Author’s Note: For those who may not know, No Kau a Kau means “for eternity” in Hawaiian. This will be the third time I’ve had the chance to interview Serge Kahili King. The first time on the radio show The Church Of Mabus I was shocked through the phone by lightning several times during a bad storm; Serge told me that it was a sign of power. It scared me to death, but all the interviews have always been pleasantly inspiring. You can find the shows archived for listening at my site. What follows is my third interview with Serge Kahili King. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and find it as uplifting.

When you were growing up, how did you fill or come into your position as a Huna medicine man?

I was brought up in the Hawaiian Huna tradition of kalakupua, and when I was fourteen, my father formally inducted me into the path of a kupua. We don’t call them “medicine men.” Later I was adopted by Joseph Kahili, a kupua from Kauai, and trained first by his daughter and then by his son. I also spent seven years apprenticed to a Hausa shaman in West Africa.

A Lakota Indian once told me I was what he would call “caught up by the seat of my pants by Spirit.” My father was a cancer survivor of over sixteen years who finally passed away. I feel I had a shamanistic death that introduced me to the spirit world and Creator, so to speak. What are your thoughts on shamanistic deaths that awaken people?

I have had a number of such experiences in which death seemed inevitable, and I was whole at the end of them. To me they were like stepping stones into greater awareness each time they happened.