Rhythm is at the heart of shamanic practice: the drum and the rattle, dance, shaking and chanting are amongst the oldest ways into the shamanic state of consciousness, used across the world. Music and dance matter beyond trance too. Like great art, they can carry something of Soul, and the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer itself is more akin to music, poetry and painting than to words.
Why is rhythm so central to shamanism? #
Because steady rhythm is the commonest way into the shamanic state. There are few shamanic cultures that do not make extensive use of the drum or some other rhythmic instrument, and where the drum is little used, other rhythmic instruments often take its place. Aboriginal Australian cultures, for example, whose peoples lived as hunter-gatherers until colonisation, do not seem to have used the drum much, but they have other rhythmic instruments, such as click-sticks and the didgeridoo, which can be used in a similar way.1 The tempo, the overtones and how the drum is used in a journey are covered in What role do drumming, movement and other methods play in journeying? and Why do shamans use rattles?
What part does dance play? #
Two parts. The first is as a way into trance. Dancing and other repetitive rhythmic movements, such as shaking or swaying, are old ways of entering the shamanic state, and prolonged dancing was one of the powerful means shamanic cultures used to shock people into a deep, right-brain state.2
The second is simply as part of a good human life. When not hunting or gathering, our hunter-gatherer ancestors would have spent their time sleeping, singing, dancing, telling stories, joking, laughing and playing with the children, things we still know something of today.3 Dancing is also one of the places where peak experiences can come: times of being completely in the moment and part of something bigger flowing through us. They come through physical activity, but not only that way; musicians and painters describe them too, and Paul Francis has had them when dancing, sitting round a campfire and listening to the ocean.4 See What are moments of awakening?
Why does music move us so deeply? #
Because it can be close to Soul. The things humans make do not have Lower-World Souls of their own, but they can be modelled on Soul and express something more natural. A mobile phone represents nothing natural; a beautiful painting or sculpture of a horse may convey something of the horse’s Soul. Generally, the closer something human-made is to the Stories of the Lower-World, the more it moves us, because the closer it is to Soul, the more it calls to our own Soul. That is why great art can move our Souls when a phone never will, why some paintings move us more than others, and why the same is true of stories, poems, music and films. Things close to Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this’s Stories are “food for the Soul”.5
Why is the Lower-World like music? #
Because it is beyond words. Language is largely a middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer and, poetry aside, a left-brained thing, about labelling and defining. The Lower-World is the realm of metaphor and imagery, akin to poetry, painting or music: evocative, not literal and pinned down. Great art rarely spells things out. It suggests, and asks for what art historians call ‘the beholder’s share’, the work the listener or viewer does to engage with it and find its meaning; the same happens with great music and poetry. Great journeys work in the same way, by evoking things, and making sense of them afterwards is the journeyer’s share.6 See Why are there no words or symbols in the Lower-World?
How old are music and dance? #
As old as anything we can trace, and probably far older. The earliest known musical instruments are flutes, found with personal ornaments and figurines in the Aurignacian layers of Hohle Fels cave in Germany. They were left by some of the first modern humans in Europe, Ice Age hunter-gatherers whose Aurignacian culture is dated to between about 44,000 and 34,000 years ago.7 Dance is harder still to trace. The archaeologist April Nowell, discussing how Ice Age communities may have marked the passage to adulthood, notes that dance, trance or vision quests are forms of intangible culture “that leave behind no traces for the archaeologist to discover.”8
Can I journey to any music? #
Shamanic journeying usually uses a steady drumbeat of around three to four beats a second, or a rattle, rather than music in the ordinary sense.9 What makes something shamanic is contact with the shamanic realms, not the depth of the trance nor the means of entering it.10 For the practical side, see What role do drumming, movement and other methods play in journeying? and Do I need to buy a drum, or any other equipment?
