Many strands make up and move our lives in seen and unseen ways.
One of the more hidden strands that has impulsed my journey of life on a very deep level is the myth and tale of the grail.
The grail has been described as a chalice that holds an energy of light that replenishes, revitalizes, heals, restores and creates indefinite living…..
In some myths it is described as the blood of Christ received by Joseph of Arimathea on the cross…
In others it is a gift from the angels to assist humanity and countless stories have been created around it.
In my life it was a myth and energy that had a very deep resonance in my being – describing an energy of a source of replenishment and vitalisation that seemed so far yet also so here. An energy that was externalized as a chalice, looked after by a group of men and women of pure heart in its service, the knights of which would go out into the world to assist people and situations that called for upliftment.
 
When I was a child and young teenager I found myself living in more than one reality. As a child my world was filled with nature spirits and invisible friends, which were not welcomed in the ‘ordinary’ reality, so at some point I closed the door to that. But the ordinary reality was much too one dimensional and scary to fulfil my being, so I opened another door into a parallel reality where I co-created and lived a parallel life. ( I guess one could call it a virtual life, as it happened in my imagination, but it occurred without technology).
So while In the outer world I was growing up with fear and uncertainty trying to learn the rules of this reality to fit in and to minimise the hurt and violence coming towards me, in my inner world, where I spent half of my time I was a character who was totally unafraid and could do anything, change the world, complete feats of what we would call impossible and create change and miracles. In fact I had a gang of youngsters who were part of my team and at certain telepathic signals we could all be mobilised at great speed and translocate to where we were required to assist a person or situation who was in need.
Thus when I started to read and hear about the stories of the knights of the grail, they were seamlessly incorporated into my inner world as a very familiar energy.
When I was old enough in my inner world I became a knight of the grail.

This parallel inner world was a wonderful place to inhabit as everything was possible. No limitations to the imagination and all situations that felt difficult and incomprehensible in the ordinary reality were able to be re-worked and transformed in this inner reality – events were re-written and stories changed – always to create a better outcome. I lived consciously and actively in both realities until I was 19 years old when I made a decision to put my energy fully into this reality to be fully present here.
Since then so many elements of what had occurred in the inner story have inadvertently found their way into my outer life…
In the inner world I had taken on various ‘professions’ and skills – including farming, being a performing singer, being a negotiator and mediator, counsellor in courts and high places… and a blacksmith – able to create with metal…
Another 19 years later I reflected on my inner world and what it had given me and realised that many of these skills had actualised in my life in different ways to how they were dreamt up in the inner world but nevertheless here they were:  I had trained as a farmer after leaving school, then expanded into music and voice, trained in various therapeutic modalities – negotiating with various inner courts and becoming a travelling troubadour, singing around the world, weaving vibrational fields of possibility and change – mediating and co-creating with energies of many lands and dimensions
… so when I found myself sitting by a beautiful campfire in Scotland on a friends’ land with cows joining us as I played music and we shared stories and Ton who was sitting next to me started telling me about his journey of discovery of crafting singing bowls as a coppersmith/ blacksmith I had the very clear knowing that this was one of the vital pieces that was still missing. The smith! It was completely clear knowing that I needed to become a metal smith crafting instruments for the future! YES. The smith!
What a gift! 
This skill added a whole other dimension to my life – allowing me to not only create vibrational realities and possibilities through sound weaving but also to anchor and birth them into matter / Mater / material form through an alchemical process with all the elements of fire, water, earth, air wood and metal! Another quantum leap, which has given rise to our movement called ‘Resounding Earth’ aiming to resound the Earth with tones, sounds music and vibration that enhance and facilitate the thrival of All of life in harmony with the planet itself.  
Only a few weeks ago the energy of the grail was brought back into my field by a tune that turned up in my inner hearing that wouldn’t stop: It was a tune from Wagner’s Opera Lohengrin, where Lohengrin – a knight of the grail tells the story of the grail and its place of keeping….the grail temple.
So what was being brought to my attention and awareness? 
A few days later in an attunement with 'Resounding Earth' and the energies that would like to create with us this year – I perceived the energy of a new grail temple created by the World Peace Sanctuary at Allanton /Scotland, where we have been called to return this year.
I was shown how their energetic, spiritual and political work for peace has created an energy vortex of receiving and gifting that can enhance, rejuvenate, vivify and vitalize – many of the qualities attributed to the grail.
Subsequently we also sensed and attuned with our journey to Portugal in the Spring and found a piece of writing that portrayed Portugal as Port-o-Gral – 'through you the grail…..'

