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Rak Razam is an alchemical storyteller with his finger on the pulse of tomorrow and the heart of today. A screenwriter, documentary film maker, author, journalist and plant medicine ambassador, his focus is on the cultural paradigm birthing in this brave new world.
Author
I started out as a freelance journalist writing about consciousness and spirituality for magazines and blogs. Many of these articles were collected in an anthology I edited alongside other countercultural writers called The Journeybook. In 2006 I travelled to the Amazon in search of ayahuasca and to understand the role of shaman in the 21st century. The answers became the cult classic memoir, Aya: Awakenings, A Shamanic Odyssey, and the companion volume of interviews, The Ayahuasca Sessions. I also have contributions in other popular anthologies like Graham Hancock's The Divine Spark.
Podcaster
For ten years I was a leading alternative podcaster with my show, In a Perfect World, which led me to a host of other luminaries and to curate a collective sense of reality beyond the norm. I was also a contributing speaker on dozens of other podcasts sharing my wisdom.
Author
Aya Awakenings: A Shamanic Odyssey Your first book is always your baby, and this is my experiential travel memoir that birthed my voice onto the world stage. Three months in Peru sitting and drinking ayahuasca with over two dozen curanderos or shamans of the Amazon, learning about their culture and the way they see the world. Ayahuasca is a visionary medicine, it can heal, astound, and reveal an energetic ecology all around that communicates and calls us to be part of it. It opens up the heart, and the soul.
The Ayahuasca Sessions: Conversations with Amazonian Curanderos and Western Shamans This book is an in-depth collection of interviews with the curanderos or shamans, and the western practitioners and spokespeople for the medicine of ayahuasca. A companion to the travel memoir book, I interviewed these experts to craft an overall sense of the ayahuasca milieu. It can be read as a stand alone introduction to the people who practice the art of shamanism in the modern age, learning how they were initiated, how they work to help heal their patients, and how they connect to the inter-dimensional ecology plant medicines open up.
Author of the critically acclaimed book Aya Awakenings: A Shamanic Odyssey and the companion volume of interviews, The Ayahuasca Sessions, he is a frequent lecturer on ayahuasca and the shamanic revival sweeping the West. He wrote, produced and co-directed the ground-breaking visionary documentary Aya: Awakenings. His latest documentary series is with film maker Niles Heckman is Shamans of the Global Village.
Films
Aya Awakenings I started out adapting my book into a film narrative for the documentary Aya: Awakenings, retaining the power of the written memoir by using actual excerpts. In this way the "script" was actually a truncated overview of the central moments of the book, using voice over narration to match the visuals and action presented. It created a unique audio-visual spell for the senses. I produced and helped co-direct that film as well, realizing the power of my network to produce crowd source footage and resources to make the project come alive. Watching this is as close to the ayahuasca experience you can get without drinking the brew itself.
Shamans of the Global Village Episode 1 - The Sonoran Desert Toad The powerful natural psychoactive of 5-MeO-DMT was central to my Aya film, and became the centerpoint for episode one of the ongoing documentary series Shamans of the Global Village. With more and more westerners experiencing earth based shamanic medicines, I realized the role of medicine person was transforming in the 21st century, as this series documents.
Shamans of the Global Village Episode 2 - The Peyote Cactus When we were invited to attend the ancient Huichol people of Mexico's peyote pilgrimage in 2019, we had no idea of the sacred journey ahead. The marakame or shaman was an elder of his tribe who had been collecting and working with the hallucinogenic cactus peyote, or hikory as they call it, since a child. The challenge here was to document their three-day pilgrimage to Wirikuta, the holy land of the peyote, across the desert and the land, praying, sacrificing, and purifying along the way.
