The Inner Circle
Chapter 6 of Neophyte: My Life In A Sex Cult
This is a chapter within my memoir, Neophyte, about my time in a harmful cult called the Deer Tribe Metis Medicine Society. It is not meant to be read as a stand-alone post. To view all book chapters, click here.
The Deer Tribe is a dangerous cult. While they present themselves as a spiritual community offering healing and empowerment, their practices are rooted in manipulation, control, and cultural appropriation. Like many cults, they offer moments of genuine connection and personal insight — but these are strategically used to gain trust and draw people deeper into a harmful system. Readers are encouraged to read the entire book before forming opinions about the Deer Tribe.
Chapter 6
Spring arrived in North Texas, bringing warm days and cool nights. New grass sprang from the ground and the trees grew lush with thick green foliage. Daffodils, Indian Paintbrush, and Texas Bluebonnets burst across the landscape. It was a wonderful respite between the icy winter and the sweltering heat of summer.
Though I had been sweating at the Rudra Center for five months, I barely exchanged more than a few words with Silver. Sometimes, if he was around when I showed up to help dress the lodge, he would smile at me and say, “Back again?” I could sense the eagerness on my face as I smiled back and uttered a quiet “yes.” I felt shy and hesitant to approach him with the numerous questions that flooded my mind.
At the May sweat lodge, I arrived earlier than usual. Silver stood in the corner near a stereo system, inserting a CD into the player. The room filled with the soothing sounds of Native American flute music.
He walked toward me and smiled. “Back again!” he said pleasantly while standing with his long arms dangling to his sides, his weight shifting onto one leg.
“You know,” he went on thoughtfully, “I have a Wednesday night class you might like to come to. A lot of the regulars attend. We go deep into spiritual psychology and self-knowledge, and you’ll learn more about all the ceremonial processes we do here and the meaning behind them.”
My curiosity piqued. Of course I wanted to know more. Everything about this place fascinated me.
“It’s a three-hour class and we start at six-thirty,” Silver continued. “It’s donation-based, and most people give ten dollars. Talk to Matthew or Sally if you have questions and they can tell you more about it.”
The following Wednesday, I sat on the floor with eight others in a long, windowless, rectangular room located on the ground floor of the Victorian house. Everyone called it the classroom, a name that, in my opinion, failed to adequately convey the room’s captivating aesthetics.
The place resembled a temple, filled with paintings, tapestries, framed photographs, and altars covered with miniature statues, animal effigies, colored stones, and other decorative objects. Every wall featured a different color: black, yellow, white, and red. The vintage, mustard-yellow carpet, while old, appeared clean, with vacuum lines still visible on its surface.
In the middle of the room, two white pillars separated the expansive, carpeted floor. Against the furthest wall stood a small platform, also covered in carpet and surrounded by photographs and paintings.
On this night, we gathered in the front section of the room, forming a circle around a wide tree slab that had been polished and transformed into a special kind of altar, called a mesa. The mesa featured small representations of the elements: a bowl of water, a bowl of stones, a cone of incense, and a candle, each arranged equidistantly around its edge.
Silver sat in his luxurious floor chair at the head of this circle. Behind him, a dividing wall blocked the entrance from our view. On this wall hung a round canvas painting with an intricate, beautiful geometric design.
Silver was an exceptionally talented artist. His paintings adorned the walls of the classroom, the spa, the dojo, and many other rooms throughout the center. They varied in size and shape, ranging from circles to squares and rectangles, both small and large. Many paintings, like this one, were of geometric designs set against stunning natural landscapes. Some drew inspiration from Native American culture, such as the square canvas of a long-haired woman drumming in the desert under a night sky.
Like the sweat lodge, Silver’s Wednesday class commenced with peculiar fanfare. A short-haired woman named Cora passed me a leather drawstring pouch filled with colored stones. “Just follow along,” she said kindly, and I noticed similar piles of stones arranged in front of each person amidst their binders and notebooks.
