SHAMAN-HEALER
~ AUTHOR ~
TEACHER
Peter Calhoun
Peter Calhoun
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Shaman believes natural energies are empowering for all
A man of the Earth
By RONDA ROBINSON, Special to the News Sentinel
October 21, 2006
Peter Calhoun traded the black hat and collar of an Episcopal priest for the black hat of a Western shaman 36 years ago. In his book "Soul on Fire" (PageFree Publishing, $16.95), the 70-year-old Townsend resident describes the spontaneous awakening of healing and intuitive abilities that led him to change paths.
Years ago at his Episcopal parish in Atlanta, Calhoun said, he was unprepared for the experiences he began to have. When people came for counseling, he knew in advance what their problems were. He said he could sense facts about strangers. He began anticipating people's statements and realized he could read thoughts.
In years to come, he said, he found he had the ability to understand the thoughts of animals - and even communicate with the elements of nature.
Calhoun also experienced a series of visions about the future of the Earth. He sensed that if people continued being poor caretakers, "we would soon reap a bitter harvest."
At a time when he was moving to the peak of his career as a priest, the spiritual awakenings caused him to leave the parish ministry.
"I began to realize that something even more profound than the awakening of latent powers or the learning of valuable life lessons was happening to me," he writes in his self-published book, which the California-based Hay House has picked up for scheduled release next spring. "Unknowingly, I had all along been on a path toward conscious and ecstatic union with 'All That Is.' "
As magical and exciting as the journey was becoming, his exodus from the church in 1970 proved wrenching. Calhoun, a grandfather with one daughter and two stepchildren, compares it to a divorce.
After growing up in an established Atlanta family, he decided in college to pursue the ministry; he wanted to help people and make the world better. After graduation, he taught English and science at the Westminster Schools before attending seminary.
Calhoun served as a priest for several years before he felt the stir of his paranormal abilities. He had thought such abilities were reserved for native shamans or Eastern mystics, but then came to believe that we all have access, although our religious belief systems have us convinced otherwise.
As a shaman, Calhoun says he can heal people's physical, mental, emotional and psychic problems, and work with natural energies to help restore balance to the Earth.
"I don't feel shamanism is better than Christianity, Judaism or any other religion," Calhoun said, "but I felt shamanism addressed problems of the environment more than any other system of thought."
Religions aren't wrong, just incomplete, he said. "Eventually, all of us have to transcend our religions. They're steppingstones into a much greater ocean that is unbounded," he said.
Author Christiane Northrup, a former surgeon who had a healing session with Calhoun, calls him "the real deal." In an e-mail interview, she praised Calhoun's honesty about his personal journey "and also his realization that the Earth is enlivened by very real, conscious energies that we can all learn to appreciate and work with consciously."
"In this time of ecological crisis, this book offers a message of great hope to all of us who are willing to see beyond three-dimensional reality and appreciate that there is much more to life and nature than we've been led to believe," she said.
Calhoun says his mission in writing "Souls on Fire" and sharing stories of hope and struggle was to help readers open up to their own possibilities.
"The abilities are within all of us," he said, adding that God has given spiritual powers to everyone, not just Moses, Muhammad, Jesus, Elijah, Rumi, St. Francis and other great leaders who are widely known.
"They came to show us what we are and who we are, and to release us from (limited) belief systems," Calhoun said.
The Earth is more magical and more loving than we can imagine, according to Calhoun, who teaches workshops and leads sacred wilderness journeys and vision quests across the United States.
Copyright 2006, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.