Heartbeat

It all began with a dream, very early this year, maybe even the end of last year.  I was in a valley and there was drumming and I could feel the drums all through my body.  Florence and the machines Drumming Song was running around my head too and it was all very loud and very beautiful and very much about the drums.

This was significant because I had just started drumming and I very much wanted a drum of my own but Lisa had written on her blog that in order to own a drum, you should have a drum dream first.  I wasn't sure this counted so I waited and then I had a second dream.

'I had another dream there was a dead reindeer, a young one I think as it was small with no horns. I was told in the dream that I was allowed to have it's skin to make my drum.' Was what I wrote about it...  The animal was lying down and there was a man kneeling at it's head and although it was dead it was peaceful and everything was fine.  The man who spoke to me is my Ancestral Guide, but I had not really met him at this point.  The only other thing I remember was that there was white, it may have been snow, but I assumed it was a whitish cloured Reindeer.

At this point I spoke to Lisa about a drum and very quickly we hit a stumbling block - no reindeer hides.  Now I really strongly felt that the animal I had seen in the dream was to be the animal that my drum would be made from.  So nothing happened, not for a long time (and I am really surprised at how patient I was!)

In August, for the Blue Moon, there was a huge gathering in Canada, which I could not go to.  I was very disappointed because the Blue Moon is an important time for us, a time when gates open and passed through, if you pass the tests.  I didn't expect to pass any gates, I wasn't sure how, by myself, so I left it to the Dreaming.

The week before I dreamt that I was back at my old school and I was in one of the classrooms sitting an exam.  Nothing was said about passing or failing, I guess it was more about showing up, or I passed and did not know it.  Afterwards a man came into the room and gave me a hide for my drum.

The night of the Blue Moon, F and I were meeting with members of our Cornish Drumming Community, to walk fire.  This was an amazing day, beginning with a season sound and chants and ending with the Firewalk.  Before the walk we had a session about how to do it and confronting fear.  It was a very powerful day and I knew I was where I was supposed to be, even if I had wanted to be elsewhere...

The week following the Blue Moon I had two further dreams.  Firstly I had a dream which made it very clear that I had passed the Spider Gate, which deals very much with Fear.  I think it likely that this was my exam.  The thing about fear, is you can't beat it, you just have to show up and do what you wish to do, despite there being fear there.  I did it.  I walked the fire several times, and believe me, the second time was the hardest.

The second dream was very long and detailed but the final section of the dream focused on my drum.  An Elder came and started stretching the skin for my drum over a frame, but the frame was from an even older drum that needed mending.  It had seemed important, even while I was dreaming the dream that I tell Lisa, so I did so.  It turned out that at the Blue Moon gathering she had been given a Caribou drum and she would sell it to me!  I was so excited!

Lisa decided to make me a drum stick so I had to wait some more.  Only while I was waiting, it turned out that the drum was not Caribou but Moose!  I was in no doubt, I had been waiting for this drum and Lisa would not have mistaken it for Caribou if I was not supposed to have had it, it was meant to be, and maybe all the mistakes were so I would not get the wrong drum....

I was curious though and went online to look at Moose and discovered that I didn't really know much about them and that I certainly could have mistaken a dead Moose lying on the ground for a Reindeer.  No one ever told me it was a Reindeer and Reindeer was never mentioned within the dream, that was all me....

So eventually the Drum left Canada!  After nearly a year since it all began it was finally on it's way.  I knew not to expect it too quickly but two and a half weeks away there was a drumming circle and somehow I always knew it would arrive for that.  Thursday I received the Customs letter and I sorted it out straight away and delivery was to be Monday, unless I paid a little more for Saturday delivery...

Of course I did and it arrived at 11.00 and we left for Drumming at 12.00.

And it is beautiful!

It is a good size but so very light.  I will find it much easier to hold than many of the borrowed drums I have used.  I don't know what wood it is, but it is a lovely light colour as well as being very light and strong.  The frame is made from 12 sections, each of which curves gently.  The hide is also very light and with it being natural there is a variation of colour and texture with a darker line to one side.  Most of the 'imperfections' are on the reverse though, but something incredible happens when you hold it up to the light, you can see them through.  They are darker lines, in one half of the skin and to me they form shapes....  a person, I think a woman, dancing, and the front half of a deer type animal, walking onto the drum.

I had thought of painting my drum but having seen it, I don't think I ever could, those shadow shapes speak so much of the soul of the drum and my connection to it.

And of course it sounds amazing...  It has that lovely rumble you feel all through your body...

And then there is the drum stick.  Lisa took a birch stick and covered the upper handle and made the head from lovely soft leather with some beaded fringes at the end.  The neck of the stick is covered with wolf fur and then it is beaded up to the leather in white, blues, and pink.  It is very feminine and beautiful and must have taken some time to make...  The wolf fur came from a Grey Wolf who was injured in a Road Traffic Accident and taken to a vet on the res where it later died.

There are so many reasons for me to love my drum and my stick...  They are beautiful.  They were made for me and meant for me.  They sound amazing.  They feel like old friends....  I am very lucky and I look forward to working with my drum and learning more.

This is an end and a beginning, I have a long way to go....

D is for Drum

A core bellief of Shamanism is that there are other realities. Some people have gifts that allow them to access these realities more easily than others but over the course of thousands of years a variety of techniques have been found. Everybody thinks of drugs but while these certainly work they are not the route I choose to take. People also fast and dance until they are exhausted as well but this is hard for most people holding down a 9 to 5 job....

The drum might not seem like a promising route to other realities but it is. There is something about the vibration of a drum and when it is played at a specific sort of speed it helps induce a trance-like state and from there you can Journey.

I tried to journey using CDs to begin with but had very limited success. I think the actual vibration of it is hard to replicate in a CD. So i found a drumming circle and that has really helped me to journey. And the more I journey the easier it becomes.

Each time I go it is as if I get a little better at finding my way around, although I have explored such a tiny fraction of all that is out there. So now I find it easier to journey at other times too, because I know the way. I have journeyed to my own heartbeat as well.

Not everyone takes to journeying straight away, some people take years to get the way of it. My other half has only just started doing these sorts of things and he has not gotten into it yet. Different senses will be stronger in the journey for different people to begin with.

I love journeying and although I have only recently started it, I can't imagine not doing it.

I recently had a drum dream and now that there is a spirit who would like to be in my drum, one is being made for me, as a home for this spirit. This is a huge thing for me. The drum is sacred and very personal. In the dream a reindeer was dying and I was told it was giving itself for my drum. Honouring that spirit is very important and I can not wait to hear it's voice and get to know it better.

If you want to read more about drums my teacher Lisa wrote this post.