The energies that offer replenishment seem are those being shown to us at this time. Replenishment where there has been a hardening of soil and Earth and of hearts over these past years in our societies, ways of living with the Earth and with ourselves and each other, where a softening, melting and real change is being asked for and required.

Where are those cracks and hardening forces showing up in your life? What can you bring to those places that allow a melting…the continual softening and opening? What changes can you be for you?

These last weeks we were shown how the sound vibrations of our voices and instruments can open communication between separated dimensions and aspects of our own being with the Earth and we received a strong and clear invitation from the beings that call themselves the 'Peace-keepers'… to soften and melt and open our hearts and beings to a calling from the Earth,  an invitation to the grail-pathways of the heart:

"....This path is indeed a new path of the grail heart. The grail and the heart have always been the same but as often occurs in human story and engagement, the distance from the body becomes great and the gift is in danger of being lost…
So you see now that we are showing you a path to the sacred vessel of the heart of peace. The thread veins you were aware of earlier, as cracks and fissures in rivers, streams and land, were the very edges where unconsciousness has cut off the connections and connectivity of the elements to humans...........  
Ignite and alight the grail pathways of the heart- you’ll find not only gold, but love, as an essential gift of peace lives there also.

[This is no heroes path. This is a delight filled journey for engaging the consciousness of the elementals and firing up the sparks of peace!]"

(from a recent attunement with ancient ones called 'the peace-keepers' received by Heather for our journeys in 2019)

Our season of journeys and workshops this year has been formed from these gifts and attunements over the past months. Our workshops and retreat may be over lighted by the energies of the grail as a known source of replenishment, vitality, nourishment …
We are shown at this time not to search for it on the outside as a vessel held in a castle, but as a set of qualities whose source we can re-discover within us as we come into deeper communion with our own hearts and bodies, with Nature and all of life… 

How better than through co-creation with others!!?

Would you like to join us somewhere beautiful on this magical tour we have named The Heart of it All? We invite you to play and craft and forge and attune with the elementals and most beautiful places on Earth to enliven and uplift, to vivify and fortify your own vessel of the heart. Could this be the path to the cocreation of Heaven on Earth? Through  co-creation?

Would you like to craft vessels that emanate and resound this quality as an essence and sound that overflows as a gift and nourishing replenishing elixir into the world through you?

Would you like to become the soft open energy of the heart in communion with the Earth and your body that allows the replenishing flow?

and here, our most recent gift from the same Peace-Keeper. In it is everything that goes beyond the need for words. A request?
​Maybe. . . but certainly an invitation.

It is simple…and clear
"...Will ye craft instruments for stillness? For peace of being? For sanctity of heartspace, present and available in any single moment?
The drop of sound that each hammer strike brings forth is neither antidote nor cure for the ailments of this world. It is a gesture, pure and simple, that has intrinsic beauty and harmonic peace ever present within its nature...."

Join us for our special Easter retreat in Portugal where we will be in collaboration with our dear friend Margaretta McIlvaine or at the end of May at the Allanton Peace Sanctuary in Scotland or on the west coast of Ireland where we invite you home, to a greater and newer you here with the Earth.
 
For more opportunities and events during our Spring Tour and while we are transitioning our website! 
ee: WORKSHOPS: and on Peace-Trails 

I sat with this beautiful bronze bowl for a while the other day and I was moved ... 

...after a while I recognised a vibrational field that is truly of and from 'the new' rather than one that is created according to a template from the old or familiar. 

To our ears it is an incredibly beautiful and long resounding sound... bright, long, strong and as clear as any signal could ever be.

And then there is so much more happening.... check in with your body and ask what is occurring as you hear the bowl play.

Where does your attention go as you allow the sounds to 'take you'...?

What else is occurring? What other magic or 'work' continues to happen when the sound that you hear stops short of the audial range?

What we know for sure is that we are changed through the playing of the bowls, the making of them and also being with them...

Hearts full of thanks to the maker, Gabriella Kapfer, and the inspired person who asked for this one to come into being through form.  

