Emaho – Awakening The Spirit
Emaho is a Native American Indian man sitting right in the centre of transformative bonfire. The most striking initial first impression is how he holds eye contact with you; it’s as if he looks right through you but not in an intimidating way. My photographer and I had just arrived out of the blue at his annual event in Glasgow. There was not the usual well you didn’t make an appointment, no groupies dived in to ‘handle’ the situation he accommodated us totally himself. Openly. That common sense approach is the tone of his whole set up and is sadly missing in other spiritual circles.
He encouraged the photographer to take as many pictures as she liked, whatever she liked and however. There was to be no boundary probably because there is no boundary around an open heart and Emaho is a shaman who has just that. You soon begin to get a feeling that he has nothing at all to hide – nothing. Shamans or Medicine Men exist in all indigenous cultures. They have the power to heal, to receive messages and some might say journey to other worlds where parts of your soul may be.
The day’s events started off with a well groomed Emaho facing an audience of about 150 people. I was concerned that the event may be rehearsed and very evangelical. Those fears soon dissipated when Emaho started by connecting, through eye contact, to every person in the audience – one at a time. Instantaneously the atmosphere became very intimate. The look has a knowingness, an acceptance and reminded me of the ‘Eye of the Beloved’ that Sufi poets so often write about. In that space with him two really become one and you realise the shamanistic