The Art of Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow)

Posted on January 29, 2021 by davidrkopacz

I have been working with Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) since October of 2014. I’ve written about how I was working on a Hero’s Journey class for veterans, based on the concept of Joseph Campbell. I happened to find a copy of The Visionary: Entering the Mystic Universe of Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) by the late Kurt Wilt. Kurt had mentioned several times in his book that Joseph’s life’s path was like the Hero’s Journey. I wrote to Kurt, told him what I was doing with the veterans’ group and he thought Joseph might want to hear about what I was doing. Kurt gave me Joseph’s email address. We emailed back and forth a couple times and Joseph invited me to visit him at the Southern Ute Reservation in southern Colorado. On the way down there I was thinking maybe I could include a chapter in the Hero’s Journey work on indigenous approaches to healing. As I wrote up my notes that first night, I realized there was more than a chapter – it was a whole book! The next day I mentioned the idea of a book to Joseph, what to me was an epiphany must have already been obvious to Joseph, as he just off-handedly said, “That’s what I was thinking.”

This led to the publication of Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing Trauma & PTSD. Actually, in working on that book, we turned in our first draft to Paulette Millichap, our publisher with Pointer Oak and Millichap Books. Her reaction was, “This is interesting, but where is the book for veterans?” Oh, no, I realized, Joseph took me down the rabbit hole and I chased his thoughts like birds and we ended up writing a book that went up, down, and all around, but we lost track of what we started writing. So we split the book into two books and I quickly wrote in more veteran specific chapters. The second book also expanded and expanded and became Becoming Medicine: Pathways of Initiation into a Living Spirituality. However, even that book – at 500 pages – still had things we cut out and that could go in other books!

One of the other book ideas that grew out of the other writing was a book on Joseph’s art. I had the idea of a book called Art Medicine (which is actually the sub-title of the Becoming Medicine color edition) that would focus specifically on art and visions.

To this end, with the idea of doing a book on art, vision, healing, and featuring Joseph’s art work, I’ve put out a call to anyone who has an original art work by Joseph. Joseph is very generous with his work and has given away the bulk of it. At some point, he did start getting digital copies of some of his work, for books, or for printing out posters that he would give away. He also gave me a set of 35 mm slide photos of some older work and I’ve had those digitalized to preserve.

If you have an art work by Joseph, please just take a camera photo of it and email it to me at davidkopacz369@gmail.com

I’ve gone through each of Joseph’s books and listed the art work that has been published and we have all or most of these on digital.

For anyone intersted, here is a list of art work by book with the page number in parenthesis.

Sound: Native Teachings & Visionary Art

New Awareness, Old Awareness

An Epiphany

Seekers of Divine Guidance (0)

Blessing for All Life (4)

Mother Earth and the Flowering of Life (8)

Voice of Silence (10)

Song of Singing Bowl (14)

Sky Father covers Mother Earth with SPIRIT Leaves for new trees just planted after the summer fires (18)

The Infinite Vast Self (21)

The Fun Makers (23)

The Grandfathers (26)

Rainbow man and rainbow woman make first Double Rainbow on Turtle Island (29)

Oceanus vents beneath the Earthly crust, circles of epiphanies for the two Leggeds on Mother Earth in July (32)

Untitled (Early Horn of Plenty) (34)

Summer nights with Mother Earth and her children (38)

Morning Prayer for a new dawn (43)

Spirits of Red Rock (44)

CLEAN AIR Sacred Offering for the People of Mother Earth (47)

The moon arrives near the Earth to seed abundance in the Oceans (50)

Dance Chief calling the Sun-Moon People from the Spirit World to come and Dance (54)

Song of the Baskets (61)

Beautiful Painted Arrow song before Painting: “Oh Grandmother help us to see.” (65)

27 Feather Blessings (66)

Ancient Mysteries tell us that the Mother of fires lives inside the roots of grass, the roots of trees or in the brightest star in any night sky (69)

The Cosmos dreaming us in and out of perceptual realities (70)

Biosphere Stratosphere Energy Sphere (75)

Ceremony for severe cyclones with strong winds (76)

Woman of the Mountain Lakes calling for Mountain Rains – in Ceremony for the water moon (79)

Blessing place for school books (84)

Entrance to TREE of Life (87)

The Winter Summer People (90)

From the Clay of Life “the people” became visible (93)

