September 6, 2005

Dear Drummers,

Welcome to the beginning of the fourth year of Drumming the Soul Awake! I feel incredibly blessed by the amazing community that has emerged around our drums—a community of fun-loving, deep-hearted seekers and lovers of the great mystery. If I could speak with the tongues of angels and with the words of the poets, I could never adequately thank you all enough. I address that thanks to the humans gathered at our drums, and to the spiritual presences that have also participated.

Our drums in September will delve into the Celtic notion that the body has three cauldrons, or spiritual energy centers. To be balanced and healthy, we attend to all three. If you are familiar with the Chakras from the Yoga tradition, the cauldrons are similar.

The cauldron of “Warming” is located in the belly, and has to do with our instincts and basic life force. The cauldron of “vocation” or “calling” is in the chest, and has to do with how we connect what we love with what we do in the world. The cauldron of “Knowledge” has to do with the spiritual gifts given to us by the Divine. The cauldron is a cooking pot, yet is also a poetic image for much more. The womb is a cauldron, as is the physical universe. The body is a cauldron for the soul. The heart is a cauldron for our emotions. The cauldron is that place of nurture and transformation into which the raw food is placed, and through a process of heat, is transformed into delicious, life-enhancing nourishment. All of life is a cauldron.

One of the great poetic tragedies is that the cauldron has been diminished in its imaginal scope to be the “witch’s cauldron” over which craggy, lump-nosed old hags cackle as they stir their potions. (This in fact, is a very Celtic notion; the only difference being that in the Celtic point of view, the Hag is one aspect of the divine, not merely an evil spell-caster obsessed with putting nice European children into her oven for lunch. Celtic myth is full of Hags stirring brews, but the brew is almost always the brew of wisdom—a few drops of the brew make one wise. In one wonderful fragmented image, the cauldron is watched over by the nine daughters of the Spirit of the otherworld, and their constant breaths cool the brew. These may be the counterpart to the nine muses found in Greek myth, so here we have a beautiful image of the nine kinds of inspiration actively cooking the brew, a brew prepared for us; one that we, in our spiritual seeking, drink drop by tiny drop—often watered down, throughout our lives. My greatest hope is that each monthly drum you attend, or each retreat, provides you yet another tiny drop of Hag’s brew. I believe one of the best kept secrets in the Christian tradition is that the Trinity has one part female—the Holy Spirit, and she just might have a craggy-lumped-nose and she might be stirring a cauldron, cackling. Well, that is certainly not the pleasant white dove of the Protestant tradition—but she can certainly become that when she wishes. (By the way, in Celtic myth the Hag is also associated with the Well. Look through older and newer testament readings, and you will see that the great men of the western tradition constantly meet their wives at the well.)

As always in our monthly drum, we will drum up some soul-livening ry6thms in the first hour or so. Then we will take a break for cookies, tea and conversation, and those who wish to come back for the second half—more prayerful, more mystical, more meditative—may do so. Those who want the drumming but not the theology in the second half are provided a convenient time to exit happily.

This drum will also help set up the retreat that we are offering the weekend of September 16th, where the group will actively enter into the Celtic myth of the cauldron of regeneration. That weekend retreat will really be a three-day mythic journey into the cauldron, each person seeking the drops of brew to re-balance their lives at the autumnal equinox.

Looking forward to another boom-boom, takka-tak, whomp-whomp-whomp kind of year!

Jaime

© 2005  Jaime Meyer

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