Layne Redmond

All existence arises out of vibration, and rhythm is the primary structuring force of life on this planet. Sound is power and the first sound we hear is the pulse of our mother's blood. No sound has a more powerful effect on our consciousness. We vibrate to this primordial pulse even before we have ears to hear. Before we were conceived, we existed in part as an egg in our mother's ovary. All the eggs a woman will ever have form in her ovaries when she is a four-month-old foetus. This means that the sacred egg that developed into the person you are now, formed in your mother's ovary when she was growing in the womb of her mother. Each of us spent five months in the womb of our grandmother, rocking to the pulse of our grandmother's blood. And our mother spent five months rocking to the pulse of her grandmother's blood, and her mother pulsed to the beat of her grandmother's blood. Back through the pulse of all the mothers and all the grandmothers, through the beat of the blood that we all share, this sound can return us to the preconscious state, to the inner structure of the mind, to the power and the source of who and what we actually are: the pulsing field of all consciousness existing everywhere, within everything, beyond past, present or future.

This is the reason I believe that women in the ancient world were so identified with the frame drum. This is the reason symbols, like the lotus, that represent creation, birth, or the womb, were often painted on the frame drum or the reason why the drums were painted red -- the colour of blood, the colour of life. The frame drum, held in the hands of the goddess or her priestess, represented her power to create the universe with one stroke on her drum -- with one beat of her primordial heart -- every thing vibrates into existence.

Deep listening to this sound is a powerful and effective means of returning to the unconditioned, primordial state of our original consciousness. This sound has been used therapeutically as a background for massage, sleep, hypnotic inductions, counselling sessions or while practicing yoga. I believe this is the reason that the frame drum was at the core of all the religious rites of the ancient Mediterranean world.