PLANET BOWLS

Planet Bowl is a term that I first began using in 1983 upon receiving a bowl that was attuned to a particular planetary influence. This was a rare bowl that has it's own base attached and I bought it from Alain Presencer. This is the context within which I used such terms. The same applies to Chakra Bowls - these were bowls that I found to resonate with specific Chakras whilst I was selecting from amongst 200 to 400 bowls on any one occasion (I have searched through over 5,000 bowls in over 20 years). I have also had recourse to mention (or demonstrate / meditate with) at my workshops a few bowls of mine that happen to be attuned to Spiritual Masters. At that time nobody used the terms of Chakra Bowl, Master Bowl, or Planet Bowl. We had Tibetan Singing Bowls and a Talking Bowl, a Panic Bowl, and Star Bowls (a type of Water Bowl) and that was it. Nowadays these terms are used but not in the context within which I coined them.

There are a number of varieties of bowls either with regard to their shape or concerning their acoustical properties. A number of merchants and workshop leaders have attended my workshops down these many years now and they sometimes take these names and, either through misunderstanding, or for a sales pitch, they adopt these categories whilst, simultaneously misrepresenting them to a certain extent.

Frank playing a Talking Bowl (picture Esther James. 1989)

I have had a number of people coming to me stating that they've bought a Master Bowl, or a Talking Bowl or a Panic Bowl but when they produce the bowl or describe it, it becomes clear that they own nothing of the sort. There are bowls that we have come to term Jump Bowls to distinguish them from a Talking Bowl because a Talking Bowl is a very precise shape - seldom seen or found - but these Jump Bowls (largely Bhutanese Bowls) are often mistakenly called Talking Bowls. However, both the Talking Bowl and the Panic Bowl are held in a completely different manner than other bowls. Both possess bases and must be held by these and they are played vertically rather than horizontally. Some persons have approached me to inform me that they own a Master Bowl. I often enquire of these visitors what this title of Master Bowl actually means in their case. Invariably, they cannot tell me, they haven't got the foggiest idea - which means that the merchant simply called it a Master Bowl and raised the price! I ask them: "Was it made by a Master Bowl maker?" "Compared to other Bowls has it got such a clearly significantly superior sound quality (and is thus a Master amongst Bowls)?" "Is it attuned to a particular Master and if so why on earth didn't the seller inform you as to Whom this being was - and just what precisely is your spiritual relationship to Him/Her?" They remain utterly blank at such foreign, yet urgent, questions. I am not giving these ideas to further confuse the purchaser by arming the seller (who may read this article) with even more ammunition with which to mislead the purchaser. I am informing the purchaser of some of the misleading information that accompanies the selling of bowls by some unscrupulous and unethical merchants/dealers - or, at best, confused.

For example, one person came to me in order to purchase a wooden wand that I've designed and produced (sometimes - see photo below) for many years now and it transpired that absolutely everything that the reputable seller (at an International Festival in the UK [impressed this purchaser anyways]) had told him, was an utter lie. The Bowl was painted with an F#. So I started out by testing this but the bowl refused to produce this note, hovering instead somewhere between a B and a C (a semitone)! Not even a note at all!

Frank's design for wands hand-made by himself since 1980

Photo Esther James 1989

Some sound healing practitioners wishing to work with the Chakra system, via Planetary correspondences, turn to the works of Hans Cousto where mathematics are used in order to turn the time of the planetary orbits into a sound within the range of human hearing. This system has been used by PAISTE the world's leading manufacturer of tuned and un-tuned Symphonic Gongs. I have been an endorsee of PAISTE since 1973 and it was whilst I visited their factory in 1978 that I introduced the idea of using sound for healing. I found that certain of their tuned discs resonated with certain of my seven cervical vertebra and they made three of each for me to choose the most perfect ones from. I mentioned to them at that time (Werner Acherman translated) how I use sound in healing via correspondences between planets and elements, etc, and soon afterwards they produced (without referring to myself specifically) their first set of Gongs relating them to different elements and then years later they produced their Planet Gongs via the system developed by Hans Cousto. These Planet Gongs are produced to vibrate at a specific frequency, which sometimes comes close to a note on our diatonic scale. Were somebody to find that a singing bowl came close to that note or specific frequency and then deduced that this were then a Planet Bowl (for the planet concerned - let's say A for Venus) then I must state that this is not my idea of a Planet Bowl. As I stated before, for me a bowl has to resonate with the spiritual energies of the planet concerned - and I have studied Spiritual Astrology (in this lifetime) since 1973. This way of finding a system of correspondences that is easily applicable is derived rather from the workings of the lower mind (intellect) whilst I prefer that of the Higher Mind (the 'mind-in-the-heart' - the intuition) even though it may be seemingly fraught with dangers.

