Friday Night Rattle Making
Have you ever wondered what your younger self would think of you? That thought crossed my mind yesterday, as I thought of what a Friday night might have been in my earlier years. I wonder how my younger self would have responded to see how I was spending my Friday night: sitting on the edge of the tub with a few knives at my disposal as a I scraped away at a piece of deer hide, offering prayers to a deer spirit.
My husband has been partaking in a few learning experiences that have presented themselves to him in the realm of Norse trancework. He has been using recorded music to go into trance, but he has bumped up against some work where he needs to make the sound he uses to go into trance himself. He needs a magical sound maker.
He could use my rattle or my drum, but it’s better that he have his own. So, to help him out with this, I offered to make him a rattle. I could use the practice, and it would be more meaningful to have one made for him instead of just buying one.
The first step was to get the hide. I have a deer hide given to me by my sister-in-law’s brother about a year ago, and this was a perfect moment to use some of that. I trudged through the snow to get to the barn where it is. I sat with it, getting ready to take some off, when the spirit of the deer decides to reach out to me. He wanted me to know that he’s a little pissed that I haven’t taken better care of the hide.
I took the piece of hide inside, put it in a bucket of water, Borax, and salt, and make offerings to it. Working with annoyed spirits does not make a good sacred tool. The deer spirit is right, though. I didn’t clean it off as well as I should have at the beginning of the last summer, so it could be in better shape. In penance, I offered prayer and herbs along with the salt and borax to properly clean and care for it.
After a few days of that, it was time to start the actual process of rattle making. I took the hide to our tub to get a good look at it. The fur was still there, and that gets in the way of cutting, sewing, and muffles the sound of the rattle. The Wahl Show Pro Plus dog hair trimmer is the best thing ever in that situation. If it wasn’t for that, I would be cutting with scissors and scraping with knives all night.
For those of you who have not had the pleasure of handling wet hide, it’s not exactly pleasant. It is a great material, though, and being a local deer gave the rattle a connection to the area. It also makes one ponder their life choices as one scrapes any detritus off it while sitting on the edge of the tub on a Friday night. Hence the beginning of this blog entry.
After it was clean and ready, back to the bucket it went with a fresh batch of water. I made offerings to the water (white flowers and sea salt), the deer (tobacco), and the future rattle (a mix of sage and lavender), along with a little more prayers and thanks. I instructed Josh (my husband) to go and make an offering that seems right to him.
Fast forward to this morning. I took the hide out of the water, and cut out the shape of what could be described as a fully deflated balloon from half of it. I used the cutout to make the same shape with the other half of the hide. I broke out my leather hole punch, and begin ringing the outside with holes about half a millimeter apart (except for most of the skinny part of the balloon shape). After finishing both shapes, I broke out the thread. I usually use waxed thread or sinew, but I had neither. Doubled up upholstery thread it was!
The sewing is part of the magic for me. I like working in energy and intention with sewing. I see it as light that I sew in along with the thread, or the thread capturing certain words or phrases. As this is for Josh, I just put love into it. I keep on thinking about how much he’ll love it. I don’t want to affect the feel of it too much. I want it to feel wholly his.
I then lugged up this cauldron of sand we have. We have used it as a big ashtray before when we have large amounts of people over, and we want our smoker friends to have a place to put their cigarette butts that isn’t our lawn, road, or garden. It’s clean now, and I need the sand, so up to the mage room it goes. I started filling up the hide pouch with sand, tamping it deep in with a stick. As soon as I could fill it no more, I hung it up to dry. That is where the project stands now.
Once it dries, I will empty out the sand, and begin the process of finding the right sound for Josh. I have a jar of old Jacob’s Cattle Dried beans that I harvested years ago, and I’m sure they do not have a high germination rate. Instead, they should make a great sound in the rattle. If that’s not the sound Josh is looking for, we keep searching. He has to also pick a type of tree that he wants to make a handle out of, and preferably go find the perfect handle. We’ll attach it and seal it to the rattle head, once we have the right insides for the right sound. We’ll decorate it as he likes with leather, cloth, braids, feathers, paint, or whatever else he might want.
Once he has a rattle, he will have a tool to create a monotonous sound that he can use to go into trance. I’m feeling pretty good about the project, so I wanted to share with you a little bit of the process. After all that hide cutting, hole punching, intentional sewing, sand packing, and now blog writing, my hands are feeling a little tired. I’ll end the blog with this.
I think that my younger self would totally approve of my Friday nights. He was pretty weird, too.
Until next week
The Green Mountain Mage