Gnostic Vowel Chant by James Bean About.me/SpiritualAwakeningRadio In India, many have verbalized the Sound of the universe as AAAAAUUUUUMMMMM, the OM chant. In Tibet, Buddhist monks created an otherworldly form of chant -- their attempt to reproduce audibly something of the inner sounds they heard during their meditations. The various Christian, Sethian (Jewish), Hermetic, and other Gnostic schools of Egypt also devised forms of chant that they perceived as verbally mimicking/expressing the Real Name of God that otherwise is hidden in the silence of the soul. In a Sethian Jewish Gnostic text called the Gospel of the Egyptians is an example of the vowel chant of Gnosticism, a kind of Western equivalent of the OM/AUM, in the land of Egypt, that with its monastic culture, once was a kind of Tibet of the West. Gnostics chanted various combinations of vowels and have included them in their prayers: I praise You. I call your Name that is hidden within me: IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Ive always been intrigued by the Gnostic vowel chant. First noticed it in the Gospel of the Egyptians and then other Nag Hammadi texts. The long vowel chant in the Gospel of the Egyptians spells IEOU, a sacred name of God according to some. There are more examples of vowel chant in the Bruce Codex, also Hermetic texts. Sometimes these seem to make up short words or non-words, perhaps glossolalia (speaking in tongues). Other examples are random combinations of vowels chanted like the AUM/OM. One can verbally chant vowels as well mentally chant them in your mind, with the tongue of thought. Both of those techniques have effective mantric consciousness-altering effects. I eventually learned how to do harmonic overtone chant, which is similar, only there is another layer of overtones generated. One is singing two or more notes at the same time. Hard to know from what remains of the texts if the Sethian Gnostics were into overtone chant. I assume probably not. But the overtone version is quite wonderful. There are a few choirs that do both plain chant and overtone chant. If there were such a thing as Gnostic choirs doing the vowel chant -- and most likely there were, maybe it sounded SOMETHING LIKE THIS! Youtu.be/VU4yuaVR5XQ?list=PL26LaJi1Lee3OplyY9B2xjwch_BTpcFvB Its such an amazing ethereal album of sacred chant, Harmonic Meetings. Im glad someone finally uploaded the whole thing at Youtube.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 19:00:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015