Chakra painting by Frank

I also do not find that a Planet Bowl necessarily becomes a Chakra Bowl via the relationship between planets and chakras. It is not that simple, but rather is it the case that one planet will have a relationship with several chakras. For instance, I have a bowl attuned to Venus that also works on the Third Eye. Actually, there is a relationship between these two, but it is not the one derived from a straightforward system (where Venus might be placed with the Throat Chakra) and I also have a Bowl attuned to Saturn that is a Throat Chakra Bowl whilst the aforementioned system would place Saturn as ruling the Root Chakra! When I first played this bowl it affected my second Thoracic vertebra (attuned to the constellation of Taurus - ruled by Venus! - which Sign the ancients connected with the Throat Chakra) whilst I also felt it working in my Throat Chakra even as I was also immediately aware of a specific visualisation that was used with this ancient and rare (design) bowl. This is given as an example of my personal experiences occurring during the selecting of some of my bowls from amongst hundreds of bowls over a typical four to six hour session of tiring selection.

For me this whole subject of Planet Bowls is an Intuitive science and not a method that can be applied simply by anybody who can remember a system. Sometimes, when I play my ancient Heart Chakra Bowl (conveniently my Sun Bowl [attuned to the Solar Ray and a certain Spiritual Master]) I ask the group whether they can imagine Margaret Thatcher playing the same bowl and giving the same effect! Not everyone is suited to working this way - whilst it isn't all down to the bowls either! One has to intuitively feel these things with the heart and soul, or view them clairvoyantly, or understand them clairaudiently! In order to safely come to such an understanding one has to be very still and work from within the Voice of the Silence - with a quiescent openness and selflessness within the spiritual heart that contains no desire or passion or egotism - but rather simply seeks the truth in order to be of service. Try to get behind the sound of the bowl to the spiritual dimension (remembering that not all bowls function upon these additional dimensional realms).

In the ancient science of Astrology the planetary rays are further modified by the Element through which they are passing. In traditional healing methods of the Bonpo (the pre-Buddhist faith of Tibetans) the Elements are very prominent. The Elements are also associated with the Chakras as are the planets. In Chinese acupuncture the Five Planets (minus Sun and Moon - the two Lights in the sky) are associated with specific Elements. Element Bowls are found from both their shape and their sound qualities. For instance, not every bowl will work with Water, however others will work - yet not very well, but then, again, others take on a whole new character and very clearly come into their own when the correct amount of water is added and these we can then rightly call Water Bowls. All of my Air Spirit Bowls have the exact same design and they are exceptionally suited to ululation (some people call it the 'wah-wah' effect) whilst being stroked, and so on.

Fire spirit above by Rose Perry.

Frank demonstrating the Ululation technique. Photo Esther James 1989

In order to work with Planet Bowls it is obviously necessary to have spent time meditating upon the several Planetary Rays. How to work with a bowl attuned to Neptune, Pluto, Venus, or Uranus for instance? Furthermore, it is then necessary to understand how to work with these Planet Bowls within the context of Sound Healing. Just as in the form of Spiritual Healing, in which I am trained, certain colours are seldom used, if at all. So it is in my Sound Healing work, some Planetary energies will not be used very much. I do not use a Newtonian Mechanistic Paradigm that is based upon the assumption that a Planet rules a certain Chakra and then if that Chakra is out-of-tune, I simply need to play that Planet Bowl to the Chakra in question. In such a system one would naturally have available all colours and planetary rays.

