Additional Resources & Follow Up
New Age Frauds and Plastic Shamans forum — entries from 2009–2015 about Daniel Foor
On my separation from Ancestral Medicine google document — a series of letters from 2019 and 2020 by Dare Sohei
White Supremacy Culture article — by Tema Okun
Leaving Dharma Ocean website, an example of another “spiritual community” dealing with a leader enacting patterns of abuse and harm, including Enabling in a high demand group
DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender) behaviors
Undoing Undue and the BITE (Behavioral Control, Information Control, Thought Control, Emotional Control) Model resource — from Freedom of Mind
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Updated Dec 3, 2020:
In response to Daniel Foor’s statement, written by Elsa Asher Khalfin
On November 30, 2020, Daniel Foor posted a statement on his website regarding the Open Letter Regarding Daniel Foor & Ancestral Medicine published October 19, 2020.
Part of me wants to forget and move on from this whole experience, and the other part of me knows I am responsible for my actions of being involved with and promoting and teaching his work and now it is my responsibility to tell the truth about what has happened, even more so because of his ongoing attempts to obscure and deny.
I want to address his statement, piece by piece
My first inquiry about his statement is, who is this statement for? It wasn’t sent to me, as one of the signatories of the letter. It also wasn’t posted on social media. It was sent out in a newsletter to the “network” which excludes most of the letter signatories, and I only saw it because a colleague sent the link to me. This leads me to conclude that this statement is for people who have, are currently, or may in the future take his online courses or training program. I have not received any communications from Daniel letting me know he is offering and available for mediation. They have my email address, and my phone number. If he is not reaching out, how am I supposed to know that this offer stands? And why is he expecting those of us impacted by his behaviors to reach out to him?
This “two-month sabbatical” should not be confused with an actual stepping away from his leadership and his position of power, or a time away to work with his behavioral issues. He references that this “was requested by several in the network” but I know that at least two of the people in the network who brought this up talked about him stepping away from his position for much longer, like six months to a year, because he is not fit to be in a position of power and leadership at this time, and so he can meaningfully and deeply address his behavioral issues. It looks like this time off is a way to let himself off the hook to respond in any kind of meaningful way to the reverberations of his ongoing lack of taking accountability.
He continues to emphasize that the issues raised in the open letter have already been addressed, that this is old news, and that those of us writing and signing this letter just don’t know this because we left so long ago. This isn’t true, many people involved in writing and/or signing the letter are still in the “network” or were in it until recently. I only officially left on March 3, 2020. Regardless, if things have changed, if Daniel has addressed these behavioral issues, wouldn’t that accountability process include reaching out to every single person who left or was kicked out, with a report back detailing his understanding of what he’s done, why, the impacts, and his plan for repair.
Daniel once told me that he keeps a mental list of people who he likes/are good, and people who he doesn’t like/are bad, and he writes people out of the universe when they’ve crossed him. This internal cosmology/psyche structure is at play here. He also once told me he was narcissistic and knew he had the potential to be a cult leader. These are not quick fix behavioral and psychic issues, or ones that are repaired through individual mediation with people he’s impacted.
The open letter was published on October 19, because it was 4 days before what was at the time being called the last “conflict resolution” meeting for people in the “network” and we wanted people to have time to read the letter and bring any questions and concerns to this meeting. To focus on the latest cohort’s perception of the letter as an attack fails to address Daniel’s responsibility for his behaviors.
This statement is actually designed to “minimize concerns expressed in the open letter” and Daniel is saying the opposite of what he is doing, a classic hiding in plain sight move used by people abusing power or mistreating others and trying to confuse and divert. Additionally, listing the number of staff, ritualists, supporters, and course participants, is a numbers game, a way to display or prove innocence by way of mass implied support, to make anyone who has experienced the impacts of Daniel’s behaviors, and who know and support people who have, to feel outnumbered
Daniel emphasizing private direct non-social media contact, without making efforts to initiating this, and saying “nothing in the post was new information,” is an attempt to obscure the whole point of the open letter. It was not written in haste, or in dysregulated states. It was not the first move, or an escalation. It wasn’t a social media “call-out,” it was a last straw, a final act we could take after a long and protracted process over the course of two years in which Daniel failed to take accountability, and all that was left to do was document the behaviors and the timeline. We came to understand that it was important for the general public to have access to this information, especially as he attempted to erase records of the last two years, denied and covered up what happened, and continued to expand and grow his reach, and convert Ancestral Medicine into an “online school” with an international audience. You can’t make informed choices without information.
Now Ancestral Medicine calls itself an online school and a network, but when the accounts of mistreatment that were recounted in the open letter, Ancestral Medicine called itself a guild, a community, a spiritual family, and Daniel was presenting himself as a priest and mentor, a spiritual teacher and guide. This is relevant, because the lack of clarity up front led to a lot of issues, including people having never asked for or consented to various roles and relationships, and Daniel behaving in very controlling ways.
Lastly, this offer to “connect you with individuals… who are willing to speak from their personal experiences” is a basic high-demands/cult-like group ploy, leveraging or capitalizing on the “it didn’t happen to me” explanation, and uses people in the “network” to do his PR work for him. I am not supposing that people aren’t thinking for themselves, but I do not underestimate the effects of a controlling environment.