Commissioning a bowl is to enter and fully engage with an act of co-creation. You are asking for a sound being to come into the world that will possibly make a difference...

to you, to others, to the future...

Would you like one? More here

What single drop of possibility can we be that brings into the world a manifest vibration of peace?
 
What does it take to create peace? 
 
For this we are inspired to look at the question of where does transformation happen? Is it out in the world or is it within ourselves? Is it in our actions or our reflections? Is in the ways that we create and generate our lives with each other?

What does it take to live from beyond the distractions and the habituation of a polarised reality rather than an inherent desire to live according to essential harmony and wellbeing for all of life?

We’d like to ask – what would it be like if we acknowledged that peace is something that lives as a dream in this current world and that the creation of peace – within and without – is actually a quality that we have virtually no references to?

What is it that allows a dream to begin to create itself as reality?

Initialising and Actualising. It is about having an impulse to bring something forward and then taking a different step, a course of action, and asking for a different possibility - one that carries ever more of the many single moments that we each desire more of. A single drop many times brought to the planet creates more ripples that carry the qualities of that drop. These drops, when brought from an open-hearted space of co-creation with elemental beings can bring about a range of new frequencies that have never existed on earth before! What if those single drops, of hammer strikes on annealed metal, could bring forth a vibrational possibility that Peace May Prevail on Earth?
 
Over the years of crafting and forging metal sounding instruments we have been privileged to co-create alongside different organisations and communities who carry a deep impulse towards the creation of peace on earth and whose work is daily impulse and generated from this question - what does it take to have peace on earth? What difference can we each be that will allow a field of possibility to grow that literally invites the energies of peace towards the Earth?

Our invitation for you to join us for the making of a Peace Bowl or Bell is an invitation to come with the willingness to undefine your ideas and conclusions about what that means and come willing to Be the energies from which Peace may begin to know itself here on a planet that includes and is woven into a glorious creation dance with All Beings, the Solar System, the Cosmos and the Universe at large.

For us a workshop is an invitation to participate in a dance of co-creation. One where you meet the metal as a being of the earth, one that has come forward from the Earth's crust to be crafted as something new, acknowledging all it may have been and encountered in its existence pre-mining and since having been mined. These processes may have been many along the way and it may well have been regarded as inert, benign or unconscious along the way. What if we are able to meet this sheet as a co-creator – an element in bringing forth more of what you would like to have as possible for the future?

For that we ask you to find that invitation within your own space of being and allow the engagement with the fire, with the metal, with the water, with the many nature and earth beings that assist and be willing to be in joy, in gratitude and in wondrous possibilities for the many futures we would each wish to create on and for our ongoing journeys and choices.
 
It’s simple. It is profound. It is stillness in motion. It is transforming and it directly opens multitudinous new ways for living and creating and generating your life and living.

And what is peace?

Is it the absence of war? Is it audible silence? Is it the roar of the ocean? Is it a single drop of stillness in a busy day? Is it a space where there is usually none? Is it the warm hug of a child that lives in the moment? Is it a spontaneous encounter with an aspect of nature? Is it something that you have never encountered? Is it the empty fullness of a meditation? Is it harmony in whatever action you are engaged in? Is it joy? Is it sexualness? Is it communion with another being? Is it a flash in the pan? Is it a distraction? Is it a divisive plot to have you focus on what you are not? Is it a brief encounter with delight? Is it a red rag to a bull? Is it the knowing that you are not separate from anything or anyone? Is it about another? Is it about you?
 
What are the qualities that are close to the creation of peace for you?
For me it is the absence of thoughts…an emptier space that allows me for a moment to arise and flow from a space where I am more elemental by nature.
 
Do you desire peace?
In your life? On Earth?

Are the answers to these separate or linked?

Interesting yes?

The hard and the soft
Fire’s heat, hammer’s beat.
Earth pulls the hammer into the bowl
Heaven propels it aloft.
The instrument makes itself.
How the fire embraces,
How the metal speaks,
How the hammer responds.
Every detail tells a story of our lives unfolding.

Are we able to receive these messages from the elements?

Do we remember what we have asked for?

An essential gift of nature:
the chaos of the bowl that has not yet reached coherence.

The birther and the birthed:
all we can do is surrender to the birthing.