With a nod from Silver, everyone raised their yellow stone high above their head as a young, stocky, long-haired man named Julian spoke to the sacred powers of the east, ending with the familiar refrain “Be here now!” Immediately, Olivia, a beautiful, dark-haired woman sitting across from him, spoke to the sacred powers of the west, a black stone held high in her hand. The process continued this way for the south, north, southeast, southwest, northwest, and northeast, and finished up with Wakan Tanka, the Lakota name for ‘Great Spirit.’ By the time it was over, we all had a circle of colored stones set before us.
Silver picked up his two-sided drum and began beating a steady rhythm, instantly joined by Matthew, Sally, Julian, and another woman named Reina, who also held drums. Silver began to sing, and after the first line, everyone joined in. The song continued in this call-and-response style for several moments.
Ate Wakan Tanka
Heya wuelo he
Ate Wakan Tanka
Ohn shee mah yey hey-loh
Oh yah tey oh yah tey
Zah nee chee peey-loh
The song came to an end, and then Sally began beating a new rhythm on her drum, initiating another song in her sweet, melodious voice. For the next fifteen minutes or so, we continued singing and drumming, with each person who held a drum taking a turn starting and leading a new song. By the time it ended, I felt serene, calm, and deeply relaxed.
Silver set his drum down and the others followed suit. He took a long drink from a tall glass filled with thick, pink liquid and then began to speak.
“Alright, so we have a new person here tonight, so for her benefit, I’ll explain the purpose of this class. We are here to learn about ourselves because when we learn about ourselves, we have the opportunity to see patterns that are no longer working for us. Once we see these patterns, we can change them. But here is where it gets tricky. When we try to change the things we don’t like about ourselves, those things tend to get stubborn and stay stuck. So we have to learn how to have radical acceptance first, observe without judgment, and gain the knowledge we need to shift these patterns and transform them in the light. And the way we do that is through these teachings that I call shamanic psychology.
“One of the first things we have to do is shift the way we think. We’ve all been indoctrinated into a linear way of thinking. But nothing in life is linear. Life is cyclical and circular and this is also apparent in nature. You can see it in the seasons and the moon cycles and so on. The natives knew this. So we have to get out of our heads and begin using circular reasoning, and one of the ways we do this is through a process called wheel teachings.”
Then, turning to me, he said, “Draw a circle and at the bottom of the circle write the word ‘south.’ At the top, write ‘north.’ On the left write ‘west’ and on the right write ‘east.’ You’ll notice it forms something that looks like a compass.”
I did as instructed, notating everything down inside the spiral notebook I brought with me. As I did, I noticed the notebooks of the people sitting closest to me. Theirs were either hardcover or leatherbound, the pages filled with drawings of wheels and notes.
Silver continued, “Now, we’re going to overlay the elements on this wheel. So the south element is water, the west is earth, the north is air, and the east is fire. In the center is the void. This is the basis of all wheel teachings.”
A quiet moment followed as Silver waited for me to finish writing. Then he went on.
“Part of our work is understanding where society has steered us wrong. For instance, most of us were taught that humans have a body and a mind. In some new age circles, they’ll add the soul. But humans have five aspects. We have an emotional aspect, a physical aspect, a mental aspect, a spiritual aspect, and a sexual aspect. This is what makes us Sacred Humans. It is our awareness of these aspects and our willingness to heal the wounds we hold in these aspects that differentiates us from what SwiftDeer called two-legged animals. Two-legged animals are humans who are basically stuck in low-vibrational energy and ruled by their reptilian mind. People who operate out of this kind of energetic want instant gratification, they start wars, they remain stuck in dualistic thinking. They are not interested in a spiritual path. It’s very low vibrational energy.
Silver talked fast, and I wrote as quickly as I could, trying to capture every word, every idea, completely enthralled by what he had to say.
