Guth of the Heart : Singing the Many as One

Veiling of the Soul, painting by Rassouli

A few days ago, Phyllida Anam-Aire kindly invited me to a guth gathering, I thought it was a workshop where I'd learn how to sound the Celtic chants. I really didn't want to miss the experience of participating in a guth session and while it wasn't a workshop, I had the privilege to sit and receive the sounding of these Celtic guth.

It's an ancient Celtic vocal tradition like keening, connecting to the land, the unseen world but mostly singing intuitively from the heart, allowing the voice as a channel of expression with what is present here and now. It's more an approach, a way of sounding the voice as a natural expression.

Many people came to sing the Guth in unison that evening, maybe we were around 18-20, 3 of us were guests, we were there to receive and witness the gathering of hearts sounding together. There were people from the Netherlands, Germany, South Africa and different parts of Scotland, Phyllida often gathers people as something very ordinary but very often it turns into a full ceremony of healing and/or a wonderful celebration of life. This time was the same, I thought I was going to a "workshop" and here I was, experiencing the Guth of the Heart, singing the many as One.

I recognized some Celtic words like "Gia Inam" which means the "The Divine is me" or "Taleh Inam" "The fire is me" as I had the chance to hear Phyllida sing over the 10 years I've known her. I find some guth very powerful and there's a lot of mystery in the sounding of this language as if one needs to really go deep into the pronunciation itself to unravel the fullness of the depth of the language. It's a very intriguing language to me, just like Sanskrit or Aramaic. The first time I heard the lord's prayer in Aramaic, the Gayatri Mantra and Phyllida singing in Irish, I had tears running down, I didn't know the meaning of the words but my body reacted to the language itself. It turns out that Old Irish and Sanskrit come from the Proto-Indo-European family so they are distant linguistic cousins.

There's a profound, quiet healing power when women gather to sing together, their voices weaving in harmony, each voice carries not only sound but intention, resonating through body, heart and the surrounding space, creating a living field of vibration.

As they sound, their gestures, hands and arms lifted, wide open and curved like the flow of rivers, or palms resting over the heart, it becomes a sacred choreography of presence, embodying the energy of the old Irish words and the rhythms.

The layered voices and the intentional movements gave me some sense of rootedness and gentle soothing, It gradually calms the nervous system, so much so that I felt drifting into sleep at times. One person would choose a specific guth and started singing then, all the others joined in and although we could hear many voices, it felt like one heart singing. Many of the participants looked like they were making love to their soul: sound, gesture and intention aligned to their heart.

I chose the above image to illustrate this post because while listening and being bathed in the softness of the intentional sounding, I had this painting of Freydoon Rassouli that came to my mind. I love this painting because I discovered Rassouli's art at the very beginning of my painting journey and I was transported by the energy of his paintings, just looking at them, I feel an expansion of my heart.

There are so many people, practicing and living such meaningful lives yet many of them are very quiet and no one knows about it so I wanted to write a few lines to honour this special gathering, honour the mysterious language of old Irish and the whispers of the Heart.