Do you have a good repertoire? Recently I participated in some absolutely excellent ritual, but they kept using the same four chants over and over; all old ones from the seventies.
Chants can lift the tempo or mellow it, they can evoke specific energies needed for specific work. They can bring in elements and focus the mind on deities or purpose. They can create reverence, joy, or solemnity. Knowing a good assortment adds greatly to your magical bag o’ tricks.
Here are some of my favorite sources:
Chants: Ritual Music: The ones from this that get the most use in my house are The Beginning of the Earth, Air I Am, Rise With the Fire, We Are the Flow, Air Moves Us, and Water and Stone.
Mothertongue: I don’t own this one, but a lot of the chants are around in the community and are excellent.
Abbi Spinner McBride is a wonderful Pagan singer, and at least two of her chants, Let the Way Be Open, and Oh Ma Ma Ma, are breathtaking. I’ve heard a second CD but I don’t know it well.
Victoria Ganger is an awesome singer. I use Lord and Lady Now in ritual all the time.
There are some Pagan chants that are just bad. The lyrics don’t flow smoothly leaving everyone stumbling over the words. In my humble opinion, this distracts a lot from raising energy.
That’s why I love Abbi Spinner. She obviously puts a lot of herself into her work and it definitely comes through in her music.
A certain musician, to whom I am married, keeps threatening to write and record some Pagan chants with a High Priestess, that we all know and love, but who will remain nameless. I think that would be a splendid idea!!!
There are some really great chants (and pagan songs in general) on Songs of the Strengthening Sun and Songs of the Waning Year by T. Thorn Coyle & Sharon Knight too.
I know chants which have more similarities with New Age than Paganism. Sometimes it’s hard to find great chant, for example, to Hindu Gods cause hinduism is different than neopaganism and its chants just are not… pagan. There is no much chants which I like, sometimes music is bad, sometimes lyrics and, oh Mother! That where music is ok, lyrics are bad, and where lyrics are amazing, music is horrible! Of course, sometimes I really like some chant and I can listen to it with out end 🙂 I love mantra to Goddess (I mean: Isis, Astarte, Diana…)- I know mantra to God like that and I think this is the best version what I was listening to. It is “Osiris, Adonis, Kurus, Pan, Dionisis, Shiva, Dumuzi”- I’m sorry for mistakes cause I don’t know how to write these names in English.
P.S. I read Your site, and I have a question. Do you think that there’s no need initation and coven to be Wiccan? I thonk that Wiccan worship their own Gods and only they know names of these Gods (and in Gardnerian Tradition there is three names of God and Goddess). Am I right or no?
I wish Victoria would record “I wanna be Jean Luc’s love slave…”
Wiccan, some people use the word “Wiccan” to mean only those who are initiated into a tradition of Wicca. Others use the word more generally, to mean anyone who worships and practices ritual in a Wiccan manner. Many people are never initiated into a tradition, and yet honor the Lord & Lady, do full moon rituals, celebrate the 8 holidays, and work in a cast circle marked by four quarters. These are the basic characteristics of all Wicca. Initiation is not right for everyone; if it is your karma, you will know.
Thank You for answer.
I just think that it’s difficult to worship Gods when you don’t know their names but I think that it is possible 😉
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