Growing up in the tiny town of Florissant, Colo., Krystal Gauley had a heightened sense of the world. “(I) grew up very clairvoyant,” she said. “(I) could predict a lot of things, see a lot of things.”
When she was about 12, Gauley had a vision of the surrounding area on fire. “I saw it all burning,” she said, “and I said, ‘This’ll happen in a few years.'” A few years later, the Hayman fire swept through the area, burning nearly 150,000 acres and killing one Florissant woman.
Years later, Gauley parlayed what she described as gifts of clairvoyance and perception to become a practicing shaman.
Gauley, 32, has dusty blonde hair and light hazel eyes. Across one forearm, she has a tattoo of a totemic salmon; across the other, the words “Tears Are The Noble Language Of The Eyes.”
In addition to working as a massage therapist at Klondike Chiropractic, Gauley is a practicing shaman or, as she calls it, a shamanic practitioner.
She describes her role as a cross between psychiatrist, career counselor and priest.
Clients come to her with complaints ranging from the physical to the spiritual – she blesses homes, cures knee pain, provides career and life guidance, and deals with cases of possession by spirits – so far, though, never of the demonic variety.
Shamans occupy a unique role in a community, said Gretchen McKay, a practicing Zulu shaman and Gauley’s mentor. “They’re the therapists, they’re the diviners, they’re the medicine people,” McKay said. “They contribute to keeping balance and harmony in the community. They’re the mediators. They’re the spiritual compass.”
After meeting with her client, Gauley diagnoses what ails them by embarking on a “shamanic journey,” a state of altered consciousness induced by prolonged, rhythmic drumming or rattling.
“It changes your brainwaves to the dreamlike state,” Gauley said. While in this state – or “journeying” – Gauley said she meets with spirits and her client’s ancestors to determine the best way to address a client’s problems.
Gauley discovered shamanism in 2012, while getting her degree in psychology at Fort Lewis College in Colorado. There, she met members of the Ute and Blackfeet tribes, who brought her to sweat lodges and ceremonies.
After attending a shamanic workshop, Gauley said, she fell in love with the practice. “I realized, ‘Oh my God, yeah,'” she said. “This is exactly who I am and what I am.”
A vision during her first shamanic journey led her to McKay. “She took me down this eight month-long, shamanic, chakra-clearing path.”
One of her roles as a mentor, McKay said, is to instill key values in her students. “Cause no harm. Be ethical in all of your practices. Surrender to the guidance of the spirits and the divine,” she said. “Those are basics.”
Conditions Gauley encounters vary widely. Once, Gauley said, she was approached by a 30-year-old client who was married with a child. “She called me and she goes, ‘I think I’m going to give up everything and become a prostitute,'” Gauley said. “I said, ‘What? You need to come into my office.'”
The client was suffering, Gauley said, from a curse – one of the client’s ancestors had murdered a prostitute. The prostitute’s sister had gone to “a sorcerer of some sort” and cast a curse on the murderer’s bloodline: all the women in his family line would turn to prostitution at the age her sister was when she was murdered.
When the curse was lifted, her client called her back. “(She) says, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I did that,'” Gauley said. “‘And by the way,’ (she said), ‘I want you to know my sisters are both prostitutes.'”
Physical ailments, too, sometimes have spiritual causes, Gauley said. “(A client) came in with knee problems,” she said. “She had no injury, nothing that happened to have her knee hurting as bad as it had been.”
While performing a shamanic journey, Gauley said she received intimations that the girl’s grandmother was involved. “I said, ‘Did your grandmother have knee problems?'” Gauley said.
“She goes, ‘Actually, yeah, she went in for surgery on that knee and died in surgery.’ And I said, ‘Okay, (your) grandmother’s still hanging out with you.'”
Later, with revelation of a family secret, Gauley said, the grandmother passed on and the client’s knee problems disappeared.
Olivia Jaymes, a resident of Colorado Springs, Colo., saw Gauley for soul retrieval.
“She goes out and finds as many pieces of traumatized soul, if you will, and she brings them back,” said Jaymes. She found Gauley far more effective than other, more mainstream forms of counseling.
“I’ve been to so many counselors that I got to the point where I knew what they wanted me to say,” Jaymes said. When she discovered Gauley, “It was a huge turning point,” Jaymes said. “(She) helped me find me.”
Both Gauley and McKay say they realize much of their work may be dismissed as New Age quackery or even dark magic. But McKay said shamanism is growing in acceptance. “There’s a huge disconnect that’s being bridged very slowly,” said McKay. “Quantum physics, quantum science showed (people) that there was more than what we see.”
Gauley, who considers herself a Christian, said she avoids skeptics. “I respect their beliefs and opinions,” she said. “(But) if you want to argue about it, I literally walk away.”
There are other criticisms, too. Rosita Worl, president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute, a Juneau nonprofit that promotes Southeast Alaskan Native culture and tradition, said the practice may be culturally insensitive.
“Shamanism is very spiritual and very sacred,” Worl said. “From my experience at the national level, and my experience with other tribes, (Native people) have grown weary of this kind of disrespect.”
Worl said that the tribes that provided shamanic instruction should have the last word. Shamanism originated with indigenous cultures, Worl said, and for people of European heritage to practice indigenous traditions veers into disrespect.
“First it was our land, then it was our art, now it’s our traditional and religious practices,” she said.
Gauley moved to Haines in September. Here, she keeps a fairly low profile.
“I don’t advertise,” she said. “If people need to see me or hear about me, then it’ll happen.” Gauley said she was guided to come here by a spiritual purpose.
“There was a small group of people here that needed some pretty significant stuff done,” Gauley said. She declined to provide details.