From the hand of Great Spirit comes all Blessings (99)

Galactic Dance (102)

Flowering of new insights (104)

Untitled (eight-lobed inner flower, colored faces, Old Medicine Wheel) (108)

Rainbow Makers (110)

Story Tellers say that Ancient Ancestors traveled through time looking for new places to live and were known as “Those that fly like blowing wind” (113)

Angels of Light (114)

Harvest Belt Dance (117)

Climbing and Crossing Between Worlds Ceremony (121)

Dream Catcher (124)

Four Winds, Elders of the Sacred Blessing Way (128)

Ah-who (131)

Mother Nature of fields and Streams A child of innocence is born in every moment (137)

Watermelon plant people making food for the children of Mother Earth (141)

Creator of Ocean mists always brings new wisdom to learn (147)

Sage Woman becomes visible to bless “the People” (150)

From the Spirit World comes Eagle Wing to heal the people (159)

The Dreams of the Right Hand (168)

A cup of Silence (170-171)

Ocean Places of Oceanus (172-173)

Cradleboard Blessing Great Bear is the Big Dipper and the seven stars (174-175)

A Geological Formation: A Fault Line vision quest site a place to look for something that prevents perfection (176)

Flowering of Divinity (receiving sending) (181)

Weh-mu – 1 (191)

Weh-seh – 2 (196)

Pah-chu – 3 (199)

Wiii – 4 (202)

Pah-nu – 5 (206)

Mah-tschlay – 6 (209)

Cho-oh – 7 (212)

Wheh-leh – 8 (219)

Whiii – 9 (222)

Tehn-ku-teh – 10 (226)

Sun-Moon Dance, for our Galaxy (na-ku-tha-ke) We’re Dancing (229)

Creation Singing for all Artists (232)

Being & Vibration:

Entering the New World

Climbing and Crossing between worlds Ceremony (duplicate)

Untitled (Hands Weaving Mocassins)

Little Rainbows of Light home of a Beaver dam of water…Of Enlightenment (x)

The Land Spirit after it returned to Mother Earth, she drinks the thunder of Light at the new home of the Corn People (xii)

Planet Earth (Mother Earth) for Paulette & Kelly (Angel bringing child) (7)

Lava Rock is connected to time (10)

Born into the being of vibration the prehistoric farmer demonstrates how multi-verses were made with the sound of “Taah-que”…(12)

Broken Pots (20)

Birthing the Corn Mothers (24)

Coil Pottery Stew (28)

Deer Mother Feeds Her People (31)

Breath Matter and Movement, Being and Vibration, Life is the road of Goodness Grandfather walks with us (34)

Medicine (go forth for the people) for the four directions medicine bag, Grandfather, creator Dreaming into Life, all of the universes (Tiwa World) pa-aah-neh (40)

Untitled (Medicine Wheel) (48)

The Red Road (51)

Corn hair woman (64)

Singing for the Little People who bring the autumn light t0 (key-yah-ney) Mother of Planet Earth (67)

Mother of Time (74)

Untitled (corn plant, emotional, physical, spiritual, mental body – left, south, west, north, east on right) (79)

Drum Dance Wa-Chee-Chee-Who at Where God Lives and Walks on Planet Earth (99)

Being and Vibration of the Brother and Sister stars (102)

Creator of the Five Worlds (111)

Holy Water (113)

Untitled (5 worlds) (119)

Rain water droplets, sun flower, drink (124)

The Rain makers at Long beaver tail pond (131)

Ancestors bring rain to the desert (135)

Heart Path Spirit (137)

The Being of the feather Dance (139)

Altar of Mountain lion – mossa-neh (144)

Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing Trauma & PTSD

Breath Matter and Movement (three feathers pointing to sun) (xxix)

Offering of the Heart (xiv)

Planting the Seed of the Heart (DRK xvii)

People of the West-East be Blessed (xviii)

People of the North-South be Blessed (xxiii)

The Cardinal Directions are created (xxxi)

The Ancient Role of the Sentry of sentient perceptive consciousness for seeing long distances, etc. (15)

A Geologic formation A fault line vision quest site – a place to look for something that prevents perfection (20)

Trapped Warrior (DRK 34)

Untitled (corn plant, emotional, physical, spiritual, mental body – left, south, west, north, east on right) (44)

Grandfathers in the dreamtime traveling into multiple realities on strings of light (47)

Sweat Lodge (55)

