Learn how we were called by the weather.

As we’re sure has yours, our life paths have taken us through trials, tribulations, learning, growth and blessing. Now, we find ourselves in Gratitude. We were born, perhaps like you, in this Western culture. We have received a precious legacy, and we do the best we can to bring these ancient worldviews, traditions and healing ways home to you.

We live and practice the Way of the Dove. This is the light-filled and luminous path of the Heavens: the Clouds, the Misty Rain, the Breezes and Winds, the Thunder and Lightning glorifying the path opening our hearts to the Heart of Creation. The Way of the Dove is the path of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She is the embodiment of bliss, ecstasy, compassion and blessing.

This path has been calling us all of our lives.

For us, this is how it took place. Our Story:

When young, Adam and Erin both had connections with the spiritual forces of life. Even in childhood, the Way of the Dove was calling. As children in their separate families, the Heavens opened to them in various ways. The Clouds moved and shifted and showed them ecstatic sights. The Beings of Air and Light visited them in their dreams and called to them, in various ways, in their waking life as they walked the paths of the earthly world.

They met and married through a grand whirlwind of an adventure in 1994. They had each found a soul-partner in the other: the two wings of the Dove.

In 1995, they read the book Plant Spirit Medicine and met the author, who eventually became their teacher, Eliot Cowan. Not long after that, they began dreaming of mountains and weather in and around the Asheville area. They began a new journey filled with many synchronicities and miracles.

In 2002, because of learning of Erin’s past experience with a lightning strike and several specific dreams (and also concerned about her life-long issues with watery illnesses), Eliot, now a trusted mentor, advised Adam and Erin to go to Mexico to visit don Lucio Campos Elizade, a respected traditional shaman in the countryside of Central Mexico.

Don Lucio was truly Heaven-blessed. Those around him knew him as a smiling and joyful saint, filled with wisdom and dispensing blessing to those around him. Don Lucio had an intimate and beneficial relationship with the transcendent Beings of Light and Heaven, including Clouds, Lightning, Mountains and Rain.

When the moment came, don Lucio recognized them. He affirmed he had met them in his journey to Heaven among the sublime Clouds themselves (“las Nubes resplandancientes”). He confirmed both of them were specially called to devote themselves to his ancient Nahua indigenous tradition, to become “weather workers,” known as quiaclazques in Nahuatl and tiemperos or graniceros in Spanish. He counseled them to allow him to initiate them immediately and to never deter from their sacred covenant with this path, which was a rare gift from the Ancestors of this ancient and time-honored tradition. The translator who had been present for many consultations with people seeking don Lucio’s insight remarked again and again that his “download” of special messages to them was unparalleled in her experience.

Since their crowning (spiritual initiation) by don Lucio in April 2003, the couple has dedicated themselves wholeheartedly to the learning, trials, generosity and growth that go hand-in-hand with an authentic traditional path.

In 2020, after years of pilgrimage to sacred sites and some helpful training with colleagues, they emerged as quiaclazques healers. They uphold don Lucio’s legacy of healing and weather work involving working with “shamanic” dreams and guidance. Their healing practice is located in the beautiful mountains of western North Carolina, near Asheville.

Their offerings include traditional healing, life counseling, personal healing retreats and getaways, spiritual house clearing and blessing, public workshops, and, with their local compadres, seasonal ceremonies like the Spring Nature Honoring Ceremony and the Traditional Weather Harvest festival every fall.

See our ancient, living Native American tradition at work.

An ancient indigenous tradition influencing the power of weather continues, and is preparing for the new world of changing climate. In the highlands of central Mexico, the villages of the Nahua people are nestled in the rugged high-altitude landscape dotted with volcanoes, steep ridges and valleys. The Nahuas have always thrived on their fields of maize, beans, squash and chilis, despite living in a region that receives rain for only six months out of the year. Yet this precious moisture isn’t guaranteed to arrive. A storm might also bring harvest-busting hail that can quickly beat down a crop, which is possible given the mountainous terrain. In order to prosper, they have depended on a special relationship with the “Great Beings of the Sky” to bring the beneficial rains.

These highland indigenous people have cultivated an important understanding, approach and arrangement through thousands of years of successful interactions in village ceremonies to bring the rains and the processes that limit the effect of strong storms. What the villagers have understood since time immemorial is that these weather gods and the sky Herself play an active role in selecting those people who will act as emissaries and relationship-holders between themselves and the people, who will organize and lead principle ceremonies, provide wisdom and help maintain an awareness of the importance of these sacred connections between the heavens, people and earth. These specially chosen men and women have many names: In the Nahuatl language they can be called quiaclazques, or someone who makes “watery” arrive, or a quiapaquiz, someone that makes moisture rise up and inundate the land. In Spanish, they can be called graniceros, people that stop the hail or trabajadores del tiempo, or tiemperos, workers of the rain season. In English, they can be called weather workers. This calling is most often delivered by surviving a lightning strike or special, strong, persistent dreams.

