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You are listening to Insights at the Edge. Today I speak with Nicki Scully. Nicki is an author, healer, and teacher, and has been teaching shamanic arts and the Egyptian mysteries since 1983. She is the author of several books, including Shamanic Mysteries of Egypt, as well as the Sounds True audio learning program Becoming an Oracle: Connecting to the Divine Source for Information and Healing. I spoke with Nicki about her role being what she calls “a journey master,” in which she facilitates people engaging with shamanic journeys or oracular journeys.
Tami Simon: Nicki, I have the feeling that many Sounds True listeners are not familiar with you and your work. And I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about how you became “journey master” and what it means to be a journey master.
Nicki Scully: Well, I’ll tell you a little bit about where I came from, because I think I’ve been a seeker ever since I was a child. I grew up in Beverly Hills, of all unlikely places, from a secular Jewish family. Three of my grandparents were immigrants from Russia and Lithuania, and it was always instilled in me to reason and figure out things and question things. And in the early 60s, I kind of took a leap into exploring consciousness through psychedelics in the vanguard of that movement, in 1964. And I think that was my first experience of any kind of oracularism, although I didn’t know it at that time. But it was also my first experience into journeying, into moving beyond the ordinary, and I kind of dropped out after that. I dropped into the musical scene and the psychedelic movement that was happening in San Francisco.
I eventually hooked up with Rock Scully, one of the first managers of the Grateful Dead and for those first twenty years. And it was at those concerts where something very magical happened. I can only speak from my own personal experience of it. It was as though these gatherings, these concerts, became a temple in which I found myself praying and receiving information and guidance. And I know that my experience was unique for me, although I think that it was that possibility that drew so many people to that music. And it was through the Grateful Dead that I got to go to Egypt in 1978 when they played three concerts at the seat of the Sphinx, with the Great Pyramids as the backdrop. And that was the pivotal point in my life where everything seemed to change. It was as though Egypt became an oracle for me. And I kept returning again and again to try and understand the kind of magic and synchronicity that I felt there. And I found myself in the insightful moments, in those monuments and temples, making commitments—not as though I was remembering past life, but somehow achieving a level of clarity where I had a sense of my sacred purpose, my reason for being here at this time.
Tami Simon: So help me understand exactly what it was like for you. I am curious. I am imagining going back 1978, a concert with the Grateful Dead, at the Sphinx, at the Pyramids. What did you hear? What messages did you hear that gave you this sense of purpose? And what was the purpose?
Nicki Scully: Well, this first part of it was this experience of an extended time. I was there for two weeks. And every moment was fraught with meaning. Every, every word. Every exchange. Every experience had a sense of magic, of heightened awareness that took me to an edge where I am thankful that I had conscious friends around me that could kind of pull me down. I think that is where I learned that the Sphinx was an anchor…that if I went down to the Sphinx in the morning I could ground myself in the energy of that altar. And what is interesting is that it is the Sphinx to this day that grounds me into those mysteries, into that magic, and is also used in the becoming an oracle projects to ground the people at the beginning of the work so that they can experience these journeys and travel into the heights of new awareness, meet teachers in other realms who can inform us, and be able to do that in a safe and grounded way.
After I came back from Egypt I knew that I needed to start studying. I needed to find teachers. And it was as a result of the…I think it was the first four trips in 1978 and 1979 that I solidified my awareness that I needed to commit to service as a healer. And I didn’t even know what that meant at the time. And so I left the Grateful Dead family. I left my husband. I moved to Eugene, Oregon. And instantly found a teacher. And her way of instructing was through guided visualization and initiations or rites of passage that would happen within this journey format. And that became the basis of the way I not only learn but the way that I’ve learned to share what I know and have experienced. And so that is how I started out developing this process of guided journeys as a way of inside guidance and initiation.
Tami Simon: Can you explain a little more what you mean by initiation? The journeyer, the person, the seeker, is being initiated by whom and into what?