Medicine Circle of Mother Earth home of two leggeds (65)

The Medicine in the Medicine Wheel (DRK 70)

Untitled (Medicine Wheel 1995) (71)

Ideas (74)

Father facing sun rise blessing for the people (77)

The Grandfathers (90)

Before the Gourd Dance the spirit of time came to bless the people she was wearing sixteen medicine wheels (124)

Awakening at an AA Meeting (135)

Darkness Seekers of Wisdom (137)

Awaken from sleep to a state of grace (142)

Sacred Heart (DRK 149)

The Sacred Heart of the Madonna (DRK 150)

The Enlightenment of the Horn of Plenty (153)

Medicine Wheel of the Darkened Heart (DRK 157)

Center of the Heart Become Aware Carry Divine Consciousness find and live states of Grace (163)

The Ordinary and the non-ordinary learning how to play or paint, follow the Red Road (169)

Ideas – Reflections (171)

Madonna over Sound Peace Chamber (189)

Cosmic Medicine Wheel (DRK 191)

The Grandfathers (217)

Breath Matter and Movement (Sacred Offering for Humans) (222)

Summer Rains a basket People of the Earth receive It is full of Beauty and delight is dancing (Angels of Divinity) (225)

Fan Spirit Ceremony (Lord of the Winds) (228)

Wind Keeper – Breath of Life Spirit (230)

Three Feathers dancing to the light of Divine Song (232)

The People in Ceremonial Bliss (238)

Dreaming a New Future Cat People symbol of the visionary (250)

Warrior Healing (DRK 264)

Divine Healing (Eagle wing) (268)

Becoming Medicine

Available in Art Medicine Edition (color) and Standard Edition (b&w)

Creator of Worlds (ix)

Breath, Matter, Movement (xxiii)

Enlightenment (DRK xxv)

Conception (DRK xxvi)

The Hero’s Journey (DRK 7)

Medicine Wheel of the Heart (DRK 12)

A Rainbow Medicine Wheel (DRK 19)

Night Eyes of the Direction Finder (22)

Eagle Dancing Feather Medicine (33)

Lunar Stand-still at Chimney Rock (37)

Creation (DRK 46)

Sun and Dancing Moonlight on the People of Mother Earth (61)

Dove of Peace (72)

Where God and Humans Meet (79)

‘Alam al-mithal (DRK 86)

At Vision Questing with Dandelion (90)

Puuh-Tea Bringer of New Knowledge (96)

Vision of the Blessed Virgin (100)

Shamanic Vision (DRK 109)

Blessings for Drinking from Morning Star w/ JR dictation to DRK (117)

Sacred Offering of the five-fingered (130)

Elders Gathering at Winter Solstice (139)

Drinking Universal Spirit Starts Light (156)

Dove of the Holy Spirit (DRK 160)

Crow Flying Through Cosmos (DRK 166)

The Blowing Breath of Dark Energy (171)

The Underside of a Far Larger Ship (184)

Heart Meditation (DRK 206)

Heart at the Center of Dark Matter (DRK 220)

When the People Went into the Cave of Existence and Returned as Made People Ceremony (228)

The Vase of Love and Light (235)

Blue Feather (DRK 238)

Candle of the World #1 – Ordinary and Non-ordinary Realities (249)

Crystal Chamber Taken up into the Sky (256)

Ordinary, and Non-Ordinary Reality Offering Bowl (258)

Spirits of Chimney Rock (263)
Crow Flying Through Dark Matter (DRK 281)

Of Many Windows in the Dream Time of Mother Earth (283)

Puma Giver of the Visionary Life to the People of Mother Earth (293)

The Hunter Puts Cornmeal in the Deer (297)

Dark Matter Deer Medicine (300)

Planet Earth (Our Mother) Offering to the Sky and All Our Relations Wa-Ma-Chi (311)

Returning Home for Mending (316)

Grandfather God Creates All the Universes (328)

Drinking from the Flowering Light of Mother Nature (344)

Good Bye Dr. Dave (356)

Out of One, Many (364)

Rain Cloud and Oceanus (371)

Earth Child of Spiritual Democracy (380)

Peace Makers of the Rainbow Light (396)

Candle of the World #2 – People of the Sand Place – Stars Who Live in the Heavens – They Travel to Planet Earth (406)

Holy Woman (412)

