Rattles

G6

I don't know much about rattles, but I've been wanting one.

Does anybody have any and what do you do with them?

🙏🏻✌🏻

G6
 

HearthCricket

Yes! I love working with rattles. I love the gourd rattles, but also shell, wooden, skin and other materials. I use rattles to cleanse areas, shake out bad energy, shake in good energy, rattle trees that are sick, rattle ailments away, use rattles to ground myself, to wake my altar from a deep sleep or rattle it in to being if I just changed it out, etc. To me the use of rattles is endless. I use my intuition as to what rattle(s) to use for each project. They all sound different and are different personalities and traits to me. Low sounding rattle speak well for grounding and for working with trees, especially roots. High sounding rattles attract fae and wake things up! Soft ones sooth, medium but firm tones are great for cleansing. Add a bell or two to mix it up! Perhaps a drum! Music is magical! Here is my collection last year, but it has grown! :D
 

Apollonia

When I want to do shamanic journeying, I use my rattles to provide the steady rhythm that facilitates entering a trance state. If I have done a soul retrieval, I rattle all around the person's body at the end, in order to seal in the soul parts.
 

G6

Yes! I love working with rattles. I love the gourd rattles, but also shell, wooden, skin and other materials. I use rattles to cleanse areas, shake out bad energy, shake in good energy, rattle trees that are sick, rattle ailments away, use rattles to ground myself, to wake my altar from a deep sleep or rattle it in to being if I just changed it out, etc. To me the use of rattles is endless. I use my intuition as to what rattle(s) to use for each project. They all sound different and are different personalities and traits to me. Low sounding rattle speak well for grounding and for working with trees, especially roots. High sounding rattles attract fae and wake things up! Soft ones sooth, medium but firm tones are great for cleansing. Add a bell or two to mix it up! Perhaps a drum! Music is magical! Here is my collection last year, but it has grown! :D

WoW, HC! You have a whole basket of rattles! Thanks for the pic! Yea, I think I want one to make noise, shake things up. I like the ones with a leather heads.

You said projects, what work do you do with them?
 

G6

When I want to do shamanic journeying, I use my rattles to provide the steady rhythm that facilitates entering a trance state. If I have done a soul retrieval, I rattle all around the person's body at the end, in order to seal in the soul parts.

Soul retrieval. Are those from this lifetime or past ones too?
 

Tanga

OOOH rattles!

Nice collection HeartCricket.
I promise a photo of mine in a couple of days as I'm out all-day tomorrow (today...).

I love sound. And I have a selection of rattles - and more happily tibetan bowls, a set of tingshas, a tuning fork, a Gong and some Altar bells.
I've just "re-discovered" my bowls - all 3 in my therapy room. And I use them to clear/renew
(Bowls clear cluttered energy and draw in new energy simultaneously) the energy in my room before and after each treatment I do. (The Gong - I use to clear the house... usually on a day when house occupants are out, so I don't get funny looks or complaints about the racket I'm making. Lol).

Somtimes it's rattling the rattles about to do the same.
(Most of my clients aren't "woo woo" enough to be happy for me to be rattling over them - lol. :) ).
 

Mi-Shell

I use rattles in my shaman workings with my patients. I also bring rattles and other percussion instruments when facilitating community and Healing Drum / shamanic trance circles.
In the Haudenosaunee Longhouse in Watah where I am a member, we use very different, specific rattles for the Women's Honour Dances and in our ceremonies.

I also do make rattles, for my personal work, for working with patients and to sell.
The basket full of rattles is for the circles, for others to use.
Then there are some pictures of rattles I made for sale.
 

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Mi-Shell

Here however are some pictures of the Medicine Rattles I do use in my work:

.... and a copy of a blog post about how I made one to take to Nepal to work with other shamans and in a Tibetan refugee camp.....

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A new Rattle for me!

October 3, 2013 by Mi-Shell

For our shamanic work in Nepal we have been asked to bring along a drum and or a rattle.

So a few months ago I was oohing and awing over my drums and rattles trying to decide, which one to take, or ifff it makes sense at all, to take one of my trusted instruments at all. All my drums are clad in Animal skin, Goat, Buffalo or Deer and so are subject to the ever changing humidity we would encounter in England and Nepal…….

But a rattle, a rattle would be fine and easy to take! 🙂

But which one????

Surely my Deer dew claw healing Rattle! -That one would be just the right Medicine Tool to take! But what ifff something happened to it? Luggage gets lost… And that Rattle would raise red flags at every airport security check, Animal parts are “problematic” to import into the US, from where we fly to England and even more problematic in England. I could not bear to loose it! ….

