Teàrlach eshu RCH LNLPP

Priest and wizard… that about covers it.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn to the edges — to the places where mystery meets method, and where transformation becomes possible. I’ve spent my life exploring how the mind, spirit, and body intertwine — through meditation, trance, ceremony, language, and lineage.

I’m an ordained Zen Buddhist priest and authorized teacher in the Rinzai tradition, recently returned to serve as Abbot of Zenwest. I’m also a clinical hypnotherapist, animist guide, and community ritualist. My work draws on decades of training across traditions — Zen, ancestral animism, trancework, and end-of-life care — all grounded in a commitment to integrity, depth, and relationship.

I work where thresholds appear — between life and death, tradition and innovation, personal and ancestral. Whether I’m guiding someone through koan practice, psychedelic integration, grief ritual, or ancestral reconnection, I approach it with the same heart: a respect for what’s alive, a love of deep process, and a belief that transformation is always possible.

My Path

When I was five years old, my sister asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said, “a priest… or a wizard.” Odd, maybe, since my family didn’t go to church and religion wasn’t a topic of conversation. But something in me already knew.

I asked to attend Catholic school by third grade — not for doctrine, but for the pull of ritual and mystery. I was that kid in the back row arguing with the Bishop about what made something “holy.”

When I was nine, my mother died suddenly. That rupture shaped me. What began as spiritual curiosity turned into something rawer — an existential crisis that lasted through much of my youth.

In my late teens, I found martial arts, which led me to the Tao Te Ching, and then to Zen. A line in The Book of Five Rings cracked something open. By nineteen, I was sitting zazen. Within a year I had moved across the country to Vancouver Island and thrown myself into formal training.

In 1997, I began my Rinzai Zen path under Joshu Sasaki Roshi. I was ordained at Mt. Baldy in 1999, became an Osho (Zen teacher) in 2013, and led Zenwest Buddhist Society as Abbot from 2004–2019. After a few years away to focus on family and deep integration, I’ve now returned as Abbot and teacher — offering Zen as a living, evolving path rooted in discipline, intimacy, and inquiry.

My own Zen lineage is both traditional and complicated — and I think it’s important to be clear about that.

I was ordained in the Rinzai Zen tradition in 1999 by Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi, and trained for many years with his senior students. Over time, I came to recognize — and publicly address — the serious misconduct within that community. That reckoning shaped me deeply.

I later continued my training with Kokan Genjo Marinello Roshi, Abbot of Dai Bai Zan Cho Bo Zen Ji (Chobo-ji) in Seattle, WA, from whom I received the title of Osho (Zenji) and full authorization as a Zen teacher. I remain affiliated with Chobo-ji and the broader lay Rinzai network. My Dharma name is Kōsēn Eshū (紅仙恵秀), often translated as Red Mountain Hermit or Red Wizard — a name that holds both my fiery commitment and the creative wildness at the heart of my practice.

Deepening the Work: Hospice, Trance, Entheogens, and Ancestral Pathways

My years as a Zen teacher laid the groundwork for how I meet transformation — but it was my time in hospice that deepened my understanding of presence, impermanence, and the sacred.

From 2016 to 2022, I served as the Spiritual Health Coordinator at Victoria Hospice — an 18-bed palliative care unit embedded in the hospital system. I worked as part of a multidisciplinary team, offering support to the dying and their families, and mentoring staff around grief, meaning, and spiritual integration.

It was there that I began to explore the potential of psychedelic-assisted therapy — particularly psilocybin — for end-of-life care. That exploration led me into ceremonial and clinical work with entheogens, and eventually into my role as a facilitator and mentor with the Roots to Thrive program — one of the few legally sanctioned ketamine-assisted therapy programs in Canada.

In addition to that clinical work, I have extensive experience in ceremonial entheogenic practice — both as a guide and as a participant. I’ve worked with a variety of medicines in traditional, hybrid, and contemporary ceremonial contexts. While many of these medicines remain illegal in most jurisdictions, I do not provide them — but I do offer preparation and integration support for those engaging with these sacraments in their own healing or spiritual path.

This work is inseparable from a commitment to decolonization and reconciliation. In the realm of medicine, that means upholding and advocating for the validity of Indigenous ways of knowing within systems that often marginalize or extract from them. Many Indigenous Peoples have stewarded relationships with these medicines for thousands of years. They carry deep expertise, and they deserve respect. We should listen — not just in ceremony, but in science, policy, and practice.

Alongside this, I’ve continued to deepen my work in trancework, hypnotherapy, and ancestral animist healing — integrating methods drawn from both traditional lineages and contemporary therapeutic models.

I trained as a clinical hypnotherapist in 2016 and became a Registered Clinical Hypnotherapist with CACHE. I also hold certification as a Licensed NLP Practitioner through the Society of NLP. My trancework blends clean language, deep presence, symbolic patterning, and ritual framing — always grounded in ethical, relational practice.

Spiritually, I identify as an Ancestral Animist. I believe healing must happen not only within the self, but also in our relationships with lineage, land, and the other-than-human world. My background includes years of training in Nordic traditions (especially runecraft and galdr), European witchcraft, and animist healing modalities — including psychopomping, depossession, and curse or pattern unwinding.

One of the most meaningful threads in my own reclamation journey has been the revitalization of Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic) — my ancestral language, and the cultural backbone of my people. Reclaiming Gàidhlig is not just a personal act; it is a way of processing the harms caused by colonization — both those enacted upon my own ancestors, and those our ancestors inflicted upon Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island. Exploring these cycles of harm, trauma, and survival together opens a path toward deeper healing and genuine reconciliation.

It’s not easy work. But I believe it’s necessary — and I believe it’s sacred.

Where I Am Now

These days, my work flows through several distinct streams — but they’re all fed by the same source: the vow to return again and again, for the benefit of all beings.

I serve as the Abbot of Zenwest Buddhist Society, guiding formal Zen training and offering mentorship to sincere students of the Rinzai tradition.

Through Monarch Trancework, I support individuals through spiritual direction, animist mentorship, trance-based healing, and preparation/integration for entheogenic experiences. I also create and offer Trancework recordings, community rituals, and 1-on-1 sessions focused on ancestral reconnection, land-based healing, and personal transformation.

I’m a founding organizer of Cinneadh nan Gàidheal (Kindred of the Gaels Society) — a nonprofit rooted in Gàidhlig language and cultural revitalization. Through Cinneadh, I help build pathways of community, learning, and remembrance for those reclaiming Gaelic identity in diaspora.

I also share reflections, teachings, and resources through my Patreon, The Red Mountain Way — an evolving archive of Zen, trance, and cultural reclamation work.

At the heart of it all, I see this work as a form of bodhisattva practice — offered for the benefit of all beings, human and other-than-human, in the ten directions and across past, present, and future.

If something here resonates, I welcome you to reach out. You’re not alone on the path.