NAFPS Forum

Hello People,

does somebody know something about this very popular author and European herbalist (Known for his dangerous ideas about Lyme Disease) in German esoteric scene, named Wolf Dieter Storl?

Lyme Disease Book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TegTs9INDSo

Pseudo Indo-European "Puja" Ceremony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drWMvxdP_2g

He claims that he had grown up in the USA as a Child because of Russian occupation after 2. World War, later migrated back to Germany, today he lives in a house in the Allgäu Mountains.

He wrote many pseudo-ethnologic Books about old European Cultures which are more fantasy than fact based, indian Shivaism, and he did some India travels as well.
On Youtube, he most appeared in interviews on Esoteric Channels, but was also in German TV and Radio Shows.
He was not very known in the early 2000s but today he is very popular and is selling a lot of things, Calendars, Herbal Pilgrim, Videos, Books, CDs.

He claims he had been in contact with several Native American people, specially Medicine-people (Bill Tallbull, George Elkshoulder) of the Cheyenne.

He is also a Friend of Christian Rätsch, who is "flirting" with Ayahuasca Ceremonies:

http://www.christian-raetsch.de/Artikel/Artikel/Ayahuasca.html

Translated in English: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.christian-raetsch.de%2FArtikel%2FArtikel%2FAyahuasca.html

Rätsch seems to be in Connection with Other people:

http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=574.msg2715#msg2715

http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=2496.msg35360#msg35360

Picture with Wolf Dieter Storl: http://www.christian-raetsch.de/feedback-zu-seminaren/  Picture: Windischgarsten, 20.-24. Juli 2016

One of his Video Advertisements "Manitus Green Warriors": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZUB5TRuGbE

In the USA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFT8fACnJiA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKYV2SowXF8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S36e8CG6lvs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNNipCrLj_0

Does somebody know, if he really is or was in connection with Native American people?

Thanks!

A Wolf Dieter Storl, born in Germany, immigrated in 1954 to New York City, NY, USA on the ship Italia.

Other Storls on that ship were Gerhard and Elfriede.

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To help us pin down where he was in USA:

QuoteWolf Dieter Storl was born on Oct. 1, 1942, in Saxony, Germany and emigrated to the United States with his parents when he was 11 years old. After finishing his undergrad studies at Ohio State University, he received an MA in anthropology and sociology at Kent State University, whereupon he taught there as a full time instructor. In 1970 he went to the University of Vienna for post graduate studies and was an instructor at the Institute for International Studies.

QuoteBack in the United States teaching sociology, anthropology and organic gardening at a college in Grants Pass, Oregon

https://www.amazon.com/Wolf-Dieter-Storl/e/B00385W6SS

QuoteSome years ago in Basel, at the big party that took place on Albert Hofmann's 100th birthday, an American spoke to me - his red hair was braided and he wore buckskins like an Indian. One would be happy, he told me, if I would participate in the annual herbal event in Montana. He handed me a plait of Mariengras ( sweet grass ) and dried buffalo meat. A greeting from the Cheyenne Indians: They would not have forgotten me.

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://www.storl.de/allgemein/texte/filmreise-zu-den-kraeuterleuten-nordamerikas.html&prev=search

QuoteFrom 1984 to 1985, Storl was a lecturer at Sheridan College, Wyoming , where he read Ethnobotany, Ethnomedicine, Religious Ethnology, Native American Culture, and at the same time maintained close contact with the medical men (Bill Tallbull, George Elkshoulder) of the Cheyenne for ethnobotanical data gathering.

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf-Dieter_Storl&prev=search

An article about one of his meetings with Elkshoulder and Tallbull: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.culturelife.de%2Fhtml%2Fartikel%2Fstorl_hm11_d.html

Please give the original German links first, then add the Google Translate links.

It's quite cumbersome to get to the original links, and there are quite a few people in here who can read German.

Otherwise, very interesting topic, and I will soon put in some comments and links.