Mother Earth Dreaming All the Two Leggeds into Beauty (423)

In the Currents of Time (433)

Breath and Space Time (446)

Rainbow Bird and Blue Star Woman (460)

Up to 2000 Songs per Day of Bird Song Chiuu-cho-cchaa-aah-neh (473)

Heart Radiation (DRK 482)

One Sun and Four Moons (486)

New Issue of The Badger – Letting Forth the Goodness

Posted on September 26, 2020 by davidrkopacz

Here is what the editor of The Badger put forth to the contributing authors:

Dear Authors,

I world like to remind you that the next deadline for The Badger is August 10 2020.Usually I don’t ask/suggest themes, but this time, considering the extraordinary events of this year, I would like to suggest a theme. I strongly believe the changes ahead require our best skills and knowledge. So I would like the next issue to infuse hope for a good new future for our descendants.While I am writing, I realize that I am asking you to write something that will be useful for the next 7 generations.This is the time to give our contribution to the evolution of humanity.

Thank you for your effort

Lots of love and light your way

Antonella Vicini

Dreaming a New Future, Joseph Rael (2005)

After thinking it over for a bit, and then talking with Paulette Millichap, of Millichap Press – who published Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing Trauma & PTSD – we offered chapter 14 from that book, “Return to the Held-back Place of Goodness.” It can be found in The Badger, volume 4, Issue 2, Autumn/Winter 2020, 44 – 67.

Here is how we introduce the offering of this Goodness:

During this time where so much in the world seems to be going badly, Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) and I offer you Chapter 14: Return to the Place of Held-back Goodness from our book, Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing Trauma & PTSD (2016 Pointer Oak/Millichap Books). We thank Paulette Millichap for giving permission to reprint this chapter.

While we wrote this book for Veterans, we feel that it is useful for anyone going through stresses and suffering – as so many are during this time of pandemic and political turmoil. Joseph tells us that no matter what you have done, no matter what has happened to you, there is a held-back place of goodness in your heart. The job is to search for it and to reconnect to it. The world could use some more goodness, when you find yours, please share it openly and widely…

Blessings & Goodness

David R. Kopacz MD & Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow)

Free Download of “Return to the Place of Held-back Goodness”

Posted on September 11, 2020 by davidrkopacz

Given how trying 2020 has been, we thought you could use some Goodness! Our publisher has agreed that we can offer a pdf download of chapter 14, “Return to the Place of Heldback Goodness“ from our 2016 book, Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing Trauma & PTSD.

Joseph phoned me one night (2/18/16) as I was getting off of work and told me he had a dream or a vision in which God told him that there is a heldback place of goodness in everyone’s heart, no matter what you have done and no matter what has been done to you. When he told me this I knew we had the organizing framework and ending of the book! I grumbled a little, internally, thinking, “Gee it would have been nice to have had this vision when we started writing the book,” but I got over that pretty quickly. This vision meant that trauma did not destroy our goodness and innocence, although we can lose touch with it. It is waiting right there in the heart and all we have to do is make the inner journey to that place of heldback goodness. We further develop this idea in chapter 9, “Guhā: Cave of the Heart,” in Becoming Medicine: Pathways of Initiation into a Living Spirituality.

The chapter starts off with a painting of Joseph’s, “Dreaming a New Future.” After Joseph phoned me about his vision of the heldback place of goodness, I quickly wrote out a number of related concepts in trauma and healing work: Peter Levine’s work on healing through embodiment; Donald Kalsched’s The Inner World of Trauma, and Trauma & the Soul; Richard Miller’s concept of the “inner resource” in iRest (Integrative Restoration/yoga nidra); Lewis Mehl-Madrona’s “inner healer;” Hindu traditions about the guhā (cave of the heart); and Martia Nelson’s Coming Home: The Return to True Self. Many different writers and traditions speak of an inner source of healing in the heart.

