"Shamanic Transformations"

I am a contributing writer for the new book "Shamanic Transformations: True Stories of the Moment of Awakening." It is a collection of inspiring accounts from contemporary shamans about their first moments of spiritual epiphany. Contributing writers include Sandra Ingerman, Hank Wesselman, John Perkins, Alberto Villoldo, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Tom Cowan, Linda Star Wolf, and others. My contribution is "The Calling," which is an excerpt from my book "Shamanic Drumming: Calling the Spirits." How does one receive the "call" to enter onto the shamanic path? What causes some people to change their safe, uneventful, and ordinary lives and start on a spiritual search? To learn more, look inside "Shamanic Transformations." To read the entire excerpt of "The Calling," click here.

The Hopi Butterfly Dance

In the summer of 1989, my wife and I had the opportunity to attend the Hopi Butterfly Dance in northeastern Arizona. The Butterfly Dance is one of the most beautiful and spectacular of the Hopi social dances. Like most Hopi ceremonies, the Butterfly Dance is a petition for rain, good health and long life for all living things. The dance is a celebration of the harvest that recognizes the butterfly for its beauty and its contribution in pollinating plant life.

The main participants are Hopi youth and young adults who are accompanied by a drummer and a chorus of singers. The participating girls each wear an elaborately painted headdress or kopatsoki made for them by their male dance partners. The imagery includes symbols of the girl's clan and sometimes of her dance partner's clan. The boys wear loosely fitting velvet shirts and tailored kilts that are embroidered with cloud and rain symbols. Everyone dances lightly, keeping time with the constant drumbeat. The dancers' gestures interpret and emphasize each song's meaning: lowering the arms depicts the lowering clouds, moving the arms in a zigzag motion denotes lightning, lowering the palms signifies rain, and lifting the hands symbolizes the growing stalks of corn.

To watch the Butterfly Dance is to be transported to a way of life rooted in the distant past. The Hopi (The Peaceful People) have carried on their ancient way of life and culture in northeastern Arizona for more than 2000 years. To be Hopi is to strive toward achieving a state of total reverence and respect for all things, to be at peace with these things, and to live in accordance with the instructions of Maasaw, the Creator or Caretaker of Earth. The Hopi observe their traditional ceremonies for the benefit of the entire world. Watch the Hopi Butterfly Dance.

"This May Be the Last Time"

"This May Be the Last Time" is a documentary by Native American filmmaker Sterlin Harjo (Seminole/Creek) that interweaves the story of the 1962 disappearance of his grandfather with the rich history of the Muscogee (Creek) hymns the Seminole community sang as they searched for him. It's the evolution of these songs, a form of a capella "line singing," that Harjo determines to investigate and shed light on. Through interviews with community members and outside academics, Harjo discovers that the hymns likely entered the Seminole language via Scottish missionaries, who also influenced rural Appalachia congregations, as well as African American churches in the South during the early 1800s, prior to the tragic relocation of Seminole communities on the notorious "Trail of Tears." Tribal members sang the songs on the long forced march and they subsequently became mainstays of churches reestablished in Oklahoma.

Most intriguingly, Harjo's sources help make the connection between one of their religious songs and the Rolling Stones' cover of the Staples Singers' gospel tune "The Last Time." The roots of the song can be traced back to an African American spiritual from the 1800s called "This May Be The Last Time." Filtering painstaking research on the evolution of Creek Nation hymns through a tragic narrative from Harjo's family history, the director's first nonfiction feature is heartfelt and illuminating. The documentary can currently be streamed at Netflix. To learn more, please visit the official website.

Shiva's Drum

Shiva, Lord of the Cosmic Dance

According to Hindu mythology, Shiva is the lord of the cosmic dance and the cosmic sound of AUM, from which the entire universe in generated. Shiva is often depicted with an "hourglass drum" or damaru, which provides the music for the dance, and symbolizes the act of the creation of the universe through sound. The sounding of Shiva's drum produced the first sound (Nada, the source of creation) in the void of nothingness; its pulse setting up a rhythm to which Shiva began his dance of creation.

The damaru is a small drum with two drumheads, which symbolize the two states of existence--unmanifest and manifest. When a damaru is vibrated, it produces dissimilar sounds which are fused together by resonance to create one sound. The drumbeat is the tuner sound, the sound that fuses the unmanifest and manifest aspects of vibration into one resonance. The sound thus produced by the damaru symbolizes Nada, the cosmic sound of AUM, which can be heard during deep meditation. According to Hindu scriptures, Nada is the source of creation. It is through this drum that the universe was created, and through it the universe will be destroyed and renewed again in the endless cycles (rhythms) of time. 

The damaru, like all double-headed drums, constitutes a microcosm of the universe, unites the masculine and feminine principles, and produces sounds with a tremendous dynamic range. By playing a double-headed drum we become co-creators. In such a drum there is balance between male and female forces. Earth and Sky, Matter and Spirit, Shiva (divine masculine) and Shakti (divine feminine) are working together in perfect harmony. With clarity of thought and intent, the drummer becomes a co-creator of all that is needed to benefit all beings unto seven generations. To learn more, look inside my book Shamanic Drumming.