Primordial Sound: Reflections on the Life and Death of Drummer Layne Redmond

I spent the first year of a three-year healing hegira in New York State, in an altered state. It was a homecoming at a higher level along life's spiral: although I'd grown up just over the border in northern New Jersey, being in New York in 1994 was time out of mind, sacred space in the deepest sense, even as I was remembering what that was, even as my severely ill body brought me to places where my soul rejoiced at finally being unleashed to embrace my purpose this lifetime. Stripped raw, connected only to Spirit, I followed a divine thread to my healing destiny. 

During an extended stay at one country home, I heard about a performance that was to take place soon at The Widow Jane Mine, an underground chamber where the audience would sit on hay bales. It sounded intriguing, inviting, essential. I had to go.

I did not yet know who Layne Redmond was. When the Drummers Were Women, her definitive book about the ancient art of frame drumming, was three years in the future.

At the event, I purchased her first CD, Since the Beginning, entranced by her rapturous visage on the cover. Then I entered the mine, and opened to the unimagined.

I can still hear the invocation as their voices reverberated, reaching us before the candlelit raft bearing the drummers floated into view. "Ah, ah-ah-ah, Ah, ah-ah-ah, Ah, ah, ah ah, ah ah ah, ah ah AH!" This was primordial sound; the drum is the sound of our Mother's blood, the first sound we hear in the womb, and the sound of Gaia's heartbeat as well. It entered me.

I found myself at night for weeks, months afterward, singing this incantation as I remembered the stars, felt the Moon inside my being, began to heal/whole into the truth of Oneness. I was never so joy-filled as during this awakening time.

I was stunned last week to learn that Layne made her transition just before Hallowe'en/Samhain, on October 28^th, a time when the veils between worlds are thin. I was more shocked to realize she was just five years older than me. In 3D she clearly had much left to do; she was in the midst of continuing to expand her global work. But her soul knew a different timetable. Her soul felt her work here was complete.

I am blessed to have witnessed this master of the frame drum and her Mob of Angels in New York in 1994, and again in California in the late 1990s. Layne Redmond played a pivotal role in my awakening journey, though she did not know it. In this moment when all the timelines are merging, as solar cycles and planets dance us awake en masse, I say a humble thank you. Thank you for drumming me to consciousness, for your generous heart, for sharing your manifold gifts as manna for us all.

Blessings, Layne Redmond, now adding her joy to the Music of the Spheres…

A Rose By Any Other Name

The rose energies are enveloping us these days, and as I am a member of the Rose family of humanity, I feel called to share the rose wisdom. As I explain in my name shift article:

"The word 'rose' is identical in English, French, German, and many other languages. The rose is symbolic of female sexuality, and of the Goddess. In ancient Goddess culture, the five-petaled rose represented the five stations of female life: birth, menstruation, motherhood, menopause and death. The blossoming flower resembles the womb: witness the evocative art of renowned American painter Georgia O'Keeffe. Rose is also an anagram for Eros, the Greek god of sexual love. Down through the ages, it has been one of the secret names of Mary Magdalene.

In aromatherapy, rose carries the highest healing frequency. 'Rose' is also the past tense of 'rise,' which means to grow, to go beyond — to metamorphose! It's a verb, which is really what we are — we're more process than product. The interface of the spiritual and the material is where we co-create, co-evolve. I feel a broader sense of kinship with all life as Amara Rose."

Three years ago on Mayan New Year's Day (July 26th), I read an astonishing article in the now-defunct Psychic Reader magazine, which said that the earliest known reference to the rose was 5000 B.C., in ancient Sumer. Since I've long identified with the Sumerian Goddess Inanna, and her archetypal underworld journey, these words resounded in my being.

The rose is a herald of change, calling us to balance spiritual and material, peace within and harmony without. In 2009, I discovered a novel called The Rose Labyrinth, which arrested my attention with this:

"The rose … is a code showing the aim of all humanity to attain divine wisdom. The only path to that wisdom is through love, and knowledge; the blooming rose translates the whole meaning of the universe. To understand the mystery of the rose is to comprehend the essence of the universe. Through its simple perfection, we may become more perfect.

"To realize the possibilities of the rose, mankind must develop the capacity for love to the point of loving all peoples, all creatures, all that is different and foreign to us. We must enlarge our capacity for knowledge and understanding through the loving intelligence of the heart."

It's a tall order, and ~ we're being given Divine assistance as never before. In her June New Earth Rising log, Celia Fenn writes, "In the New Earth Grid System, the power flows from South to North and from North to South. The Flow that is known as the 'Rose Line' flow or the Divine Feminine Flow/Goddess Flow or current, moves from the Southern Pole area of Antarctica and northwards along the meridian lines that are called the 'Rose Lines'.

"The most active of these 'Rose Lines' at the moment is the South/North and North/South flow through the Americas … from Antarctica and up through Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia and then along the Andes, through Central America and up through the Rockies to the Northern Polar Circle. This is the territory of the Eagle and the Condor, and as they unite to fulfill the prophecies of the end times, we are experiencing huge transformation on the planet."

Finally, I went to a spiritual service this past Sunday that I attend very occasionally, with the Unitarian Universalists. To my delight, the service was focused on sacred drumming and chanting using Layne Redmond's Lotus of Light CD, Chanting the Chakras. I was privileged to hear Layne live during my awakening journey in New York State years ago, so I knew the power of this work with the frame drum. (Layne is the author of When the Drummers Were Women and an incredible shamanic healer.)

To my amazement (although nothing ought to surprise me any longer!), we closed the service with a simple hymn called, "I Know This Rose Will Open." The lyrics:

I know this rose will open
I know my fear will burn away
I know my soul will unfurl its wings
I know this rose will open.

So, dearhearts, the message is crystal now: We are being called, sanctioned, sanctified by The Rose, to open as the lotus, to live in and from our hearts, to love beyond limits and not to limit our love. This is the ultimate gift and key to the next stage of conscious evolution.

Blessed Be.