Brant Secunda

Brant Secunda is a ceremonial leader in the Huichol (Wixárika) tradition of the Sierra Madre in western Mexico. As a young man he spent twelve years apprenticed to the Huichol elder Don José Matsuwa, completing long vision quests and fasts and joining him each year on the pilgrimage to Wirikuta, the high desert the Huichol regard as holy. In 1978 Don José named him a lineage holder and asked him to carry the tradition out into the wider world, and after the elder died in 1990, well past the age of a hundred, his widow gave Brant his medicine bundle.

In 1979 he started the Dance of the Deer Foundation, based in Santa Cruz, California, which organises his retreats, pilgrimages and vision quests and supports Huichol villages with supplies, money for ceremonies and an outlet for their art; he later founded the Huichol Foundation as well. His teaching centres on ceremony, prayer, the deer dance and a daily, practical relationship with the powers of nature, and he also offers recorded online workshops on the Huichol spiritual path. He has spoken at conferences around the world, helped found the Peace University in Berlin, and wrote Fit Soul, Fit Body with the triathlete Mark Allen.