Walking the Land Sedona, Arizona: In Search of Bololokan’s Path-Marchiene Reinstra

Copyright Marchiene Reinstra 2010
All Rights Reserved

This is Eileen’s drum she made. She painted Bololokan, the Yavapai myth “rainbow snake” that lives in the Verde Valley, according to their legends and knowledge. She is a water snake and brings water to places around Mother Earth. It is her job to move the rain so that the Earth remains verdant and green. And alive.

WHO ARE WE?

Eileen Nauman (Ai Gvhdi Waya is here Eastern Cherokee name) is 1/8 Eastern Cherokee via her father’s side of the family. Her great-great grandmother was on the Trail of Tears and as a sixteen-year-old, escaped and ran into Kentucky, where she later married into the Gent family. We know only two things about her: that she came from a medicine family and was from the Wolf clan of her people. Her medicine was being a shaman. And this gene has gone down through our family. Eileen was the chosen child to be taught this ‘medicine’ (this means an inherited skill of healing) by her father. She trained with him from age 9 through 18. Later, she had other Native American teachers and in 1990 began training others for Soul Recovery and Extraction, the medicine of her great-great grandmother.

Marchiene Reinstra is an interfaith minister. She has written many books and has been an advocate of women being equal to men in all organized religions. Coming from Dutch missionary parents, Marchiene grew up in India. She is cosmopolitan and has many natural psychic skills. She met Eileen in the mid-90s and since then, they have become a psychic team in search of understanding the energy of the land where they live in the Verde Valley of Arizona. This includes Sedona, but the scope is much wider than that. Please see our blogs from 2009 as they worked to bring the chakra system of Sedona back online.

WHAT IS WALKING THE LAND?

Eileen’s genetic knowing about the land comes through her Native American genetics. She simply sees Nature as symbolic and is able to interpret it so she that she understands the visible and invisible energy in an area and what it is doing. Further, she is clairvoyant and can see the spirits, the guardians of sacred places, vortexes and everything else associated with the land. Her belief is that if we understand the energy and beings where one lives, that you can live in a deep and positive harmony with them.

The land is fed by the human’s gratefulness and attention. And the land’s energy/spiritual beings, in turn, create a far more positive energy framework and environment for the human. They must work together for harmony. Otherwise, if one ignores the other, we are ignoring Mother Earth and all her relations. That is like ignoring your neighbors and pretending they aren’t there or exist.

This blog is dedicated to showing the fundamentals of Walking the Land in hopes that you will take the information and apply it to your own area. And if you will, then you will forge a positive and healing link as a result. And the energy of your area where you live will be amplified, lifted and online so that the positive applications of this teamwork will benefit all. Weather will return to what it used to be. There will be no more floods and droughts, as an example. Water can be cleaned up with prayer and attention to the spirit of it. And so much more. You will learn as we Walk the Land here in the Verde Valley.

TWO BLOGS: Eileen will post her blog on Walking the Land first and then the next day, will post Marchiene’s. Each writes a blog based upon her experience as they walk the land in search of the planetary water snake, known as Bololokan to the Yavapai Native Americans who live in the Verde Valley. There are many powerful planetary beings that work with Mother Earth. Humans can interface with them as well but it is always the planetary, regional or local spirit who decides that. You can’t work with one unless your heart is in the right place, you practice daily humility and understand that humans are a small part of the mighty woven energy that is here on our home, Mother Earth.

Their intent is to discover the natural energy geology of where Bololokan moves/slithers, through the landscape of their valley. In discovering Bololokan’s path, Eileen and Marchiene will then perform ceremony to reawaken this path. In doing that, the energy comes back online and it lifts and helps feed the area in a natural way as it used to be when the First People lived here in union with Mother Earth and all her relations. It will change the weather pattern of the area, which has been in a twenty-year drought. Bololokan is the WATER snake. There are three other planetary snakes for the other three elements: earth, fire and air. Bololokan utilizes the Verde Valley area as one of her many sipapu’s (emergence hole) to come up into our area. She has sipapu’s around the world and slithers inside Mother Earth in tunnels that connect them all. We’re fortunate to have her with us and we discovered her when we opened up the chakras of Sedona. She came to us and we had no idea she existed before that except in Yavapai legends who spoke of “Bololokan.” Once she contacted us at Rainbow Bridge, one of her sipapu’s, she has been with us ever since. This year in 2010, she asked us to discover her energy path throughout our valley and clean out those sacred points with human attention and ceremony. In doing that, her third dimensional energy in our valley will reawaken and bring harmony to it once more. We hope the drought will be broken and the rains that Bololokan brings, will once more, go back to its normal pattern. Join us on our journey and you can be a part of the discovery and education as well.

MARCHIENE’S BLOG EXPERIENCE December 1, 2010

Early this morning, at sunrise, I went out into the wilderness for a special time of preparation and ceremony, knowing this was the special day I would be starting the great adventure of walking the land with Eileen, and offering our love and service and prayers to mother earth and all the inhabitants of this area as we sought to trace and awaken the energy of the great Water Serpent of this area, who we call Bololokan (a name from the Hopi and Yavapai traditions, we are told.)