As we are forging, so we are being forged.

Am I willing to wear this intensity like a blanket,
and relinquish suffering it like a penance?

It all takes place within the stillness and expanse
of the field of becoming
which is always holding us.


a cornucopia of energy through words ... words gathered during the spaces between the sounds and the hammerings at Ardalanish Bay.
Words brought into the dance of creation by Helen Titchen-Beeth

See the wondrous language of beauty from the lens of her eye here 

Forging Sound, Forging Self
Isle of Mull, Scotland, August 2017

Have you been crafting, creating and living your life from an 'old' way of being?

Are you asking for that which you know is available but it cannot be defined or named and so it sits in the wings, waiting…?
It cannot be named for it has never been in existence and you know that to name it may restrict its growth, it’s infinite qualities and energies that will allow and enable more of what you know to be possible.

It is new.

You know it's possible because you can sense the energy of it as it dances in the realms of what may have formerly been called the dream ... the whispers of consciousness … your own infinite knowing in relationship with the cosmos…
It may be an energy that you can sense and perceive but not quite grasp? Wonderful! Please don’t attempt to grasp it…allow it to come to you as you sense it more generously, ever opening to greeting it with wonder and openness.
Keep going – sense the energy of it. It may be something that you have tucked away and out of sight, perhaps locked away in a cupboard or stashed under the bed, put away for your children to find or for you to return to in another lifetime?

Perhaps it's something you've known all your life but through years of getting on with the stuff of life has become a little like white noise - ever present and irritating - but if you filter it out you can manage to get on with the daily numb?
 
What if it were possible now to bring that which has only ever been a dream into existence? What if these are the days we have been asking for and creating our lives for and the days that are indeed offering us to live as one with Creation's Dance?
 
So here's our question to you - 

Would you like to create your life from the Hum instead of the Numb?

When something is held too tightly it contracts, becomes dulled and numbed. This is easy to perceive through a singing bowl - when an open and vibrational sounding instrument such as a singing bowl is ‘stopped’ it ceases to vibrate according to its own resonant field. This is true of an idea, a child in the playground filled with questions, your own body as it’s movement is restricted through rules or lack of something it requires. When a singing bowl is either held lightly or sat freely without too much surface contact when being played they may ring freely and their full harmonic range will vibrate out into the field of the wider cosmos.

This work of handcrafting an instrument such as a singing bowl cannot be fully met through any manufacturing process. The way of forging is mysterious and strong. It facilitates people to having a direct experience of being at one with the energies of embodied creation. You yourself as maker will be changed, transformed through direct engagement with receiving that which you are asking for vibrationally and in a form that cannot be controlled or dominated at the outset. 
And here’s an interesting moment that bears more fruit - what we know about creation and crafting and forging is that it's the bowl itself that tells us when it's ready to come out of the fire. It's the sound or vibrational frequency through sound that delivers the moment of arrival. A moment of knowing, a direct, generous and coherent space from which the maker, the place and the impulse to make the bowl itself all come home to a new resonance.
An instrument that is in resonance with what it is you are calling for - not only through the instrument but that may well touch every molecule of your life.

If what it is that you are calling for is ready to be birthed – even if only vibrationally - would the bowl making like to facilitate that birthing or b-earthing for you? 

A beautiful brass singing bowl, hammered and forged with the kind of presence and willingness that was able to give birth to different and new possibilities.
That's the bowl you see above - a bowl that has been re-crafted this year - from one that has worked hard for three years as a healing bowl.  Siddantha has assisted many through deep processes of letting go and witnessed some immense clearing and transformations.
Powerful and in some ways costly.
Like the maker herself, the bowl was ready to retire, ready to give up a way of working hard. In so doing the bowl and maker demanded to be re-fired, re-hammered, re-newed, re-leased from service oriented purpose that included suffering and given a whole new life filled with nameless and multitudinous new possibilities. It takes a certain readiness and open - hearted willingness to say yes to change and it's always a choice.
She was ready to let it all Go.
Knowing that what was on offer was nothing less than everything she crafted a bowl of openness, of kindness... of  generosity and youthfulness that seems to call directly to a deep femine voice of the earth herself. Through the days of bowl making she came into a wholly new way of living and generating her innate beauty with others as though a dance of creation.  

