Luzia Krull

[Manicman]

http://www.danadanadana.com/danae//luzia/index.html

I saw this woman, a therapist of the Santo Daime traditions in a series of (roughly) ten day retreats, while I was undergoing a lengthy kundalini awakening. I had a pretty bad experience. From the beginning she told me that she "knew" interventions had been made to get me to her and the Santo Daime. This in and of itself isn't such a bad thing, and most of the individual details I will share aren't so terrible as to make me think of her as a fraud. Once I thought about it in depth, and started putting different incidents together as a whole, that was when I realized I was working with someone manipulative and control seeking.
She used verbal tricks and obfuscated language in order to make herself out to be more of an authority than she really was. When I expressed my admiration for Native spiritual traditions, she said to me that there were people who considered her to be a shaman. It became clear to me that this woman considered herself as an elder of the Santo Daime tradition, although I later found out that Santo Daime is not considered authentic Native spirituality. She encouraged me to pray to one of her deities, someone she called Divine Mother, who she claims is some sort of reincarnation of the virgin Mary. At one point during a journey with the Daime, she asked me what I wanted from Divine Mother. She also played up her Native American accent. She does in fact have some red in her skin, but if you look at her profile she was raised in a Jewish American family, so there is no reason for this woman to speak with a Native American accent. I only realized this was an act after the fact.

By the second retreat, when I wasn't fully going along with her trip, she actively told me she found me to be a dislikable person.  Because at the time she was my therapist she also knew I had self esteem and mother issues, which she was happy to use against me. On the third retreat during a particularly deep journey, I regressed and said some pretty childish stuff, including mommy. She, who was not under the effect of a boundary dissolving substance, said "Ok come here." It took me a moment to realize, because I was in a visionary state of consciousness, but she was offering to hold me. This was when it really began to hit me that she was seeking control and manipulating me. I stayed on my side of the room.

After the journey, the next day she said to me "I think I am your spiritual mother." I tepidly told her that I didn't think so.
On the fourth and last retreat that I went to see her, I said do you remember when you offered to hold me. It was a shameful thing to talk about, but I wanted the truth about the woman I was working with. She immediately said "No!" in a very dark tone of voice. This confirmed it for me. If this hadn't actually taken place, she would have still said no but been open to talking about it, because therapists are supposed to be used to transference. The fact that she said "No!" with a heavily implied "Shut up!" proved to me that she had done this in order to gain control over me.
At one point in the retreat she also said to me "I am close to giving up on you." When I didn't respond she turned and gave me a long look, because she had expected this to have more sway over me than it did. Keep on mind that this is the retreat after she called herself my spiritual mother. She also got very very uncomfortable when I said I didn't think the spirits had intervened to get me to her, and insisted that she "knew" this had happened. When I told her I was thinking of leaving the retreat early she berated me, and said that it was my own character weaknesses that were sabotaging the relationship. In fact the only decent moment in this retreat was when I payed her a chunk of the back money I owed her at the end. Which is not such a terrible thing in and of itself; we do need money to eat and live. But as I said earlier, I am trying to paint a picture of my experiences with this woman, and I saw a very cold, manipulative woman posing as a therapist, posing as a shaman.
She also displayed a remarkable ignorance about spirit work and these traditions. She said that the spirits and spiritual forces of these traditions are all the same with different names across the glove. She also claimed at various times to be of Cherokee, Iriquois, and Huichol descent. I came away from my experiences with her angry and ashamed, but glad that I had (even during a personal crisis) had enough awareness to maintain a certain amount of distrust and distance from this woman claiming to be my therapist/elder/shaman.  Had I gotten as fully sucked into her trip as she wanted, I would have suffered long term damage. Instead I am just pissed and angry, and short term damaged.

[Pono Aloha]

If she is dispensing illegal substances she can be turned in to the authorities.

[Epiphany]

Manicman, I'm glad you survived, and were able to get free of her. Thank you for posting this info, it will help others.

Hopefully anyone thinking of going to her for healing sessions sees this and decides not to.

Luzia Krull's California corporation The Divine Light From Heaven has a "suspended" status

http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/

I have worked as an independent massage therapist since 1980. I am not licensed.

(my bolding)

http://www.danadanadana.com/danae//luzia/massage.html

Is this the same Luzia Krull?:

A routine traffic stop in St. Landry Parish led police to a car full of drugs worth almost a half-million dollars.