There were some clouds in the sky to the east, El Shadai, the volcanic vent in Verde Valley was beautifully lit up by the rising of the sun. As a vent, she is tied directly with the only volcano in the valley, House Mountain.

I walked with a song in my heart to one of the sacred spaces I have been led to in the area I live–a place where I wanted to give thanks and ask the special blessing and guidance of the spirit of this place, who I name El Shaddai, and who manifests as a large breast-shaped mountain which is a volcano vent directly related to House Mountain, an extinct volcano in the Sedona-Cottonwood area.

Having accomplished my objective, I returned to the house to get ready for our hike. I looked again at my topographical map of the area and traced the shape that might be the energy line of the landscape serpent, but I just couldn’t discern the trail of the energy clearly. “I’m glad Eileen is working on this too,” I thought. “I’m stumped. All I know is we are supposed to start at West Fork, up Oak Creek Canyon.”

I slipped on my hiking boots, my jaguar print cap, and my turtle backpack, into which I put offerings of seeds, cornmeal, and tobacco, water, money, and my flute. Later, I wished I had also taken a small notebook and a couple pens and some colored pencils. I could have put them to good use. We always have these, plus the topo map of where we’re going to be working.

Here is a photo of my turtle back pack, the topo maps and everything else I will need for our hike.

Eileen picked me up right at 11 a.m. and we went off to our usual lunch place, the Wild Flower, to catch up and compare notes on what guidance we may have received for how to proceed. As we ate, I told her a soul retrieval story about my raven guide, and as I finished I looked up and saw, through the window behind Eileen, a big desert raven winging its way towards us. Then it veered in the direction of West Fork, which is where we had planned to go. Double check!

Double checks are a natural and synchronistic occurrence when you are working in your FLOW. When we’re in our FLOW, synchronicities occur all the time, many times a day. That’s how you know you’re in your Flow. And a “double check” is a repeat of an event or thought or occurrence that has already happened. It happens again to validate that what you saw/experience/heard/know, is accurate. In our business of Walking the Land, we never do anything without that “double check.” And it will come within minutes or hours after the event (whatever it is).

Eileen took out a napkin (she also forgot her writing and sketching materials) and drew what she thought might be the path of the Water Serpent’s energy. She wasn’t sure she had it right either, but we both agreed it was very big, and that probably the head was up at the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, and the tail way down by Mingus mountain, which figures largely in the ancient Yavapai creation myths. “We’ll know as we go what to do and where to go next” we assured each other as we finished lunch and got into her car. “Our guides have never failed us yet.”

We drove up Oak Creek Canyon, which Eileen remarked was like a birth canal. I agreed. We pulled into the parking lot and were relieved to see there were only a few cars there. We wanted to be able to do our ceremony, which would include drumming and fluting, with some privacy. As always, once we had our gear, we stopped to ask permission of the spirits of the area to enter and work with the land and them in a sacred manner. We offered tobacco and cornmeal to the seven directions, and received permission. Just as we finished, I noticed a big black desert raven walking near us through some tall grasses. After a moment, it lifted off and flew low near us as it gave a few caws as if it had been waiting for us and was welcoming us. Double check.

A short way down the path we came to a very well-constructed bridge over Oak Creek. As we walked over it I said, “This feels like the bridge between two worlds—ordinary reality and the spirit world of shamans.” Eileen smiled and agreed, and we continued on our way.
We could feel the energy changing as we approached a huge womb shaped area bordered by the waters of Oak Creek.

Here I am on the bridge at West Fork. This bridge was created to span Oak Creek below. Eileen and I call it a bridge between the worlds…that on one side is the world we live in and after we cross it, we’re into the magic of the other dimensions that are so near in West Fork. Here, the veils are thinned, which means we can communicate much easier with those spirits who are here as guardians to the many sacred places that abound here.

Across from us, huge frozen icicles of water hung on the sides of the towering cliffs. We exclaimed at their beauty, and how unusual it was to see this, which was the result of a recent cold spell up in the canyon. We found a place to rock hop across the creek, and followed a narrow path through the forest until Eileen stopped and said, “Here. Here is where we need to leave the path and go up the hill.
This may be where the Tibetan monks go to do ceremony when they come here.” I nodded and we set off through the pine needles and dead branches on the forest floor. Soon we were huffing and puffing from the steep climb. We noticed where there were markers of the energy trail we wanted to follow: gateways made by trees, the way light fell on the landscape, and pure intuition. We would double check with each other when we felt we were supposed to turn one direction or another, and in this way, were led to a special guardian rock that was a sign we were in the area we were looking for to do our ceremony and seek guidance for our quest.

We paused at the rock, gave offerings, and laid our hands on it, giving and receiving energy and information. I felt I needed to go “further up and further in.” Eileen was content to stay by the rock, but humored me by continuing on. We scrambled up and up a steep slope towards a ledge in the rock above us, a cave above that, and a huge V in the sky created by the coming together of two soaring cliffs which lined up with the guardian rock at which we had paused. We felt a strong energy alignment of all these features in the landscape.