Nicki Scully: Well that depends on the journey and the quest itself. When I first studied with my teacher Nadia Eagles, who used this form in transmitting her teachings, I found myself in a room full of people who were able to describe their visions and their experiences and how things looked and felt. But for me it was different. I couldn’t see what she described. I could occasionally feel it, but they weren’t necessarily related, or I couldn’t make that connection. But what would happen is she would say, “Okay, we will do this journey.” And she would affect a change or simply say that this change had been made and that it was possible to do something, like, for example, psychic surgery.
And then what would happen for me is the very next day somebody would come into my home and say, “I am in terrible pain. I have this horrible abscess. I am afraid to go to the dentist. Help me.” And I could apply what I was told that I could do, and lo and behold it happened. And so for me the result in the natural world supported and gave validation to these rites that I was engaged in with this teacher. Whereas all of the other students would come back with visions and stories and all these colorful experience, but I was the one who would take it into the world immediately and things would happen.
Tami Simon: Now let’s just pause for one moment here and look a little deeper into psychic surgery. Can you explain that?
Nicki Scully: Yes, it is a form of healing that I describe and teach in my book Alchemical Healing, but it is one of many, many, many techniques and not the first one I would recommend people to utilize because it is very much like the western surgery where you actually enter with your energy into a person’s body to manipulate and change things. Since I learned that in the early 80s, I have learned a lot more subtle techniques that are equally powerful. But at the time, I think I required more dramatic means of recognizing the capacity that we all have to heal ourselves and one another.
Tami Simon: Wow. Amazing. Now tell me a little bit, Nicki, about the Becoming an Oracle project and what the origins of this project were, how this came into being originally.
Nicki Scully: Well it started with the Egyptian mysteries. I live in Eugene. I have been living in the same home for twenty-eight years. And over time we’ve actually consecrated an Egyptian temple. And we did this through various rites and rituals that would come to us in preparation for a series that went on for about twelve years, twelve or thirteen years, of Egyptian mysteries retreats. And I primarily worked with the writer and scholar Normandy Ellis, who is amazing and if you ever have an opportunity to work with her, she is really a magnificent writer and teacher. And the kind of magic that we developed and conveyed took us to a point where in I think it was 2002, as we move close to the time when we do this work, that is when the information would come in. It would be a mystery to us until we are just about ready to teach it. And then usually my husband and I would go into ceremony and look for the work that was wanting to come in. And then Normandy and I would work with that as a basis.
Well, Mark saw a vision of Isis squatting like the Great Mother, and this was the black Isis, the dark Isis, in this state of ecstasy as though she were in a continuous birthing of creation. And as we delve more deeply into his vision it became apparent that we were to…the work that was coming through was the work of becoming an oracle. And when I conveyed to Normandy what we were about to do, she was a little nervous and she found in her journals that five years prior, that was the point at which she stopped. And she knew it was time to take that dive to not just learn about the deities, but move into the place of actually speaking for them. So we developed and taught Becoming an Oracle back then, but it was distinctly Egyptian mysteries, where we learned how to dive using the symbolism of Egypt and the deities of Egypt to convey how if creation was a wave you could enter into the depths to find and tickle the source of creation itself, to provide the impetus and the energy to be moved forward to different areas of the way for different perceptions. And ultimately to be able to move your consciousness in front of the wave so you can perceive what is coming at you. And if you are strong enough and focused enough, perhaps even influence or change that possibility.
And when I began talking with Sounds True about doing this work, that is what I had in mind. But I was asked to be more general than to focus on Egypt. And so it actually…a really interesting point, Tami, that I think you’ll like is that it was when I was shown the cover, the beautiful cover that your art department designed for this program, that the next level and inspiration came. Because I looked at the cover and it was gorgeous, and my first thought was, why is Horus on the cover? What is his relationship to oracular medicine, which by this time I was looking at becoming Becoming an Oracle as a way of making a new kind of medicine. And so once again Mark and I went into ceremony and went looking to find why Horus was on the cover of this work, and that is when we brought in the final piece, the piece in this program where a person can fully realize the possibilities of being able to elevate their consciousness to a point where they can see with the focus of the hawk to anything on our planet or any place in our three-dimensional reality and at the same time be directed from above like a new antenna or a new sensory organ awakening to receive information from throughout the universe and be able to explore new reaches of knowledge and insight. And then from that place everything in between the Sphinx that is the anchoring at the beginning that started for me in 1978 and the height of becoming Horus of the horizon that was given to us last summer in preparation for this program.
