Greetings Readers and Watery Ones! I am so excited to bring you another interview in the Water Priestess Interview Series! This time we have a Sea Priestess, Dolphin & Whale Emissary, Chalice of Divine Frequencies, Bestselling Author, and Creator of Dancing Dolphin Alchemical Synergies (flower and gem essences infused with dolphin healing frequencies and sacred sound). She has been leading channeled global water healing meditations every Equinox for over 2 decades with a co-facilitator in Australia. I am was really excited when Takara contacted me. I was so surprised that I had never seen her or heard of her work before! It just goes to show how many amazing Water Priestess are out there doing this good and amazing work! I think as the Water Path continues to grow and flow we will come together more and more!
Who are you and how do you practice?
My name is Takara Shelor. I live in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I’ve lived in many other places including on a yacht in Fiji and the South Pacific.
Tell us about your background, and any training you may have done to prepare for this role
I’m the author of Dolphins & Whales Forever, Peering Through the Veil, and several other books. I’m also an engineer and mystic who helps women get deeply connected with nature and their true essence self, experience deep inner peace, and fine-tune and enhance their intuition so they can better express their unique spiritual gifts and achieve their highest potential. I’ve been leading global meditations for water healing for the past 22 years. I am an emissary for dolphins and whales.
I feel that everything in my life has played a part in preparing me for this work. Even my engineering days gave me skills, training, and experience that I utilize now. My skills at managing projects help me immensely in managing book, product, and program creation. One of the companies I worked for went through a major layoff and restructuring. I was forced into the position of front-line supervisor in liquids manufacturing. I was not at all happy about being in that position. Yet, now, many years later, I am doing my own liquids manufacturing with Dancing Dolphin Essence and my lotion, & body butter lines.
When I first woke up spiritually back in the mid-90’s, I began doing a series of sessions with a spiritual advisor/energy healer and at her recommendation, I learned many things and took many classes. The first one she suggested was meditation and it changed my life in a very positive way.
Another she recommended was the 9-month Women’s Wisdom Course at Heart of the Goddess in Philadelphia. We met one weekend a month for 9 months and did many rituals, very deep and transformational shamanic journeys, healing processes, etc. It was like taking a series of intensives in numerous topics including crystals, goddesses, the blood mysteries, chakras, the Wiccan sabbats, color, sound, and other energy healing methods. The same advisor recommended an Aromatherapy Certification Course for Holistic Nurse Practitioners. I wasn’t a nurse and knew nothing about aromatherapy, but I took it anyway because I trusted her guidance. I now use aromatherapy in almost all of my product lines. While working with the spiritual advisor, I felt drawn to study the work of Stuart Wilde as well as shamanism and earth-based spirituality.
Stuart became my metaphysical mentor. I listened to his audio tapes to and from work every day and read all of his books. Eventually, I did his 8-day Warriors in the Mist training in the high mountains of New Mexico. I fell so in love with the energy of New Mexico during that event that 5 years later I was living there. I did my first of many sweat lodges, built a medicine wheel in my second bedroom and meditated in it daily, and did a great number of hikes near streams and shamanic journeys in nature. Stuart is known as the greatest metaphysician of our time. He taught a modern-day version of Taoism, a deep appreciation and connection with nature and the cosmos. He was also very Camelot/Avalon connected and did a lot of teaching around that subject … one that is so dear to my own heart. His etheric training allowed me to really fine-tune my intuitive abilities. The warrior part of the training helped me overcome fear, heal deep wounds, and achieve the seemingly miraculous. All of this meditation, nature connection, crystal, medicine wheel work led to the channeled shamanic journeys/vision journeys and grid work I do now for healing the water and many other things.
When I lived in New Mexico, my then-husband and I ran Spirit of Nature Retreat, a shamanic healing center, and place of gathering. We had shaman, wise men, and women from many traditions, from all across the globe come to lead ceremony, teach, and in some cases participate in the events and teachings that I and/or my husband led. The things I learned were priceless. Over the years I have become dear friends with world-renowned sound healing pioneer, Jonathan Goldman, and his wonderful wife, Andi. I have participated in many of their workshops and include sound healing in a lot of what I do.
What is your path? And how does it relate to your Water caretaking?
I follow a mystic path. Being highly intuitive/clairsentient/claircognizant, I am guided or simply “know” that I am to do various things. That means everything from reading certain books and taking various classes to going to particular locations, putting crystals in various places (including waterways), saying particular words, and doing other rituals at specific locations and/or times of the year. Much of what I do for the water, the land, myself, or my clients comes from Divine guidance.
