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These days, the term Heyoka empath gets thrown around a lot, usually to describe someone highly sensitive, has a sarcastic sense of humor, and heals through chaos. Even trying to find information about Heyokas is a riddle, with many people claiming they are one…
Sounds edgy, but hereโs the thing. Most of whatโs being shared about the Heyoka is completely off base.
The Heyoka is the spirit of contrary and duality that’s associated with Native American traditions (but a similar archetype is found all over, it’s a universal). It’s not a trendy personality label or something you can claim because youโre a little bit quirky. The spirit of the Heyoka works through an individual who is ordained to ‘be the Heyoka’ of the tribe.
I became familiar with this term when working in shamanic medicine communities in the Andes for 9 months, and learned that there’s so much depth and nuance here that is seldom explored.
So, here I’m going to share my understanding of what a Heyoka is without all the riddles, and offer a more balanced, spiritual perspective of what this spirit is, and how it works through certain people.
My Encounter With the Spirit of Heyoka
Heyoka is a word that’s sometimes thrown around in shamanic communities, and is often used playfully to describe the joker during ancestral medicine retreats. Shamanic retreats often have someone who wins the label of the Heyoka. This tends to be the person with the grand personality, the offbeat joker who often makes inappropriate comments or acts out of line, fills the ceremony with laughter, and completely misaligns with the energy of the space, which tends to draw quieter, more serious crowds.
At one medicine community I was working at in the Ecuadorian Andes, the Huachumero would sometimes exclaim, “We have our Heyoka” to the boisterous individual who wasn’t necessarily disrespectful, but who couldn’t read the room and often disrupted the energy. He is seen as the killer of overseriousness, and says what everyone is thinking. He perhaps unintentionally lifts the energy of the group through playfulness, silliness, asking all the wrong questions, and being politically incorrect.
But the term changed from a playful label to something much more tangible when, now and then, guests would have encounters with the spirit of the Heyoka during an Ayahuasca or Huachuma ceremony. He often presented himself as a mischievous, cosmic jester-like spirit that often played games with the participants or drew attention to wounds they didn’t know they had.
For some, the experience was unsettling. For others, it was a relief, like being shown a cosmic joke about who they are to the point they’re forced to let down their guards because they’ve been slapped in the face with a truth-bomb.
I began hearing the word Heyoka around quite a lot in this medicine community, as a contrarian spirit who breaks all the rules. Upon asking a Native American Shaman about the Heyoka, I was told that if I see the spirit of a Heyoka, not to fear.
The Heyoka reflects what’s in your heart, and if you have a good heart, you have nothing to worry about. If you have darkness in your heart, then the Heyoka will play games and reflect the hurt, not to be cruel necessarily, but to find the cracks in your armor and bypass your guards.
A year later, when I was volunteering in another medicine community high in the Peruvian Andes, the Heyoka made its way back into my life. One afternoon, when a medicine woman was doing a Mayan astrological reading for me, one of my personality traits showed the Heyoka.
She asked, โDo you often do things backwards?“
“What do you mean?” I asked
“Like… you struggle to follow norms? You do things in a way that confuses most people.”
What she said made sense. Following rules or norms is difficult for me. Now it would be silly to claim that I’m a Heyoka, but perhaps I have some tendencies of this energy.
I’ve spent much of my life doing things a little differently than most. I prefer to learn through error and suffering. If someone I know gives up, I will too and tell them how much better it is, not sarcastically, but honestly, until they think I’m a loser and decide to keep going.
I’ve always felt like an outsider, choosing a nomadic life while everyone else settled down, to tackling challenges in completely upside-down ways, which have baffled my friends, teachers, and family. Having odd emotional reactions, defying norms, and reflecting emotions to others.
Itโs always been that way.
Even as a kid, my parents and teachers thought I had autism because I would struggle with the simplest of instructions, but thrive when I’m left to my own devices, to work things out for myself in strange ways with seem to defy logic, but worked for me.
And who knows… maybe I am autistic. Maybe thatโs part of the gift. But thereโs always been this… sideways rhythm to how I move through the world.
Maybe that’s an aspect of the Heyoka in me, and this sacred energy we can all tap into to an extent.
The Origins of the Heyoka
The term Heyoka (or heyรณkศa) comes directly from the Lakota people, who are a Native North American tribe from the Great Plains region. In traditional Lakota culture, the Heyoka is a role appointed by spirit, said to be through dreams or visions, typically Wakรญลyaล, the sacred thunder spirits.
