 One of the things I try to pass onto the women that I work with is that ceremony does not need to be elaborate to be deep, powerful and effective. In fact many times it is in the simplest of ceremony that the most powerful things can arise. It is with this intention that once or twice a year I host a spontaneous gathering of women, usually once in the summer in my Red tent and once in the fall close to Samhain in my home. The gathering is always small and made up of students and friends, and deliberately kept very casual, or at least that is what those invited think, until they arrive at my door! There is no pretence, no exclusivity as the invite list usually has no rhythm nor reason, and one may get an invite after meeting me once or after having known me for many years--that is the fun! The only criteria is that women come and gather and the number of us be able to fit in my tent or kitchen. For the fall gathering we are always working with the ancestral realm, and to this end guests are asked to bring a food dish that their ancestors would have traditionally made for sharing, as well as a small keepsake or item that holds a special memory for them of a family member in their ancestral blood line. This year I decided to write a small blog post on our celebration in hopes that it may inspire some of your own gatherings. it is my greatest hope that one day I will be able to to make this annual evening a larger event open to any that may wish to join us!   I write this post a few days after the Dark moon of October.... The day dark and it is raining hard outside, but tucked inside my cozy home have a pot of spicy chai going and I am cooking up a feast of foods that my Ukrainian ancestors would have loved. I know my guests are all doing something similar as they prepare for our evening of sharing food, ancestral stories and witchcrafting. it always begins with food, because this is at it's core an intimate act--it is ceremony and love, and in my opinion it is everything to a proper ceremony, as it nourishes and grounds and gives the gathering the proper feeling of celebration that is important after the intensity of holding the container of ceremony. Our ceremony this evening is simple in form, but also sacred so I will not be sharing what was spoken, but I can say that we gathered to share the stories of why we each choose our specific food dish, and the stories of our small ancestral items that each have been placed lovingly on the altar. These stories carry the weight of who we are and where we come from, some hold great sadness and some great joy, but all were worthy of hearing and each woman was given the time she needed to speak her ancestral truth. We lit candles for loved ones gone and for things in our lives that also have left us feeling bereft or grieving that we are working to let go of... In between we created a plate of food for the ancestors and placed it lovingly on the altar and then feasted and talked as women do, we shared stories and tears and of course there was much raucous laughter... Finally somewhere close to 10:00 in the evening, we have settled down at the table, our bellies full, and with cups of tea in hand, and I begin to share some old folklore about gathering and witch crafting. I have placed small bottles of homemade pomegranate Hawthorn herbal vinegar out for each woman and small red painted altars that hold Rowan berries, black glass beads, and sculls for stringing rowan berry talismans to hang on doorways for protection... We begin with the vinegar and each woman adds the ingredients she feels she needs now into their bottles. Everything has some small piece of old folk lore or meaning, both for physical health and for spiritual health. Each herb that is added is a part of the table setting, so sprigs of rosemary, thyme, oregano Hawthorn berries, bay leaves and other nourishing herbals are scattered literally into the table decorations so they are easy to reach, and thus each woman can create something specific for her constitution in the moment. When we are done each holds a healing magical bottle to her heart and blows intention into it so that it is ready for her when she feels she needs a small nip of healing magic to fortify her. After this I hand out needles and red thread and we all settle into the creation of Rowan berry strings as protection talismans for our homes. Each woman makes hers a little differently, some are heavy with berries and others ave more of the black beads and sculls, some feel delicate and some heavy and strong in their meaning. Once done many exclaim at the time for is well past bedtimes and bodies beginning to feel the toll of the week, for it is Friday after all and bodies are yearning for bed. The circle begins to close down then, and we all wander over to the altar and each woman adds her rowan talisman to it to wait until it is time to finally go.. The evening winds down with many hugs, lots of bustle, and tidying up, the the candles are left lit and the lights are still dim, so as not to detract from the ceremony that is still happening right up until each woman wanders out and into the night on her way home..... Soul Cakes: This kind of gathering is not complete unless it has soul cakes in my opinion, as this is where the humble origins of Halloween and trick or treating come from, and although I do not ask for a trick or treat, nor blessings for my "sins" in return for sharing soul cakes, it is fun to hand over these sweet little cakes at the end of the evening. As you can see above, for this gathering I made both small soul cakes and a large ancestral cake, one for eating that night and the small ones for taking home--both from the same recipe. My recipe has been changed and adapted to my tastes, and what feels seasonal to me, which is to say that although the traditional soul cakes were more like small fruit cakes made with