Okay, i will do that in the future, the original link about his meetings with Elkshoulder and Tallbull: http://www.culturelife.de/html/artikel/storl_hm11_d.html

Quote from: BrandemeerHG on December 14, 2017, 10:41:40 AM
... the original link about his meetings with Elkshoulder and Tallbull: http://www.culturelife.de/html/artikel/storl_hm11_d.html

There is a short bio at the same site: http://www.culturelife.de/html/artikel/storl_hm11_d.html

It says in the first link that George Elkshoulder was born in Montana, ca. 1915. I found a 2010 obituary of a George Elkshoulder who was born in 1927, but otherwise seems to fit the description:

http://billingsgazette.com/lifestyles/announcements/obituaries/george-elkshoulder-sr-night-wolf/article_de2a6959-8004-5261-8205-e54e9e2b1926.html

If this is the person we are seeking Mr. Storl is 12 years off as far as birth year goes. My first thought is he didn't care to check facts, to him George Elkshoulder soon became almost a mythical figure which he went around and made speeches about in Europe, especially Germany?

Seems that Mr. Storl was in the U.S. just some five weeks ago to lecture about Bill Tallbull and others:

Quote from: https://www.facebook.com/events/124860388228203/
NOV 9 [2017] — Talking with Plants with Wolf Storl
Public · Hosted by Evolver Learning Lab and 5 others
Thursday, November 9 at 8 PM - 10 PM EST [about 1 month ago]
The Alchemists Kitchen — 21 East 1st Street, New York, New York 10003

Details
with Wolf-Dieter Storl

It baffled Wolf Storl when, as a young anthropologist, he observed that Bill Tallbull, the Cheyenne medicine man did not talk about plants, but with them. On his visits to India and Nepal, Wolf repeatedly found this to be the case when herbalists gathered healing plants. The effects of the botanicals used with this attention, certainly stand up to scientific scrutiny. As we gather from the Anglo-Saxon "Nine Herbs Charm", these wortcunners, or herbalists, also spoke with the plants, reminding them of their power.

Talking to the "green folk" is indeed nearly universal among indigenous peoples. Who are they talking to? Who, or what is there, to listen? In this lecture, we shall explore the psychological dimensions and the archaic techniques involved.

$20 advance
$25 at the door

Quote"One should not tempt the gods and play around with sacred things - my friend, the Cheyenne medicine man, Bill Tall Bull, told me that often enough."

From Healing Lyme Disease Naturally: History, Analysis, and Treatments, By Wolf D. Storl
https://books.google.com/books?id=RJ4YG4_WPckC&printsec=frontcover&dq=healing+lyme+disease+naturally&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEzarF3YnYAhVT7GMKHbQGC5AQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=cheyenne%20&f=false

Articles in German, very critical to his treatment of Lyme disease, also known as Lyme borreliosis:
https://blog.psiram.com/2008/03/scharlatanwarnung-wolf-dieter-storl/  (Charlatan Warning)
https://www.psiram.com/de/index.php/Wolf-Dieter_Storl
https://www.psiram.com/de/index.php/Karden-Therapie_der_Borreliose

Some background: Mr. Storl keeps up a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/storl/

There is also a homepage, both in German and English:
https://www.storl.de  &  http://english.storl.de

Seems he travels frequently to the U.S.; another example:
http://english.storl.de/general/texte/newsletter-july-2015.html

There are Wikipedia articles about Mr. Storl in four languages, here German and English:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf-Dieter_Storl  &  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf-Dieter_Storl

Uploaded here is an extensive interview with Storl:

"Casual-looking German youth far from typical teen"

Chronicle-Telegram, Elyria Ohio, 7 Sept 1962

There are a lot of very dangerous, untrained or self-trained "herbalists" out there exploiting people who are very ill with Lyme infections. Lyme can be very hard to treat and recover from. Like cancer, sometimes the treatments are harder to live through than the disease itself. Sufferers can wind up very weak, debilitated, chronically ill and vulnerable to these exploiters, and many have been harmed by these types. 

Like with other difficult-to-treat conditions, there are also scammers who claim to have had the disease and healed themselves from it, who never had it in the first place.

The Cheyenne men he names are real, very well-known in community, and very easy to find out about without ever setting foot in Cheyenne community. While one is dead, it is unclear whether in the other case he is talking about a grandfather who is dead (most likely - easier to lie that way), or one of the living sons or grandsons. It doesn't matter, because either way, because it is abundantly clear in every way Wolf Storl speaks about these men that he is misrepresenting them.

