Healing Asheville started when a former NASA aerospace engineer moved back home to discover that family, friends and communities were struggling with mental, physical and spiritual issues.
Asheville, formerly a New Age mecca of healing, spiritual pursuits and basically a place of general wellness, had become dark, malignant and unhealthy. Materialism, or Mamon, had become the new god under the current leadership of Asheville. Much of the focus had shifted from the traditional Appalachian value of making do with what one had, to simply rejecting those that did not have the monetary means to make do.
Healing Asheville explores ways back to the original purpose behind the Spirt of Tahkieostie – the often unameable giest that one used to feel when coming home to Asheville.
Asheville has become a mockery of it’s former self … we have alot of soul searching to do.
Seraphim, Asheville Artist
John is a native of North Carolina, military veteran and also served as the lead ITS engineer for the Apollo I Operations launch room during the Artemis I at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. John left home in Appalachia to go to work for NASA during the intial phases of the Artemis/Orion 1 (EM-I) tests working with Boeing in Texas and Lockheed in Colorado. In 2023, he began his return back home to Asheville as soon as the launch operations completed and the project came to a close.
His great(x) grandfather John Stewart was born in Buncombe county in 1758. His great grandmother, Doshia, is an Overhill Cherokee from East Tennessee. John was raised in both the Piedmont region of the Blue Ridge Escarpment and near Scaly Mountain, North Carolina. His family fought during the Battle of Kings Mountain.
John graduated from the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, attended Advanced Infantry Combat School at Ft. Benning GA and later became a Combat Engineer. His work with UNIX systems began in 1992. He is a strong advocate of the LINUX operating system. He was the first research tester for Smoothwall in in 2001. Currently, he holds three university certificates in Project Management, Systems Engineering and Advanced Project Management. His Ph.D. is in Religious Philosophy with a focus on New Age Cults. He is an unrepentant arms instructor, ballistics designer for a Lv. 7 (SOT 2) and advanced armorer. John is currently a Blue Ridge Naturalist at the NC Arboretum.