dried currents and fruit, mine carries the flavours of my winter.. which is dark chocolate spicy ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon, as well as dark rich molasses and the use of acorn flour to create a nutty rich texture and autumn taste. Traditionally crosses were added to the top representing "alms" which is a way of representing "giving" as an act of virtue. This is where Christianity and the old pagan ways intersect, as if we go back far enough we see that traditionally they were set out with a small glass of wine as an offering for the dead, which is why I always mark my wee soul cakes with small candy bones and create more of a traditional Celtic cross shape.. Soul Cake origins: Traditionally poor children would go out into the village asking for soul cakes, at the beginning of the winter season, this was when things were becoming scarce and people still generous from the harvest would have the ingredients to make these cakes with. What they represented though is far more dreadful, for they originally were cakes laid out for the dead, and if you took a soul cake you were essentially offering to pray for the sins of any soul who had recently passed in that household. This is why the poor children would do it. When asking they would sing this song, which as you can see here has been changed from the traditional masculine form to a more accurate feminine form.... Oh and it never hurts to hear Sting singing it, as this is by far my most favourite version!  Recipe for Dark Rich Chocolate Soul Cakes: 1 cup acorn flour 1 1/4 cup all purpose flour or Gluten free flour 1 cup dark dutch coca powder 2 eggs- or for a vegan recipe add 1/2 cup applesauce 1 cup milk or almond milk etc. 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar or other herbal vinegar ½ teaspoon sea salt ¾ cup brown sugar 1 tbsp dark molassis ½ teaspoon baking soda ¼ teaspoon baking powder 1 tsp of nutmeg 1 tsp cardamom 1 tsp cinnamon 2 tsp grated ginger fresh or dried ginger powder 2 tbsp vanilla extract-optional Mix dry ingredients together first then wet ingredients and mix well--slowly mix the dry into the wet until folded together. Bake at 350 for about 20 min's for small cakes or 45 min's if making in a bundt or cake pan.  Blessings of the changing season to you!
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 The moment I feel the first small chill in the air something inside me shifts, and whatever seeds I planted in the spring will have grown within me and I know that now is the time to harvest! This year it is a course that has been with me to grow for some time now, although one can not harvest before the time is right, and so it has waited, and waited With the first chill floating in the late August evening air, I understood that now was the time for it's creation.  It all started with the Rowan tree really. As I take my daily walks through our lush neighbourhood I noticed that the rowens in the area were bursting, and very ripe and ready for harvesting. Well before I knew it I found myself out in the woods, basket and offerings in hand looking for the rowens I had a feeling were in that area. Fortune was with me that day, but very much guided by a large owl who showed me a small grove of Rowan trees waiting for me! You see although I felt sure intuitively that there were rowans in the area I had chosen, I really had no idea, and so after quite some time walking around and tromping off the beaten paths and not finding a single one, I headed in a different direction, and just as I began to think I would be going home empty handed, something up high in a tree caught my attention, a large barred owl! I stopped abruptly in my tracks and stood there for some time, both me regarding this large powerful creature and he watching me mindfully. This went on for quite some time, but eventually he tired of me, and flew off into the woods as magically as the moment I first noticed him. After he left I noticed something that looking like a snake draped over the branch that he was on so I went closer to inspect, and see if perhaps he left me a feather as a gift as it is getting close to moulting season. Instead however, as I moved under the tree he was sitting in I realized that now I was standing in a small grove of Rowan trees!! The fact that if it were not for the owl I would have walked on by was not lost on me, because honestly if I had not stopped or tromped under that tree I would have probably come home empty handed!  I spend much time singing to the Rowans, asking for permission to harvest their berries and leaving offerings and in the end came home with a basket full to brimming. As I worked old folk tales and magical recipes kept running through my mind, and finally I headed home with great excitement, as this time in the forest brought the understanding that now was the time to finally share my love of of folk lore and herbal medicine making with the trees with others...  At the Mystery School the priestess work shamanically within a grove of trees, and within that realm there is powerful medicine, healing's and teachings for them. as well as a few trees that are not covered in the new course. However I thought it would be fun to really dig into the history and folk lore as well as magic and recipes of each tree in a way that I have not written about before, and so the making of this course have come together quite organically with video tutorials and tree identification as well as magic making... Of course Mystery School students will have access to all of the juicy new information, but the new course will also be available to anyone who wishes to learn more about the magic of trees, and step into the forest with me!  I leave you now with another blog post which also serves as a small sample of the first tree in the new course, the Rowan tree or Witching tree as it is called in many places......