Now, two Californians are behind bars on a variety of charges.

According to Chief Deputy Laura Balthazar, 46-year-old Hugo Arana and 51-year-old Luzia Krull, both of California, were transporting 37 liters of the hallucinogenic drug commonly known as DMT from California to Florida.

Deputies also found 10 ounces of marijuana.

Both Krull and Arana are being held in the St. Landry Parish jail on $41,000 bond each

http://www.klfy.com/Global/story.asp?S=2971873 2005

Update: Hugo Arana named in that news story and in her bio is "2000 - Met my companion Victor Hugo Arana"

http://www.danadanadana.com/danae//luzia/luzia.html

[educatedindian]

Haven't found what happened in the drug bust, but apparently Santo Daime churches have sued to prevent prosecution before since they use psychedelic drugs in ceremony.

The bigger problem is not the church but Krull herself. She's almost 60 and yet seems incredibly lost and aimless, a flake bouncing haphazardly from one belief system to another her whole life because she's suffered more than a few traumas.

From her own website.
-------
Psycho-spiritual Development...
1966 - Began Zen meditation practice
1967 - Death of my brother, onset of my father's illness, and familial depression
1968 - First boyfriend, abortion, death of aunt, and a male friend...
1973-75 - Mother re-married, lived on a Kibbutz in Israel, a cave on a Greek island, an apartment in W. Berlin with a companion, studied communities, Lao Tzu, and non-attachment
1975-78 - Sonoma State University, participated in alternative life-styles, vegetarian cooking, yoga, studies of consciousness, the brain, and quantum physics...
1981 - Discovered Vipassana meditation and Larry Rosenberg, founding member of Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, practice leader, chai maker, and retreat cook
1983 - Married Perrin Cohen to form a 'restructured family', first home since 1971, travels to Nepal, India, began a women's group
1984 - Began a private psychotherapy practice, entered in Bio-energetic/spiritual psychotherapy with Jose Rosa, participated in Native American rituals, discovered Creator, spirit guides, and how to pray.
1985 - Fell in love with Mother Ammachi, began working with clients who were subject to ritual abuse, satanic cults, and sexual abuse
1987 - Entered Bio-Energetic/Psychodrama psychotherapy with Ildri Ginn, informal massage training, macro-biotic cooking, travels to Peru, initiations in Machu Pichu
1988 - Brazil, enchanted by the Queen of the Forest, mediumship erupted, spiritual initiations, owned my womanhood, battled with sanity, and confronted craziness, end of marriage, home and community
1989 - Joined the Church of the Santo Daime...
1991 - Life-style change, closed psycho-therapy practice and group, built house in Mapia and began living there for extended times...
1992 - Baptism and second earthbirth re-named Luzia
1993 - Caretaker and witness to the death and dying of my second father, passed through grief, loss, depression, and despair, wrote "Soultalk, Conversations on Psychotherapy and Spiritual Practice", (still awaiting publication)
1994 - Continued my personal psycho-spiritual integration in the Amazon forest, internship in plant and spirit based healing techniques and practices.
1995 - Founding member of the community Kayumari, Sonora, California
1997 - Formation of Ceu da Luz Divina (Divine Light from Heaven) a religious corporation...
2000 - Met my companion Victor Hugo Arana and his son Camillo, vision of spiritual community/healing center in Florida
2001-4 - New home life with family in Felton, California, developed Psycho-spiritual Integration as a therapeutic style
2005 - Spent a year on a retreat in central Florida, reawakened political awareness, revelations on love and war, decided to return to Santa Cruz and open an ecological spiritual healing center off the grid to continue my work.
2006 - Re-establishing myself in California, and traveling to Mexico and the US giving spiritual retreats and sessions.
2008 - Returned to Felton, creation of the Golden Light Chapel, a place for my work, personalized retreats and communit events...

-------
The drug bust was apparently during her "retreat" supposedly in FL.
Has she ever stuck with anything over 3 years? Mostly she abandons or fails at one project or belief system after a year or so.

Often she seems have been conned by abusers and exploiters herself, like the ones claiming to work with victims of satanic cults (an urban legend the FBI has investigated and never found evidence of.)

