SOUND MAGICIAN
by Eva Rosenfelder
MUSIC AND CHANT ARE HER WORLD, THE SINGER AND SOUNDPAINTER ORNA RALSTON HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH SPIRITS, BUT THE SPIRITS WITH HER.
On this evening the people didn´t dare to clap their hands, so deeply Orna Ralston touched her audience with old Hebrew psalms and prayers from the Old Testament. „These are the Mantras which are grounded in our culture“she says. As daughter of a Jewish mother and a protestant father the sound painter is able to build bridges between two different cultures with strong connected roots.
When this woman starts to sing, it is as if frozen emotions wake up and transform in a wonderful way. So it happens at the baptism of her newest CD „Medicine of Voice“, which led her audience to fall into tears and brought the magic of bliss into their faces.
THE VOICE FROM INSIDE
Chant, sound and music, which is her world. Since her childhood her voice attracted attention, but her father Robert Ralston, painter and sculptor himself, wanted her to get an education. „With the diploma I manifested to accept the rules in this world. At the same time I was later free, to follow my calling. “
Evermore she clearly felt in herself the voice of an old lady, who turned out to be a spiritual guide. „She told me exactly how I had to sing.“ Also when a music teacher urged her to become an opera singer. „You have the choice“ the voice said, „but on this path you will lose something. So she decided to trust the voice. „It always brought me to the right places. “
STRANGE SYMPTOMS
But however successful she was in the Swiss music scene: she was tormented by ever in intensity growing pains in her whole body. “ Psychologically I was shaken, but I felt that these symptoms had other reasons and that I wasn't really, ill. '“Though she kept on suffering, keeping those things for herself. Like her fear as a child, when she woke up at night to go to the bathroom and had to run down those long corridors in their nouveau house, because she was afraid by a „mysterious presence.“She didn't find any explanations for that. Only when her parents much later told her that her aunty Anny had died in her room.
BREAKTHROUGH
Thanks to the persistence of a friend, she found herself in a seminar room listening to the invocation of the four cardinal points. „The New Zealand shaman and healer Wai Turoa Morgan was just calling the forces of the west, which in the New Zealand culture stand for the ancestors, when I felt that beings from every side and corner came. They took space in myself and with them the horror of Germanys war history. Incredible pains, strong nausea flew over me, I felt unable to walk, felt ,doomed'.“ „Green and white“she was when her friend searched for help from the shaman. What happened next took away Orna's awareness. „When I woke up again, they were all crying, embracing each other, everything was blown up.“- „Do you know that you have shamanic energies in yourself? “ Wai Turoa asked her on the following day. When Ralston denied the third time, Wai Turoa beat her fist on the table: „ Three times I said it to you, now you can't cover it up with a black blanket anymore! “
SPIRIT CHANTING
She will need a special training the shaman said and she took her as her personal assistant and student. Seven years Ralston attended her seminars in Europe and learned from her, while she was teaching with her. Since she is living her gift, to channel universal energies with her voice and to act as a healer, the pains and complaints, which were part of her shaman illness, have vanished. Meanwhile she gives single sessions and seminars in Germany, Netherlands/Holland, Spain and Switzerland and teaches long-term study programs as a shamanic healer.
To perform magic, no this isn't what she does, but she moves on with that, what is possible-transforms the pain into stars, chants strength from very far away from our everyday life into our hearts.....
Published in the magazine "Zeitpunkt", translated by Laura Jo Schumacher
BIO-FLASHES MUSIC (only a little excerpt)
LECTURER FOR SHAMANIC WORK, EXPRESSIVE ART THERAPIST MA, in Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Spain SHAMANIC EDUCATION 7 years personal student and assistant to the New Zealand shaman Wai Turoa Morgan
OWN COMPOSITIONS: CD „Lovezone“ 1996 (out of stock), CD „something to touch“ 2002, CD „A Shamans Journey“ 2009, CD Medicine of Voice 2014 FREELANCE: CD „Heppchor“ 1992, CD „Hand in Hand“ 1994, CD „Überegratuus“ Totschna 2000 and others PERFORMANCES: in Switzerland, Germany, France, Netherland, Austria, Israel, China and Tunesia. Solo and in cooperation with various musicians. Solo concerts with Kotamo (48 chord instrument) and planet singingbowls in churches and meditation halls. PARTICIPATION AS FREELANCER: in various music projects. AWARDS: Omanut Award. Eliette von Karajan Kulturfonds Award. The song B.B. from Orna Ralston was handed over to his Holiness the Dalai Lama by the International Society for Human Rights (IGFM) as an Award for for human rights.