Here is what we saw down below. We both knew there was ‘something’ up on that huge red rock. Above the red rock are two huge dolomite rocks that form a “V”. Where there are V’s this is where energy is funneling down and it was perfectly aligned with this red rock formation. We knew from looking at the geology and placement of it all that this was an important and probably, sacred location. We would have to get permission to approach it and hopefully find out more.

My heart beat faster as I got closer to a particular place on the ledge above us. Suddenly I stopped and knew that I had been here before. I began to cry, unexpectedly, and it felt like tears of relief and joy at being “home” in a place I had not been for a very long time.
With tears running down my face, I continued to climb until I reached the place that was calling me: a little alcove where I could sit on flat rock, nestled against a rock wall behind me, and a shelf of rock over my head. Eileen joined me, and said she felt this was the place for us to do our ceremony and ask for guidance and blessing. She smiled and gently patted my hand and said, “We were girls who played here together many lifetimes ago.” And I felt in my heart right away that this was so.

Here I am climbing the very steep slope to get to the Snake Clan rock.

Eileen took out sage in a shell. We purified ourselves and offered blessing prayers to the directions. Then Eileen took out the drum she had made last spring, with the rainbow snake she had pained on it, and as she drummed we both closed our eyes and journeyed.

Here is Eileen with her Bololokan drum that she made and painted. When she starts drumming, we close our eyes, shift into non-ordinary reality to see who is there and if we can not only introduce ourselves to them, but hopefully be given information and guidance.

I saw the energetic form of the huge Water Serpent Bololokon in my mind’s eye. To me, it was very clear that it’s head (or maybe two heads?) were at the San Francisco peaks. Then I was instructed to get water from a spring along the canyon, and take some of it to every place we would be going, and offer it as part of our ceremony of honoring and awakening the serpent energy. I was also told that Eileen had very powerful snake medicine going way, way back, and that she would get specific directions of where we were to go, and when, to awaken the serpent energy that snaked through the whole area. My medicine was bird medicine, and we would be welcomed and guided by birds in various ways as we went along. I was told it was my job to be especially aware of this.

At last! I’m up and leaning against the Snake Clan Rock! This is a home for me. I was overjoyed to once more, physically connect with a lifetime that I’d had here over ten thousand years ago. Eileen double checked me on it by telling me she saw the two of us as very young girls running along the edge of this wonderful red rock formation. She said it had been “a long time ago, like ten thousand years or more.” Another double check. I was sooooo happy to be HOME! When you can travel to areas that call your heart that means you had a happy lifetime in that past life incarnation. When you can go there and physically connect, what happens is that past life memories, skills and knowledge are automatically downloaded into our unconsciousness. And from there, we can begin to automatically utilize them now, in this lifetime. THAT is why it’s important to travel around the world to locations that call you. It’s like opening up your personal incarnation treasure chest of knowledge.

By this time, Eileen was done drumming and our journeys came to an end. She immediately got out a napkin and pen and drew what she had been shown–the path of the Water Serpent from one place to another. It was somewhat different from what she had guessed when we were at lunch, but it confirmed that the head was north at the “grandmothers” or San Francisco peaks, and the tail at Mingus Mountain. Our course had been revealed to us, just as we asked! Eileen also saw her great grandmother spirit, an ancient Snake Priestess in white—-but that is her story to tell.

We spent some time just being in this beautiful, sacred place after we shared our journeys. As we started back down the hill, I remembered I had left my hat up on the ledge on which we had been sitting. I scrambled back up the slope and found it easily, and also discovered a little path and ridge which led to a larger ledge that ran the width of the steep embankment. “We used to run and play up there as girls,” Eileen called from below me. And she was right, I could feel it, and remembered the place very well. At the far end of the ledge, I found a path that led quite easily down the slope we had laboriously scrambled up, and we both made a mental note to look for this path next time we came. It made access to our special place a lot easier. The rest of the way down to the path, we noted the gateways, the guardian rock, a huge guardian pine tree, and the lay of the land so that we could find the place again. As we came back to the place where the icicles hung from the rock cliff, Eileen gasped, pointed, and said “that is what the grandmother’s hair looked like–just like that!” Double check.

Over the creek we hopped from stone to stone, then back over the “bridge between worlds” and through a field back to our car.
I invited Eileen to stop for a coffee on the way back to my house, and we did. It used to be called the Raven Heart Cafe, and is a favorite coffee shop of mine. We had two excellent coffee drinks, a good talk about our experience, and then got back on the road, ending our first adventure of this season with a hug and expressions of gratitude.

Hey, we psychic hunters know how to work hard and play hard! I suggested to Eileen after we left West Fork, to stop by the Heart of Sedona coffee shop for a latte. She wanted a mocha! It would give us a chance to talk about our experiences some more, do more note taking and journaling before we split up and went home. Here I am with our lattes. A great end to a wonderful day of discovery and knowledge. We’re on our way in working with Bololokan’s energy trail that weaves in the landscape of Verde Valley.

Stick with us! We’ll be teaching as we go. Join us for our next adventure. Eileen will be posting the blogs as we reach these important energy points in Bololokan’s movement in our valley. Blessings.