marker yellowThe Visions and the Visionary

Joseph sings Seeds of Peace
he invites us to join in and learn this song
The track is on a loop with a long gap between plays. You can pause it at any time.



marker yellow The Origin of the Chambers

Joseph Rael, Beautiful Painted Arrow. photographer: David RandleThe vision for the sound peace chambers was given to Joseph Rael.  Joseph is of Native American descent and his mystical name is Beautiful Painted Arrow.  The vision came to him as he was dancing in ceremony.  He saw an oval-shaped chamber and inside that chamber were men and women singing.  In his book Being and Vibration he tells us:

‘It was a house of the sound of presentness, a structure built to reverberate sound.  The melodious chanting of men .. and women .. (was) a reflection of people whose spirits and voices resonated in absolute harmony to balance the present, the future and the memory of how the cosmos is oriented through the use of sound.

Everything inside of the house was created by the mirth of the yellow people, light made of truth.  The house they created was time that had been slowed down so that we, the people, might seek to know the vastness of our inheritance.  The house was made up of many dawns, middays, and moonlit nights.  Inside the house lay the principles that would hold and nurture life, that would carry us from dawn to dusk and then take us into beautiful and meaningful dream states, and then beyond them.  In the morning time of consciousness, time, again, as was its destiny, would awaken us to what had been discovered in the nighttime for us to hold on to and then to explore.  Beyond the circle of this light, where the walls stood, darkness fell.  Light stopped there because beyond would be the “no form place of the breath of revelation”.  This “no-form place” would also be the place from which all new things could come to be known by the people on their journey to perfection.’

The realization of the vision was to be his next task and in House of Shattering Light he writes:

‘I had to figure out exactly what was required of me to fulfill this vision.  I asked myself,  What is the metaphor here?  What is the chamber?  What is the human anatomy?  What is singing?’

The answer he found was that the spiritual energy inspiring the sound peace chamber vision is vast, indeed, it is the Vast Self, the eternal Self of which our personal selves are all a part, and that through the building of chambers where people would come together to sing:

‘the eternal Self was involving all of our lives holistically, .. sound is another form of holism that is an ingredient of our physical well-being, our planetary well-being, our environmental well-being.’

Joseph and friends on Findhorn beach c.1987Joseph looked for the place to build the chamber.  He came to Europe, lecturing as he travelled and meeting people who would one day build chambers, or who would inspire others, who had never met him, to build chambers.

But he did not find the place to build the chamber of his vision.  During a sweat lodge shortly after his return home, help came.  These are his words from House of Shattering Light:

‘I …. saw a group of grandfathers …. sitting in a circle. …. They were expecting me, and they had a question for me.  They asked, “Why haven’t you built the peace chamber?”  I answered, “I’ve been looking for the right place, but I haven’t found it yet.”  One of them said: “Well, we’re going to show you where to build it.”  The next thing I knew I found myself standing in the middle of the garden plot in my own back yard.  The circle of elders became a circle of light.  This ring of light … placed itself in my garden, a circle of fire where the walls for the first peace chamber were going to be.  In the next instant I saw a smaller circle of light, no bigger than six feet in diameter …. and standing on the circle was an angel holding an infant …. he took the child he was carrying and gently placed it in the ground about two feet under the soil, planting the child like a seed in the center of the circle of light …. he said to me, “This child is yours to raise,”  Then he was gone.  Pretty soon I built the first peace chamber there beside my trailer house in Bernalillo, New Mexico.’

 the first chamberThat was in 1984.  Not all the Chambers that have been built since then are oval; there are circular chambers, hexagonal and octagonal chambers, and at least one dodecahedron.  There are egg-shaped chambers, and chambers with flat, pitched, or reciprocal roofs.  There may be openings in the roof, one or more doors, and windows, or no windows.  Often there is a pit, mother Earth’s navel, in the floor to remind us how we came to be here.

 Whatever their shape, all the ones I have been in carry the unmistakable vibration of peace.

This is a ground plan of the original chamber at Bernalillo:

ground plan of first chamber

Sacred geometry, including the golden mean, plays its part in this design, and the oval shape causes sounds to travel in the chamber in unpredictable ways, bouncing off the walls and travelling in new directions, creating echoes and unexpected harmonics which shatter the patterns that are stuck within us and allow new vibrations, insights, and cellular communications to occur.


marker yellow A Temple in Your Garden

My teacher, Alexander, who introduced me to Joseph’s teachings, once said to me: ‘Imagine this, now everyone can have a temple in their own garden.’

a garden templeMy daily life diverted me and I had not been in the chamber in my garden for some time.  ‘Why did I expend all that effort building it if I never use it?’  was my thought.  I went to the chamber and when I entered I noticed that it was working without me; the spiritual light was on and the chamber was humming the vibration of peace.  Every day that I did not go there I was the one missing out!  And the vibration of peace is something I really need to get to know better.

The chamber in my garden is called Cave of Clay.

The name came from a powerful dream I once had, but now it clicked that in sounding it is:  K-eh-v  oh-v  K-l-eh:  which in meaning is:  a place holding and teaching the healing vibration of peace

Build a chamber, they work for peace because they are peace: they are made of peace, the body of the building carrying the vibration of peace, here and now.


marker yellow The Fire Ceremony

There is a particular ceremony associated with the sound peace chambers, a ceremony which Joseph received from Spirit around the time the first chamber was built.  It is a fire ceremony which cleanses the oceans of our planet, the cosmic oceans of space, the oceans of thought in our individual minds, and all the resonating levels of the ocean metaphor.

Originally taking place within the chambers, where the light of the fire casting shadows on the walls reminds us to question our perceptions about reality, the invitation to do this ceremony is now extended to everyone who feels called to light a fire for peace.

The ceremony came as a request to Joseph when he was taken out of his body into the ocean to meet a beautiful Being of Peace, Oceanus (a sounding:  oh-shii-ah-nuu-s, a meaning:  through innocence enabling the light to increase, drawing new life into world), who said:

‘I want you to build a fire on the seventh of April, and I want you to build that fire for me. I want you to build it because that fire is going to purify the oceans.’

That is how the fire ceremony began, and it was taught to me in this form:  28 sticks built in a square stack, blessed with maize and tobacco, lit, and watched as it burns till just the ashes remain, the watchers seeking insights as the transformation takes place and enjoying, becoming, the essential quality, the principal idea, of fire.

fire ceremonyI was introduced to the fire ceremony in 1999 at the Gathering in Australia.  It really appealed to me and I have continued to hold it, as is now the custom, on the seventh of every month at seven o’clock.  And here is the beauty of the twelve hour clock, I mostly perform it at 7 p.m., but sometimes at 7 a.m. and on special occasions even at both times.  And without a rigid adherence to a form:  once in a friend’s fifth floor flat in the centre of Cairo with 28 matches balanced on an incense burner; once, in howling wind and rain, inside my house playing it on a musical pipe; once, as a passenger on a long haul flight, I made and lit and watched it in my mind.

The complete sequence for participating in ceremony is: be inspired to do it, decide to do it, and then do it.


marker yellow Life is made of breath, matter and movement

for more about the creative work of Beautiful Painted Arrow, Joseph Rael, click the links below

sound recordings * * * * * * * * written matter * * * * * * * * video recordings

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