A composition for custom electronics, field recordings, shruti box, voice, conch horn, candles and dried herbs.

“Gemini Radiant” is a sonic ritual that I developed specifically to be performed during the peak of the Geminids meteor shower. On this night, the thin sliver of waxing crescent moon set at 22:00 leaving us with a dark night sky full of shooting stars radiating from the Gemini constellation. On this same night, I performed a sonic ritual and fire ceremony fueled by the fiery momentum of the meteors to clear any unwanted energy of the past year in preparation to manifest intentions for the new year to come.

The ritual was a carefully planned sequence driven by a score and sound composition that included mantra, a custom-built electronic instrument, field recordings and traditional sacred instruments. It honored and drew power from the four cardinal directions and their natural elements by using sounds and objects that invoke their qualities. Some examples are: incense smoke and field recordings of hummingbird wings for Air, blowing a conch shell horn whose deep tone is Earth while its origin is Water and chanting a mantra honoring Agni the deity of fire.

The principal action in the ritual was the fire ceremony where I used techniques of visualization and energy transference to charge dried herbs with energies that were no longer desired. Once the undesired energy was extracted and directed into the dried herbs, I burned them in a grid of four candles representing the four cardinal directions that sat on top of a photo-sensitive, custom-electronic instrument that I built. After the herbs were burned, I activated the dimmer switches on the series of 12 light bulbs on the instrument. As I increased the intensity of the light bulbs, it caused the sound of the instrument to increase its pitch until it reached a long, droning, piercing high-pitched tone. This tone served to further send the unwanted and burned energy off into the ether and begin the new year with a clean slate.