Threshold rhythms: Ancestral sound healing at Arnos Vale

Drumming at Arnos Vale Cemetery

I struck my drum. The sound reverberated through Arnos Vale Cemetery, challenging the expected stillness. Something shifted. What began as a simple experiment - bringing rhythm to a place our culture reserves for silence - quickly became a profound encounter.

Sound waves seemed to move differently here, travelling between tilting gravestones and ancient trees with unexpected clarity.

Despite years studying medieval attitudes towards death and communal spaces, this moment transformed abstract knowledge into visceral understanding.

The cemetery as sacred space

My research as a medievalist had taught me that cemeteries weren't always the solemn, quiet spaces they are today. Intellectually, I knew that before the Black Death, these grounds served as vibrant community centres where the boundary between living and dead was acknowledged but not feared. Markets, festivities, and everyday life unfolded alongside memorials to those who had passed - a relationship with mortality that our contemporary culture has largely forgotten. Yet experiencing this truth physically, through the medium of sound, offered insights that texts alone couldn't provide.

Before the Black Death, medieval cemeteries were vibrant community spaces. People gathered there not just for burials, but for markets, festivals, and celebrations. Death and life coexisted in a dance that our modern sensibilities have largely forgotten. As historian Philippe Ariès noted in his seminal work The Hour of Our Death, the cemetery was "the centre of social life" for medieval communities—a threshold space where the living and the dead communed in mutual respect. [1]

When I first began researching medieval death rituals as a student, I was struck by the concept of the danse macabre - the dance of death that emerged as an artistic and cultural motif following the Black Death.

These images depicted people from all walks of life dancing with personifications of Death, a stark reminder of mortality's democracy.

What fascinated me most wasn't the morbidity of these depictions but their vitality—the ways in which acknowledging death served as a catalyst for living more fully.

The fresco at the back wall of the Church of St. Mary of the Rocks in the Istrian town of Beram (1474), painted by Vincent of Kastav, Croatia

Memento Mori: Remembering life through Death

"Memento mori" - remember you must die. This phrase, often inscribed on medieval tombstones and memento mori jewelry, wasn't meant to instill fear but awareness. An awareness that has largely been lost in our death-denying culture.

The danse macabre emerged in the 14th century as both artistic motif and actual practice following the devastation of the Black Death. In church frescoes across Europe, these images depicted people from all walks of life - popes, emperors, labourers, children - dancing with personified Death figures. But what many don't realise is that these weren't simply grim warnings.

Historical records from the Burgundian chronicles describe actual danse macabre performances held in cemetery grounds during the 1430s, where participants would weave between gravestones in chain dances, embodying both the living and the dead. [2]

The famous 15th-century cemetery of Les Innocents in Paris featured both painted danse macabre murals and served as a gathering place where such dances were periodically performed. These weren't mournful affairs but paradoxically life-affirming rituals - acknowledging death's inevitability became a catalyst for celebrating the vitality of the present moment.

“When our drum circle gathers at Arnos Vale, we’ll be reviving this tradition - not as historical reenactment, but as a contemporary practice rooted in ancient wisdom. The steady pulse of our drums will echo the heartbeats of those who came before, creating rhythmic bridges between then and now, between memory and presence.”

The steady heartbeat of the drums against the backdrop of memorial stones creates a powerful alchemy. Participants often report feeling more alive in these settings than in conventional healing spaces - their senses heightened, their connection to their bodies intensified.

There's sound historical precedent for this. Medieval communities understood what we're only beginning to rediscover: that threshold spaces hold unique potential for transformation and healing.

The Foremother Drum: Ancestral voices speaking through Sound

The Foremother Drum carries a voice that seems to transcend time.

When I bring this drum to Arnos Vale, I'm acutely aware of the lineage it represents - not just my personal ancestors, but the collective wisdom of people throughout history who used rhythm as medicine.

I think of Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th-century visionary abbess whose musical compositions were designed to heal the spirit. [3]

I think of the wise women and community healers who understood the power of rhythm to alter consciousness and facilitate healing long before modern science could explain these mechanisms.

When I drum among the gravestones, it can feel like I am participating in a conversation across centuries, acknowledging that the wisdom of those who came before us remains accessible if we know how to listen.

Sound as Medicine: Medieval healing through rhythm, voice and bells

My research into medieval healing practices revealed a rich tradition of sound-based therapies that fascinate me to this day. The historical record offers compelling examples of how our ancestors used sound as medicine in ways that were sophisticated and profound.

Medieval sound healing encompassed remarkably specific techniques. The Chronicon Anglicanum describes three-beat rhythmic patterns called tripudium that were believed effective for "awakening vital spirits" in those suffering from lethargy or melancholia. [4]

Records from St. Giles Hospital in Norwich document how musicians would position themselves in a "circle around the afflicted" to create what they called a vas sonorum or "vessel of sound." This circular formation was thought to contain and amplify healing vibrations, preventing them from dissipating.[5]

The nakers, a pair of small kettledrums imported to Europe during the Crusades.

14th-century manuscript illumination (detail) from Boethius, De Arithmetica. Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS V.A.14, fol. 47r.