For myself, each planet is associated with a number of soul qualities and it is these that I need to bring to a Chakra once I have analysed why it is malfunctioning. I am seeking to attune the soul of the patient with that soul quality that is lacking within them from the higher planes and this reunion with spiritual harmony will gradually filter through a change or alter the physical condition - the particular manifested disease. Life would be easy for me if I simply had one bowl for helping the Heart Chakra. Whereas, when considering the Heart Chakra I must first make some initial considerations - am I to use a Bowl that very gently opens the Heart (for someone whose Heart is closed, or who has suffered emotional pain, or who is extremely wounded and shy); or am I to use a Heart Chakra Bowl that is attuned to Divine Love or am I to turn to one that cultivates the Human Heart of Compassion? Or which combination of Heart Chakra Bowls will I create for the client's needs from out of my nine available Heart Chakra Bowls? Heart Chakra Bowls can vary from sunlight through clouds, right up to 120 degrees in the shade!

Fire in the metal of PAISTE gong. Photo Frank

This is a far more ancient form of sound magic arising from the nature of what can be found to reside within the notes themselves. Such ancient sound magic would also attribute meaning to the particular octave in which the note is sounding (in fixed scales - not really relevant to Singing Bowls as these are not really musical instruments but rather ritual implements). Some practitioners employing the Glass Bowls (so-called Crystal Bowls - for more concerning these click HERE) for sound healing utilise this system of the lowest note on the piano scale - the note C - for the Root Chakra without any regard for which of the seven audible octaves this C is in. It is considered that as long as you produce the sound of one of these seven C's it will work all the same! In the modern music of today, this ancient way of working with sound magic is almost entirely lost. The notes on the piano are now all equal. All that matters are the (intervallic) relationships between these notes as found in melody and harmony and printed in black and white on the score. As long as the sequence of intervals and chords remains the same it matters not, to the majority of composers, what key they are played in. A performer may find the published key awkward and they can then merely transpose the piece into a key that is easier for them to perform and it would be considered a minor (if any) change to make. It is true that some composers have a sense of meaning for each key whilst yet others (e.g. Messiaen, Skryabin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Beethoven, etc) also have a sense for each note and chord. In our Western music we have two scales remaining from ancient Greece, which had at least seven, and composers and listeners alike can distinguish between the sad Minor and the outgoing positive Major keys. In some ways the evolutionary developments of modulation and chromaticism have freed the composer from the rigidity of keys and provided the entire resounding keyboard as a tonal palette from which to select notes and chords - poetically we could come to see the sounding board of the entire piano keyboard to be resounding almost like a huge giant Gong only with a capacity to focus upon every single tone within it's entire oceanic sound-world. Admittedly, it is very hard to hear this in the current equal-tempered system. It is easier in alternative tunings - as used by Terry Riley or LaMonte Young.

But I am relating far more to that which lives within the one sound itself - apart from any other. A handful of composers have likewise stepped into this new world of sound. In particular I can mention the Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi (for more on Scelsi click HERE) who experimented with this new way of listening from the middle of the last century. He was interested in spiritual philosophy (particularly of the Far East) as were Dane Rudhyar (for more on Rudhyar click HERE) and Cyril Scott - both of these latter were Theosophists. Theosophy influenced many hundreds of artists at the start of the last century - most notable of which were Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Nikolai Rerikh. Rudolph Steiner also was a Theosophist before beginning his own movement Anthroposophy - largely based upon the Theosophical teachings and ideas. Steiner gave several lectures upon the subjects of Sound and on Colour which have been made available in books. An important seminal work published by the Theosophical Society was the book THOUGHT FORMS by Annie Besant and Charles W Leadbeater. This book contained a chapter on the experiments of sound by Ernst Chladni and also Margaret Watts-Hughes (for more on this and a later development called CYMATICS click HERE) whilst it also contained clairvoyantly observed depictions of certain thoughts and emotions in coloured diagrams. The current explorations in Japan by Dr Emoto into Water Pictures is akin to these early adventures. The effect upon abstract painters was obvious whilst their treatment of sound likewise opened doors, especially through these experiments that enabled one to see sound.

Cymatic Image created via sound vibration. Photo by Hans Jenny

Admittedly, the rich harmonic world of the Singing Bowls can hardly be referred to as one single sound, yet by approaching each bowl in such a way one enters into the inner world created by prolonged exposure to the individual sound characteristics of each bowl. However, a lot of modern bowls upon the market are new and are not made with any specific purpose in mind, whilst it is also true to say that at any time there would be bowls produced that were never intended for sound work and thus had little effect upon the listener. Only certain bowls carry subtle energies and the more elevated the energies the rarer the bowl. As I have stated in other articles upon this site, there are three categories of bowls that can be loosely related to the Body, Voice and Mind of Buddha i.e. those relating to the Body are merely bowls - either you like their physical sound or not, but they are not charged with any higher energies and do not resonate with any significant focalised centre within the entire human being. This is not to say that such bowls as these carry no meaning for ourselves or cannot be loved and appreciated by ourselves. It is quite simply the case that they carry no magical significance or extended meaning from the vantage point of our spiritual evolution. Neither do they resonate with any potential spiritual use and so charging them would take a very long time because the sounds they make upon this plane are not in-tune with a manifestation of any higher reality.

