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whale song in the deep
drums sing our Mother’s heartbeat
we re-member sound
—haiku by weaver
Once in a while, i like to share a past spirit drum i birthed. I’m proud of that work i created in past years, and this one is yet another…
This sweet drum, titled ‘whale song’, is a small women’s frame drum on a 12-inch local yellow cedar hoop, with its voice in a thin, resonant goat spirit hide… It was a gift for a dear friend, to help support her in her ancestral journey.
Traditionally, frame drums are played with the hands and fingers, with rhythms that express the four elements. The outside hoop was stained in a light brown, and the inside with red ochre… representing Mother earth and, in some traditions, the blood of the animal who gave its life to become reborn as a hallowed drum. It is finished with beeswax and orange oil, and bound with a handwoven band of cloth by my daughter-in-law Mailyn Bergeron. I soaked the hide in our well water, infused with rose petals and amethyst crystal, and blessed with palo santo oil. It was birthed during a “black” new moon during the midsummer of 2019.
(A “black” new moon simply means two new moons within one month.)
On the front, I painted a stylized humpback whale known as the “Record Keeper,” surrounded by a Celtic knot in blue. The spirit of whale is very much like a swimming library, and these gentle giants are known to carry the records of Mother earth. It is said by the ‘old ones’ that the whales were placed here by the ancients, from the Dog Star, Sirius…also known as Sky Dog…from the Altay region of Siberia.
The spirit of whale can teach us to work with the sounds and frequencies that balance our emotional bodies and heal our physical forms. To recall why the sacred drum brings healing and peace is to align with whale’s message. The sacred drum is known as the vibrational voice of our dear Mother, the universal heartbeat that aligns (entrains) all beings heart-to-heart. If you’ve ever participated in a community drum circle, you know that everyone eventually entrains together ‘as one’ heartbeat…regardless of experience level. It doesn’t matter; the holy drum always aligns us within community.
If you connect + orient with the spirit of whale, perhaps you are being asked to tap into these records, to allow yourself to be sung to by those who hold the original language. We are the only creatures who do not have our own unique cry or call. And to note, we all know how to drum, because the first sound we ever heard was our mother’s heartbeat, as we grew within her womb for nine months and we know it so very well.
Whale welcomes you to find and call forth your own unique song. Allow your voice to use this sound to release tension or emotion… as singing and drumming can help to release those deep records. For you, as a vibrational being, an extension of Source energy, are part of the great melody of the universe of the Òran Mór. (Scottish Gaelic: "great melody of life" or "big song")
with much love, weaver x (((🩵))) 🐋💦
And, in closing… a potent quote from the wonderful Layne Redmond, RIP…
“It is often said that the first sound we hear in the womb is our mother’s heartbeat. Actually, the first sound to vibrate our newly developed hearing apparatus is the pulse of our mother’s blood through her veins and arteries. We vibrate to that primordial rhythm even before we have ears to hear. Before we were conceived, we existed in part as an egg in our mother’s ovary. All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother. Each of us spent five months in our grandmother’s womb and she in turn formed within the womb of her grandmother. We vibrate to the rhythms of our mother’s blood before she herself is born. And this pulse is the thread of blood that runs all the way back through the grandmothers to the first mother. We all share the blood of the first mother - we are truly children of one blood.”
—Layne Redmond
below, a few more photos of ‘whale song’…
below, a short video so you can hear some whale song… x
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sources… Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams + David Carson The Druid Animal Oracle by Philip + Stephanie Carr-Gom Animal Speak by Ted Andrews When the Drummers were Women by Layne Redmond
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