Music in Ritual

Hello, friends. This is Kira Lang of Spiral Rhythm. What is the place of music in pagan ritual? I’ll share what my beloved bandmates had to say about that.

Kerri Hirsh-Upton and Jon Skoglund have been crafting ritual for decades, as Priest and Priestess, and at times Spiral Rhythm’s shows are in form of a musical Ritual. We can use drumming to gather the community in procession like we do when we open a show, invoke the elements with The Element Chant, call the Goddess and God with I Summon Her/Him, raise power with Freedom and perhaps at the end of the Ritual, we are celebrating being reborn into the world, with the last lines of Becoming. “I have become everything, and all has become me. I am one, I’m everything you see.” Using music is an amazing way to bring a deeper spiritual connection to a Ritual.

“I have become everything, and all has become me. I am one, I’m everything you see.” – PJ Seale

Spiral Rhythm began as a group of friends drumming, chanting, and singing around bonfires. This form of celebration of life is worldwide, prehistoric and a way of understanding where we fit into our natural world and connect with each other. This also is a ritual of community. It is less formal, and still it is powerful.

For people new to participating in ritual, adding music can help them join in more quickly and create a bond to the community energy a little faster. Jon said when he first started rituals, there was an expectation of needing to do everything perfectly, and he likes using song in ritual to facilitate “breaking away from the numbers and having exact words that create fear of making mistakes.”

Kerri said; “I agree with that, because I remember being asked to invoke an element and I would be nervous as hell to say two lines,” as a newbie. She adds, “There are so many shy people, you know, ‘Oh, I don’t sing’, ‘I can’t memorize my lines’, or ‘I’m gonna mess it up’, so when you’re singing something that you’re repeating 10 times, not only do you get an opportunity to memorize it or learn it, you get the opportunity to build it up, too.”

“…we took things we loved, threw it in the cauldron and BOOM ritual!” ~Kerri Hirsh-Upton

Kerri said in the early days of attending rituals they would begin chants or song while waiting to be anointed before entering a ritual circle. They began getting invited to invoke the elements or the god and goddess, which they would do with song. Once at a break in circle at PSG, with the full moon overhead, they spontaneously began singing of The Moon is High, which was picked up by the entire field of people in a magical moment.

Attending so many rituals, some of which could be long and slow, sparked many conversations about what they didn’t like, what could work better. “…we took things we loved, threw it in the cauldron and BOOM: ritual!” Kerri learned about their process of getting more people involved, “the best way to do group participation is by singing or making noise, so, it kind of started like that.”

“Music, chant and song helps focus the mind on the spell and energy binding will to word.” – Jon Skoglund

Bringing aspects of music into your ritual can help engage people on many levels, bring a deeper awareness in the moment, as well as a stronger connection to the ritual’s meaning and intention. When using a song you bring associations, beyond just the words of the music, into the ritual. If you start a with a heart beat you have a steady primal feel, speed the drums up a little and the singing becomes louder and the energy increases, slowing the song helps ground the energy more naturally.

Hollywood has used our primal reaction to sound with great effect. We all know that words have power and the sound vibrations carried with song activate both sides of our brain and levels of psyche. In Jon’s words, “Music, chant and song help focus the mind on the spell and energy binding will to word.”

“As a drummer, I feel I play a supporting role in ritual.” – Ric Neyer

When asking musicians to participate in a ritual it is helpful to choose a lead musician for the others to follow. That person would work with the Priest and/or Priestess, usually given an outline for the Ritual, and follow cues for speed and changes in tempo. Ric has participated in ritual as a drummer since the early days of their ritual building, and is a founding member of Spiral Rhythm. His take is; “As a drummer, I feel I play a supporting role in ritual.” Jon likes to use both verbal and physical cues to set the tempo and volume. It can be a very simple raising of your arm to make the music louder and a verbal asking the circle to ‘bring it up now’ or like Jon likes to say; “Lets raise the pillars of heaven!”

When deciding what music to add to a ritual It is important to keep in mind what the ritual is going to achieve and the type or energy you wish to manifest. An example would be the Friendship Ritual Jon and Kerri have done many times over the years to help facilitate powerful connections in the community. They have used Spiraling Opening. Repeating the lines “Spiraling into the center, the center of our wheel” while everyone is entering the sacred space. When everyone is in the circle the song moves to the next chant; “We are a circle, within a circle, with no beginning and never ending.” The song goes from ‘spiraling into’ an action that we are doing into ‘We are a Circle’ engaging the awareness of bonding as a community within the ritual circle.

Another example is the Ritual of Becoming which has used the chorus from the song I Summon Her and the lines “I am, She is, We are together” sung three times ending with “together as one”, then “I am, He is, We are together” sung three times ending with “together as one” to invoke the God and Goddess, also including “I am, they are, we are together, together as one.” This engages us to invoke the Divine, as well as recognize that which is divine within us.

Sometimes we create chants to help reinforce a working for a ritual and sometimes a song will be gifted in ritual. Kerri said, “Kiki was so spontaneous. Back in the day, we would do full moons, we would do Sabbath, we would do all of them, we would see each other so much. We were doing one and she just started singing Look Within and, I hopped up and got a mirror and it just evolved in the ritual and like, whew, it happened.” Kiki Williamson, another founding member, has written many songs for use in ritual that Spiral Rhythm performs onstage.

Using music is a wonderful tool for the alchemy that is Ritual.

~ Kira Lang, for Spiral Rhythm

All photos by Barrow Photography (Ashley Barrow)

For more information about Spiral Rhythm, including their collected articles here on Pagan Song, their bio, and links to Spiral Rhythm’s site on the web, check out the Spiral Rhythm page on Pagan Song

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