Both of these beautiful films can be found on the website of husband and wife shamanic artists, Will and Niamh of Tobar Trua (Well of Compassion) based in the Northwest of Ireland. Together they work with the spirit of the land and craft shamanic drums and rattles. This area is very dear to my heart and is a place I return to often in my dreaming. Home to sacred waterfalls, holy wells and turloughs: disappearing and reappearing lakes - it is also the ancestral home and origin of Swan Blessing. The waterfall and pool that Will is singing beside in the video below is so very much like the one I see in Swan Dreaming that I felt a wonderful jolt of recognition to see it in this beautiful water song. A song that is beyond words and time similar and reminding me of a post I wrote recently: Your Spirt Has Songs Beyond Time. After writing this post I was contacted by many singers who felt deeply connected to this message.
Recently I was asked to write for School of Shamanic Midwifery's Women's Mysteries Teachers ejournal about my personal journey to teach Women's Mysteries in the Swan Blessing. I wrote a piece called Hiraeth - the Heart's Call to the Dreamer. Hiraeth is something felt deeply in Australia as many of us came to this wise place of ancient dreaming from many other countries in the scattering of diaspora. I feel it is so important to heal the trackways, ancestral pathways with song, storytelling and remembering as these are often the same paths we need to follow to find and reclaim the Dreamer.
Next year we have been invited by our dear friends Karen Ward and John Cantwell of Sli An Chroi (Pathway of the Heart) to bring Swan Blessing to Ireland. It will be such a homecoming to visit this waterfall and sing my gratitude back to my ancestors. To feel the water flow deeply along this ancient liquid pathway from the origin of the Dreamer back to my heart.
Here is Will's description of the beautiful Celtic Shamanic Icaro singing and drumming you hear, derived from journeying with plant spirit and medicine. Thank you Will and Niamh for your hearts, your craft and your songs.
"This type of singing is derived from working with the plants. It is similar to the system of healing known as Curandismo in Peru where the healers "diet" with a particular plant to learn its medicine and how to carry its energy in the form of Icaros.
I've learned through working with the plants certain vibrations and melodies which flow through me as energy and information which has the capability to clear, inform and heal. These icaros or healing songs call on the intelligence of the plant spirit world.
This Icaro is a type know as "puro sonido" or "pure sound", where words of a language are not used but primal sounds relating to plant sentience comes through, the sounds, though not a language per se, do carry intent and meaning. By the fact that it is not a constructed language, it can bypass our rational mindset and speak to us on a deepr transrational layer where it can be felt and understood in an intuitive way.
This song is never the same, as it changes to suit the moment and the environment where it takes place. When sung in the power spots of nature such as the waterfall, the spirit of the place amplifies and lends itself to the song as a combined expression of the beauty of spirit.
Perhaps it is not a matter of singing but of being sung, of becoming a channel or instrument for the divine to come through."
This song can be downloaded for free at the following link.
http://hu.lk/w8l5wf3gj7uc