How do you think your path brought you here into this specific role?
Because I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) the importance of following the intuitive guidance I receive, I definitely feel I’ve been led on purpose to the work I do now. I’ve been leading global water healing meditations/ceremonies every year at Equinox since 1998. My co-partner on that is a famous channel from Australia named David J. Adams.
Do you identify as a Well Maiden, Priest/ess, Caretaker, or Witch?
Sea Priestess is probably the most accurate description of my water-related work. In almost all of the channeled meditations I lead, I end up taking people on a journey beside a stream, to the ocean, or through a forest to a magical pool … always for healing.
Alchemist also describes some of what I do. I create energy elixirs with water and flowers, gems, numbers, sounds, colors, and various energies that I “bring through” from multiple dimensions. Each is infused with dolphin healing frequencies, sacred sound & geometries, diamond frequencies, and more. All those energies I put into oils, lotions, and body butters.
Image by Takara SelorWhat brought you to this sacred water path.
It was the medicine wheel and dolphins that placed me firmly on the water path. I spent several months looking for the 36 crystals necessary to make the crystal medicine wheel described in Dancing with the Wheel by Sunbear and Wabun Wind (now a friend of mine). The year was 1993 and ordering online wasn’t yet an option. I visited new age bookstores, lapidary shows, and other stores. until I found them all. Then I spent 2 hours holding up each stone and calling in the energy it was designed to represent. Once the invocation and dedication were complete, I turned on some beautiful native-inspired drum music and did a shamanic journey. It was in that moment that my life changed … forever.
Because of the extraordinary energy that came in during that very intensive activation, I could see, feel, hear, etc. the various beings of the 4 directions. I could literally feel the buffalo’s breath on my face and see the eagle soaring high above as if I were standing outside in broad daylight looking up. While meeting coyote in the south direction, he began acting like the trickster he is so well known to be. He began running around in circles like a cat chasing its tail and then suddenly, he began to shapeshift into a dolphin swimming in circles.
With the arrival of the dolphin, I started to feel a tsunami of loving, healing, nurturing energy and my life has never been the same. Dolphins are the angels of the sea, the messengers of the Divine Feminine / Goddess. I had only felt energy that strong once before … when I was 14 and had a vision of a white dove descending, the Shekinah energy flooded the space and I was left a bliss bunny and, again, permanently altered. Now, with the arrival of the dolphin, I felt that same Divine Feminine presence. From that moment on, any time I closed my eyes for meditation, the dolphins showed up. I jokingly say they took over my life. I say it jokingly, but it actually is the truth.
While at the 8-day Warriors in the Mist Training with Stuart Wilde, I met a woman there who lived in the San Juan Islands. She told me the story of Lolita, a beautiful orca in captivity in SeaAquarium Miami. Hearing how the orcas were herded with explosives and the babies taken away from their mothers to be lifted out of the water on slings, put on trucks, and hauled across the country caused me to weep to the depths of my being. The story haunted me even after the retreat was over. I eventually dumped my high-paying corporate engineering job and moved to the San Juans Islands to help that same woman start a non-profit for dolphins and whales and to hopefully get Lolita home.
It was there that I developed my deep connection with the orcas that make those island waterways their home. Living on an island, surrounded by water in every direction is my idea of paradise. I became so attuned to the water and the orcas that I could literally “feel” when they were near. This deep inner knowing would just wash over me and I would drop whatever I was doing, jump in my car and drive as fast as possible to the west side of the island, park the car, scramble to the top of my favorite hill, and watch 30 or more orcas slowly swim past. OMG, it was heaven. While there, I did a ceremony onshore and heaved a fairly pricey imperial topaz stone in the ocean as far as I could throw it. As soon as the stone dropped into the water, I realized that was the second imperial topaz I had placed in water. The first was my class ring. I’d only had it 2 weeks when a group of us went cliff jumping at Claytor Lake in Virginia. The ring fell off and landed at the bottom of the lake somewhere.
After the San Juans, I moved to Southern California where I developed a deep bond with the dolphins that swim near Encinitas and Moonlight and Swami beaches. Again, I could feel their presence and would look up from reading a book or turn around while eating a meal and there they would be swimming past. I became very concerned about the military’s use of Low-Frequency Active Sonar (LFAS) as it does great harm to sea life. I sent up a prayer asking what we, as humans, could do to help and the next morning at precisely 4 am I woke up with the words to the Golden Water Dolphin Meditation for Planetary Healing burning in my brain. The year was 1998. I knew I was to let as many people as possible know about it and that it was to be done at Fall Equinox. I found a woman, Barbara Wolf, who had an email list that went to people worldwide who participated in global meditations. I asked her to share it with her list and she suggested I contact David J Adams in Australia. It turns out that he had channeled the Global Marine Meditation in 1992. We shared our meditations with one another and they were so similar it was downright magical. We’ve been leading them together every Equinox since then.
