M is for Music in Ritual
Maybe because I was raised in a musical household but I could not do any sort of ritual without music even solitary rituals need music.
Music changes the atmosphere and casts sacred space faster and more immediately than the spoken word. Music takes you out of your right brain and into the creative brain from the moment it starts. It makes you shift gears without a jarring disengagement.
Our coven has always written its own music even if it’s bastardizing Yule carols besides using chants we have gathered on the way. It’s a very organic part of ritual and sometimes even happens during ritual spontaneously.
TOILA has always had a lot of talented music makers. So it comes naturally to sing together and to create chants and songs. At the very least we always have the Knot of Isis chant but we always include music, sometimes with drumming sometimes not. We sang for the Heiromum when she was dying and it calmed her and soothed her when the drugs weren’t working as fast as we would have liked.
Even if you think you can’t sing you should be including music. Music comes from the heart and that is all that matters, where your heart is. Head is not as important, thinking too much puts you back in the right/logical brain and you will find it much more difficult to find sacred space and to raise energy.
Thanks to the internet it’s a lot easier to find chants and songs to use in ritual. You can find Robert Gass, Moving Breath, Reclaiming, Laura Power, Libana, Emerald Rose and others on Amazon as well as others or on CD baby or Ladyslipper.
But should you be inclined there is non-pagan music to use such as soundtracks or Celtic music or old 60’s folk music or camp music and things like John Denver or others from that era.
There really is no excuse for not using music in ritual other than lack of imagination and very few pagans suffer from that.
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