"Mother Ammachi" has been accused of all kinds of cultic abuses herself.
http://brontebaxter.wordpress.com/blowing-the-whistle-chpt-9-amma-the-mother-saint-hugging-away-your-personhood/
http://cult-of-the-hugging-saint-exposed.blogspot.com/
http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/insider-vs-outsider-doctrine-hugging-saint

And Kayumari? That's the same center founded by Jyoti, the manipulator behind the 13 grandmothers.

[Defend the Sacred]

Is she using Ayahuasca, or dosing people with substances she claims are Ayahuasca?

[Epiphany]

Is she using Ayahuasca, or dosing people with substances she claims are Ayahuasca?

I believe so.

In fact, according to Luzia Krull, who represented the Santo Daime point of view, the Queen of the Forest came out of the forest not just to spread ayahuasca but to save her home, scene of the most rich biodiversity known on the planet.

http://www.conferencerecording.com/newevents/auy20sfbg.htm

Haven't found anything where she states explicitly that she uses it. But she's worked tours that have descriptions that definitely hint at such use.

[Manicman]

During this time with Luzia, I met the man she talks about, Hugo, and he was actually a great guy, although he had also been drawn into Luzia's trip. I also worked with the Santo Daime which I would consider a plant spirit rather than a drug, and in all honesty I got a lot of benefit from the work with the Santo Daime. I would be dishonest if I didn't mention that the Santo Daime did me an enormous amount of good during a very messed up period of my life.

But Luzia herself was playing all sorts of games. She kept telling me that it was important that I get baptised in the Santo Daime, in order to keep away bad spirits, or become part of the Daime lineage. Again, I got a lot of benefit from the Daime, but the only real reason to go through a baptism or conversion is if you want to make it a part of your long term path. At the same time, Luzia repeatedly insisted that she had no investment in whether I chose to come to her. She also told me that she knew God and the spirits had sent me to her, which seems to contradict the no investment part.
It was a very odd situation, in that I genuinely was deriving benefit and personal healing from in depth work with spiritual forces. But Luzia herself had very little insight into the nature of my process, and in many ways seemed like a religious fanatic.
I have also heard (second hand) that the Jyoti you mentioned of Kayumari has cut ties with Luzia. Though I am interested to know why you describe Jyoti and the thirteen grandmothers as a manipulation. Most of these people I only have heard of second or third hand.

[Epiphany]

The tea has had many names including Santo Daime (or simply Daime), Hoasca, Ayahuasca, Yage, and Caapi. It is made from two or more plants, one a woody vine (Ayahuasca vine or Jagube; generally Banisteriopsis caapi), and the others known as admixtures. While various plants are used throughout South America, most of which have high concentrations of dimethyltryptamine, the preferred admixture in the case of Santo Daime is Psychotria viridis, known to church members as the "Queen of the Forest," after the figure who is said to have appeared to the church's founder in a vision, prompting him to start the religion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santo_Daime

[Epiphany]

Listening to an audio clip from Luzia Krull http://www.desertholisticnetwork.com/enews.php?id=70 Ancient Plants for Modern Times

She speaks at length (and very lovingly) about Ayahuasca.

[Epiphany]

SHERIFF'S DEPUTIES MAKE UNUSUAL DRUG BUST

The biggest drug bust in the history of St.  Landry Parish happened Tuesday, but it took narcotics detectives two days to figure out what they had.

What detectives had was 37 liters of liquid Dimethyltryptamine, said St.  Landry Parish Sheriff Howard Zerangue.  Known as DMT, the Schedule I narcotic is a powerful hallucinogenic that has never been seen in the parish before Tuesday.

"This part of Acadiana is not familiar with it.  We had to call an expert with the DEA and experts from local agencies in Texas who have dealt with it before," said Chief Deputy Laura Balthazar.  "It is 10 times more potent than LSD.  We fear this may be the new drug of the new century."

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n298/a01.html 2005

[Epiphany]

I've listened to about half the audio clip so far. At first she spoke in what seems to be her usual speech pattern but as she began telling the story of when she first took Santo Daime in Boston her voice changed quite a bit. Noticeably so. Entirely different speech pattern and rhythm. As if she both has regressed age wise and also as if she is pretending to be someone who hasn't spoken English her entire life. Stagy and affected.

Possibly also a sign that she isn't all that mentally stable.

Towards the end she says she recently initiated in Umbanda. Her voice is different yet again as she talks about this.

[Manicman]

She seemed plenty stable to me, but yeah from my experience the Native American accent was a put on.