“So someone give the Human Aspect wheel.” Silver took another swig of his pink drink. As he did, Elena, a lovely, passionate woman in her early twenties who attended every sweat lodge, spoke up.
“Our emotions are in the south with the water element. Our bodies are in the west with the earth element. Our minds are in the north with the air element, and our spirits are in the east with the fire element. The center aspect is our sexuality and also our soul,” she said in her spirited voice that I had come to admire.
“This is how we empower ourselves. We have to get to know ourselves and how we work,” Silver said. “None of this is taught in our school systems. Yet this is how we create self-empowerment and co-empowerment.”
I felt a resonance in my being as I listened to his words. Five aspects! It made so much sense. I had never experienced this level of depth inside spirituality or psychology before.
“So that’s enough review for now. We’re going to shift back to our teachings on tyrants. What is a tyrant?” Silver looked down, waiting for someone in the group to speak.
“A tyrant is a person who wants to steal your energy,” Julian explained.
“Tyrants can also come at you through the weather or environment,” Elena added. “So like, a flat tire that makes you late.”
“Or if the rain ruins your outdoor wedding,” Cora said.
“Exactly,” Silver confirmed. “But tonight we are going to focus on two-legged tyrants— two-leggeds being humans.”
For the rest of the evening, I learned about the eight two-legged tyrants. Each had a specific place on the wheel, as well as a specialized motive, intent, and method by which they attempted to steal energy from others.
Silver brought out a stack of papers and sent it around the room. Each person took one sheet, and when I received mine, I saw “Tyrant Wheel” written at the top. A large circle took up most of the page, with the names of the tyrants printed all around it.
The names were evocative. Petty Nuisance Tyrants. Sly, Cunning, and Devious Tyrants. Brutal, Vicious, Violent Tyrants. Sad, Melancholy, and Guilt-Provoking Tyrants. Persecuting Tormenting Tyrants. Rage-Provoking Tyrants. Lord, King, and Queen Tyrants. Finally, there was the Inner Self Tyrant.
“Tyrants come at us in various ways,” Silver explained. “And the first step is to recognize that you are being tyranted. How do you know if you are being tyranted? You will always have an internal response, such as negative emotions or judgmental thoughts. Our society calls this being ‘triggered.’ Humans who are unaware will usually project all their emotions and judgments onto the tyrant. That’s how the tyrant gets us - that’s how they steal our energy.”
I looked around the room at all the faces, wondering if everyone else felt as spellbound as I did.
“If we let ourselves get upset by a tyrant, we are losing energy,” Silver emphasized.
Our work, Silver explained, was to turn every tyrant into a Teacher Tyrant. Doing so would help us learn and grow. To accomplish this, he instructed, we must first identify the type of tyrant, and then do a process called “counting coup,” which means that we have to show the tyrant what they are doing. Silver said we do this by “spinning the mirror” so the tyrant can see themselves for who they truly are.
I listened intently, but despite his explanation, I still didn’t understand how to count coup or spin the mirror. Yet I was intrigued, especially because conflict and confrontation terrified me, and I loved the idea of mastering a new way of handling these kinds of situations.
Soon, Silver ended his dialogue and asked the group for real-life examples. A few people described tyrants they had dealt with in the past or tyrants that were impacting them in the present. We talked through possible ways to count coup on these tyrants.
By the time class ended, it was nearly ten o’clock. We finished by closing out our circle, which meant once again, we held up each stone from our stone circle, thanked the powers for their presence, and replaced the stone back in its pouch.
I walked home that night elated, filled with the energy of new possibilities, scarcely believing that Silver and the sweat lodge and this class had been right under my nose all this time. It seemed auspicious, yet I also felt a pang of sadness. I had walked by this center dozens of times over the past seven years and never once did I think to inquire within. I couldn’t help but wonder how different my life might be today if I had known about this place sooner. What painful experiences could I have avoided? I lay awake in bed that night, feeling agitated and weary as unpleasant thoughts of what could have been filled my mind.
Go to Chapter 7.