Do you have a Sacred Body of water you tend?
I basically focus on all the waterways of the earth, particularly the oceans. There are certain beaches, like Moonlight Beach in Encinitas, CA that I visit again and again in my work. Another one is the beautiful stream that runs through the resort where the Warriors in the Mist training was held. When I moved to New Mexico, we went there often. I rented a cabin up there and sitting beside that stream for hours on end in a light trance state, I channeled an entire book and set of healing technologies. In the global water healing meditation ritual, I lead at Equinox, I have people prepare a bowl or chalice of water to bless during the ceremony. Afterward, I always pour my blessed water into the New River. The little town where I live sits inside a horseshoe bend of the New River … meaning the whole town has a river wrapping around it. This lovely river is within walking distance to my home.
Tell us about the work you do there now
Over the years, I and many others have placed imperial topaz and clear quartz crystals in various waterways throughout the world. I tune into those when we do the water healing meditations at Equinox. I have also collected shells for decades and people from countries all over send me shells and sand from their location or locations that they visit. The shells and sand on my grid and the crystals we’ve placed help me connect with the world waterways and anchor the healing energies when we bring them in through the Equinox meditation ritual. Mary J. Getten is one of the authors I asked to contribute a chapter in my book, Dolphins & Whales Forever. She leads a Global Water Healing meditation group that meets every month for water healing. I lead that group’s meditation/shamanic journey every September (in honor of the dolphins who lose their life in the Taiji slaughter that begins each September). Every year the channeled meditation I take them on gives them another tool or way to heal the water. So much of my work is in empowering others and giving them tools to offer stewardship of water and land locations and energy healing for those locations as well as people, animals, etc.
Leaving a career and income source to become an environmental advocate says a lot about where I stand. I got pretty involved in Standing Rock. Even though I didn’t go there personally, I know several who did and I helped with sending supplies, communicating from one organization to various individuals in getting various supplies out there, etc. We even sent a horse to the young man who had his horse literally shot and killed right out from under him. I’m still part of various Facebook groups that started because of it and every day while it was happening I was communicating with people who were there. Many of these groups are led and primarily participated in by Native Americans. The Equinox global water healing meditations are all about healing and protection … for all the waterways.
What are some of the new things you are working on right now?
All of my newer work is focusing on the Goddess and working with water as a healing tool for self and Mother Gaia. I’m being guided to help women develop a deeper connection to the Goddess mysteries, becoming truly empowered and awaken the Divine Feminine within. I have a membership program called The Sacred Circle at Magnificent U where we are beginning to explore these things. I’m working on 4 books simultaneously all related to this theme. I love helping women align to the element they are most connected with and am excited to see how many new water priestesses will blossom through this work.
The images are of the multi-layer grid that I use daily for meditation, as the space where I upgrade the energies of my various product lines, and as a specific focus during the Equinox global water healing meditations. it is very water connected. On the top layer, I have a sand-colored blanket. On top of that, there is a beautiful turquoise towel that reminds me of a tropical ocean. In the center is the crystal chalice surrounded by sand dollars and various crystals. One of the strands of shells is from a shell ley that was given to me while I was living on the yacht in Fiji. On the lower layers (where you see rocks, feathers, etc.), the very large blue vase is filled with shells and sand from all over the globe. The stones also come from numerous global locations, some that I collected, others were sent to me. The flat table above the vase contains a big crystal grid with various crystals and gems. Sadly, it’s hard to take a photo of. The final image is me sitting on the front of the yacht with my feet dangling over the front edge with dolphins swimming below. That is my favorite view and those waters in Fiji are probably my favorite in the world.
Learn more about Takara through Dancing Dolphin Essences, and her free water meditations at the links below.
Website: www.MagnificentU.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DebbieTakaraShelor
Facebook Wild Dolphin Lovers Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/wilddolphinlovers
Dancing Dolphin Alchemical Synergy Energy Healing Oils & Mists: www.MagnificentU.com/DancingDolphin
Free Sacred Healing Pool Guided Meditations: www.MagnificentU.com/meditations
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