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An Urban
Shaman's Prayer Not normally appearing in the news, the Pagans of New York City were both deeply involved in this tragedy and now are involved in all aspects of healing. Donna Henes/Urban Shaman/Mama Donna sends an Urban Prayer. Loch Sloy! More than a week after the blasts there are still immense clouds of smoke coming from lower Manhattan. I keep looking for the towers which I used to be able to see from my window. I cannot compute that they are not there. Last night the sky was crystal blue, the buildings were lit with thousands of twinkling lights and backlit with a billowing mass of white smoke. It was breathtakingly (can I say?) beautiful. What happens when so many souls leave their bodies at once? The glow from their combined spirits was electrifying. May it purify our intentions and power our resolve for peace. xxMama Donna Towering Eternal I have had a very long ritual relationship with the World Trade Center. For more than two decades it has served as my own personal/public shrine, an urban Stonehenge for an urban shaman. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey along with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council have sponsored 18 of my 26 Vernal Equinox celebrations, Eggs on End: Standing on Ceremony. Tens of thousands of people, a great many of them from the offices upstairs, and many more who were tourists from everywhere coming to get a bird’s eye view of America, participated in these cosmic rituals. On each of those occasions the crowd has stood up 360 eggs on the black marble circular shrine in the center of the Trade Center’s vast circular plaza. Altogether we have balanced 6480 eggs in the shadow of those two towering spires, close to the number of the presumed dead. I wonder about the fates of all of the building staff people whose names I never knew who have helped to set up and facilitate our public seasonal ceremonies over the years — the guards, the sound guys, the helpers with ladders and brooms, the woman with the key to the bathroom. I pray that they are all safe. And I pray for the thousands of people in those buildings who have added their soulful energy to our celebrations over the years. I bless them all, I bless us all, alive and dead, ancestor and antecedent, with eggs, with seeds, with sanctity, and with solemn promises that their tragic loss will propel us to build the sort of world where people don’t blow each other up. Shall we do this in their names. The last event at the World Trade Center was Keeping the Fires Burning For Peace: A Summer Solstice Sunrise to Sunset Vigil for Peace on the Planet, 1999. An intrepid few souls showed up in the rain for the 5:07 AM Dawn Dedication. We laid out concentric circles of mirrors on the paved ground. In the center, sat the same large circular mirror that serves as our altar at drumming circles. It stood for the year. Surrounding it were 8 medium-sized mirrors which marked the equinox, solstice, cross-quarter day spokes of the annual wheel. Then smaller and smaller mirrors represented the 13 months of the year, and its 365 days. The outermost ring was a collection of 2001 dime-size crystals in anticipation of the new millennium. This modern medicine wheel stayed in place all day, reflecting and absorbing the potent solar energy of the longest day of the year. Another group gathered 3:49 AM to chant for peace and inscribe their messages of hope on my day-glo orange Streams of Conscience. A crowd gathered for the Sunset Ceremony at 8:25 PM when once again we joined together to chant for peace. At the end of the day, everyone took home one of the small crystals as a sun-filled talisman to help remember the light when times are dark. I carry one in my amulet bag. On several occasions we celebrated the Winter Solstice on the urban beach which was created from the gravel, dirt and sand that had been blasted and dug out from the Manhattan bedrock to create the foundations for the World Trade Center. On the bank of the Hudson River, we built our fire and played our drums on the guts of the Twins that towered over our heads as we chanted and danced. The 1986 Reverence to Her Winter Solstice Ceremony was broadcast live via satellite as part of an international radio solstice simulcast. The aborigines of Australia began the ritual around the world with a chant that traveled westward with live feeds from India, Africa, Europe, the United States and Hawaii, making a circle of earth spirit song around the globe. We were the east coast U.S. representatives to this communion of rejoicing. About 250 of us gathered beneath the Twin Towers in the middle of the night to Chant for Peace. WNYC Radio had a mobile satellite dish there at the site. It recorded our chant, sent the feed straight down Chambers Street to the Municipal Building and up to the roof where a golden angel sits on high. She is the satellite up-link for New York City. This civic guardian seraphim sent our songs, our drums for peace out into orbit. They have been circling Earth and transmitting signals for peace ever since. Chants for Peace * Chance for Peace was and still is to my knowledge the only peace message in space. In loving memory of those two mythic megaliths and in the names of all who died, of all who suffered, of all who helped, of all who continue to heal, let us chant for peace. xxMama Donna Dear Mama Donna, You do not know me but last
year at 20 March I was visiting my sister in New York and I saw your egg
ceremony at the World Trade Center. I still think about it very often
and I realize reading your book that I would also love to Dear Mama Donna, Every time I eat an artificial
tic tac I think of your egg ceremony at the World Trade Center and smile.
May Allah bless you and your family. En sha’ a-llah. If it please
Allah. *************Send your mailing address to receive a calendar of upcoming events, a list of services and publications and a copy of her highly acclaimed quarterly journal: Always in Season: Living in Sync with the Cycles. Mama Donna's Tea Garden &
Healing Haven
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