The Healing Island of Moy Mell

Two posts back I mentioned Sacred Nature – the new healing meditation audio download that has just been released. Often audio meditation collections tend to conform to one method or formula, and so each track can sound quite similar. With Sacred Nature the tracks are very different, since they are designed to fulfil different functions.

In this post, let me tell you the story behind the track ‘The Healing Island of Moy Mell – A Journey to the Land of Honey.’ With this meditation I wanted to create an experience that opened the listener to the healing energy of the natural world, and in particular the earth, sun and moon.

The meditation opens with a quotation about rejuvenation from the eighth century Irish Voyage of Maelduin, and continues with an adaptation from Joseph Jacobs’ nineteenth century telling of the story of Connla and the Fairy Maiden. Later, English versions of two Gaelic prayers to the New Moon, from Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica, are spoken, and these are followed by a prayer to Brighid, Goddess of Healing, written by OBOD member Susa Black.

I asked a local composer, Helen Glavin, whose music and voice I found beautiful and lyrical, to

Helen Glavin

see if she could create some music that could work with the Golden Mean, and she has composed a haunting piece that combines the sounds of the sea with the use of Fibonacci sequences of notes. The Fibonacci series defines the Golden Mean.

At the heart of this meditation you are invited to bathe in the colours of the spectrum via the light of the sun mediated through a crystal held up by a Druid healer. Over the centuries various theories have been proposed that link musical notes with colour, and I asked Helen if she could work with this in her composition. She writes: “It has been an enriching experience creating music for Sacred Nature. The Island of Moy Mell inspired me to compose music evoking an ancient Celtic world, lulled by the sea, lost in time. I’m from Southern Ireland and feel an affinity to the island and the powerful mystical journey.

Music and colour have a golden synergy. I’m greatly drawn to the ancient Tibetan system where the individual colours connect with the chakras and the notes of a diatonic scale. I used this system in the music to accompany the Druid’s journey through the colour spectrum. The colour that came to me is red for the note C. I built up the rainbow journey from C, moving through the seven colours, the chakras, and related notes from C to B. I also explored the golden ratio and incorporated numbers from the Fibonacci sequence in motifs for the solo piano music. This was the sequence I used:

C — red — root chakra

D — orange — sacral chakra
E — yellow — solar plexus chakra
F — green — heart chakra
G — blue — throat chakra
A — indigo — third eye chakra
B — violet — crown chakra”

As a nice synchronicity, Helen lives very near the Rainbow Inn, just outside Lewes, in an area noted for its high incidence of double rainbows. You can browse her websites here: www.helenglavincomposer.co.uk and  www.helenglavin.com

And you can hear an excerpt from The Healing Island of Moy Mell in this sampler recording, with excerpts from all four tracks:

If you’d like to download the album, you can find it on i-tunes, CD Baby and Amazon UK