Tami Simon: Can you tell me just a little bit about Horus?
Nicki Scully: Horus is…there are many manifestations of Horus. He is most known as being the son of Isis and Osiris who was divinely conceived after his father Osiris was murdered. And through the tremendous love and tantric knowledge of Isis to be able to raise her dead husband sufficiently to conceive their son. And he was raised to avenge the death of his father and inherit that divine, enlightened rulership. Well when you look at the story of Horus, he started as an impetuous warrior and through his balance with Set to achieve dominion over the lower urges of being and our shadow aspects; he matured into the enlightened ruler. And every pharaoh is called Horus. And Horus is the symbol of the enlightened ruler, one who has fought that internal battle and been victorious in the maturation as an authentic, fully realized being.
Tami Simon: So in a journey if I am connecting to this energy of Horus or the energy of Isis, what is your view…what am I connecting with? I mean, these are legends and stories, or these are actual archetypal energies that I can contact?
Nicki Scully: I certainly experience them as archetypal energies that we can contact, whether they are inside ourselves or outside of ourselves doesn’t matter as much as that it works. That the symbols and the hieroglyphs, the sacred glyphs in Egypt, if you look at them for awhile, they stimulate and awaken, almost as they are awakening memory inside our DNA and turn on those lights and bring us into the intentioned awareness. And so we learned what the journeys are that come through me and through my work are designed to catalyze and stimulate a person into a deeper awareness according to the intention of the journey.
Tami Simon: Can you give me an example of what a potential intention might be in a journey for becoming an oracle?
Nicki Scully: Yes, I think I will go to the ancestor cave, because that was based in my personal vision quest. And when I went to this cave, this very remote and little seen by anyone in thousands of years cave in the middle of the western desert…
Tami Simon: So this was not a journey in non-ordinary time. You actually physically went to this cave.
Nicki Scully: I physically went there.
Tami Simon: Okay.
Nicki Scully: And I ceremonied there and vision quested there. And in that cave are some handprints from maybe 6500 or 7000 years ago, at least, and there is also carvings of lions paws and antelope with antlers in the middle of the desert that had to be verdant when those people lived there and left their mark in that cave. So what happened for me in that cave, the intention that I went there for was because I was told in guidance that I needed to find this cave and go in there to submit myself to the rituals and rites that I was engaged in writing for the book that I co-authored with Linda Starwolf, Shamanic Mysteries of Egypt and the Anubis Oracle, and that before I could teach those rites I had to undergo them. And so this was before an Egypt trip that was going to be the first time that I shared the rites I was working on. And when I went into the cave in the night and spent the night there, I connected to the ancestors in a way that was new for me. I did experience many of the rites that I was learning while I was sequestered in this cave, but I also realize that just like the caves in India or Tibet or Australia, these caves are doorways or portals where you can connect to many forms of knowledge. And for me it was a recognition of those ancestors whose handprints were in this cave.
it was some months later when I was preparing to speak at a large shaman’s conference and had told them I was going to be doing Becoming an Oracle as I went to look for what I was going to present the ancestors from that cave came to me and said, “We want to help. We want you to tell our story and connect people to us so that they can heal their frayed and tattered ancestral lines.” Because we would not be here but for the strength and tenacity of our ancestors. And so in this journey of Becoming an Oracle I have people approach this cave with the same reverence and respect that I did. And enter into it and place their hand upon the hands of the ancestors, at which moment there is this direct interaction. It is almost like an electrical jolt where you connect through time, regardless of where your ancestry is. This portal somehow magically or not so magically if you really fully understand it, connects those lines and provides an opportunity where knowledge or information or memory can come through and where you get the sense that you can actually heal the links between you and your ancestors and straighten the bonds that go from you to the past and forward from you to the future. And I think it is an important healing that we all require. We have to remember and honor how we got here and what we hold for the future. And a journey such as this provides that and it is an oracle, because if you listen you hear the wisdom of the ancestors. And if you are clear enough and if it is done in a sacred way, you actually can bring back the articulation of what you hear.