 The rowen is the first tree in the new course I am working on about the Folklore and Magic of sacred trees and I could not be more excited about this offering! Right now it is Rowan berry harvesting season, and I wanted to share a little bit about my love for all things rowen along with a wee bit of folklore, a recipe for Rowanberry Jam, and some basic house protection magic using rowen berries strung on Red cording.... Shall we begin...  Owl Box, Rowen cross, crescent, and staves all made and gifted to me by my dear friend Sarah Lawless. www.banefolk.com With her red or sometimes orange berries the rowan is as powerful as she is beautiful with large amount of folklore and magic surrounding her berries and wood. In ancient times all throughout Europe, but most especially in Ireland and wales the Rowan was viewed as food of the fae. Rowan berries were seen as the magical food that, should you ever stumble into the hill of fae and should they offer you food, beware, for one rowen berry is said to have the power to sustain a human for nine meals, and eating three berries would keep you the same age for over one hundred years! Thus the saying that if one enters into the land of the Tuatha de Dannan, while they think it has only been three days actually 100 years passes in the land of the humans! Conversely, it is said that you can pull a person back from the land of the fae using a rowan branch by placing one of if it into the middle a faerie ring. Then holding onto the top of the other end, and waiting until the feeling of a tug happens on the other side, two large men should pull with all their might, thus pulling the person from the other side of the fairy land onto the side of the humans! However, although the berries were very much liked by the faeries, the wood was not, and so carrying, wearing or having a rowen cross made of wood was a protection such dealing with the fee such as the capture of changlings and other such shenanigans. My way though has always been to give respect, and so far there has been no need of protecting. Now humans and other beasties on the other hand, well I have my rowen strings over all doors in my house.. I go into more of this kind of folklore in my upcoming course The Magic and Folklore of the Sacred trees... Stringing Rowan berries for house Protection: Another old piece of folk lore is the use of Rowan berries for protection by stringing them onto a piece of red strong and hanging them over each of the doors to your home. This will protect your home from unwanted visitors be they human or fae... This is a fun activity for kids to do as well as adults and I did this a lot when my children were little, Now a days I make a new set every two years or so to renew the workings. I also like to work with sets of three as that number is a magical number for any spell working and it is often finished with a small and simple incantation: Three by three, by three, so mote it be... This year I had both red and orange berries, with the red berries coming from a tree that had grown out of an old cedar log making it doubly auspicious! I strung 9 red berries in amongst the orange ones, and always on red string as red is also a strong colour for protection, especially for women. Some practical tips for stringing rowen berries: Use a thin but longish needle so that it is easy to get a thicker thread through it like embroidery thread. If you have very ripe berries stick them in the fridge for 3 hours or so to firm them up, this makes the stringing much easier. Also ideally harvest as soon as you see them ripe late august early Sept is the best time!   Rowanberry Jam recipe:
This Jam is essentially food medicine, for no matter how much sweetness you put in, or how many apples you use, the bitter astringent aspect of the rowen comes through, ands this is how it is meant to be. The rowan berry is a good digestive, but if too much is taken it can have the opposite affect. {Not that anyone wold ever accidentally over eat too many Rowan berries!} It has been used to get rid of worms, ward off scurvy and as a blood cleanser. However I like to share and eat small amounts of it in the fall with rich cheeses and meats. This is a recipe I created this year and it worked like a charm, much better then any recipe I have used in the past and it is as simple as it is powerful! I also added dried Hawthorn berries from last years harvest, as well as honey from my hives and rosehips for added medicine--and I encourage you to do the same, as what we have in our back years and forests can be always added to create an even more nourishing food medicine. Here is the recipe: 4 cups of chopped apples--any kind. 4 cups Rowan berries--best after a frost or even frozen and then thawed for a bit. Red berries tend to be sweeter then orange, but either will do. 1 tsp cinnamon 1 finger length of ginger. 4 cups of granulated sugar Process: Pick the Rowan Berries from the little stalks and wash them. Peel and cut the apples. Put both into a pot together with some water enough to cover--I used 3 cups. Cook the fruits until everything is soft about 1/2 an hour, stirring a bit here and there. I also added cinnamon and a finger length of ginger which I highly recommend doing! {I also at this point added my extra medicines, such as the dried hawthorn berries etc..} In the meantime prepare your jars by either boiling them or running them through the dishwasher. Pour everything into a blender or food processor and blend it all up. Now pour it all into a cheese cloth--ideally after it has cooled a bit. Now press everything through the cheese cloth leaving behind only the seeds and peels etc... I used a small food processor and did it in 3 batches. Now pour the puree back into your pot and add your sugar and keep boiling until everything starts gets thick and jammy. The apples have natural pectin and so it will firm up in no time--I promise! Once this is done you can pour your Jam into jars, seal, and enjoy!  A few weeks ago I bought a stamp that looked tome like a basket or gathering pot of some kind. I bought it home and rubbed red ink on it, and as soon as the ink hit it's surface the words Red Basket came to mind and stuck so firmly that I wrote them down in big letters in my workbook. An idea was forming but had not yet taken shape, I knew that this would be something wonderful but what exactly it might be was still a mystery to me..  It sat on my desk for about 2 weeks giving me great happiness to look at it,but the mystery of it's deeper meaning giving me no hint whatsoever, until.... Until during a phone conversation with a friend who is also a red drum leader, and she asked me if I had given any more through to her suggestion of giving back in some way? I had completely forgotten that part of our conversation and as I sat with her reminder it all came to me in a flash-as these things often do! The Red Basket Project would be a gathering place a way to give back....  Traditionally baskets were made by women and used for gathering, and it is in the spirit of this gathering that the Red Basket project formed. As women working with women, leaders understand the importance of giving back and as such each leader donates a portion of money from each Red Drum made to helping other women. Each Year I choose a new organization to donate to so it is an ever growing thing as I learn more baout local groups and what is needed in each moment. The wonderful thing about Red Basket project is that it is not mine!
