Maki gamma

If you are the tribal sort, or a potter, you would have enjoyed the event that I found myself invited to and participating in last Friday night. A local professor in the ceramics program at Folsom College has a large "maki gamma" on his property. That is Nipponese for "wood kiln," this variety being based on a sixth century model also known as a "dragon kiln." Such a kiln is loaded and fired with great ceremony and celebration.

The kiln, about 40' stem to stern, is decorated with offering ranging from flowers and fruit to sake and cakes. Candles and incense are everywhere. Excepting a thin moon, the stars, and a rare shooting star, that is the only light in the pitch black countryside. The other, but small, exception is a campfire nearby where tidbits from a table laden with potluck offerings are washed down with lemonade or ale. It was quite a spectacular sight . There were circumambulations, prayers, invocations, offerings, libations, and many thanksgivings. Then one of the students who had been active on the project was surprised with the honor of actually starting the fire.

The kiln will get increasingly hot over 24 hours with folk tending it over night and through the day. At peak, it will reach 2300F, no little accomplishment using only wood. At its height the kiln will spout an eight foot flame from the flue, signifying its having reached the height of its ability. The over 100 pieces stacked in the belly of the beast in ranks reflecting the seniority of the potter's work included, will be soaked in fire and wood ash, giving them the characteristic chocolaty rust color of such a firing, with white accents form the lime in the rice straws on those so decorated before immersion in the heat.

After the lighting the forty or so people, who came to partake of the initial ceremony or to aid with the vigil of stoking the dragon over night, stayed for food and drink that was there in generous supply. There were home made soups, enchiladas, pot stickers, munchies and chips of every description, and a rainbow of drinks. All this was had around a four foot fire ring that contained a blaze made from 8" aged pine logs cut in 1' segments. Soon it felt like the campfire was competing with the kiln, and all the folk around it from all their walks of life were making a happy noise of talk and laughter, doing what people are meant to do: be together in the love of life, enjoying their cooperative productivity. With all the harvest offerings on the kiln, and this being the Thanksgiving season here, it somehow felt like home, if one feels that the presence of heart makes it so.

Reading back, there was an element of the kiln lighting ceremony I neglected to mention. I had said about the circumambulations. I had also said about the profusion of candles and incense. What I didn't do was adequately describe the trappings and surroundings of the kiln, a factor which led to one of the thrills of the evening, as you shall see.

Imagine, if you will, a structure framed of 6"x6" timbers holding up a corrugated tin roof, the far end of which was pierced by the diameter of the kiln flue. The mouth of the kiln faced a bank of straw bales which served as seating for many of the participants. On either side, about four and eight feet left and right, was stacked cord wood of several descriptions intended for different stages of the firing, such as warming, ash production, and final heating. Over everything between these walls of cord wood, including over the kiln itself, was
a layer of rice straw of various thicknesses. At about three feet, set all around the kiln, was a 3" hawser elaborately woven of rice straw, the purpose of which was to define the sacred space of the kiln within which the Fire Goddess would do her work. On the kiln itself there was an additional burden of festive autumn leaves and pine boughs. These were over the layer of base straw. This was the setting into which were placed some 80-odd candles and perhaps an equal number of incense sticks, all aflame.

It was a scene to make a fire marshal have a serious threat of cardiac arrest, especially had such an official seen the tentative and indecisive placement of some of those fiery objects in their bed of tinder. A further agitation might have been the casual use of smudge bundles and punks that were part of the assemblage of incense offerings. None of this compared, however, to the final insult to any consideration of safety. I speak of the companion of the minister who, wearing a styled western hat, black overcoat, boots and beads, was doing the walk arounds, chanting and waving feathers and a rope of smoking sweet grass.

The companion to this picture of shamanic priesthood was a mutt of large size and, most notably, of wagging tail and inquizitive muzzle. This creature, judging from its coat, must have had as parents a dalmatian and a large Labrador. Certainly, whoever they were, each contributed a very active happiness-and-tail-wagging gene to the animal in our company. I nearly jumped and grabbed the dog a number of times, as his tail whisked within inches of a candle or votive. I felt great relief when it settled down and ceased threatening to cause a conflagration that might be seen for miles, had it happened. But that was short lived, as the beast again took to patrolling too near the many flames, any of which could have brought the whole structure to an untimely end. Indeed, as the dog made some turns in the narrow spaces, I thought of Mrs. O'Leary's cow and the great Chicago fire. We were, you know, surrounded by feilds of dry grass and a pine/oak forest.

Nothing happened as a result of the dog in the space of time between the lighting and the final self-immolation of the candles. All the straw on the kiln, and the offerings, were at a certain point removed. The growing heat of the kiln itself demanded that. But the whole scene with its inherent dangers left an impression on me. I remembered all the dangers and stupidities I had miraculously survived, especially in my younger years. No doubt, had we enough time for their stories, each one there could have told tales of escapes from near certain death. Somehow, with all the adrenaline generated by the thrill of the event, augmented by the random threats of a dog's tail, I was left with a greater trust in the wonder of life, and a feeling of an inherent good intent.

Was it chance that saved the scene from a wagger knocking over a candle? Or did the fashioning of the protective dragon at the prow of the kiln, all the elaborate thanksgivings and prayers for success, did these form a shield of safety and well being around and through the event? Was there a Fire Goddess, or was this simply the working of our own Nature intent on an end? In any case, I felt part of something special, an event of gathering, doing and finding. And as is the usual case, more than anything else, I found more of the adventure of my own self's journey.