Agnes of York, documented in the ecclesiastical court records of 1321, employed a technique of gradually increasing tempo on her "small hand drum" (tympanum parvum) to "drive out ill humors" (pulsatio rhythmica ad humores malos expellendos). Witnesses testified that her accelerating beats would culminate in a healing crisis after which patients often reported relief. [6]

The Leechbook of Bald, that fascinating Anglo-Saxon medical text, contains references to "sounding stones" (hlystan stanas) placed near patients. The text suggests different stones transmitted vibration in unique ways, with specific stones recommended for various conditions. This shows an intuitive understanding of what physics would later confirm: that different materials transmit and transform vibrational energy in distinctive patterns. [7]

Hildegard's sonic prescriptions

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), the remarkable Benedictine abbess, composed dozens of liturgical songs specifically designed as healing tools. Her Symphonia armoniae celestium revelationum wasn't merely devotional music but a collection of sonic prescriptions. As Barbara Newman notes in her translation of Hildegard's works, the abbess believed certain vocal tones could "rebalance the disordered body" and "realign the soul with divine harmony."[8]

Hildegard prescribed specific chants for various ailments—low, resonant tones for conditions of excess heat and higher, more ethereal melodies for conditions of coldness and lethargy. [9]

Hildegard believed that certain frequencies could physically reorganise disordered tissues and energy. We now understand similar concepts through entrainment, resonance, and vagal tone regulation.

A self-portrait of St. Hildegard of Bingen. It is the frontispiece of Liber Scivias (Know the Ways), one of her theological books which explain her mystic visions.

Medieval sound healing: Community practices

Perhaps most remarkable are medieval records of community healing rituals conducted at threshold spaces. The Chronicon Anglicanum of Ralph of Coggeshall describes how, during a 1198 outbreak of a "dancing sickness" (possibly ergot poisoning or mass psychogenic illness), sufferers were brought to churchyards where drummers and pipers played for days. The chronicler notes with some surprise that many recovered through this "medicine of music" (medicina musicae). [10]

Historical records from St. Giles Hospital in Norwich document the use of "rhythmic sound-making" for patients with "melancholia" and "frenzy." The 14th-century hospital accounts list payments to musicians who would play for patients at specific times, demonstrating an institutional recognition of sound's healing properties. [11]

The Leechbook of Bald, an Anglo-Saxon medical text, references "sound-healing" (sweg-haeling) for various conditions, particularly those affecting the mind and spirit. One passage recommends placing patients near church bells during ringing, suggesting an early understanding of vibrational therapy that continues to inform sound healing approaches today. [12]

These historical examples reveal that our ancestors understood what modern neuroscience is only now quantifying: sound vibration can fundamentally alter our physical and mental states.

Drumming and Dancing at the Threshold

This summer's gathering at Arnos Vale invites us to a threshold space where the Foremother Drum will echo among gravestones. When we drum among the graves, we're not disrespecting the dead but honouring them as our ancestors would have recognised - acknowledging that joy and grief, life and death exist not in opposition but in complement to one another.

We'll be continuing a tradition older than the stones themselves: using sound to bridge worlds and mark significant transitions.

Invitation to the threshold

If you feel called to explore this unique intersection of historical wisdom and embodied practice, this is your invitation. Bring your own ancestors in your heart and memory. Consider who came before you, whose rhythms flow in your blood, whose dances might live again in your body.

Whether you come to drum or to dance, to remember or to release, know that you're participating in a tradition that spans centuries - the tradition of gathering in threshold spaces to honour both what has been lost and what remains vibrantly alive.

“In the words of the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” [13]

These words, spoken during the devastation of the Black Death, remind us that even in places marked by death, we can find profound affirmation of life.”

Endnotes

[1] Ariès, Philippe. The Hour of Our Death. Translated by Helen Weaver, Oxford University Press, 1991.

[2] Binski, Paul. Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation. Cornell University Press, 1996.

[3] Cockayne, Oswald, ed. Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England: Being a Collection of Documents Illustrating the History of Science in this Country Before the Norman Conquest. London: Longman, 1864-1866. [Contains translations of Bald's Leechbook]

[4] Green, Monica H., ed. and trans. The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women's Medicine. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

[5] Hildegard of Bingen. On Natural Philosophy and Medicine: Selections from Cause et Cure. Translated by M. Berger, Healing Arts Press, 1999.

[6] Horden, Peregrine. Music as Medicine: The History of Music Therapy Since Antiquity. Ashgate, 2000.

[7] Newman, Barbara, ed. and trans. Symphonia: A Critical Edition of the Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum by Hildegard of Bingen. Cornell University Press, 1998.

[8] Page, Christopher. The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France 1100-1300. University of California Press, 1989.

[9] Rawcliffe, Carole. Medicine & Society in Later Medieval England. Sutton Publishing, 1995.

[10] Ralph of Coggeshall. Chronicon Anglicanum. Edited by Joseph Stevenson. Rolls Series, 1875.

[11] Records of the York Ecclesiastical Court, 1301-1399. Borthwick Institute for Historical Research, University of York.

[12] Voigts, Linda E., and Michael R. McVaugh. A Latin Technical Phlebotomy and Its Middle English Translation. American Philosophical Society, 1984.

[13] Julian of Norwich. Revelations of Divine Love. Translated by Elizabeth Spearing, Penguin Classics, 1998.