Questions & Clarity

What You Need to Know

We believe in complete transparency. If something remains unclear, we welcome you to reach out directly.

Who We Are

What is The Sacred Circle Fellowship?

The Sacred Circle Fellowship is a Private Membership Association (PMA) — the ceremonial and community heart of Ayni Munay Ministry, a 508(c)(1)(A) religious organization operating under the full protection of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (42 U.S.C. § 2000bb et seq.).

We are a living religious community — intimate, private, and by invitation only. We do not market, advertise, or solicit from the general public. Every member arrives through a personal referral from someone who knows them and believes they belong here.

Ours is not a retreat center or a therapeutic program. It is a path — one that asks for sincere commitment and rewards that commitment with a depth of transformation that is genuinely rare in today's world.

Who leads the ceremonies?

All ceremonies are personally led by Keith Walters — Founder and Senior Minister of Ayni Munay Ministry — supported by a carefully selected team of highly qualified facilitators, each with significant depth of experience in plant medicine facilitation and each operating at the highest level of their profession.

Our facilitation team is not assembled for convenience. Every person who holds space within our ceremonies has been chosen for the quality of their presence, the integrity of their practice, and their capacity to meet each participant with genuine skill, care, and wisdom. Many carry their own lineage transmissions and years of dedicated ceremonial experience.

Keith holds authentic initiation in two of the world's most demanding healing lineages — the Mestizo Vegetalista tradition of the Amazon under some of the most respected master shamans and healers, and the Missoko Bwiti tradition of Gabon under the most respected healers in the traditon — as well as the Yungdrung Bön tradition of Tibet under Geshe Shenphen Samdup Rinpoche. To hold authentic initiation in both Ayahuasca and Iboga lineages simultaneously is extraordinarily rare. Keith carries both with integrity, devotion, and over a decade of daily living practice.

Is this legal?

Fully and unequivocally.

Ayni Munay Ministry operates as a 508(c)(1)(A) religious organization. The Sacred Circle Fellowship operates as a Private Membership Association pursuant to the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The United States Supreme Court affirmed these protections in Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal (2006), recognizing the sincere religious use of entheogenic plant medicines by genuine religious organizations.

Our sacramental practices are conducted exclusively within the private domain between consenting adult members who share sincere spiritual beliefs — protected by the highest law of the land. This level of legal clarity and integrity is among the rarest things available in the world of sacred medicine today.

The Medicines

What sacred medicines do you work with?

The Sacred Circle Fellowship works with several plant medicines, each recognized by Ayni Munay Ministry as a sacred sacrament:

Ayahuasca

Held in the Mestizo Vegetalista tradition of the Amazon Basin. Ayahuasca is a profoundly healing and transformational medicine that works through the emotional and spiritual body — revealing, clarifying, and reconnecting us to the intelligence of the natural world and our most authentic self.

Iboga

Held in the Missoko Bwiti tradition of Gabon, Africa. Known as the "Grandfather Medicine," Iboga is one of the oldest initiatory traditions on Earth — precise, direct, and extraordinarily clarifying. It is not a visionary journey. It is an initiation into the root of one's truth, their ancestral linage, and the deepest patterns of the psyche and body.

Tobacco / Mapacho & Mambé

Used ceremonially in accordance with Amazonian and Andean protocols as sacred purifying and grounding medicines. Each medicine is worked with separately, in its own dedicated ceremonial container, honoring the distinct protocols and cosmology of its originating lineage.

Do you combine Ayahuasca and Iboga in the same ceremony?

No — never. This is an important distinction.

Ayahuasca and Iboga are entirely different medicines from entirely different traditions, operating through entirely different mechanisms, and they are never combined or administered in the same ceremonial container. Each is held in its own dedicated space, prepared and conducted in strict accordance with the protocols of its respective lineage.

What is rare — and what Keith uniquely offers — is authentic initiated lineage in both traditions. Members who feel called to work with both medicines over time can do so within a single trusted relationship, guided by someone who carries genuine transmission in each. That continuity of relationship and depth of knowledge and experience across both traditions is exceptionally uncommon anywhere in the world.

I've heard that Ayahuasca ceremonies can be chaotic, loud, and overwhelming. Is that what this is?

This is one of the most important misconceptions we want to address — and we understand why it exists.

There are plant medicine experiences around the world that accommodate 40, 60, or even 90 participants in a single ceremony. In those environments, chaos is not uncommon — people in varying states of preparation sharing a large, uncontained space without the individual attention or ceremonial precision that this work genuinely requires. The purging that many people associate with Ayahuasca is often a direct consequence of inadequate preparation — not an inherent feature of the medicine itself.

Our container is something entirely different. Every member follows a strict preparation protocol — dietary preparation (dieta), cleansing and purification practices, somatic preparation, and intentional mental and emotional groundwork.

When this preparation is honored fully, what emerges is closer to a meditative, precision container — quiet, intentional, and deeply internal. Purging, when it occurs, is minimal and purposeful. Our ceremonies are organized, professionally held, and deeply intentional — conducted with the same precision, care, and reverence that our traditions have always demanded.

The Membership

Who is this for?

Our members are already living well. They are executives, entrepreneurs, professionals, creators, current and former professional athletes, military veterans, and deeply family-oriented people — high achievers who have built remarkable lives and are now seeking to deepen and enrich those lives.

They are not in crisis. They are not looking to be saved. They are seeking coherence — the full integration of body, mind, soul, and spirit into a life that is not only successful but genuinely alive.

Most of our members participate in one or two retreats per year, weaving their ceremonial work into an ongoing practice of integration, embodiment, vitality, longevity, and advanced wellness. For them, sacred ceremony is not an event — it is practice and a cornerstone of a conscious, intentional life.

What does the membership journey look like?