01
Deep Healing Work
In the Wirárika understanding, physical, mental, and emotional symptoms can have roots at the level of spirit. Traditional healing supports renewed wellbeing through life’s inevitable challenges.
Wirárika traditional healing
Tending the fire
within.
A path of heart, healing, and wisdom with Lawrence I. Messerman, Ph.D.—initiated mara’akame, healer, and ritual leader.
A living tradition
Healing begins by
remembering our
relationship with life.
Lawrence is an initiated mara’akame in the Wirárika tradition of Mexico’s western Sierra Madre mountains and canyons.
His work invites people to meet life’s physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges through an ancient practice rooted in relationship—with the sacred, with the living world, and with the deeper purpose of the soul.
Discover the forms of careChapter I
A healer’s journey
From dis-ease to purposeBy outward appearances, Lawrence’s early life in Santa Barbara was full: a loving partnership, natural beauty, and an intellectually rich career. Beneath the surface, cycles of insomnia, anxiety, and depression persisted despite conventional treatment.
A new direction
Searching for another way, he met don Eliot Cowan, a mara’akame and ritual leader in the Wixáritari tradition. Their work began simply—attentive listening, spiritual cleansing with feathered muvieri, and quiet counsel—but over time Lawrence experienced a profound shift toward joy and meaning.
A calling answered
A series of dreams revealed a calling to become a healer. Lawrence entered a demanding six-year apprenticeship, making annual pilgrimages to sacred medicine beings in Mexico and learning from elders including don José Sandoval de la Cruz, don David Wiley, and don Efrén González Carrillo.
Initiated as a mara’akame in 2004, he continues the lifelong disciplines of pilgrimage, ceremony, and devotion that keep the medicine alive.
“My life purpose is to bring deep healing to people of all walks of life during a time of great challenge and need.”
Chapter II
Healing work
Care for spirit, story, and the living world
Ways of working together
Sessions are available online and in person at a traditional fire council house near Carrollton, Georgia. Each form of care is approached with respect, discretion, and attention to the whole person.
02
Spiritual Counseling
Healing also means learning to walk in a better way—with ourselves, with others, and with the living world. In-person or online counsel supports that unfolding journey.
03
Specialized Rituals
Spiritual marriages, baptisms, and other rites mark passages of life through the presence, protection, and support of the sacred.
Chapter III
Affiliations
Lineage, community, and service
The circles that hold the work
Tradition lives
Tradition lives
through relationship.
Lawrence’s practice is sustained by elders, peers, sacred places, and organizations devoted to keeping ceremonial knowledge alive and available in a good way.
01Grupo Tatewarí
The Grandfather Fire medicine group—mara’akate born outside the traditional Wirárika homelands and recognized by elders there.
02Sacred Fire
Lawrence is trained and initiated as a Firekeeper, hosting community fires and programs within an international network.
03Blue Deer Center
Lawrence serves on the staff of this retreat center located on sacred land in Margaretville, New York.
Begin a conversation
Come sit by the fire.
If this work speaks to something in you, reach out to Lawrence with your questions or to explore whether a session may be supportive.
Contact Lawrence