A Vibrating Cosmic Community
A Vibrating Cosmic Community
by June Boyce-Tillman, Professor Emerita, University of Winchester, United Kingdom
Haiku
The drum resonates
In the cosmos and all is
Retuned and restored.
Boyce-Tillman, 2022
Vibrations have for much of human history been seen as the basis of the universe – a route to infinity. The audible frequency of the planet and the human body are seen as affecting and being affected by the vibrations of atoms and stars. Music is seen variously as connecting with the Divine, as having therapeutic or harmonising properties, as the underlying energy of the universe and as an infinite mystery defying understanding. Musical connections with the Divine were celebrated in the ancient mystery traditions associated with the Egyptian Gods Thoth and Hermes Trismegistius. The Music of the Spheres or Musica Universalis featured in the writings of Plato (569–490 BCE) and Aristotle; it saw the infinity of the universe in terms of vibrating planets producing music that was inaudible to human beings but which related (sometimes in a mystical way) to music produced by human creativity. It was a metaphysical concept considered as an essential part of the quadrivium - the basis of liberal arts education and consisting of arithmetic, music, astronomy and geometry. These were concerned with exploring the role of number in the infinity of the universe, music being seen as number moving through time. The following is a very brief summary of a subject which has produced vast amounts of philosophical and musical theoretical literature.
There is seen within this concept an inextricable relationship between the vibrational music of the natural world, the universe and that of human beings. Boethius (1989), in De Musica in the sixth century CE, developed this within the constructs of Christianity, seeing music as having three forms:
· Musica mundana - which is the (inaudible) music of the circling planets and the universe
· Musica humana – which is the harmony located within the human body and connected with spirituality
· Musica instrumentalis – which is created using instruments constructed from the natural world
This notion of a linkage between all the vibrations in the universe coloured medieval Europe’s view of music as a significant link with the Divine - the energy at the heart of the universe, reflected in the writings of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179):
Laus Trinitatis
Praise the Trinity
Our life-giving music.
She is creating all things.
Life itself is giving birth.
And she is an angel chorus praising
And the splendour of arcane mysteries,
Which are too difficult to understand.
Also, from her true life springs for all.
Boyce-Tillman, 2000: 130
In Hildegard’s theology music plays a significant part in the restoring of right relationship between human beings and the other-than-human world with which humans have a profound relationship.
Johannes Kepler developed this further in Harmonices (1619) by making the inaudible harmony of the spheres audible to the soul and so enabling a relationship with the infinity of the Divine. Although the developing world of science accepted much of the mathematics of Kepler, it was suspicious of the spiritual dimension of his work. There was a serious diminishment of these ideas in the Enlightenment as emphasis developed on the individuality of the human being and human beings’ control and power over nature; a division between the animate and inanimate developed, which contradicted the medieval theological view which had a greater sense of infinity. This is explored further in the Peter Lang series of books – Music and Spirituality.
However, challenging voices are still raised. The work of the philosopher Joseph van Schelling in the early nineteenth century sought to integrate the musicking of human beings with the absolute music of the organic unity/infinity of the universe. Darwin, later in that century, thought that it was possible that plant growth could be stimulated by vibration, although the results of his son playing his bassoon to plants was inconclusive. In the twentieth century, a variety of sources ideas around the centrality of music emerged in areas such as quantum physics, with Einstein seeing human beings as a bundle of frequencies expressing the music of our souls.
At the edge of the dominant Western culture, scientists were continuing to explore the power of vibrations. The tradition of cymatics was developed by Hans Jenny (1904-1972). It drew on Galileo’s work in 1630 and Robert Hooke’s work in 1680 on the nodal patterns created by particles on vibrating glass plates. In the eighteenth century, Ernst Chladni in his Discoveries of the Theories of Sound, showed, by using his violin bow, the vibrational patterns of sand on smooth glass plates. Jenny’s work - based in the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner - saw mandala type patterns generated by sound, particularly by the chanting of the syllable Om of Eastern religions. Various visual artists and musicians were inspired by Jenny’s work, such as the American artist, Jimmy O’Neal, who created a cymascope. This led to the development of the healing through sound via the discipline of cymatics.
As Western culture opened up to more Eastern traditions, spiritual writers such as Imrat Khan supported scientific ideas in a spiritual frame seeing music as a new infinite life-force and a fulfilment of humanity. A greater awareness is developing of indigenous cultures’ closer sense of community with the other-than-human world.
In the later 20th century, investigations began into singing and playing to plants. In 2014, an Indian study showed improvements in growth in 30 roses after Vedic chanting and Indian classical music. A 2007 South Korean study used Beethoven to influence growth in rice. A 2009 Royal Horticultural Society study saw tomato plants respond to female voices reading to them. Dr Dominique Hes, researcher at Horticulture Innovation Australia’s Plant Life Balance, suggests that gentle speech effects plants, although their hearing is different from human hearing. All of these suggest that plants are sensually aware of their environment. So, plants appear to respond to some expression of a relationship with them. Here we see various developments working towards human relationship with the other-than-human by means of sound and challenging the fractured relationship between the animate and inanimate – a connection achieved through accessing one another’s vibrations
Once a month, in the UK, my friends from Living with Harmony meet in a music house at the end of my garden to improvise in a quartet that includes a new plant each month. We also often leave the doors ajar to allow the biophony and geophony of the garden to enter our sound world, rather than excluding them (as, for example, in our culture’s beloved soundproof recording studios). In our improvising sessions, we have used the connection with plants such as the yew, the silver birch, a small fir tree, anemone and nettles. We use a variety of instruments including a harp, a guitar, various gongs and crystal bowls and the PuzzDrum from Ukraine. As our times together have developed, we have become more connected with and understanding of the plant sounds coming from the digital machine of the Music of the Plants. We have explored imitating motifs emerging from the digitisation and increasingly are aware of how the plant then responds to us. There is much criticism of these developments, but they are in tune with much ecological thought.
Our work is in its infancy but we are working towards a new community. Here Benedict Anderson’s concept of newly imagined cosmopolitan communities is being developed in a new way. This newly imagined community necessarily includes the other-than-human world and infinity; creatures previously regarded as inanimate can and need to be reconstructed as neighbours/ players in a cosmic game which stretches into infinity. Digital developments are facilitating the exchange of communication between the planetary, the human and the other-than-human world - the basis for imagining new communities. A new biomyth of panpsychism is developing, here using sound/vibrations as the basis of a wider view of community including the sentience of the other-than-human world. It is an exciting area in which to explore the mystery of infinity.
June Boyce-Tillman MBE is a musician, composer, performer, academic and an Anglican priest, living in South London, UK. She was educated at St Hugh’s College, Oxford University and is a Professor Emerita at the University of Winchester and an Extra-ordinary Professor at The North West University, South Africa. She runs Music, Spirituality and Wellbeing International and edits a series of books on Music and Spirituality for the publisher, Peter Lang. She writes on education, the women mystics, religion and spirituality and interfaith issues. She is a poet and hymnwriter.
December 11, 2023
