About
Us
and
Logo
Symbology |
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Vocal music
used to support
the
journey
through the major
life-passages
of birthing
and dying 
Victoria,
B. C.
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About
Us En~chanting
Beyond was set up to offer
Bedside Singing services to those who
are giving birth or dying, in various kinds of environments
around the Victoria, B.C.
area.Those
involved have a background in health services, pastoral
care and/or alternative therapies
as well as a love for music, and a passion for its
ability to support life-passages.
Pashta
MaryMoon is our Musical Director and elder Bedside
Singer.Her
interest in natural dying processes began after being
deeply affected by an old Western movie at the age
of 7
but it took until she reached her 50s to find a concrete
vehicle to combine that with her musical background.She
visited Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's Shanti Nilaya
center in the late 1970s, in search of answers to
her questions about the dying process.
In the
1980s, she worked with Northern Lights (Ontario)
a self-help community for people living with HIV/AIDS
and used Bedside Singing
to support friends and co-workers who were dying from
this disease, as well as officiating at their requiems
or memorials.During
the same time period, she was birth-coach for 3 single
mothers, and began to recognize the power of music
to help them through the birthing process.One
of these cases included the birth of a fetus who had
died in utero: and she stayed with the mother for
36 hours afterwards, using Bedside
Singing as part of the support to the
mother's immediate grieving.
Pashta's
background is primarily in social concerns and pastoral
work.In
the late 1990s, she joined the pastoral/spiritual
care team at the Royal Jubilee Hospital (Victoria),
and became its first non-Christian member.During
one experience using Bedside
Singing (hymns, in this
case) with a patient during this service, she
became aware of the power of vocal music as a way
to reach those who were dying in a state of partial
or full dementia: and this experience left her wondering
how to make this kind of musical support more easily
available to all people who were dying.
While
a member of the
Gettin' Higher Choir, she met another singer
who had similar interests and was already working
as a Victoria Hospice unit volunteer.Together,
they co-founded Songs
of Passage (SoP) , which
offers Bedside Singing
as a regular service to patients at Victoria
Hospice unit in the Royal Jubilee hospital
perhaps the first of its kind in Canada to do so as
a formal adjunct service to a Hospice unit.SoP's
repertoire is similar to
and to a great degree, taken from
the repertoire of Threshold
choir, but offers an invocative program to
train singers in the non-singing aspects of working
with dying patients.After
two years of setting up the program, Pashta left Songs
of Passage; and started
En~chanting Beyond in order to bring Bedside
Singing to those it might help beyond
a Hospice unit.
In 2008,
Pashta supported a birthing mother using the Toning
method of dealing with contractions through her labour
and delivery
which re-kindled her earlier experience using music
to support birth-coaching practices.
As a result, En~chanting
Beyond now offers
Bedside Singing services to both major
life-passages
birthing and dying.
As also
a mediator (trained by the Institute for Conflict
Analysis and Management, and the Justice Institute)
and founder of E~merging
Beyond mediation services, Pashta has a particular
focus on supporting families facing 'end of life'
situations.
Logo
Symbology
| The
base-symbol used in the En~chanting Beyond
logo is the character Omega turned
upside down. |
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The
Omega symbol itself represents a womb, preparing to
'pour forth' (or 'let down', in birthing
language) - and dates back at least to the
ancient Mesopotamia cultures (3000
B.C.E.), but was also found in ancient China.The
symbol was used on gravestones, but was a tribute
(or appeal) to a goddess of
birthing
a connection that existed even in biblical terminology:
interestingly, in China, a tombstone was called a
"womb-stone".The
symbol is best known as the last letter in the Greek
alphabet, meaning 'the end': and the general ancient
implication was that 'an end always leads to a new
beginning'
whether reincarnation, or a new life in Heaven or
other concepts of Paradise.
| Alpha
(the beginning) and Omega
are often pictured together, reinforcing the idea
that the end leads to another beginning. |
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However,
the Omega symbol, itself, carries the connotation
of both of the two major passages of a lifeterm
in essence, 'Out of the Womb' and 'Into the Tomb';
and implies that the second leads once again to the
first.It
is interesting that the two words Womb and
Tomb are almost identical, but aren't directly
related etymologically
and yet, the Proto-Indo European base for the word
tomb is "to swell", which is one
of the key elements of a womb.Some
of the earliest uses of the Omega symbol interpret
the side handles as the two proto-people (different
genders) born out of the Goddess's womb.Whether
or not the two words were originally etymologically
related, most ancient cultures did see the tomb as
a kind of womb to some form of new life.
By turning
it upside-down, the 'pouring out' womb becomes a 'holding
within' cradle-vessel (or cauldron)
of life.It
enfolds the journey between the Womb and the
Tomb
but focuses on the care-taking involved in the beginning
and end of it.
The tomb element is understood as the release
of form (leaving this world)
to trans~formation; and the womb element, the
new in~form~ation (i.e. fetal development,
preparing to enter this world).The
rounded part becomes the 'journey of life' itself,
and the two side handles become the times of major
life passages.
The
notes, hanging from the sides as part of the handles,
represent using music to aid this 'cradling of the
journey into, or out of, this world' on both ends
of a lifeterm.The
two notes face each other because, while both tomb
and womb imply a journey beyond the world they
now inhabit (the womb is the first
world of a child; our world, its second), they
mark the opening and closure of this lifeterm; yet
their tails stretch beyond , indicating a journey
to somewhere other than where the en~wombed child
or dying loved one is now.
If you
look very carefully at a full moon, you might see
the face of broad-face person singing.In
most ancient cultures, the Moon was seen as a mother
figure, watching over her children during her journey
though the night sky
and understood to be the protector of dreams, visions,
mysteries and/or any development that could not be
directly seen.The
singing-moon-mother face in the middle of the cauldron/cradle
represents both mystical protection through major
life-passage journeys, and the power of music to guide
these (mostly unseen) journeys.
Please
use the left menu to navigate through the En~chanting
Beyond website, and then contact
us for more information on Bedside
Singing
in the Victoria, B.C. area, and/or about the
general concept.
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