A different drum

New Year's Day, 2012

The little synthetic drum that has been my all but inseparable companion for 12 years is alive. It has been ensouled by use. It has powered journeys into other realms of reality for groups from the Baltic to Brazil, from Sydney to San Francisco. It has called in the spirits and the animal guardians. It has helped to guide souls in their transitions on the Other Side, and to bring vital energy back into the bodies of hundreds of people who have suffered soul loss. And through all of this, its voice has grown. At its last major outing, in southern Brazil, two professional musicians approached me during the first break, astonished that one small instrument could lay down so many complex waves of sound. They said they felt they were listening to a whole orchestra, of voices as well as primal instruments. Was there something unusual in the fabrication of the drum, and some secret to my playing?
      “The drum is alive,” I told them. “And because it has so much spirit, the spirits come to play when I am playing it.”
      But then there was a problem, that became serious only after the long journey home from Florianopolis in October. My little drum was getting tired. The drumhead had developed permanent wrinkles, as any face might age, and dull spots where the sound no longer sang. So, with a deep sigh, I purchased a new drum. The catalog description was identical to that of the original drum, but everything else was different. When I played the new drum in a local circle, it did not sing. It merely spoke, in a rather high register without the thrilling resonance and deep mysterious undertones of its senior. So I reverted to my old drum. She gave her best, while telling me, I’m so tired.
     The first day of the New Year seemed like the right day to set things right. I invited a dear friend, a sister of my soul who has shared adventures in two worlds with me for many years, to come down into the Cave where I write and dream, and asked for her help to energize the new drum, to open its “mouth” and charge it with the spirit of my shamanic work. That’s my friend (or at any rate her energy double) on the couch with the drums in the photo.
     I gave her the new drum, to start our improvised ceremony, and took up the elder of my many drums, the deerskin drum on which I painted the sea eagle that was my ally in my boyhood and carried me on its wings to deep places of discovery and initiation in my native Australia and in the Scotland of my paternal ancestors. Ah, the elder drum was in wonderful voice. We both enjoyed the waves of sound passing from its deeper throat to the young drum. I sensed something more: a direct transfer of energy. This inspired me to repeat the operation with other primal instruments in the Cave, with a goatskin bodhron out of Ireland, with a kangaroo-skin drum from my native Oz, with an Afro-Brazilian agogo, with an Iroquois turtle rattle. Each time, we felt something join the young drum, and heard its voice shift until it began to sing.

Time, now, for me to take up the drum that has accompanied me on the roads of the soul for the past twelve years. In wave upon wave of sound, we released all we have shared and let it wash over the junior drum. Now it was time to fulfill the transfer. I took the young one from my friend. I drummed in the Goddess pattern of twin spirals, cycling between the worlds of body and spirit, creation and dissolution, life and death and rebirth. I shifted into a soft and coaxing beat, the kind that might call home a lost child or a lover who has gone Away. I made thunder in the Earth. I called in the animal powers and the bird tribes. I tested whether this young one could sustain a beat strong enough to carry a traveling soul to and from the Lower World and the Upper World. And my heart smiled as the young one sang, and our spirits soared with her singing.
    The older companion she has replaced will have an honored place in my cave, as an elder among my speaking drums. I'll take her out from time to time, to sing in the woods and by the water, and to drink the light of sun and moon.


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I have recorded my own CD of shamanic drumming for dream travelers; "Wings for the Journey". It was recorded in the woods among a circle of shamanic dreamers and is available from Psyche Productions.
    
The synthentic drums mentioned above are REMO "Buffalo" drums. I use a small 16" model because I like to pack my drums in my suitcase and avoid excessive questioning at airport security. The beater that comes with REMO drums is too short for my taste, however. I use hand-made long-handled beaters made to my specifications and the heads are encased in deerskin.


I painted a very simple image on my new drum; simple can be good. My personal name for the double spiral is the Eyes of the Goddess. It was through this portal, quarter of a century ago, on my return from a visit to Newgrange in Ireland, that I found myself traveling to an ancient Iroquois woman shaman who insisted on instructing me in her own language - the first of a series of encounters that led me to change my life. I published part of that story in Dreamways of the Iroquois. It continues to unfold.