A sound first heard thousands of years ago in Tibet reverberated round the walls of a hall in Market Deeping more recently.
Listening to it were not mystical Tibetan monks but ordinary men and women drawn to a workshop at Coronation Hall entitled Ancient Primordial Sound Magic.
Musician, composer, painter, writer and lecturer Frank Perry was invited to lead the one-day workshop by organisers Starlight Sanctuary, a Market Deeping-based group which meets weekly for spiritual enlightenment and development.
Committee member Suzan Preston-Eyles explained the group, which has been meeting since early 1996, would like to see complementary therapies offered alongside more traditional medicine.
Starlight Sanctuary, which is affiliated to a charity that raises funds for terminally ill children and offers spiritual healing in hospices, would ultimately like to have their own centre in the district.
That would be a base for alternative therapies and a place where the families of ill children could be offered help.
Frank and his Tibetan gongs, bowls and bells were the latest in a series of special monthly events connected with healing organised by the group.
frank lives in the south and has travelled worldwide giving lectures for the past 20 years, using his collection of around 600 instruments.
At the workshop, Frank played some of the instruments before leading about 30 participants in meditation to the sounds of the bells.
He said: 'We were talking about ancient Tibetan singing bowls, part of the bell family. They are called singing bowls because they produce a tone which rings on for a long time, hanging on in the air.'
'They have been working with these sounds for five thousand years. They were used in Tibet by yogis, practitioners and for healing and meditation. The majority of the ones i had with me at the workshop were 800 years old, although I have a few in excess of a thousand years old.
'They are connected with magic and ritual and the ancient knowledge of sound. Each bell produces one sound, everything begins from one sound, so in that sense it is primordial.
'They are not musical instrument but have a specific effect on the player and listener and that is why it is connected with magic. It is designed to awaken specific qualities in the listener.'
LINCOLNSHIRE FREE PRESS Tuesday 7 October 1997
