This listing is for one Brown Bear, Oak & Mugwort Ritual Sounder, from The heART of Ritual.
This ritual tool is a Sounder to play your personal medicine drum with.
• keywords: strength, grounding, courage, insights, protection, resilience, inner stillness, letting go, grief composting, community, home and hearth.
This Sounder is ritually crafted with botanically dyed sheeps wool that I gathered from the bramble covered hedgerows of West Cork. Inside I have included an offering of wild Juniper berries to clear the path. The Sounder head has a large and small polar bear needle felted onto it, and the constellations Ursa Major and Minor too. The colours I chose to work with are a direct reference to the night sky.
The space between the Sounder and handle is accented with Wild Rose and Mugwort plant fiber cordage, the cresent moon shaped sesamoid bone of a wild Brown Bear, and ethical Bear Fur. I made a small hand painted Fly Agaric talisman from Acorn caps, a reference to the magical mysteries this time of year and fungi are one of Bear's most treasured foods. This is attached to the handle with Wild Rose and Mugwort cordage and accented with natural matt stone beads. They can be easily removed and used to adorn your drum if you would like to connect this tool with the drum. The handle is the stem of an incredible Mugwort plant that grew in the garden in 2024, it's height exceeded three meters so I knew as soon as it returned to the ground and went to sleep for the winter that I would have to honour those stalks!
This offering came through during the winter 2024 earth element season, which wove themes of sticks and stones and skin and bones throughout, both literally and symbolically. Winter Solstice is the time that I personally feel the strength of Oak most, and on this date, a messenger arrived at the door, Brown Bear. It appeared in my dreams and manifested in reality too.
I wrote a rather long insight into this in our Spring newsletter, but what I didn't mention there was that I also received an enexpected piece of brown bear fur and feet bones on Winter Solstice too! Note that this time of year is when Ursa Major and Minor are most prominent in the night sky, so the framework for birthing of this ritual tool happened very softly, organically, and easily.
In many ways, this one ritual tool represents it all - the bones of Samhain, the light and hope of Winter Solstice, instinctual awareness of the need for rest, strength and trust in the process, and the natural pace of the Earth all wrapped into one. The sacred sound and ritual rhythm of Spring!
ABOUT RATTLES AS RITUAL COLLEAGUES
Rattles are ceremonial tools that resonate primarily with the fire element, their sound resembling the hissing of a snake. As a tool, they are used to purify, cleanse and transform (an individual, group energy, or place) and are also wonderful to use to energize or invigorate if a person is feeling sluggish or a space is stagnant. This is their transformative work as traditional healing tools. What resonates with you, how you choose to uniquely work with these ritual tools, your experience, and the direction this takes is entirely up to you. It is your intimate expression of prayer and reflects your unique ceremonial intention.
Brown Bear, Oak & Mugwort Ritual Sounder
These are the only ceremonial rattles that Niamh has crafted this year and will make absolutely gorgeous gifts to Self and/or loved ones. Just eight of each are available and just like each of us, each rattle is wildly unique. The photographs in this listing give a good indicator of what you will receive, however please understand that due to their uniqueness, there will be very slight variations. They are one of a kind, sustainably made, petrochemical free, green ritual tools (she even makes her own bone glue). They are crafted exclusively with hand gathered and upcycled elements.