Moon Goddess Magic: A Singing Ritual

Moon magic is one of my favorite types of magic! In this article, I’ll lay out a ritual I led for the Crow Women that revolved around some of my favorite pagan moon songs. You realize that, in addition to being a musical group, the Crow Women are a very active women’s circle, right? We hold ritual each month and one or two of us lead each time. There is always a LOT of singing. Music is the core of our magic. This Moon Goddess ritual was even more bursting with song than usual. It was inspired by our song Mooncycle, but includes many other songs. Let me guide you through the ritual step by step.

Cleanse the space

We began with a chant I wrote in 2015 for purifying the circle. It’s simple and easy to pick up. We’ve used it often. It will be on our next album, which will get recorded once we’ve paid off our last one. To begin, one participant dropped three pinches of sea salt into a bowl of water saying; “Creature of water, creature of earth, I call upon you to do my bidding in this world and in all the worlds”. Then she walked clockwise around the circle, sprinkling the salt water on the space and the participants, while we all sang this:

Cleanse this space with salt and water, purify us, purify us…

Next, another person lit a smudge stick from a candle on the altar, saying; “Creature of air, creature of fire, I call upon you to do my bidding in this world and in all the worlds.” She then charged the circle by walking around it, wafting the smoke over the space and the people. While this was happening, we sang the second part of the chant:

Charge this space with air and fire, purify us, purify us…

Cast the Circle

The next step was to sing a circle casting song. I used my athame, a special knife I’ve used in magic since I was a teenager. I walked around the outside of the circle, focusing on delineating a sacred space for the ritual. I usually speak while doing this, but because this was a sung ritual, I let the chant speak for me. I used the very popular chant chat We Are a Circle, recorded by Deborah & Rick Hamouris on their album Welcome to Annwfn.

We are a circle within a circle with no beginning and never ending

Calling directions

For calling the directions, we sang my song Ecomancy. It fills me with happiness whenever we use this song in our rituals. Ecomancy calls in the Goddesses our coven discovered in our very own landscape in Southwest Colorado. Divining our local Goddesses for air, fire, water, earth and spirit has been an very important thread in the history of the Crow Women. You can read more about the song Ecomancy, and listen to it, on its page here on our website. It begins:

Ooshbala, Ooshbala, Water goddess, come to us…

Self-blessing

Because I really love the song Body of the Goddess/I Am, recorded by Sophia on Return, I put a self-blessing into the ritual so we could sing that song! I asked everyone to touch their feet. I said; “Blessed be my feet, that have carried me on the path of my life”. Everyone repeated those words, then sang the chant together:

My body is the body of the Goddess

We continued in this way, working up the body, naming a part of the body and saying something about its sacred nature, then singing the chant. There are traditional self-blessing words, but I think it’s more meaningful to make up your own. I find self-blessing to be very empowering.

After that, we sang the first moon song of the ritual: Goddess Moon. It continues the theme of celebrating our own sacredness, the power of the moon glowing within us. I spoke a bit about our connection to the moon, then we sang the song. It begins like this:

Goddess Moon, when are you coming?
Goddess Moon, where do you rest?
Little Goddess, you can feel me
As I glow within your breast

You can read the rest of the lyrics and hear the song on its song page on this website. Deb wrote a blog post about this song. It includes a lot of interesting moonlore.

Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash

Meditation

The next part of the ritual was a guided meditation. Everyone settled into a comfortable position and closed their eyes. Then I led a meditation, which went something like this:

“You are outside on a beautiful night, walking through a forest. You look upward and see the young crescent moon in the sky. Then from the moon, the Maiden Goddess emerges, and dances down to you. Together you dance, you and the Maiden Moon. (pause). Then she takes your hand, and smiling, gives you a message. (pause) You thank her for her wisdom (pause), and then she dances away. (pause) Now, you continue to walk through the night. You can smell the sea. Ahead you see a bright glow. You emerge from the forest and see the ocean before you, the full moon rising from it. (pause) From the full moon steps the Mother Goddess. She walks along the bright path of moonlight on the water and comes to you. (pause) She looks at you lovingly and then gives you a message. (pause). Mother Moon embraces you. (pause). You thank her for her message (pause) and then she returns along the path of light to the full moon. You turn away and see ahead of you a hillside. (pause) As you approach, you can see a cave in the hill, with a faint glow within. (pause) You enter the cave and walk through darkness toward the light. Now you can make out the figure of a dark woman dressed all in black, holding a dim lantern. You realize you are within the dark moon and the figure is the Crone Goddess. She beckons you to join her. She whispers a message in your ear. (pause) You thank the Dark Moon for her wisdom. (pause) She lays her hand on your head in a blessing. (pause) Then you leave the cave. You find yourself back on the path in the forest where you began this journey. Return now to your body and this circle. When you are ready, open your eyes.”

From this meditative space, we all sang my song Mooncycle, which you can hear on its page on this website.

The moon, the moon, the moon, she is waxing
The moon, the moon, the moon, she is waning
The moon, the moon, she is waxing
The moon, the moon, she is waning
The moon she is waxing
The moon, she is waning
She is waxing
She is waning
The moon
is me

woman and the moon — Photo by Drew Tilk on Unsplash

Then we went around the circle, each woman sharing whatever she wished to of the messages she had received. Some women gained beautiful insights from their inner journey with the Moon.

A Little Moon Magic

We scheduled this ritual for the dark of the moon. Because the moonlight will subsequently grow as the moon waxes, it’s a perfect time to start a two-week process of increasing something in your life. We went outside into the very dark night, carrying “seeds”. These seeds are balls of clay that we had made lots of in a previous ritual. You could use actual plant seeds or any token that suits you. We held up our seeds to the sky and let them fill with the potential to grow what we desired. We sang one of our very favorite moon songs, Dark of the Moon by Karen Beth, recorded by Libana on Night Passage.

Dark night, starry night–new beginnings
Dark night, starry night–will come to be
Dark of the moon, new beginnings
Dark of the moon, plant a seed tonight
Dark of the moon, what we envision
Will come to be by the full moon light

Energy Raising

This ritual took place in winter, so we processed back inside. However, in summer you could stay outside for the next part, or for the whole ritual, really. Now that our seeds had been dedicated, we added more energy to the spell with one more moon song. We placed our seeds on the altar where we could focus energy on them as we sang. We used the very powerful song Deity, by Wendy Rule. One of our members had learned it on the guitar and we had a great time trying to sing it as soulfully as Wendy does. It has a lot of lyrics, but the chorus goes like this:

I am the maiden
I am the mother
I am the crone
I am the sea, I am the sky
I am the blood, I am the moon
Never alone, never alone

Releasing the Circle

After all that energy raising, we grounded ourselves with a snack and some mead. Then we went on to uncast the circle. Because we had sung the directions in, we sang them out as well, using the song The Earth, the Air, the Fire, the Water, which we learned years ago from the Libana recording A Circle is Cast. It’s a nice way to release all the directions at once, especially for a ritual as long and complex as this one. The lyrics are easy:

The earth, the air, the fire, the water
Return, return, return, return

I went around the circle with my athame, walking windershins (counterclockwise), to release the magic circle. We used the same song we had sung to create the circle: We are a circle within a circle, with no beginning and never ending. It’s such a good all-purpose song. Thank you, Rick Hamouris, for writing it.

Finally, to complete the circle, we sang May the Circle Be Open. It’s the song that closed our first album, Crow Goddess. We always end our rituals with this song, and we sound just like this recording.

I hope this post has given you a glimpse into what our ritual life is like in the Crow Women. This moon ritual has more music than most, but music is always a big part of our magic. Most importantly, I hope you will find some of these ideas useful for your own moon magic.

May Mama Moon bless you.

For more information about the Crow Women pagan choir, and access to all the blog posts by Alane and the other 9 crowsingers who have written for Pagan Song, you can visit the Crow Women author page here on Pagan Song.

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