[Defend the Sacred]

Some traditional Lakota and Dakota we are friends with were down in the countries where the tribes traditionally use Ayahuasca, and they met with traditional people from those tribes. The traditionals down there are *very* concerned about the abuse of Ayahuasca that is taking place.

Ayahuasca is one of their medicines. The safe use of it, and the ceremonies involving it, have belonged to their people for many generations. Perhaps forever. Now that it is being commercialized, the plant and the spirits are being abused. The medicine is being taken out of its traditional context and misused by pay to pray exploiters. It is also being harvested by these exploiters in an unsustainable manner - which is putting the medicines, the  traditions, indeed a huge part of these people's lifeway, in danger of extinction.

We have a number of threads on here about the abuse of Ayahuasca, and Ayahuasca tourism. Westerners who think they can and should buy access to these experiences are disrespecting tribal sovereignty. The traditional people who have inherited and maintained these ways are the ones who have the right to say how it is to be used, and when and with whom it is appropriate to use. The people who are bringing in outsiders and selling these ways are abusing the source of the medicine. If this exploitation continues, people fear the medicine will be lost.

On a related note, some of the exploiters who are selling "Ayahuasca" trips are not even dispensing Ayahuasca. There have been cases of them dosing people with other hallucinogens instead, or in addition to, plant medicines, and messing with people's minds and bodies while they are tripping.

Here at NAFPS, we have seen some of the results of this exploitation, and heard from damaged people who trusted these pay to pray types to lead them through exploitative Ayahuasca tourism. This is all very sad, and very harmful, both to the traditional people, their traditions, and the naive seekers who trust the exploiters.

[educatedindian]

During this time with Luzia, I met the man she talks about, Hugo, and he was actually a great guy, although he had also been drawn into Luzia's trip. I also worked with the Santo Daime which I would consider a plant spirit rather than a drug, and in all honesty I got a lot of benefit from the work with the Santo Daime. I would be dishonest if I didn't mention that the Santo Daime did me an enormous amount of good during a very messed up period of my life.

But Luzia herself was playing all sorts of games. She kept telling me that it was important that I get baptised in the Santo Daime, in order to keep away bad spirits, or become part of the Daime lineage. Again, I got a lot of benefit from the Daime, but the only real reason to go through a baptism or conversion is if you want to make it a part of your long term path. At the same time, Luzia repeatedly insisted that she had no investment in whether I chose to come to her. She also told me that she knew God and the spirits had sent me to her, which seems to contradict the no investment part.
It was a very odd situation, in that I genuinely was deriving benefit and personal healing from in depth work with spiritual forces. But Luzia herself had very little insight into the nature of my process, and in many ways seemed like a religious fanatic.
I have also heard (second hand) that the Jyoti you mentioned of Kayumari has cut ties with Luzia. Though I am interested to know why you describe Jyoti and the thirteen grandmothers as a manipulation. Most of these people I only have heard of second or third hand.

The church has been around almost a century and its practices based upon older traditions around probably for millenia. It's no surprise if it helped you, but also no surprise there might be one less than helpful clergy among that church.

We have a thread in here on the 13 grandmas. Some are genuine activists, some are not what they claim to be. The group was put together by Jyoti to give her more credibility and a better image.

Umbanda as well? That makes the list of her supposed beliefs or studied expertise to now include:
Zen, Taoism, yoga, quantum physics, kibuttzim (Zionist socialism), Vipassana meditation. "restructured families", women's groups, psychotherapy, entered in Bio-energetic therapy, "Native American rituals," spirit guides, Mother Ammachi, satanic cults, massage, Santo Daime, Kayumari, Divine Light from Heaven, living off the grid, Golden Light Chapel, and now Umbanda.

[Epiphany]

The audio lecture is from Nov 2011. No talk of legalities, safety issues, or the drug bust.

Towards the end she says "I myself also work in the tradition of Umbanda" and goes on to say that she went through a spiritual initiation to receive her Orixás: Oxum, Obaluaye, Oxalá (my spelling choices might not be accurate). She doesn't say who initiated her or where the ceremony took place.

Her speech pattern is extra labored as she describes this. Admittedly she'd been talking for quite awhile at this point, but the labored speech sounds like she is imitating someone else or at least her bad version of someone else. I assume she does this to sound extra spiritual and authentic, but it really backfires.