know how often dreams, they are so profound in that the minute you go and try and articulate them, they vanish. But in doing this work, such as in the journeys and becoming an oracle, you have the opportunity to enter consciously in a sacred way, with reverence, and you sustain your consciousness. I ask that people have a journal or a recorder or some way that as soon as they are complete they can get it down and concretize it so it is there. And then that useful intuited knowledge becomes concretized and available.
Tami Simon: So you physically went to this cave in Egypt, but then you were able to turn it into a guided visualization such that it is a doorway for someone to connect to their ancestors, whatever their ancestry is?
Nicki Scully: That’s correct. And the response when I’ve done this work, either at conferences or in classes, has been quite remarkable. I mean, the experience…I mean, the proof of the pudding is in the experience with these journeys. They either work for you or they don’t.
Tami Simon: Now I can imagine that someone’s intention, especially with the idea of oracular medicine, is “I want to know what the future is.” I mean I want to know if I stay with this partner that they are the best partner for me versus this other partner or where is my life partner anyway, and that that would be the inspiration for wanting to explore oracular medicine. Is I want to know is going to happen.
Nicki Scully: And that is true for many people. I think that when I take up my oracles, what I find whether I am doing a reading on someone or connecting for myself is not so much what the future is but what I can bring to it so that whatever it is, I can handle it with grace and ease. It is the clarity of the moment that allows you to see whatever it is in relationship to a larger picture within which what might appear unsettling through our ordinary tunnel vision has a relationship to a larger whole where there is perfection. And so if I am reading for someone and they pull a…well, the oracle deck that I created, the Anubis Oracle, I would have to say that there are no bad cards.
Tami Simon: Can you tell me who is Anubis?
Nicki Scully: Anubis is the jackal god of Egypt, the underworld figure, the other son of Osiris with Isis’s sister. And he is like the heart shaman priest that presided over the Hasped festival rites, which are the renewal rites of the pharaoh, which is what we’ve put forth in the new interpretation or the new iteration in the shamanic mysteries of Egypt in the Anubis Oracle. And so he is…he is the psychopomp, the one who walks between the worlds and knows all the pathways that lead from the darkness back to the light. And so it is his work in the oracle that I created with Linda Starwolf and that I’ve been learning to use and what I use to give readings. And so in the death card, which would be Osiris, represents renewal, regeneration, transmutation, rebirth. And I’ve always been very leery of going to readers without giving it a great deal of thought and knowing it is the right time and the right person because when you consult another person as you seek oracular advice, you are giving them power. Whatever they say is going to influence you greatly because you are investing in their articulation and their interpretation of what their oracular device or tool presents. And so I think great care needs to be taken when someone takes a position of being willing to guide a person in that way or tell them what their future is going to be.
And so that is another really good reason for studying Becoming an Oracle because you learn how to connect directly without intersession through these various oracular tools to teachers and guides in the netherworld, the spirit world. That as you practice this work you learn to trust and the infallibility of really true and clear connection to that well-spring of intelligence and knowledge that I believe is at the source of all oracular traditions and all spiritual paths.
Tami Simon: Now you start off each of the journeys by suggesting that people practice something called “The Heart Breath.” And I am curious if you can tell me what that is and why you start off the journeys that way.
