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Hank Wesselman

American anthropologist

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 22, 2025
Entity authorityQ5648488
Source-derived summary

Henry Barnard Wesselman (1941-2021) was an American anthropologist known primarily for his Spiritwalker trilogy of spiritual memoirs. In them, he claims to have been in contact with "Nainoa", an ethnic Hawaiian kahuna (shaman) living some 5,000 years in our future. The books envision the imminent collapse of Western civilization as a result of global warming. On a more positive note, Wesselman perceives an ongoing "wide-spread spiritual reawakening" which he dubs the "Modern Mystical Movement."

Together with his wife Jill Kuykendall, Wesselman led shamanic training workshops for the Omega Institute and other, similar institutions. They divided their time between northern California, Oregon, and Captain Cook, Hawaii. Hank died peacefully near his home in Hawaii on February 15, 2021 after a short illness. His beloved Jill was at his side. He was 79 years old.

Professional background

Wesselman is a native New Yorker who received his undergraduate degree in zoology from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and his doctorate in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley. During the 1960s he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nigeria, among the Yoruba.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Hank Wesselman” as american anthropologist. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hank, Wesselman and American.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1941, 2021—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1941-01-01. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Hank, Wesselman and American providing the first useful test.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Hank Wesselman”, the useful work is to connect “american anthropologist” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 22, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5648488. VIAF identifies the subject as 2611595. The Library of Congress control number is n85807772. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941 and 2021.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Hank Wesselman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.