In 1906, a man named Lucio Campos Elizade was born in the Nahua village of Nepopualco in the state of Morelos. In his early twenties, he was struck by lightning while tending his cattle in the hills above his village. Arriving back to his family dwelling, stunned and confused, he slipped into a coma lasting three years, and during that time his spirit travelled to the sky where he learned many things about people, the earth, medicinal plants, and the “beings who brought the rain, wind and clouds.” During this time of learning in this other realm, his family took care of his comatose body. Finally he was told by a mysterious long-robed woman recognized as the mother sky, or sometimes Catholicized in the Nahua expression of syncretism as Santa Barbara, that he must return and help others. Then he awoke, and although heartbroken to no longer be in that celestial place, he was infused with a deep commitment to the living forces of Nature to serve his community. Soon afterwards, he found Don Felipe Garcia, a well-known and deeply experienced quiapaquiz in Amecameca, Estados de Mexico, who initiated him into this lasting and revered lineage of tiemperos, connecting him to the many generations who had preceded him. Complementing what Don Lucio had learned from his time in the heavens, Don Felipe supported him in the time-honored Nahua ways and art of healing. 

During his time in the upper world, Don Lucio was shown a prophetic vision by Santa Barbara that the Weather Beings would turn particularly destructive with droughts, floods and powerful storms because the peoples were losing their recognition of the relationship and generosity of the forces that bring life giving waters and nourishment to the lands. This would be a great problem along with a disrespect shown to the Earth. He was shown that some parts of the souls of the old Nahua tiemperos would be called back and born into people who lived in “the four corners of the world” to bring this tradition and work to the places where they lived and rekindle a connection recognized and cherished by humans for countless generations. These “new workers” would spread the tradition that otherwise had been humbly held by the Nahuas, thereby bringing hope to humanity that these problems could be eliminated. 

Don Lucio became a highly respected maestro and caporal mayor (ceremonial leader and temple holder) and sought by many both regionally, nationally and internationally for his wisdom and healing work. Don Lucio was sometimes consulted or requested to travel from his village to conduct ceremonies in areas afflicted by cycles of strong storms or drought through his uncanny influence with these commanding and potent manifestations of clouds and wind. In Adam and Erin’s first encounter with don Lucio in April 2003, the old Nahua elder acknowledged the provenance of the spirit that had sent them and detected that Erin had been struck by lightning when she was a teenager. The maestro recognized that Erin and Adam were two of those people being called by the Weather Spirits to the vision don Lucio had seen in the heavens. At this time, others from the “Four Corners of the World” also began finding don Lucio. The Nahua path of service beyond the traditional villages would now begin in earnest. He soon initiated Erin and Adam as a quiaclazques (weather workers).

With other gringos and Mexicans, Adam and Erin became students of don Lucio, and after some years of teaching them in conducting ceremonies, traditional healing, counseling and learning how to confirm others to the work, Don Lucio passed on into his beloved Heavens, leaving the responsibility of maintaining this connection to the Beings of Air and Light to Adam, Erin and his other quiaclazques.

Like other devoted tiemperos in this lineage from different parts of the world, Adam and Erin return to Central Mexico every year, often multiple times, to perform the necessary rituals to call the rains for the local villages and pay respects to their sacred sites. They also renew their sacred pledge to this vocation in a time-honored ceremony of revitalization. They deepen their understanding of the tradition through teachings and experience with Nahua elders who knew and collaborated with don Lucio . This strengthens the link to their calling so that they can carry this manda, or spiritual “demand,” to their homes and support the arrival of those “water-bearers” and diminish destructive storms. As part of this, they strive to inspire others to, once again, look skyward and appreciatively recognize the living expressions held by the sheltering sky. This opens the possibilities for relationship and reconnection so that humanity may live a better, more hopeful future. Their work to preserve and protect traditional wisdom is growing and expanding, both in Mexico and in their home area in the western North Carolina mountains. 

We were initiated into this timeless Native American tradition of working with weather in 2003 by maestro don Lucio Campos de Elizalde. We were also ordained as healers in this quiaclazques tradition by an elder who was an understudy of don Lucio. We continue to learn and work with don Lucio’s colleagues near his hometown in the villages of Central Mexico.

Enjoy these photos of don Lucio Campos Elizade, our seasonal ceremonies in Mexico and our Spring Nature Honoring Ceremony and our Traditional Weather Harvest Festival, which take place every spring and fall near Asheville, North Carolina. We hope you come and join us for our Harvest Festival and our other events!

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