Here are some excerpts from chapter 14 “Return to the Place of Heldback Goodness:”

I madly scribbled down his words in a notebook. In talking about this held-back place of Goodness, Joseph spoke about how the sweat lodge can help veterans reconnect with this hidden place. He says that this goodness is hidden within the “cloak of Divine Energy,” and that, through the symbolic rebirthing of the sweat lodge processes, it can be brought back into a person’s life. Joseph describes how, in the sweat lodge, you sit on the ground in the darkness. At the end of the ceremony, you move from sitting to crawling on your hands and knees out through the flap of the sweat lodge door, moving from darkness and re-emerging into light. We do not remember our original birth, but this recreates our birth, crawling on hands and knees, struggling to our feet, and then staggering in our steps…

Joseph used to perform the sweat lodge ceremony at Indian Health Service hospital and clinics. He worked a lot with addictions. In the sweat lodge, there is first “placement,” in sitting, then crawling out into the light, the re-birthing process. He says that this is a “going back to Goodness, to the Source of Renewal.” This is the pathway to our inner home, which has been waiting for us and for veterans as they have journeyed forth into the world of war and trauma. We have to “repeat what we did as a baby” and this helps us reconnect to our inner home, to that place of held-back Goodness.

Joseph reminds me again to put in the book that he uses lava rocks for the sweat lodge and that these are “from the core of the Earth, the Mother of all of us. We reach through the center of her to her heart to heal.” The Earth’s heart, Mother Nature’s heart, our heart, are all the same. In connecting to Mother Nature’s heart, we can reconnect back to our own heart and heal. Joseph then said of veterans that the “Divine Mother loves them, and can wipe away their pain . . . all that is needed is a second or one or two seconds, or even no seconds, and just instantly we are forgiven.” Joseph reminisces that when he was growing up, he would meet people from many different tribes, but the Native American people were always the “most nature-oriented people.” He says that we must “Understand that we all belong to Mother Nature. We look like a beautiful man, or a beautiful woman, or a beautiful child, but still we are all Mother Nature’s children.”

You can access a pdf download of the full chapter 14, “Return to the Place of Held-back Goodness” here. The chapter ends with Joseph’s painting, “Divine Healing.”

Memorial Day Wishes of Peace for those on all sides of the Vietnam War – Bánh Xe Y Học: Hành Trình

Posted on May 27, 2019 by davidrkopacz

On Memorial Day we remember those whom we have lost. Official reports of loss of US soldiers in the Vietnam War is 58,000+. A 2008 British Medical Journal study estimates 3.8 million total deaths during the Vietnam War (called the Resistance War Against America in Vietnam). The suffering of war continues long after the war ends with PTSD, Moral Injury, Agent Orange exposure, and even suicide. Controversy exists over the number of US Vietnam veterans who have committed suicide since returning home, with estimates from 9,000 (in a 1990 study) to over 50,000 reported in various places. As a psychiatrist who works daily with veterans, I see the long-lasting after effects of war. Brain science has been pushing back the age of full development for the human brain, with 25 years of age being considered brain maturity. Wars typically are fought by the young and after every war we have a generation of veterans whose developing brains have been shaped by war and the imprint of death. The casualties of war are the walking wounded as well as the deceased, and many of the wounds are not visible.

I just received a box of books from Vietnam, the Vietnamese translation of Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing Trauma & PTSD (Bánh Xe Y Học: Hành Trình). It is really amazing to hold these books from Vietnam in my hands and compare them side by side. I work with so many veterans at the VA who served in Vietnam and to have the words of peace that Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) and I have put together into this book translated into Vietnamese feels very important.

The work of peace is a continual work, like tending a garden. To receive a box of books from Vietnam about bringing peace to veterans is like getting a big packet of seeds to replant what has been injured by war. For Joseph, language is very important, not just in conveying meaning, but in creating spiritual realities. To have the healing properties of the medicine wheel translated into Vietnamese brings our two lands and peoples closer together in peace. Translators Huỳnh ngọc trụ & Lê Thục Uyên Phương have worked to bring American English and Vietnamese into resonance with each other. In his book, House of Shattering Light, Joseph wrote about how the war gods were first created out of the fear that people had, but that later they came home to peace and became peace gods. In Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing Trauma & PTSD, the title of chapter 14 is “Return to the Held-back Place of Goodness, which translates into Vietnamese as, “Trở Về Nơi Tốt Lành,” Return to Good Place.” Peace is this Good Place and Joseph tells us that we all have it within our hearts, we can forget about it, we can loose touch with it, but is always there. Our jobs as healers – both those working as healers for others, and those of us who are seeking to heal ourselves – is to find our way back home to this place of goodness, this place of peace. We are all wounded in one way or another, and yet we all have a source of goodness and healing within us – we are the medicine that we are seeking!

Being Fully Human

Living an Integrated Life

Tag Archives: Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing Trauma & PTSD