If you are a woman and want to participate join us--it is that easy! The Red basket can be taken out into any community and finds gathered there and directly donated to Shanti Uganda. All you need is to find yourself a Red Basket and a passion for helping others! If you wish to join our collective pop me an e-mail and let me know or better yet join our Facebook page and share your stories... Much love Nikiah  Are you a leader in your community?
Do you work with women? Run full or new moon groups? Red Tents? Do you love the Red Drum and all it stands for? Do you wish that the women you work with could have an opportunity to deepen into the work with the creation of a Red Drum? If this speaks to you please read further- because the world needs you at this time! What I have come to realize the older I get is that sometimes the best way to really keep something close is to truly let it go.... Over the past 5 years I have received more invites and e-mails asking me if and when I can come to their communities to offer the Red Drum Making workshop, and being only one person and a true introvert at that, I have declined more then my heart wanted! I say this because my heart has always known that Red Drums should be in the hands of every woman who hears the call to have one in her life! The Red Drum is our reclamation of so much that was taken from us over centuries of patriarchy. It is time for us to step forward with a deeper understanding of what the red drum means for us as women and to dive deep into the ancient pulse of the great mother through the heartbeat of our drums..... It is to this end that the Red Drum needs, no, is asking for community, for women who are picking up the mantle of leadership to bring the Red Drums to their communities! Is this you? I am looking for strong leaders who already have groups running and feel that making a red drum will serve to bring their group closer and deepen their work. Examples of this are: Ongoing new or full moon groups Shamanic woman's groups Those who work with young women and their mothers-menarche Those who run healing circles of all kinds--addictions, sexual abuse, loss etc... Women who gather monthly to work through life cycles of any kind, first moon, menopause, croning.... You tell me! The sky is the limit here really! If you wish to learn more and would like to apply to run Red Drum Making workshops in your area then follow the Red button below..... Feeling “Un-settled" Leaning into the hard work of understanding decolonization, and changing.3/9/2017  I am a fourth generation white settler woman living in Canada. Dropping into decolonization and unsettling is a difficult path of brutal self reflection, deep listening, solitude, and making connections between long held rationalizations that can often make up a spiritual life that inadvertently hurts others. Cultural appropriation is also not very hard to find one’s self participating in, especially when the spiritual culture these days has justifications for pretty much everything, and “white washing” is rampant! Selling anything from from smudge sticks to dream catchers and using terms that are clearly not ones we were given to use{ Think "Shaman"] and selling workshops using these terms, all falls under appropriation. So while my own ancient ancestors most likely wore feathers in their hair, and used herbs to cleanse and purify the air, they probably did not use an abalone shell nor did they sell these sacred plant medicines. It is my hope that anyone reading this, and perhaps seeing a bit of themselves in it, will understand that I am in no way judging, it is not for me to say what is best for anyone else only that this was my process of walking in integrity with my personal value system. It is my deep hope however, that sharing my process from years past may serve to inspire, and motivate others to make changes should they see fit in their lives and work. Understanding roots: My ancestors came to Canada via Romania, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and although they all came long after the worst of the colonization happened, they enjoyed the benefits of that colonization and the displacement of Indigenous peoples from their land. I also imagine that these ancestors having left their own sacred lands were most likely pretty colonized themselves, because as history has shown us that those who came here to North America learned what they did by having it done to them. And we all know that -Hurt people-hurt people. I am a fourth generation Canadian who has fond memories of my only living great grandfather at the time of my birth,my grampy Michael Ctzuk who came to Canada from Romania around 1920. I am also a white woman who grew up in a rural small town in Ontario whose small high school at the time was often half empty at hunting season because most kids were Indigenous and went out into the bush with their family to hunt. At the time I was a lost and troubled soul living on my own due to being exiled by my family who are JW {Jehovah's Witnesses} and I was tumbling down a rocky road of self destruction. It was then that I met my first spiritual teacher a kind Ojibway woman/ family friend who took my troubled soul in and taught me ways to recover and build my health back up. It was this woman who I had known since I was a small child that offered me healing by helping me to understand that although I had lost a religion I thought supported me, and my spiritual footing,I would never lose my connection to the earth, and this is probably what saved me from even worse self harm all those years ago. However, as eternally grateful as I was, even then, I understood that those teachings were not mine, and certainly not something I would share other then to hold inside of me the memory of pine-tip baths and the soft leather medicine bags she lovingly made for me filled with things to help me ground and deal better with the crippling anxiety that was coursing through my body and nervous system at the time. Fast forward to 30 years later, long after I stepped out into my community as a spirit healer and leader, I begin to self reflect on how informed my spiritual work has been and how I might have potentially crossed the lines without even realising it. I was sure that I was in integrity, and humbled to see how many grey lines I crossed without even realising it!  