Nicki Scully: Absolutely. I am finding that this simple breath contains within it the necessary ingredients for grounding, for centering, for invoking the allies and the intelligence, and directing your intention. It starts with focusing on your heart center. It is very important that we learn to perceive from our hearts rather than our mind or emotion or any of the other centers to which we have natural proclivities, because the heart is the place that…it is like the nexus point that is connected to the full potential. It is like the center of the circle. So we put the focus there and that places us at the center. And then we feed our heart fire with love. And love is the furl and that brightens our inner heart flame.
n I have people breathe as though they are inhaling from the heart of the earth, inviting the power of the earth and the intelligence of the earth and the elements of the earth. And pulling all that vitality and energy up into their body to their heart to join with the love that their pouring on their heart flame. And then I have them draw from the heart of the cosmos, pulling the stellar energies and the energies from above and all the intelligence of the stars in our solar system and pull that down into us. And it is like creating a bellows with our breath to make our own heart fire stronger. And that glow that we make and with our intention, it draws to us our spiritual allies and gives us the fortitude and the perception of clarity from which we enter into each of these journeys.
Tami Simon: Now in the Becoming an Oracle series you actually teach nineteen different journeys. And I am curious…you shared one with us, the example of the cave and contacting our ancestry. I am curious if you can share, just describe, one of the other journeys and why it is special to you.
Nicki Scully: There is a journey. It’s number eleven. It is the sacred pipe of the Lakota. And the reason that that journey is special to me is because I’ve been a pipe carrier, the Lakota word is chanupa, and I’ve carried chanupa since 1974, so that is thirty-five years now. And I never looked at it as an oracle. It was my way to pray and my way to ask for and receive guidance. And it wasn’t until we were engaged in bringing in these journeys that when this journey came in and the ancestors, the spirits behind this sacred pipe, came forward and offered the pipe ceremony into this body of work…that was probably the most moving moment in the entire creation of this project, because that is my most precocious and most sacred connection to the universal harmony. And so to realize that it is actually an oracular tool for divining clear guidance, I just never have seen it in that way. And that is to me the most sacred of the journeys in this Becoming an Oracle program.
Tami Simon: So how does engaging in a pipe ceremony…I mean, I would be visualizing it on one of these journeys, where is the oracular part of that? I ask for a message as I am inhaling the pipe?
Nicki Scully: Actually, no. Not in this particular journey. In this particular journey, the ancestors come forth and share with us how they learned to pray. And in the engagement with the elders in this ceremony, in this spirit ceremony, you’re taken to a place of such reverence. It is only at the end of the ceremony when it is your turn to smoke, to actually hold the pipe and make your prayer, and when the smoke is released the vision comes in the smoke. It is different than most of the other journeys because we don’t think of the sacred pipe as an oracular tool. But it is such a deeply spiritual medicine in that when you are connected in that way, you are connected to original source, the sacred Buffalo Calf Woman, the white buffalo calf woman, whose story I also tell in this program.
it is not really a divergence from an oracular tool. It is a window into another way of experiencing oracular medicine. That doesn’t mean that everybody should go out and get a pipe, because that would be totally inappropriate, but it will touch certain people and call them to find where there are ceremonies and lodges that they can attend and if they have a resonance then find out more in a more personal way. What was surprising to me was the strength and the power of the ceremony was as profound as being in one. When I gave it, even when it was being recorded.
Tami Simon: So you are saying that the smoke that comes out of the pipe…I look at the smoke and will see potentially a vision or a response to a question in the shape in the smoke.
Nicki Scully: That was what we were told to offer as the oracular potential for that ceremony…
Tami Simon: Interesting.
Nicki Scully: …in this work. I found it interesting because I had never quite looked at it that way.
Tami Simon: Well when I think of this term “oracular medicine” I can imagine, you know, people reading tea leaves or looking in a crystal ball and seeing images, so is that part of what you mean by oracular medicine?
Nicki Scully: Well, yes. I know that when you are talking about crystal balls…I mean, my first introduction to any spiritual or oracular tools was with crystals in the 70s. And I am sitting in front of my altar while I am talking to you and looking at two beautiful crystal balls on my altar and realizing that, yes, we actually connect with crystals in the Mayan journey where we visit Chitzinitza and are introduced to a crystal skull and we are also taught by villagers about scrying, crystal gazing, and water scrying. And so those tools are part of this program.