When someone dreams of these beings, it may indicate they are called to live as a Heyoka: The contrarian of the tribe whose role is to help the tribe confront illusion, ego, and dysfunction by challenging norms, being unconventional, and at times inappropriate.
The Heyoka brings humor in dire situations, fear when people are complacent, and knocks people off their high horse when they’re getting a little too head-full. They teach through paradoxical behavior, violate taboos, customs, and religious norms seamlessly, and disrupt all the systems around them.
Think of it this way.
If the community is the pot, the Heyoka is the spoon that stirs everything up to ultimately inspire transformation, but in an unconventional, seemingly inorganic way.
The Heyoka doesn’t choose to be this way. He doesn’t think “Hmm, how can I be different?”. He acts this way because he knows no other path. The spirit of the Heyoka works through this person to turn things on their heads and mirror the energies of the tribe, not to be malicious, but ultimately to bring awareness.
What Is the Spirit of the Heyoka?
In Lakota tradition, the Heyoka is known as the sacred clown, someone who walks backward into the wind, wears clothes inside-out, and does everything opposite to whatโs considered normal. They challenge social norms, mock seriousness, provoke insight, and speak truth in ways that shock people awake.
But, at the core, the Heyoka is not a person. It’s a spirit, or energy, that is channeled through a person. Traditionally, one person of the tribe is chosen by the spirit of the Heyoka to be a vessel for this energy.
Like many energies, the Heyoka is not good or bad. These are dualistic labels we tend to give things based on our perception of association with suffering or joy. The Heyoka is neutral.
It serves a role to move energies, change stagnant systems, and loosen everything up to make way for better structures, socially, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It will reflect darkness and suffering just as much as it will love and acceptance.
Think of a Heyoka as an inverted spirit that does things backwards and breaks all the rules. It acts as a mirror, showing people what they need to see but often donโt want to. In Lakota tradition, becoming the Heyoka is something thatโs recognized and bestowed by elders, often passed down through spiritual visions or lineage.
A person can be a Heyoka, but only because the spirit or energy has chosen to move through them. Itโs more like being a vessel for that medicine. Someone who has the nervous system, the karmic makeup, or the spiritual permission to carry that current without getting wrecked by it.
What the Spirit of the Heyoka Teaches Us
In the medicine spaces Iโve sat in, especially in the Red Road traditions which are prevalent in the Andes, this energy sometimes shows up during ceremony. Sometimes people will suddenly go into fits of laughter during the deepest, darkest parts of a ceremony. It can send them into fits of tears or twist their arm to act silly and out of line.
Others said it helped them see something theyโd been avoiding for years by teasing out a certain repressed emotion, aggravating a wound, or triggering them until the whole dam comes loose. They didn’t want to encounter this spirit, but it was certainly effective in finding the cracks in their armor and exposing their blind spots with just enough absurdity to shake them out of their illusion.
Thatโs what makes the Heyoka such a respected spirit.
The Heyoka teaches through contradiction, through reversal, and through chaos that somehow brings clarity. If youโve ever felt like something in a ceremony was messing with you, not to punish, but to reveal something, that couldโve been Heyoka energy moving through the space.
Heyoka Energy in Modern Times
The Heyoka isnโt exclusive to any one tradition. This spirit shows up across cultures and dimensions, and it’s a universal archetype. But to truly understand it, you have to honor where the name Heyoka comes from and what it means to the people whoโve held that wisdom for generations.
Even if youโre not a Heyoka in the traditional sense, the wisdom they offer is still incredibly valuable for all of us. The energy of the Heyoka is disruptive, but itโs never random. Itโs driven by a desire to bring people back to authenticity.
Even if you donโt carry this exact medicine, you can still walk with this spirit, and it may show up in your life in different ways, whether in ceremony, during the passing of a loved one, or perhaps when you feel the universe is playing a cosmic joke on you that you can’t help but to laugh at.
The spirit of the Heyoka teaches us to be a little less polished, a little more real. You can speak uncomfortable truths when they need to be spoken. And you can learn to hold space for discomfort. You can learn to go against the grain and be raw, without abiding by norms, but following your spirit’s calling.
The path of the Heyoka is not something to play dress-up with. Instead of claiming the label, ask yourself how you can embody the wisdom.
How can you show up as a true mirror for yourself and the world around you?
How can you bring light to the dark without pretending to be something youโre not?
Sometimes being completely raw makes us uncomfortable, but it may just be the most intimate connection with the divine we can understand.