Whether or not he met them means nothing. It is laughable for him to claim that an insular culture like the Northern Cheyenne would give a wandering fool like this freak ceremonial access or private herbal information, let alone ceremonial permissions.

Even Storl says he only met the two of them, at his university. I don't even see claims he attended social events in Cheyenne community. That is not being part of a culture. I don't believe for a second that anyone would trust an exploitative, arrogant white outsider like this guy with private cultural or ceremonial information. No way. That happens in community, not in isolation. It would have been so irregular and extraordinary that everyone would have heard about it. No way.

Looking through his interactions on social media, this is not a man who was trusted to lead ceremony among the Cheyenne, nor among any NDN people. This is a white stranger who sells his b.s. to other white people. FRAUD.

HAHAHAHA, he calls the Cheyenne "shamans." OMG. Even just normal NDNs who are ethnobotanists and college professors.

I'm looking at the videos where he mentions what gatherings he's come to the US to go to, like the Montana Herb Gathering. These aren't Native events. These are white people things. His event in New York City, same deal. He's a newager.

http://montanaherbgathering.org/theboard

On this page about another white herbalist conference in Boston http://english.storl.de/general/texte/newsletter-july-2015.html , his perspective is not only completely white, but he speaks glowingly about the colonists, from a thoroughly settler-colonial perspective, and only speaks of Natives in the past tense. Does he have any contacts in the area, the way anyone with actual history and lived experience in Indian country would? No. He is actually surprised that Natives run the restaurant he stops at, even when he is on Wampanoag land. And what does he try to talk to the waitress about? Current Indigenous issues? No, Thanksgiving and Squanto.

Aside from this brief interaction with the waitress, real, living Natives don't exist for this guy. He confidently continues to relegate Indigenous people to the past and grotesquely misrepresent Indigenous cultures in his white-written stories, relaying only the white lies. He even mentions a plant that, had he learned even the most basic things about Cheyenne ceremonial life, he would know some things about how it is used in that culture. But no, he just skims on past it, only noting the European herbal lore or things you can find in books written by white people. Such an obvious fraud.

OK, I've watched his fake "puja" video. He's doing some kind of newage/neoplaygan mashup of his idea of several different cultures there. He's got a South Asian lota, a feather fan, he's talking about the goddess Saraswati but doing things he thinks are NDN.... look, this guy does not know Cheyenne culture or ceremonies. There is no reason to believe he is anything other than just another German pretendian, another offensive "Indianer" hobbyist. The only difference is he found the names of some dead NDNs to exploit.

I think this scam of his includes his continuing to give people the false impression, like many German hobbyists want to believe, that the "real" Indians are dead now, so that now the white pretendians can replace them. This is evil.

The ceremonial leader he claims to have known, and may have even met briefly, has trained people in his own family and medicine society to follow after him. That training requires not only full cultural immersion, and speaking the Cheyenne language fluently, but training for many, many years, and then being recognized as having been given the permissions by the full community. All those people who have been trained and granted permissions are Cheyenne people. Not white, newage ceremony-sellers that no Natives have even heard of.

The fact he's also claiming to heal Lyme disease makes him dangerous. I concur, he belongs in frauds.

Quote from: BrandemeerHG on December 13, 2017, 11:56:44 PM
Does somebody know, if he really is or was in connection with Native American people?

Here's the thing, Native people do not exist to tell non-Natives about culture and ceremonies. From what I can see, this white fraud Wolf Storl is not part of any Native American community and he is certainly not a Native American ceremonial leader. He is a white newager who sells made-up, fake rituals out of his own imagination, to other white people. He is using the name of a dead Native American medicine man without permission, and insinuating that he is part of a community he has never had anything to do with. He is now exploiting that community in his ceremony-selling efforts.  That is a very offensive and hurtful thing for him to do.

Even if this man did briefly meet these two Native people, or even if he interacted with the ethnobotanist more than once, it doesn't matter. Meeting Native people doesn't give someone rights to ceremonies or culture. Not even adoption does that. Go read the main page of the website for more on this. This fraud has been selling people a bunch of b.s. about Native people and cultures. That makes him an exploiter, not a "friend."