Because I live in Canada, {a first world country}, as a white woman of privilege, and leader in my community it is important that I use my privilege to model how things can be and to support the women that I work with to find their way back to their own ancestral lineages. As some of you reading this may know that, most if not all of my work is deeply informed by what I have referred to as being “shamanic” and how my initiation into a Northern animist tradition brought me into deeper understanding of myself as an animist, human, healer, and one day an ancestor myself. I have long been deeply uncomfortable about using the word “shamanic”, but like many others, I have referred to it for "context" in the spirit work that I do, and although I never, ever referred to myself as a shaman, I felt that something more could be done. I came to to realize that I needed to make a change to be in right alignment with my work and place at this time in history, and for that I needed to drop most of the word “Shamanic” from my web-sites and use. Here is what I have written about my healing work on my personal site: Spirit work comes in many forms and has many different names depending on the culture it is from. My work is what the modern spiritual overculture refers to as "shamanic healing". Working with the spirit realm is the world’s oldest spiritual and ancient healing practice known to humans. Although the word shaman originates from the Tungus-speaking peoples of Siberia, we have come to understand this word universally as describing person who is able to experience an altered state of consciousness, in order to interact with the spirit world to ask for healing or information on behalf of others. However, sadly we must also understand that the words "shaman and shamanic" are culturally appropriated, and terribly mis-used almost everywhere. The overuse of the word shaman has come to harm many indigenous people simply due to the fact that this word is being used to describe everything even remotely "spiritual or animist" leaving many, indigenous people resorting to using the word shaman describe themselves, which is often not their language or even accurate, and takes away from the rich use of their own language and culture. Because the word shaman does not accurately describe many Indigenous healing practises, using it to explain everything spiritual or animist diminishes cultures that are diverse and rich, for the use of a single word. I believe that here in the west we can do better, and that when learning or understanding other cultures we need to stop labelling them all {shamans} and allow them to share with us their approach to healing work or spiritual ceremony including the words in their own language they use, not what we decide they are. AND we need to stop stealing these ceremonies from them! The word shamanic has been removed from my facebook page, and mostly from both of my web-sites left in a few places for context only, however it will probably take me a bit longer to remove it from my vocabulary, as I have been practising spirit work for well over a decade at this point and need to re-train myself to use other words to describe my work. {Update--it took way less time then I thought it would} Many of my students and clients have expressed that if it were not for that word they would have never found me, so I have left the word shamanic in a few specific places for context, however for the most part I describe myself as an animist spirit healer. My work at this point mostly focuses on the ancestral realm, as I work to create bridges and expand on how we can be more compassionate with ourselves as we pick up the dismantling of our colonization. I want to have conversations about how we can heal the ancestral lines and to share about my own experience of doing just that over the past number of years. In my healing work I have always seen the ancestors first, they come before I can usually do anything else and as I have learned to navigate the spirit realm for healing, I have also sought out elders to help me be safe in this work and to understand it better. And now is the time! Now is the time to to put my actions where my mouth is, and trust that while some may not agree with me, or may choose to step away and out of my realm, others will find me for exactly this reason and perhaps together we can create a new story of how the world can be!  What is the next Step-Ancestral Recovery:
Lets start talking about Ancestral Recovery, about looking into bloodlines and stories and all the things that make us up as humans. Recovering our ancestral understanding is vital to the conversation, especially if we are going to be showing up to this problem, and meeting the demands for the creation of a new story. Lets stop justifying our actions and simple make a change no matter how small, to step away from the ways we were taught. That is to say, lets us break out of the patriarchal paradigm that says it has to be one way or another and begin to carve new ways of being! If you live in Vancouver--come out to an event I am sponsoring to learn more about Canadian Indigenous History-The Blanket Exercise. We are all humans, and we all share this one earth, so the sooner we can stop dividing ourselves and start getting back to what is important, the sooner we can begin to repair some of the damage done to our earth mother. I for one am excited about re-wilding myself even further, to visiting the lands of my ancestors, and deepening my connection to the land I live on here in Canada and learning new ways of being in right relationship to my ancestors. I leave you with this quote by Carolyn Hillyer: "What is the story of our forgotten people? It is story of return. It is a story of hearthstones and home; of amber from oceans and copper from earth; of men who soar with buzzards and women who weave heron feathers in their hair. It is also however, the story of ourselves; in a landscape where time spirals rather then runs ahead of us in rigid lines, we look to our forgotten people to remember something about our own lives. Remembering our own people, those who