Tara contributed 3 songs to the Crow Women’s 4th album, Pantheon. The song Lady Titania is about dancing with the Queen of the Fairies. Hail Hekate is a processional for Hekate rituals. If you enjoy fun songs (who doesn’t?) you’ll like her ballad Trickster Rolls into Town.
Tara loves bunnies and playing the ukulele. We’re happy to feature the writing of this talented pagan blogger on Pagan Song. Tara lives in Durango, Colorado with her husband Charlie, who plays percussion for the Crowz.
Several of Tara’s posts were actually dictated to her by her bunny rabbit. If you’d like to peruse all the posts written in Roki’s inimitable voice, check out the Roki’s Wisdom page.
Many pagan practitioners have sacred places where they connect with the divine. It might be an ancient sacred site, a special spot in nature, or even a covenstead. But the reality is that for most of us, the majority of our magickal working and worship occurs in our homes. As...
Long-time readers of this blog likely recall a previous blogger Roki the rabbit. Roki supported the recording of Seasons, the Crow Women’s third album, because like most bands, we gravitated toward holding band practice at the drummer’s house. Sadly, Roki crossed the rainbow bridge in September 2020, leaving a huge...
Lughnassadh (Lammas) is, among other things, a celebration of the Celtic god Lugh (also Lleu or Lugus), the god of nobility. Lugh was both a warrior and a craftsman (ah, the heart of a warrior, soul of an artist), and is well known for his many, many talents. He is...
The roots of connection between social justice and music run deep. Music has a unique power not only to tap into a deep emotional state, but also share that state with an entire group of people. It is both evocative and connecting, making it a perfect medium for social justice...
Recently I had the honor of teaching a class on trickster deities for Ardantane School of Paganism. Of course, as a Kreauwomun (Crow Woman), I have a natural draw to tricksters. And, of course, as a Crowwomin, I had to include trickster songs in the workshop. This was not as...
Summer Solstice. Midsummer. Litha. Alban Heflin. Feast of the Sun. Sonnenwende. Thing-Tide. By whatever name you know it, ’tis the season to celebrate the sun! The Summer Solstice has been celebrated for millennia all over the world. So, chances are, you know at least a bit about it. But how...
Spring is the time of fairies. Okay, every time is the time of fairies, they’d have me remind you. But spring is a time when those of us inhabiting the mortal world can most easily see their effects. And as liminal creatures, fairies are certainly comfortable in the spring, the transition time...
I first experienced the Crow Women in concert at a Dragonfest in Colorado around 2005 or thereabouts. I must have been coming from a workshop, because I arrived near the end, just in time to catch the encore. If you’ve been to a Crow Women concert, you recognize the spectacle...
Here’s a Crow Quiz just for you! You’ve listened to the Crow Women albums. You read the Crow Women blogs. Perhaps you’ve imagined yourself as a Crow Woman. But which Crow? Or should I say, Witch Crow? From the studio that brought you such august quizzes as “Which Harry Potter...
Why a wildfire ritual? Because it’s summer again, and here in the western US, that often means wildfire season. Living in a wildfire zone gives one a different perspective on fire. As pagans, we tend to work with fire as the candle, the match, the bonfire. We experience the fire...
In a mundane world that glorifies youth and beauty, it can be a challenge for pagan women to hold sacred the inner beauty of the goddess within each of us. This ritual is a fun celebration to have with some of your favorite women in your life to recognize the...
Welcome to the new earth. Rabbits have introduced a new super virus to the human race, and we will now take over as the new highest life form of the planet. Prepare ye, Homo Sapiens, for a world of banana dreams and carrot juice wishes! Mwa ha ha ha! April...
Pagan rituals tend to focus on Sabbats and Esbats with the occasional Rite of Passage thrown in for good measure. Yet sometimes, even Pagans want to celebrate just for the sake of celebrating. This Joy Ritual is a great example. If you are looking to lighten up a little and...
Music and Grief Music is evocative. Music is magical. Music is emotional. It helps us express what we cannot express through words alone. It can help us celebrate our lives. And music can help us grieve. Listen to our Crow Women albums Crow Goddess and Crow Magic, and in almost...
A Companion Ritual for Croning Witches are healers. That got us into a heap trouble during the middle ages, but otherwise it has mostly been to our benefit. However, even with all our healing magic, we haven’t figured out how to completely stave off the aging process (though we did...
Samhain Night, the song, begets your Samhain Ritual The Crow Women song Samhain Night from our album Seasons (available from us) was written to parallel the flow of your Samhain ritual. Follow along to create your own Samhain Night. Midnight calls, the witching hourThe veil grows thin, we raise our...
