Neolithic Shamanism: Spirit Work in the Norse Tradition - Raven Kaldera 2012

Drum
The Gray World: Craft

Raven: My drum is named Talu, which means tale or story or tally or accounting in old Anglo-Saxon. She is made of reindeer hide and birchwood. She is rather vain and likes pretty things and to be told that she is beautiful. I sit out in the back field and beat her, first slowly until my heart aligns with her beat, then more quickly, like the hooves of a running reindeer. She takes me places. The rhythm seizes my body, rocking it back and forth. I see us in my mind—I am no longer the drummer but the rider; she is no longer the drum but the thundering beat beneath me that carries me across the worlds, out of the noise, to a place where I can better hear the spirits. Sometimes, if you can’t get yourself open enough to hear the spirits from where you’re sitting, you need to go someplace closer to them. My drum takes me there.

Galina: My drum is male, and I do not speak his name to others. I did not make him myself, but he was handmade by a Native American craftsman. He is a world walker, and I use him to open doorways to the other worlds. I asked a spirit worker artist to paint an image of the World Tree with the Nine Worlds and a valknut on his face, and I hang various tokens and charms from the sides and the crossbar. On the back, inside the frame, I have hung a strand of seed casings and a raven’s foot, all of which rattles in counterpoint when I strike him. He has a rich, resonant tone and watches over me when I travel.

In his book Drumming at the Edge of Magic—which we highly recommend to anyone interested in shamanism who is drawn to the Path of Rhythm—drummer and drum historian Mickey Hart points out that almost everywhere one looks, “where there is a shaman, there is also a drum.” The Soviets knew this when they attempted to destroy the indigenous practices in Eurasia, and they attacked the Siberian shamans first by destroying their drums and criminalizing their possession. While not every shamanic tradition in the world uses drums, nearly all the ones in circumpolar Eurasia do. More important, the still-existing shamanic tradition closest to northern Europe—the noiade of the Saami people—uses an oval drum called a runebom. We are convinced that the ancient Germanic peoples who came into Scandinavia so long ago learned drumming both from the Saami and from the aboriginal Scandinavians, and though that knowledge may have died out eventually among their folk, it was still kept by the Saami people. More crucially, that knowledge stayed with the old Northern spirits as well, and remains today to be passed on.

Those sound generators we call “rhythm instruments” were likely the first musical tools, probably starting with whacking sticks against each other, or against some surface. One of the oldest known drums is the slit drum, merely a horizontal log with a deep slit carved in it that is played by beating it with sticks; by adjusting where the blows fall, the players can create a number of different and interesting tones. The ringing of wood against wood was one of the first musical tones that human beings sought to deliberately recreate with musical tools. Another was the sound of slapping skin (including hand clapping), which probably predates even wooden sticks. The sound of slapping skin is the direct ancestor of the skin stretched over a frame, which is the classic drum of a million shamanic ancestors.

Rhythm is everywhere in the animist view: it is footsteps, hoofbeats, the beating of bird’s wings, the ebb and flow of the tides. It is the vibration of each note, making it distinct from each other; likewise it is the light-wavelength vibration of every color. It is sunrise and sunset, rain and wind, sleeping and waking, hunger and satiety, the four-count backbeat of the seasons, the return again and again to each solstice and equinox. It is the stroking of a lover’s hand, the patting of a mother on her baby’s back, the in and out of the sexual act that made every one of us. It is the beating of our hearts, the pulsing of our blood, the flashes of electrical activity across our neurons. It is birth and death and rebirth and death. When we are aware of and one with our environment, we realize that we live buried in onion layers of rhythm within rhythm within rhythm. Everything has a language. Rhythm is a language with a thousand dialects.

Knowing this, it could be said that all the rhythms that we make with our hands are simply reflections of these experiential rhythms. When we become aware of this (am I drumming wings? Hoofbeats? Tides? Seasons? Traffic?) and enhance it, opening to the specific energy that filters through us and letting it pour forth, the Path of Rhythm becomes a real conduit for magic. This is the real power in it, not just the mild trance that science has shown to be an easily re-creatable side effect of rhythm. However, most people are going to want to begin with that mild trance, and it’s a good beginner’s space.

Making a drum requires skill in a number of crafts, and it is best to master each of them before attempting to create one’s shaman drum—or, alternately, to study under a master drum maker. As such, it seems like an inappropriate craft to begin this section—shouldn’t one begin with single-step crafts that aren’t so intimidating? The truth is that all crafts are intimidating—or at least learning to do them well is intimidating—and that won’t stop anyone who is being pushed by the spirits to learn them. We’ll describe the process of making a traditional drum, and if the spirits want you to do it this long, hard way, you’ll study for however long it takes to get there. If this craft doesn’t draw you but you’re still meant to have a drum, be assured that someone will gift you with one.