are connected to us by blood or clan, or land or any other bond that serves to entwine our hearts and souls, is part of rooting ourselves in our landscape and shaping the road along which we choose to travel. We learn from our ancestors in order to understand the ancestors we might become. " Footnotes: Here are a few links to resources for those interested in diving into this more: Origins of the word "shaman" www.sacredhoop.org/Free-Guide-To-Shamanism/Sacred-Hoop-Free-Guide-To-Shamanism.pdf Awakening The Horse- Decolonization and ancestral recovery White Awake-Awakening ourselves for the benefit of all How privileged are you Layla Saad-A blog to white spiritual women   Making my first Red Drum: It is hard to believe that it has been so many years now since I made my/the first red drum, which must have been sometime in 2007-so about 10 years ago now, and wow has it ever been a wild ride, full of the most wonderful things that I simply never could have predicted! After I began dyeing drums red and offering workshops to women, the word seemed to spread as more, and more women felt the longing to become Red Drum Carriers and now as I write this in 2017 yet more expansion and opening has come forward..... In 2013 I wrote a Blog post on my experience with the red drum, how it came to me within the shamanic journey realm, and why the colour red was so important in relation to the divine feminine, so if you are curious about this, that post is a great starting place... Since then it has continued to grow and honestly I never could have known how significant the medicine of the Red Drum would become in my life, and the lives of other women, but how could it not, as it is a huge piece of ancient feminine reclamation that has been restored within the red pulse of the drum.... I never could have predicted how much meaning that I myself and other women would find within the creation of their own red drums, but there is something powerful that happens when women gather to create medicine objects! What do women get from Red Drum ceremonies? Not to mention the ceremonies these drums go to, the joy they create for the women playing them, and the ancient connection with the sacred feminine that woman are finding within them. Woman {you} who come to buy or make a red drum with me continually blow me away with your depth of creativity, passionate insights and willingness to dig deep inside to see what resides in your beautiful red hearts. A year ago this month Grandmother Drum came into form, her pulse specifically asking for healing within the womb of women, asking for more stretching, more sharing, and most importantly more community! And so that brings me to today, this moment here now and what is being asked to come forward, how I am being asked to stretch and grow within this form...to expand out into more communities so that more women can have the chance to craft their own red drums....to become Red Drum Carriers.... What will the Red Drum Ambassador program look like? Well---It is with much excitement that I share the news of an upcoming Ambassador program in which women who are leaders in their communities, those who offer new and full moon ceremonies, small workshops and large workshops, those who are gathering women together to create community and sisterhood, and who wish their group could all become Red Drum Carriers, a chance to make exactly this happen! If you are a leader and would like to offer a Red Drum Making workshop to your community I am setting up a program in which you can do this! As it stands we have several such women offering these workshops with the hope for more, so that the Red Drum can become a beacon for all women, kind of like a secret handshake or nod among women. Imagine seeing another sister carrying her red drum, and with the full understanding of what it is to truly craft and make one of these sacred medicine drums you send her a smile, perhaps introduce yourself as a fellow sister and together a new friendship is formed.... Lets create a sisterhood of mutual respect and understanding, not competition and competitive self destructive comparison, this is what the medicine is asking for-more community, not less! In the next month I will be interviewing Anni Daulter who is the first woman to offer the Red Drum making workshop to her community, and to give her voice the opportunity to share what it has been like for her to bring these drums to the women who work with her, and what the red drum means to her personally. If you are interested Click Here for more information.... The Red Drum is the birth rite of all women--lets see more women becoming carriers, and drummers--because lets face it--the drummers were always women!! “Because drumming was recognized as an ancient source and symbol of the power of female technicians of the sacred, drumming was banned. Henceforth divinity was to be exclusively masculine. The suppression of women was directly linked to the suppression of the goddess.” Layne Redmond, When the Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythm  November has always been known as a liminal time, and here in Mexico where I have been planted since last week is no different. I am here just weeks after Dios De Los Muertos, and before Christmas, which is a big deal here in Mexico. Stores still have bright packages of candy sugar sculls, but now they are sitting beside Christmas decorations, and as I meander around in hot weather I myself feel deeply held in this in between time, having left the cold and rain my body has not yet caught up to the fact that it is 30 degrees here in the shade! My skin drinks in the moisture and is blindsided by the time change and heat, leaving me hazy and feeling in-between, as I come back home to the place that we have been coming to for just over 20 years now. A place that carries the deep traditions of the people who live here and the place that I am a guest on...  