Tami Simon: What is water scrying?
Nicki Scully: It is a way that you can hold a bowl of water and look into it and see visions. In Peru there is this one place at Machu Picchu that actually has these sort of almost bowl like things in the ground where we were told they were used for scrying in that way as well. It is an age-old practice that seers used to get information. It was when I taught Becoming an Oracle initially many years ago that the concept of oracular medicine came to me and I think it is because basically I am a healer at heart and everything I do I am looking for its healing potential and how it can be used to bring us healing. For example, if one is looking at a diagnosis of cancer, that could be just horrifying and devastating and if one can have an oracular experience wherein they can see with clarity the potential of such a journey if it were to happen as a gift of knowledge and experience, they are not going to enter it with fear or the same fear as somebody as someone who just sees it as a doorway to death. I say this as a cancer survivor who has faced down this myself and had to look for the silver lining to carry me through.
Tami Simon: Did your work with oracles help with your own cancer diagnosis?
Nicki Scully: Absolutely.
Tami Simon: How?
Nicki Scully: Well I am trying to remember exactly. The image that is coming to mind is actually of a card that someone sent me. It was a Volkswagen that was growing grass all over it, and he wrote “oh I hear you have the big ‘C.’ I can’t wait to see what you learn and share with us when you get to the other side.” And that is the card that I posted to my bed to remind me that I was on a vision quest, that I was seeking to understand and learn and share and support through my own experience.
So I am becoming an oracle. I am more engaged in being the alchemist and I think the implementation of this oracular way of looking at things is a furthering of my studies as an alchemist.
Tami Simon: And what do you mean by that? Being an alchemist?
Nicki Scully: My life body of work, or the one that I spent twenty-five years researching before I published, is Alchemical Healing: A Guide to Spiritual, Physical, and Transformational Medicine and it is a series of rites and initiations that empower people to be able to heal themselves and others, that is where I first introduced “The Heart Breath,” that is where I diverge from my teacher to allow the rites that had to be transmitted from person to person to be able to be self-initiated. I believe that if we get engaged in being special and having the power to initiate others or provide others with what they need that separates us. I think everybody needs to realize that they have within themselves the power to transform, the power to heal, the power to turn the lead of whatever the matter is that needs transforming to be able to witness that process of turning that lead into alchemical gold, which is the enlightening and spiritualizing of whatever the matter is.
Tami Simon: Well, what I like so much about what you are offering in this program, Becoming an Oracle is, you know, you mentioned that people go to readers and give so much of their power away to somebody else to tell them what may or may not happen in their future. But here an individual is seeking their own guidance and coming up with their own answers and then the responsibility is fully one’s own.
S: Absolutely. And I think that the problem of requiring intercessors between ourselves and god in most religious institutions limits people and keeps them from their own direct connection to divinity and source. And so the tools in Becoming an Oracle allow people to experience many, many roads, many different traditions, that help them to tap into that wellspring of knowledge and guidance and clarity. And that different people will resonate with different ones. But the order in which these are given is done so for a reason. Everything is kind of layered to take you through this odyssey and into a place where you really do have an opportunity to fully recognize your own abilities and power as an oracle.
Tami Simon: Finally Nicki I just have one final question for you, which is in your own life, what is it that your questioning or working on that you want oracular wisdom to help you with?
Nicki Scully: It is pretty much always the same. Well, not always, I mean it started when I was younger. Who am I? Why am I here? And over time and development and many commitments and many, you know, my own maturation, it is how can I use whatever is being shown to be in service to my own healing and the healing of all my relations? It is pretty much service oriented because no matter what the trial or tribulation I happen to be finding myself in the moment…I am always trying to look for, okay, how is what I am going to learn from this going to be able to help and serve others?
Tami Simon: Wonderful. Well, thank you. Thank you for much.
Nicki Scully: Thank you. I’ve really enjoyed talking with you today.
Tami Simon: Yeah. Likewise.
