineage
Quote
ARRON AGUILA
Arron, Apprentice in the Shipibo medicine after many years of his own healing.

(I don't quote the rest of their bios, because I consider those parts as mostly New Age woo-woo.)

[Sean Hightower] claims to "study under the lineage" of Kesten Betsa aka Guillermo Arevalo. There are two women who spoke out about Guillermo Arevalo raping and sexually assaulting them during his own 'ceremonies' both in Peru and somewhere canada (bbc news article).
the bbc article with sexual assualt claims, i had trouble linking it, the title is "I was sexually abused by a shaman at an ayahuasca retreat".

It seems to me that the present thread should concentrate on Sean Hightower and the two other people mentioned on his team (Stephanie Rose and Arron Aguila). Therefore I started a new topic about this person, where I located that BBC news article:

http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=5486.0 [Guillermo Arévalo Valera AKA Kestenbetsa / Kesten Betsa]

Offline Sparks

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Re: Sean Hightower and "Medicine Songs" with Stephanie Rose and Arron Aguila.
« Reply #3 on: September 15, 2020, 12:40:03 pm »
It seems to me that the present thread should concentrate on Sean Hightower and the two other people mentioned on his team (Stephanie Rose and Arron Aguila). Therefore I started a new topic about this person, where I located that BBC news article:

http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=5486.0 [Guillermo Arévalo Valera AKA Kestenbetsa / Kesten Betsa]

I cannot find that anyone accuses Guillermo Arévalo Valera of being a fraud himself. What is questionable is whether he teaches or trains Western New Agers in such a way that they can claim "Curandero in the lineage of Kesten Betsa", "Apprentice of Kesten Betsa lineage" and "Apprentice in the Shipibo medicine" as is the case with Sean Hightower, Stephanie Rose and Arron Aguila of the "Medicine Songs" team.

Offline Sparks

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Re: Sean Hightower and "Medicine Songs" with Stephanie Rose and Arron Aguila.
« Reply #4 on: September 15, 2020, 01:06:13 pm »
I found prime examples of New Age "Quantum healing" woo-woo on the "Medicine Songs" site:

We offer: Traditional Indigenous Ceremonies, weaving Shipibo & Lakota Ancestral lineages.

?Space, with the supportive presence of Curanderos, Quantum Healers, and Yoga Therapists, provided in a setting to deepen your connection with the spirit world, where the vessel can initiate recalibration and soul level healing.
[…]
Shamanic Sound Bath Nidra
Guidance through sound vibration, enchanting your 5 primary senses, accessing Delta and Theta brain waves to restore harmony back into your nervous system, re-calibrating neural pathways bringing quantum healing.

The concluding sentence here is totally incomprehensible:

Plant dieta is a daily ritual, there is an art to finding the dance to the overall  diversity of the medicine journey.  Patience and determination within our plant allow the shift to occur in our body by expelling the human inadequate balance. By mirroring one’s anger, ego, concepts, grief, fear, illnesses etc.  Releases are energetically enhanced, allowing these taxing energies to surface so they can be recognized , cleared with light healing potency.  This is transformational Shadow work which bring quantum healing to all realms to DNA to ancestors’ chains.

My boldings. So what is 'quantum healing'?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_healing
Quote
Quantum healing is a pseudo-scientific mixture of ideas which purportedly draw on quantum mechanics, psychology, philosophy, and neurophysiology.

See also https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quantum_healing and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mysticism

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.3151
Quote
Among the factors contributing to the rapid growth of pseudoscience are various misrepresentations of modern physics and especially of QT [quantum theory]. Some prominent physicists of the past century have presented philosophical outlooks that, as mystical and antiscientific as they may be, have become wrongfully associated with modern physics. And the public’s scant knowledge about the underlying principles of science, combined with the compelling power of science exhibited in smartphones, GPS, and confirmation of the Higgs boson and gravitational waves, turns those philosophical misrepresentations into a forceful engine for promoting such nonsense as quantum healing, quantum touch therapy, and other “quantum” commodities sold in the crowded information marketplace.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/19/epigenetics-dna--darwin-adam-rutherford
Quote
The legion purveyors of flapdoodle love a real but tricksy scientific concept that they can bolt their pernicious quackery on to. “Quantum” is surely the biggest offender, offering up some mystical scienceyness, none more so than in “quantum healing” – an unfathomable extension of reiki, which, let’s face it, is already graphene-thin flimflam. The annexing of this word from fundamental physics ranges from washing-powder branding to the theory of mind. “Quantum consciousness” is an idea that has generated some serious discussion over the years, but for me slots squarely into the category of “using one thing we don’t understand to explain another”.