Through a stream of wordsmithing that speaks of her co-creative weave you may sense more of what it is to work with the elements ... 

Weaving in
Weaving Out
Meeting all of me in this metal
Fire Purifying,
Cleansing,
Lighting me up,
Weaving a flame

Water.
Clearing
Cleansing

Weaving

Filing the edges, taking the edges ... softening what is brittle in me

opening to that softness
Fire again,
letting go...

Hammering. My Rhythm,
My Source.
Retrieving my respect,
my tears,
my joy
Hammering the sounds of others, the support of others, their rhythm and mine match as we weave ourselves, their stuff, my stuff, one.

Softening, sun, rain, wind, laughter, song, coffee
sound, sound, sound
The big bowls listening from inside, supporting, encouraging, calling the new beings...inviting,

Go deeper, take back yourself,
Go deeper.

Chatting bowls
Midwives within and without, supporting, holding, nurturing, empowering each
as we co create a bowl,
that would sing,
my song, our song, the song for myself, for others,

for our planet,

Weaving
Love


from the re-making of Siddantha - birthing anew and also the hammering of The Reed - a hollow (singing) bone of creation.
​
​Marie Evans, Eire 2017

When it seems that all of the world is really crazy and that all is at an end - what else is possible?
 
During a recent three day retreat at The World Peace Sanctuary there was a particular bronze singing bowl that was continually drawing the attention of the group who had gathered to craft a bowl for themselves. . . it seemed to call people into the room early and invite quiet personal visits. It was energetically turned on and those who had gathered were aware of it eager for what it had to offer them.
This particular bowl, made by Gabriella, was crafted over a five day period at this very place - the World Peace Sanctuary - in Dumfries, Scotland. In 2014 we gathered with a small group of makers in response to a deep call to the question - what else is possible? 

Each of the bowls made during those days was crafted with the conscious prayer and heart based presence to bring towards the future a sonic vibration through a singing bowl that would carry a frequency that might raise the vibrational resonance of the earth. Some of that group brought their focus to bowls that were crafted specifically with the invitation for peace to become a possibility on Earth. Some crafted their bowls with an invitation to co-create with the waters of the planet and the molecules and atoms to bring forth solutions for the toxicity of the earth and the waters...some crafted their bowls with the awareness that their finished bowl would travel the world to attend and contribute to ceremonies with indigenous elders...Some crafted their bowls from the heart of the pilgrim... ready to go the distance no matter what it took.
Each of these bowls continues to be played and lived with consciously and each is a vibrational frequency that had not existed until it was made.

The bowl that Gabriella crafted, the bronze one with the compelling invitation resounding forth - both energeticaly and audibly - was crafted from the heart of the dynamic state of chaos...that of nuclear fission itself. During the forging she allowed herself to go deep into the question, the meeting point of what it would take for this particular bowl to carry the dynamic and creative potential of the transformative energy that created the Fukushima nuclear accident and from within that space she asked the energies to bring forth another possibility.

What is our potential and what can we bring forth?  
What vibration does that question carry when it comes free of expectation and the agony of regret for what has been?

These are wordless places. 

The bowl making process is one thing and the coherent and 'completed' singing bowl that is birthed through this total engagement is something that has no words...how could it? It has not existed before. It is an energetic and vibrational frequency that is recognised and creatively engaged with dependent upon our level of receptivity. This bowl, like many of our bowls, was crafted specifically for the Earth. We experience her as always receptive and always conscious of our requests, always generous beyond measure... 

So two years on from the b-earth-ing of this bronze singing bowl an elder from our bowl making community responded to the call that this bowl was sounding forth. She perceived the invitation, the request, from the Earth for another bronze singing bowl to be forged by Gabriella...a frequency carrier that would bring forth the kind of conscious communion that has not been available on the earth before. That of true and dynamic peace.


That bowl has come into Being.
It is conscious and consciousness, alive with an acoustic wave of sonic possibilities that could, quite possibly change the world.

How do I know?

Through being in its presence it changed me. My body experienced a communion through and with sound that it has not experienced before. Through having the bowl gently and consistently played to me I became more in tune with something I have no words...a silent and empty fullness that was alive with a communion...where the energies of gifting and receiving have become one.

An energy and space that allows and brings tears of gratitude to the fore. 

Heather