Sacred geometry in a drum: the nonagon

Magical numbers are woven into my shamanic journey drums.  I have been taking a break from my work on the text pages for my Journey Oracle cards to make a new drum.  I began with five laces holding the Cortes Island deer hide onto the spruce wood frame.   I relate the number five to the five layers of time that Martin Prechtel writes about in his recounting of the Mayan teaching story: The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun, in which Sun Time, Moon Time, Ocean Time, Sudden Time and Possible Time are all layers of interpretation that bring revelation.

The cords that hold the cedar ring in the center of the drum number nine, which to the ancients was the number of perfection in nature.  Freddy Silva writes that “this is expressed in that creation of the earth, the human body, which evolves in the female womb over the course of nine months.  The tail of the sperm half-cell is made of nine twisted threads, and after it unites with the egg, the first step in the doubling process of mitiosis is the duplication of a centriole, a set of nine parallel tubes arranged in a ring.”

I decided to complete the hand hold inside the cedar ring as an interlacement pattern of the nonagon, the triangle manifested threefold.  In Silva’s book Common Wealth, he describes the triangle as the prime force of the universe, and that its threefold expression represents utmost perfection, utmost expression, and highest attainment.  What a beautiful beginning to give a new voice for spirit.