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

Flute
The White World: Air

Raven: The recorder was the first musical instrument that I ever played. Well, there was that kazoo at age four that my mother quickly took away from me, but the recorder was the first one that I ever made anything resembling music on. I played the concert flute as an older child for years, until an accident in my teens cut up my lip and prevented me from making the right mouth shape. By that time I was enamored of the piano and guitar and mandolin, and wind instruments went by the wayside. My favorite recorder was stolen and broken by schoolmates, and I told the Universe that when it was ready for me to play anything with my breath, it could replace what I’d lost. In my fit of pique, I turned entirely to strings and voice, which I was better at anyway.

Thirty years later, my first lover died of pancreatic cancer. When our daughter sadly cleaned out the house, she found the handsome alto recorder that belonged to my lover and spouse, and gave it to me. “It felt like it wanted to come to you,” she said. As I work most closely with a death goddess, it is not surprising that many of my most timely gifts have come from deceased loved ones . . . and apparently, it’s time to pick up the practice of breath music yet again.

Galina: I studied piano for sixteen years as a child and was torn between pursuing music or ballet professionally. I chose the latter and gave up music for a very long time. My adopted mother was a musician, though. She trained at a specialized conservatory in Basel and taught piano for more than twenty years. When she died, I hungered for any fragment of her life that I might snatch up and tuck away, any crumb, no matter how small. Even as I honored her in my ancestral devotions, I craved some shadow of the physical, real-world connection that we used to share. Because she’d been a musician, I decided to go back to music. It was frustrating with the piano—I’d lost all my technique, and playing it reminded me a bit too painfully of her—but her favorite instrument had actually been the alto recorder. She didn’t play it because it always felt strange in her hands, but she loved the sound, so I took that up instead. Playing became one new way of connecting to her, and I would often hear her correcting my mistakes as I practiced. People tend to dismiss the recorder as a child’s instrument, but in actuality it’s not. There’s a tremendous musical canon for it, especially in Baroque music. I continue to play, and it’s one of my ways of honoring both my love for my mother and the Wind spirits. There’s peace there and beauty and tremendous respect: for my mom, for Wind, for the spirit of Music itself. It also made me far more aware of the importance of breath and breathing properly!

Wind spirits all love music and sound, but they have a special affinity for instruments that are played with the breath. These are some of the oldest instruments, as far as we can tell from tribal peoples, but because they are usually made of perishable materials, we rarely see them in archaeological finds. The earliest flutes were likely made of hollow plant stems with holes cut in them, an instrument played by children in some rural areas to this day. They have also been carved of wooden saplings (or bamboo in Asia), cast in clay, and—most likely to survive—bone and antler. The earliest known flute was found in the Ach Valley of southern Germany, one of the areas of this shamanic tradition. It was carved from the hollow wing bone of a giant vulture, and was dated to thirty-five thousand years ago.

There are many different kinds of flutes, but they can be sorted into two main types: horizontal and vertical. Horizontal flutes are easier to make, but much harder to play. Vertical flutes are a little more complicated, but easier to play, especially for inexperienced musicians who may find it difficult to perform the mouth-blowing of a horizontal flute. For this reason, we give directions for making a vertical flute, but one can easily find directions for horizontal flutes in books and online. You can also find directions and videos for vertical flutes by searching online for “making tin whistles” or “penny whistles.”

Craft: Making a Flute

The hardest part of making a flute is getting the holes at just the right length from each other. With this in mind, we suggest that you make some cheap practice flutes out of PVC pipe first in order to get the pitch right and to help you decide which key you want to play in. You can always give them to children or to a kindergarten or daycare when you’re ready to make the sacred piece. Pick up a piece of ¾-inch-diameter PVC pipe the length of your forearm as well as a PVC adapter meant to link your ¾-inch-diameter pipe with a ½-inch diameter pipe.

With a rasp, sand down a 3-inch strip about ½-inch wide, starting at one end of the pipe. You want to remove enough material to make it significantly flatter. How to know if it’s enough? Put the adapter on the end and look under the edge. The flattened area should create a gap between the inner surface of the adapter and the outer surface of the flute. Smooth the area with sandpaper and then drill a ¼-inch hole at the very end of the pipe on the flattened area, just a tiny bit from the edge. About ½ inch farther down on the flattened area, drill two ¹/₈-inch holes right next to each other, close enough that you can drill out the tiny bit between them and create a rectangular hole.

The next step involves finding a piece of ¾-inch wooden dowel and cutting off a piece that is the exact width between the end hole and the rectangular hole. You want to wedge this plug right between those two holes, which many require a bit of sanding to get it in. If it doesn’t stick perfectly, you can glue it. Then you push the adapter onto that end, so that it is covering the first hole and a little of the second.

Then you will make the holes for the notes. The first flute you make will be sized to your hands, and there’s no telling what key it will be in, but it’s a good practice run. Drill ¼-inch holes down the flute in the following order:

1. Drill the first hole one hand’s width below the rectangular hole.

2. Drill the second hole one hand’s width from the other end.

3. Drill the third hole the distance between the first and second knuckle below hole 1.

4. Drill the fourth hole the distance between the first and second knuckle above hole 2.

5. Drill the fifth one hole the distance between the first and second knuckle above hole 4.

Blow through the flute and see what kind of sounds you can make. Check to see what key it is in. The Winds would say that this is your own personal key. You can make a few more if you want to learn to make flutes in specific keys. After you add the adapter “mouthpiece,” blow through it and check the note. You can make a new flute that is shorter if you want to change the key and then shrink the distances between the holes accordingly when you measure them. You can also try spacing holes equally and see how that works. Figure out which combination is best for you.

When you are ready to make a shamanic flute out of natural materials, you can repeat the process with a piece of ¾-inch hollowed-out wood sapling and a specially carved mouthpiece that copies the plug-and-holes of the PVC flute, or the right size of bone, or—if you’re a very good potter—a clay flute fired around a metal pipe, which is how a potter friend of Raven’s made his. If you drill the flute from wood or bone, every time you drill—whether it is drilling out the initial hollow or drilling each hole, say, “I open you that spirit may come into you and through you.” The hidden plug can be made special as well with runes or symbols. To preserve a wooden flute, once it is sanded down, coat it on the inside with oil. This can be ordinary linseed oil, or you can add a few drops of essential oils that are pleasing to the Air spirits.

To bring a spirit into it, decorate it with symbols of the Wind spirits and leave it hanging from a tree branch for three days and nights. You can hang ribbons and chimes around it to encourage the spirit to come into it. Play your flute outside when the winds are strong. Let them tell you what their tunes are. Each has a simple tune, but they don’t share those quickly. They also know all sorts of tunes to control other things—the North Wind taught Raven the simple tune to activate a labyrinth and make it into a door to other worlds.

If making a flute is beyond you, commit to learning to play a flute or recorder well. Burn designs into your instrument if it is made of wood. Decorate it, honor it, keep it in pristine condition, and, most of all, practice. Nothing comes without the daily discipline of practice. It’s the only thing that gives birth to excellence, and it can be an excellent devotional offering to the Winds.