Lupercalia: goat skins, kink, and fertility. The snowdrops are up. That’s how I know it’s February. With February comes the Feast of Lupercalia or its mild, newer religious overlay. As much as I love chocolate, I get a sweet giggle out of the old ways. Besides, they’re not mutually exclusive by any means. As the …
You’d think that we humans would be used to it, this dark time of Winter. It happens every year, with greater intensity the farther north you live. It is almost a ritual in my own home to remark on how dark it is and how early the darkness comes, how the light of the morning …
Songs and Chants for Clearing Sacred Spaces Space Clearings and Home Blessings are essential tools for creating safe and powerful containers for Ritual, Healing, and Magick. We all have certain spaces where we spend most of our time. Whether it be our bedrooms, cars, our workspaces, or even our heart space; adding songs and chants, rhythm and melody …
One of the things that brings ritual powerfully alive for me is the combination of symbol and song. The melody of a song pitched just right can create a powerful opening to the Otherworld. And the imagery we choose for the lyrics can guide us to where we are going. Symbol and Song As magic …
I have written a lot of music over the years about the seasons, how I see them and how they make me feel, both instrumental acoustic guitar compositions and vocal songs too. I am sharing 3 of those songs with you now: Moonlight on Snow Covered Branches, Holly and the Oak and The Light of …
Winter Solstice Sunrise is the first chant that I ever wrote before I wrote any songs. Sometime in 1981 (I was 19 or 20 years old) I started realizing that I could write music and not just reproduce it (I had been singing and playing music since I was a child) when I was asked …
In this, the Dark time of the year, I chose to write about something we all will face. As I age, I contemplate that day when Lady Death will stretch out Her hands to me. Not the skeletal hands of crude illustrations from the Middle Ages, but the warm, calloused, welcoming hands of an old …
Thank you for the invitation to share the background story of one of my songs. On this occasion, I have chosen Soul Journey written and created within my private stone fire circle on my land. As the lyrics convey “I lie in my nemeton circle serene, in a blanket of stillness and web of my …
The traditional date in Australia for Imbolc is the 1st of August and Spring Equinox/Ostara is the 23rd of September. We are coming to the time of the year for new beginnings and a time of balance and I find myself meditating on what I will bring into my life in the coming months and …
It’s 1997, and I’m standing naked, with my wife and guitar, on a stage a few feet above 800 naked sunbathers, and I’m about to make an announcement that will change my life. “Thank you all so much for listening! We’re Gaia Consort. See you soon!” Little did I know…. We’d done plenty of the …