A Ritual offering from Roki, the Kreaurabbit Another season changes, and my Crow friends are all a-flurry with fall rituals and activities. As usual, they make me giggle (i.e. twitch my nose happily) at their human naiveté. Yes, you should celebrate with a fall ritual, but all this singing and...
Come Autumn, the earth undresses, settles down and prepares to stretch out under a blanket of winter and rest. In this blog, we’ll make an easy, no-sew handkerchief doll to use in ritual–Mabon or otherwise. It’s easy enough that it can even be done by a group within or just before...
Another Ritual to Celebrate the Crone In my last post about Croning, I explained the importance of demarking this important life transition with ritual. (Go back and read that to catch up. Done? Great, welcome back.) This week, I offer a ritual to help welcome the aging pagan or witch...
Crone. Hag. Witch. To modern pagans and wiccans, these are honorifics, not insults. A pagan woman spends her whole lifetime becoming a crone, and by Goddess, she deserves a ritual worthy of that investment! I’ve been planning my Croning for nineteen years, which is all the more amusing considering that...
In a previous post, I wrote about the why zills are an excellent choice for pagan fire circles. Let’s dig in a little deeper. The simplest way to support the drum beat at a fire circle is to just emphasize the down beat. Sometimes I just want to make sure...
Recently my human Mom left her computer within bunny reach so I started skimming the Crow Women website, mostly to find pictures of bunnies. As I scrolled through, I stumbled upon a very interesting blog post by Alane Crowomyn called “Pagan Music Tips: Planning a Rehearsal Period.” When I read...
It’s the ultimate dilemma. There you are at the fire circle, the fire beckoning. Your hips are shaking, toes tapping, you want to dance!!! But the rhythms are calling you. Do you join the drummers, keeping the heartbeat of the festival alive? Or do you answer the call of the...
As I believe we’ve already established, Crows have a close relationship with the elements. To become an elder Crow, one must have spent at least a year dedicated to each element: earth, air, fire, water, and spirit. Because we have each designed many, many rituals centered on an element, we...
Crow Magic was my first foray into recording with the Crow Women. Imagine my elation when our most prolific and arguably most talented songwriter Alane Crowomyn asked me to sing a lead on one of her songs. If only because of that, Farewell, My Familiar holds a special place in my...
By Roki the Crow Rabbit I like the Crow Women. They come over to my house and sing to me and tell me how cute I am. They never bring banana, but no one’s perfect. So, it’s with love and respect that I must tell you that they are full...
As witches, many of us use magickal tools of some sort. From the practical everyday tools of a kitchen witch, to the arcane and complicated tools of high magick, there are a wide variety of tools available to help support a witch’s magickal workings. There is one tool that, in...
Have you or someone you know ever uttered the words, “I’d like to have more music in my ritual, but I can’t sing”? If so, you are not alone. We run into many circles and solitaries who love hearing music far more than they are comfortable making it. My own mother swears she...
And the wheel turns to springand the wheel turns to spring I got to hear that Crow song (Dance of Spring) frequently over the past year. It took a lot of rehearsal. Of course my human Mom would prance around the house singing “And the bunny turns to spring!” because she is...
For many pagans (and nonpagans!) our homes are our sanctuaries. They are where we spend of much our mundane life, as well as where we nurture our physical, emotional and spiritual selves. Often they serve as our covenstead, either on a temporary or permanent basis. In our case, they frequently...
It’s finally my favorite time of year and the only time you humans really pay attention to rabbits. And you will pay attention. I recognize your favorite bra, and I will find it in the laundry and chew it to smithereens if you don’t. Ostara, or Spring Equinox is the holiest of...
I was just my mother’s daughter. You may think that being the daughter of a goddess is all frolicking and flower picking and ambrosia and harps. Okay, it is all that. And it’s living life in the shadows—someone else’s shadow at that. A big, fat, Olympian, grain-filled, fertile shadow. I couldn’t exactly say...
First and foremost, the Crow Women are a Wiccan coven. We are a sisterhood that celebrates the Goddess and our earth-based spirituality with music (and other forms of art). Secondly, we are a Pagan choir. Finally, we all have our mundane lives to keep us going. What we are not:...
Does it ruin the magick of a thing to know how it’s made? Is the sun any less magickal to us now that we know it is a hot sphere of hydrogen and helium that is one of millions of its kind? Or is it somehow even more unimaginable to know how...