Ancient Peruvian Whistling Pots

Last February, in my blog about Martin Jack Rosenblum, "The Holy Ranger," I promised to write a future blog about Daniel Statnekov, the mutual friend who was instrumental in reconnecting me with Martin Jack after a quarter century. Today, I am fulfilling that promise.

Daniel Statnekov (then known as Dan Stat) is the man who introduced me to the ancient Peruvian Whistling Pots, shown above, back in the late 1970s. As I recall the story, Dan had purchased one of these items at an antique auction. A whistle is created when you blow on the spout of these ceramic pieces. Dan told me that he took one blow on the pot and that triggered a dramatic life change.

Dan had been living the life of a wealthy country farmer (whose family owned a large, industrial concern). He was a collector of antique racing motorcycles (which is how he eventually met Martin Jack Rosenblum, who is the Harley Davidson historian). But, upon hearing the whistle, Dan left his wife and his farm, and went on the road to explore the mystery that had called him to a new adventure.

Dan grasped that there was something very profound about the whistling sound that he heard. It seemed to create an altered state of consciousness. It seemed to have a purifying and centering effect upon the mind. And his journey eventually led him to me. Dan suspected that I, as the newly published author of The Roots of Consciousness, might be able to help him understand the mystery he was researching.

One of the amazing things about these whistles is that when a group of people play them together, it is possible to hear a low rumbling sound. This is known as the "binaural beat effect" and it is a sound that is created within the human brain itself. (Dan pointed out that oscilloscope studies did not show this low frequency in the room when the whistles were played.) In effect, it is the frequency between the frequency of the whistles themselves. My own supposition was that corpus callosum brain tissue linking the two hemispheres becomes activated in this process -- thus causing a "centering" of consciousness within the brain.

Anthropologists maintained that these ceramic pieces were strictly water vessels, and that the whistle was a novelty unrelated to any purpose associated with shamanism or consciousness. Dan was convinced they were wrong. And, eventually, after much investigation he wrote several articles on the subject, plus a fascinating book (now out in a new edition) called Animated Earth.



Dan even went so far as to begin manufacturing replicas of the antique whistles he had been collecting. And, in his travels, he began giving them away. I still have a set myself. Every now and then, Dan would visit -- and would end up replacing one of the replicas (that he found unsatisfactory) with a new one. He would insist upon destroying the old one.

Dan has now authorized another individual to manufacture and sell these replicas. You can buy them at www.entheosound.com.