Over the years this stretch of beach has become a sacred place for me, as I have done many, many ceremonies and walked in-between many times over the years. All through my shamanic apprenticeship and initiation into our tradition I was required to, regardless of time or place, stop what I was doing and sit with spirit. I make mention of this because this place is not mine, I am a visitor here, and before I was really able to drop into my strange and different spirit work, I needed to first make contact with the spirits of this place, to introduce myself to them, and and seek permissions. The first thing I was asked to do, was to learn the songs of the Sand, Ocean, and beings here, and then find my own and make it as an offering to them.... Now 20 years later when I visit here, it is like coming home to old friends, and the first thing I do is to go walking in the early morning hours to say hello and make offerings... Usually we {the spirits of this place and I} play together for awhile, and I create a small altar out of her flowers, bones and feathers enjoying the beauty having a bit of fun before getting down to work... The sand becomes my altar, and the mountain my temple, my desk sits with a view of mama Ocean and working begins to slip into a liminal place where I no loner am sure I am actually "working".... I know many of you reading this are also world travellers, adventurists with wild souls and a desire to live life to the fullest, so I would like to share the idea that the paces we visit, also holds "spirits of place" and that if we can remember this no matter where we go and honour this by remembering we are guests, not only will we be more often then not be held and welcomed, if the spirits are honoured and asked, we will be held in an altogether different way! Having said that if we ask and the spirits say no, we need to respect this and move on....  "Fog shrouds the land. There is just this rock in the half darkness and the surf, rising and falling with a thunderous roar, reminding me how tenuous my perch is on this tiny island. Right now is also sea turtle hatching season and we are on a stretch of beach that has the sanctuary on that that releases the baby turtles into the ocean each year in November. The reason for this is because baby sea turtles typically follow the light moon into the ocean, and mother sea turtles lay their eggs accordingly so that full moon is perfectly round in the sky just as her babies hatch! However with the advent of artificial lights made and used by us humans both mother and babies have become confused and so both laying patterns and baby turtles are all over the place. Baby turtles come out of their shells and follow the lights, sometimes out onto the roads or into hotels unwittingly, mostly being eaten by night time prowlers looking for a snack! This is why it has become so important that the sanctuary is here, run by volunteers that sleep in shabby shacks in hammocks for weeks at a time staying up all night sometimes to make sure that the turtles find their way to the ocean.  These turtles are also beings of this land that we are visiting, and although it is fascinating to behold them, leaving them alone is also just as important.
Even on vacation if we honour the spirits of the place we are visiting, we can still stick to our value systems, show respect for the spirits, and keep to our spiritual practise, even if for a short time it no longer looks like the one we might do at home.... Blessings and love from sunny Mexico Nikiah  As a sacred drum-maker it is not often that I am called to make drums for myself much these days, after all I already have close to 10 personal drums, so unless I am really called by spirit, all of the drums my hands make are going out into the world for others. So when... Just before the change of the new year I began to feel an inkling of what 2016 was to bring and part of it was an inner knowing that now is the time for me to get out and into my local community more. To create more in person drum workshops, more ceremonies and more offerings in general. Some of these inspirations will take some time, while others such as my Red Drum Workshops were as easy as setting a date and booking them. During this time I was out and about at my local suppliers when across the room I spotted a large, no make that giant handmade drum frame, the kind that some of our first nations people might use to make pow-wow drums. As I stood there looking at this frame, spirit began speaking to me, whispering into my ear that I must build a community drum--a womb drum to be specific! And so it was that the frame came home with me, followed by a series of wonderful synchronicities that not only brought me the most perfect piece of Elk hide from a dear friend, who cut it for a drum similar to the one I was making, but also many small confirmations that I was on the right track that came by way of my community. And so I began, first by honoring the beautiful cedar drum frame and spending some time getting to know it's spirit, which is very gentle and loving.  Of course these things take their own sweet time and although I already had the hide, it too needed to be honoured and the time perfect for the creation of such a sacred healing drum. This is why the frame sat with me for close to 2 months before anything more was done. And then finally, the day came when everything felt right to make the drum, and when I looked up into the night sky and realized that the moon was making her way into fullness I knew why! The February full moon was one of the most powerful moons in a long time, and each night that she was full the skies here were clear and bright with her light. The first step was to stain the beautiful frame, or rather the bones of the drum with natural water-based wood stain made by a company called Saman that I use for everything. The colour of course was a deep burgundy red and instantly transformed the bones of the drum. next I drilled holes into the sides and made four handles for her so that she could be held on all sides, as well as making sure that she would fit the frame that a friend is making for her to hang on. And then she was ready to come into form!  I made lots of rookie mistakes because I have never made a double sided drum this big before, so she is perfect is the most imperfect way, kind of like most of us, wouldn't you say? Once she was made I was so overcome with joy, honestly there was nothing to say or do but admire her and slowly get to know her. She dried in my kitchen surrounded by the sounds of our family life, as she say perched in the kitchen window with the eastern facing sun shining on her for days and days as she dried.  