Exercise: Making a Traditional Spirit Drum

Ideally, in the shamanic practice of our tradition, the shaman builds his or her own drum as part of a weeklong retreat. To begin, spend time on a piece of land, ideally one where the landwight is well disposed toward you. In fact, we suggest that this be the first order of business, because a cooperative landwight can help you find the right tree. Saami folk make their drums out of pine or birch, mostly due to its availability. Ash wood is good as well, as it recalls the World Tree, and oak will do, although it is harder to bend. Make offerings to the spirit of the tree, who must be willing to sacrifice itself. Sing to it, and ask that its spirit pass into the drum.

Second, cut down the tree, split its wood, and saw out the long narrow board from the heartwood that will be the drum’s frame. Each end should be cut with a bevel at least 2 inches long, facing in opposite directions so that when the board is bent in a circle, the two beveled ends overlap and join perfectly together. The length of the board will determine the diameter of the frame; for an 18-inch or thereabouts frame, you want at least 5 to 6 feet. Have the ideal measurement ready before you start. Smaller drum makers might want a littler drum; there’s no shame in that. As the tree is cut, sing a song to it in praise of Earth, who gives us these resources. Place the board in a stream, lake, or pond overnight to soak while you rest, meditate, and sing.

Third, build a fire the next morning, ideally a sacred fire (see the Red World chapter on making fire with flint and steel), and place on it a large cauldron of water, preferably from a lake or river or stream. Sing a song in praise of the Fire spirit, and burn the rest of the tree, sending it off to the heavens. Draw the board from the water, visualizing that you are a midwife drawing a baby from the watery womb, ready for its new life. Sing a song in praise of Water while you do this. (See the praise songs at the beginnings of each elemental chapter.)

Fourth, lay the wet wood across the cauldron—or if you can do it, several cauldrons—and steam it until it can be bent by the hands. You have to keep moving it around so that all parts can catch the steam, removing it, bending it, and then putting it back to steam again. When it can be bent far enough to be tied in the shape of a hunting bow with a leather belt, do so and then sing the praise song for the Hunter (see beginning of the Brown World chapter). Put it back to steam, and keep bending it and constricting it with the belt (or a few belts if need be) until it makes a full circle or oval. At any point in the steaming, a song can be sung in praise of Air. The four elements must be present and active for any birthing, including the drum, but Air is last, of course—it is the last element to come into the infant’s body at birth, with the first breath drawn.

Keep steaming the wood and cranking down the strap. This should be done quickly—don’t delay. No part of the wood can be allowed to dry out. If any part looks like it is starting to dry out too fast, dunk it in the boiling water. You can sing songs to the fire to keep it going, and to the drum to keep it bending. This part of the ritual symbolizes how shamans are cut and bent, submitting to their fate to become tools of the spirits, and you can also sing about that—about your own struggle and how you will yield to get through it.

Traditionally at this point, another tree would be found that would act as the “mother tree,” and the frame would be bent around this tree, strapped in place, and left to dry. The mother tree would act as the mold for the drum frame. The problem with this method is that it is nearly impossible to get the frame off the tree afterward—we can’t figure out how it was done; perhaps some magic that we don’t have? At any rate, we suggest strapping it around the mother tree for the space of a blessing and a song, then removing it and strapping it around a tree stump of large diameter from which it will be easier to remove. Make a small shrine out of the stump’s top, and leave the frame overnight. When the frame is entirely dry—which may take place overnight or over the span of a couple days, depending on the weather and humidity—remove it, drill two holes in the overlapping area, and hammer in two small pegs. If necessary, apply wood epoxy, if you’re not sure that mere pegs will hold. When the epoxy is dry and firm, sand the frame.

Find a skin for the head—deerskin, goatskin, whatever you like. Ideally it should be from an animal that you got to know while it was still alive and saw killed. Some of the animal’s blood should be saved to anoint the inside of the drum frame, giving it life. Thoroughly scrape, stretch, and dry the skin, and then soak it overnight in the water of the great cauldron. Stretch it over the frame while wet, trimmed so that it extends only a couple of inches beyond where it wraps around the back of the frame, and punch holes in the edge. As you place the skin on the frame, meditate on how we ourselves are a skin stretched over a frame, how we are drums for the Gods to make music and magic upon.

Select a piece of wood that is a good shape for a handhold. This will be used as the lacing anchor. Sand it smooth, and then drill it with holes. Lace rawhide through the edges of the skin, and attach the rawhide to the piece of wood. It should “float” in the center of the back of the drum. Adjust, retighten, and allow the skin to dry. The tightening is done to the four directions—East, South, West, North—asking for blessings from all these directions. When it is at its best tightness and makes a good sound when struck, nail the skin to the frame with tacks, or lace it to the frame (which keeps it adjustable, but requires drilling a series of holes around the back edge of the frame), or—as they used to do—peg it to the frame with birch pegs.

Then fully awaken the drum in a ritual, which will vary depending on what its purpose is to be. Sometimes a person might make a drum, thinking of one purpose, but the drum that is made will actually end up being for a different one, so the spirit of the drum should be asked before it is forced into a job. The drum will give you its name, and then it is alive and your responsibility. It will be a working partner for you, and you must take care of it.