Just as there is little logic with regard to the sound of a bowl and its size (in a lay-out where the bowls are placed in ascending order of pitch there is no discernable order - a couple of small bowls between two large bowls produce a sound in-between the larger two), so a bowl attuned to Jupiter ( a very large planet) may yet be half the size of one attuned to Mercury (a tiny planet). It quite simply either is, or is not, attuned to a similar vibration to the planet concerned. Just as a planetary mantra will serve to put you en rapport with the planetary energy, so one may find a bowl that similarly carries these self-same energies and characteristic qualities that may serve to expand the influence of that planetary ray within the listener's being. If the issue of treating the human energy-field Chakra system were simply a matter of using one of the notes from one of the white keys on a piano, then the fact of it being a Tibetan, Himalayan, or Glass bowl becomes rather superfluous. For within this philosophical context that same note must have the same effect whether it be played upon a violin, a saxophone, a vibraphone, a flute, a piano, etc, etc. In fact, it would be better to play it upon one of these instruments for they are less rich in harmonic overtones and therefore more focused upon the exact note declared to be ruling that part of the body or chakra than would be Tibetan or Himalayan singing bowls. On the other hand the extended harmonic language of the singing bowls allows the listener to enter into level upon level of sound and ultimately layers of meaning - glimpsing something of the magical Presence.

(Photo of Bowls layout above taken by Rose Perry)

We are, in effect, projecting 21st century Western mental constructs upon Himalayan bowls. Just as many of us may struggle to live according to unnatural 21st century Western scientific, agnostic, or religious ideologies or even self-improvement programmes, rather than trusting to Nature (including the nature within ourselves - the Anthroposophia) and following the voice of our heart. Admittedly, this is the mystical way. It is natural to want to make the bowls part of ourselves. New Himalayan bowls now are often covered with Buddhist symbols - an attempt on their (Buddhist) part to consecrate the bowls to Buddhist ends. None of the older bowls that I have seen have any such markings. The most one would get would be some writing and this would mostly refer to either the maker or owner of the bowl. Western bells likewise often have writing upon them - either details of the dedicatee or a message describing the effect of the bell. At the time that the bowls were made the bowl-makers would never have heard of our Diatonic Western scale. Chinese music is Pentatonic whilst Indian music is derived from a different interval altogether. So, none of the surrounding countries would be using our diatonic scale either. In fact, the bowls were not created to fit into any musical scale. They are for ritual, ceremonial or meditation purposes and not for playing tunes upon. Whilst it is also highly unlikely that any of these countries would have associated any planets or chakras with our Western Diatonic scale - if with any 'musical' note at all.

Photo by Frank 1994

In Yoga the Chakras have a Bija Mantra associated with each one whilst the number of petals also have their own tone (derived from the Sanskrit alphabet) with Four for the Root Chakra and Sixteen for the Throat Chakra, etc. Not one sound - in that sense. Masters differ according to which mantric sound is for which chakra - so it's best to work either within your own school or with whatever works for you. These Bija Mantras are not notes of the musical scale though. However, there will be traditions of sounds associated with the chakras handed down from prehistory that may well sound close to a certain musical pitch.

Ultimately, all healing comes from a Heart full of Universal Love and the Healing Angels can and do often make any necessary adjustments to our treatments. So there is no need to get too bogged down in details - where we 'can't see the wood for the trees'. Each must work in the way best suited to their nature and the spiritual Ray upon which they are working - if they work with spirit beings. Nonetheless, it is also incumbent upon us to have our feet firmly placed upon the ground whilst holding our heads up in the heavens. But patience is also a virtue and we shouldn't press ourselves upon the sick and needy before we are truly ready to provide a beneficial service.

© Copyright 2004 by Frank Perry. All rights reserved.

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