During this time I began dreaming of hall the ways she could join us in our community, and how she might be able to heal women in her work, and she whispered stories to me, and inspirations came in from friends who told me stories of other healing drums, and so as I prepared for two big ceremonies I knew that she would come along and that we would consecrate and bless her and her work in our community. This past week-end I was joined by many, many wonderful women whose hands and stories blessed our womb drum. She held us in circle as we birthed more red drums out into the community, and as the women from our Red Moon Mystery school were initiated, and were held by each other is a full day of ceremony and spirit work. We sprinkled libations of sweet honey mead onto her, we smudged her, and adorned her with cedar, sprigs of Heather, and our ancestral spirit bundles, and she held us as we touched her and welcomed her into our community. It was a full week-end, but she is now ready for the next piece in her creation.....  I know there is so much more about her yet to come through, and I have seen how she might help to heal women if they could somehow slide under her frame as we drum her, so that their wombs can feel the vibrations of her healing heartbeat. And so the unfolding of the Womb drum continues.....   From the Hindu goddess Kali’s red tongue, to the red robes worn by Mary Magdalene, each goddess has an essence of red that she carries with her, and in turn each of us also carries within us an essence of all the goddesses. This is our birthright as a woman, for it is the red blood that we hold within our wombs that enables us to give birth to new life, and it is this aspect that connects us to each other, as we all cycle through the aspects of life, death and re-birth...  Many years ago now, in a shamanic journey that I first saw the red drum. Initially it was a journey to ask for an image to place on a drum, but instead my entire journey was in red, my guides were red, the landscape was red, and when I saw a red drum placed into my hands, I knew that I was to make a red drum, and that the colour red WAS the symbol-the symbol of the Divine feminine... Over the next months, giving away to years, the significance of the colour red would come to me in my work over and over again, teaching me and showing me a constantly unfolding path... Red has became the touchstone for my work as a writer, my business name, Red Moon Pathways and the Red Moon Mystery School. Our book Moon Mysteries, was also self published by our company Red Moon Publishing. But one of the most humbling parts of my work has been in the making of Red Drums. In her book When the drummers Were Woman Layne Redmond says “The drum was the means our ancestors used to summon the goddess and also the instrument through which she spoke. The drumming priestess was the intermediary between divine and human realms. Aligning herself with sacred rhythms, she acted as summoner and transformer, invoking divine energy and transmitting it to the community.” These powerful words sum up so much about the role of the drum for myself and for many of the women who come to my workshops and purchase these red drums. There is much meaning to be learned from crafting and using a sacred drum.  The sound of the drum is said to be the heartbeat of the mother, likewise the roundness of the frame in the context of my work represents the moon, and the wood coming from the ancient tree of life. When I gather women together for our drum making workshops I play ancient sounds of the frame drum and together each woman handcrafts her own sacred tool. We begin with the frame, which is the foundation for the drum and as the woman work in creating the drum each piece is blessed and held close to her beating heart. It is also said that many of the ancient priestesses used drumming monthly, perhaps to facilitate her monthly blood flow and we know that in our older matriarchal cultures woman would drum while a woman was in childbirth allowing her to relax deeply and open for her child to be born, as the ancient sound of the heartbeat reminds her of her own birth. It is also said that it is this same drumming that takes us back to the heartbeat of the mother when we die, transforming us into the great spiral of life, death and re-birth. Ancient drums owned by woman were specifically painted red using Ochre to represent blood, menstruation and birthing rites. It is in the spirit of this ancient tradition that I too dye my drums red.  Using beets and pomegranates as well as a natural mixture of pigments that I have mixed up over the years, I have managed to achieve a deep scarlet red in the hide that I use. Each drum I make represents an ancient tradition of women drummers, and priestesses, that tap into the ancient pulse of the red, and the divine feminine that runs in every woman today. The woman in turn who either buy or make a red drum with me continually blow me away with the depth of their creativity, their passionate insights and willingness to dig deep inside themselves and see what resides in their beautiful red hearts. Below is a red drum painted by one woman many years ago, she used her intuition and the feel of the drum’s landscape in the patterns she saw to create her painting on it, and this is what came. The significance of her image of it held much power for her and I know she spent many hours playing and singing with her red drum. It is in the spirit of this kind of creation that I offer my drums out into the world, that makes my heart sing for the work that I get to do and I am thankful everyday for the strength of the RED that runs in my veins.  This post is dedicated to my dear friend Janine Suzanne Weber, who after a year of walking with cancer, went to the heartbeat of the great mother.
Janine painted the Red drum above after one of my workshops many years ago. She was a gentle creative spirit and woman who offered the best of herself to her friends and loved ones. She is greatly missed. |
AuthorNikiah Seeds Archives
October 2017
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