For sure I would have to take of its large Owl feathers and the other feathers it carries and – well, that is, where part of the Power of this Medicine Tool is embedded.

My Medicine Tools are living entities and it would feel, as ifff I was asked by someone, to take off my nice and appropriate cloths and wear nothing – or an unsuitable substitute…… My fundamental conviction that “Everything is alive, has a Spirit and thereby speaks”….. can sometime complicate things 😉

Or my large Gourd Rattle which I use to drive out unhelpful energies would be a second choice. But, iffffff ever it falls onto hard ground, Gourds can crack. I had that happen and lost a beloved working rattle…..

Then just take one from my pile of countless drum circle rattles!

Yes, OK , what a good idea!

Maybe dress it up, just a little, make a travelling rattle, just for this trip and leave my trusted working buddies at home!

This here Gourd and this here stick, they “feel just right. This time boil the gourd, to cure and harden the shell…..Now how about some Wolf fur …..?

Yeah, well, when I get going, dressing something up a “little”, well, I get going and one thing leads to another…. and then Spirit takes over and all of a sudden i HAVE to get some of that Bear fur and the little bone Eagle and Spirit demands via a waking vision crashing into my consciousness, that this and that is supposed to go here and there and yes, I am supposed to put bells on it, (no whistles, luckily, but yes, feathers too…….

And then, 4 hours later fingers full of glue, fur in my hair, I loooooook at the crazzzzzy item in my hands – and 😦 do not like it! Not at all!!! What the heck is THAAAAT?

Spirit however is not finished with instructions:” Put the Owl feather tip on it!!!”

” NOW!!!”

Ok, Ok, That is the tip of a previously broken large primary of a Grey Owl, that along with a complete wing I received as a gift from our Sachem of the Wolf Clan of our Longhouse.

I go upstairs and get out my Owl feather box, retrieve the requested feather and put it into position at the top of the rattle.

My hands start shaking. EVERYTHING shifts,My Soul breaks through a membranous barrier and tears well up in my eyes. .

My Rattle! This is my Rattle!

I loooove it, it is absolutely RIGHT!

Putting on this feather changed EVERYTHING!

It was the shift, when the power came into the medicine Piece!

Never had I experienced this transition so viscerally.

I sense, it catapulted this brand new Rattle waaaay past any allegiances I ever had with / to any other Rattle to the NO 1 Rattle in my ?? life??? work??? In my Soul!

I am flabbergasted flummoxed and deliriously happy!

The rest of the day I walk around the house in a daze, holding my new Rattle close to my heart.

But now what?

Taking it to Nepal?

I was led to create/ give tangible existence to it in preparation for this trip, so I will just pack it well and trust the Spirits, that guide me!

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Last 2 pics show the Rattle from 2 of its 4 sides....

Since that day, a few years ago, this Rattle has been my main working Rattle and goes with me everywhere - except into the US, where I have to have something without feathers to get it across the border in our motor home.
 

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Tanga

Mi-Shell, my favourites of yours are that bright orange rattle with circular black handle... does it have a skull face with feathers on it?....REALLY drawn to that one.
And the bear claw rattle.

Beautiful!

Here's my little collection. (none made myself :) )
The one with the most beautiful soft sound, is the West African one which
is the two seed pods linked with a blue cord. If I have a client who is amenable to being rattled over,
this is the one I use. The one with a face - is an owl...I should have angled it a bit more so you could see
it has a body of feathers carved into it...
The prettiest to my eye is the East African one with shells woven on the outside to make the sound,
and the most practical - because it's so easy to pop in a pocket - is the purple egg,
which one can get in any music store. :)
The skull is luminous in the dark :joke:
 

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Mi-Shell

Mi-Shell, my favourites of yours are that bright orange rattle with circular black handle... does it have a skull face with feathers on it?....REALLY drawn to that one.
And the bear claw rattle.

Beautiful!

Oh! (blushing...)
Thank you, Tanga!
Well, no, it is not a skull really but a drawing of a Siberian petroglyph of an Owl swooping in to aid a shaman. It is / was found on a rock quite near where my maternal Great grandmother lived and worked as a shaman. so I am sure, she knew the place. This rattle I made for my "becoming a Crone" = a year and a day after my last Moon bleed. That is, why it is red. Gourd for womb. It also has a Turtle petroglyph (Mother Earth) cut from Deer leather in the top center and other drawings. I will check, iffff I have more pictures.

The Bear Claw - that is just one of 4 sides/ sections of my special Medicine Rattle.
I did make a quite similar one for one of my long-time students. So there is a pic of that one and then one of the Steer horn rattle i made last year
 

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