This is Layne Redmond's Bee Priestess blog.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
6/11 Rosendale, NY: Ancient Traditions of the Sacred Bee Keepers
Evidence from the ancient Mediterranean world.
Slide lecture, Instruction in the Bee Breath Pranayama and drumming by Layne Redmond and Tommy Be
Rosendale Community Center
Ulster County Beekeeper’s Association
Meetings run 7 - 9 pm
Coffee and mingling at 6:30
1055 Rt 32, Rosendale
Admission free, donations gratefully accepted!
(Persephone with the Omphalos/Beehive on her head at the Eleusis Museum in Athens)
Layne will give her most current lecture on the history of the sacred practices and images of the bee priestesses of the ancient Mediterranean world:
The Bindu, The Omphalos (beehive or stone at the center of reality), The Melissaes and the Frame drum: the Mysteries of the Bee Priestess
The ancient wisdom is being awakened, enlivened and offered anew into our lives. As these images resonate in your mind perhaps you will sense how they are awakening in our contemporary bee sanctuaries.
The frame drum is the world’s oldest drum and was played by the ancient priestesses of the Bee Goddesses: Aphrodite, Artemis, Cybele, Demeter, Persephone and Neith. They were known as the Melissaes in Greek and the Deborahs in Hebrew. Their rituals and rhythms were drawn from their interaction with their bee hives.
Jewelry depicting a bee goddess, Greek c. 700 BCE.
Classical Hellenistic Period, Eritria, beehive used as Child’s tomb
Beehives from Crete, used since antiquity to present day
Bhramari Devi, the ancient Bee Goddess of India
MUSIC MADE WITH THE BEES!!
Layne Redmond’s musical career focused on the frame drum, the world’s oldest known drum. Since 1981, she has researched the history of this drum in the religious and healing rites of the ancient Mediterranean world culminating in her book, When The Drummers Were Women.
Many of these drummers were also sacred beekeepers, their titles were the Melissaes, which means bee in Greek and Latin and the Deborahs, which means bee or swarm of bees in Hebrew. These ancient women, kept by their bees, inspired Layne to spend time studying the sacred traditions connected to beekeepers around the world.
She discovered that the Sanskrit word, Anahata, means the unstruck, unhearable, celestial buzzing sound of creation. Old texts from India say that the audible sound most similar to the Anahata is the sound of bees humming. In the summer of 2008 she spent much time listening to bees buzzing and heard beautiful songs from deep within the hive.
She recorded the bees, tuned her frame drums to the pitch of their buzzing and called in the presence of brilliant musicians: the voices of Amit Chatterjee, Mariella Santiago, and Marcela Belas; the violin of Vicki Richards; the percussion of Tommy Be, Everton Isidoro, Eduardo Moto and Ubaldo Oliveira; and the piano and keyboards of Tadeu Mascarenhas. Through these sacred technicians of sound the Hymns the bees sang in her mind have come into the human realm.
