Session Description: The Five Buddha Families, also known as the Five Wisdoms or Five Wisdom Energies, are a perspective on the five fundamental energies that make up our universe. Much like the Lakota Medicine Wheel, the Andean Chakana, or the Chinese Five Element system, the Five Buddha Families present a type of compass for navigating our world, as well as a rich and multi-layered symbol-code for diving into the heart of the matrix of existence itself. As a typology system, the Five Buddha Families also offer insight into our relationships and personal mode of operating in the world. In this session we’ll explore the qualities and characteristics of each of the Five Buddha Families, how they show up in ourselves and our lives, and how we can work with them as a tool for awakening. We’ll also connect the concepts underlying the Five Buddha Families to elemental/directional/typological systems from a variety of cultures, and imagine together how these systems might inform a Fourth Turning vision of Sacred World.

Bio: Tayel is a bridge between worlds and beyond borders; an apprentice weaver of stories, codes, songs and symbols honored to study beside many masters and wisdom traditions in this and previous lifetimes. A self-described “altar nerd”, she has dedicated the past two decades to deep immersion in traditional and syncretic ceremonial technologies, informed by Andean, Amazonian, Afro-Brazilian, Lakota, Wixárika, Daoist, and Vajrayana Buddhist cosmovisions. A winged migrator from cosmic origins unknown, Tayel is joyous to find home among the mountains, rivers, lakes, and forests of her beloved twin-sister home continent(s), Amerikua, in service to Planet Earth and the awakening of all beings.