Dash replied to yesterday's posting, and offered some interesting suggestions:

"So far Hazrat Inayat Khan's The Mysticism of Sound and Music has been extremely influential as well as my studies into the Native American Way and Shamanism among others. Like you said, my experiences in the Sweat Lodge Ceremonies and Native American Peyote Ceremonies have offered far more than any books could have.

Cymatics has always been extremely interesting to me because it seems to prove that matter is animated and structured by vibration - the implications for music and its effects on humanity are profound."


Thanks, Dash! Nicky Skopleitis gave me Khan's book awhile back but I didn't really connect with it at that time. I'll have to give it another go. This is the first I've heard of Cymatics. It sounds closely related to Gurdjieff's ideas as outlined by Ouspensky in In Search of the Miraculous.

Two excellent works of fiction on this subject are:

The Bear Comes Home - Rafi Zabor. A heady mixture of jazz music and culture, and Sufism from an adept of both. Zabor worked with Reshad Feild's school at one point.

Finnegans Wake - James Joyce. A difficult, mind expanding study that can take years to appreciate, but is well worth the effort. Joyce was a good singer and wrote as musically as he could. The secret to hearing its music is to silently sound out all the coined words and phrases. It's easier to approach and understand the Wake as an incredibly complex piece of music than it is to follow a storyline. Joyce was a visionary qabalist and had a profound understanding of magick as evidenced in Finnegans Wake.