Two Years of Pagan Song

Our blog has been going strong for 2 years now. Happy birthday to us! Our first post went live in February of 2019. Over the past 24 months we’ve published 138 posts, written by 12 different authors. We’re realizing our dream to be one of the best pagan music websites out there. The purpose of our website and blog is to help you, dear reader, to enrich your magical practice, using the songs created by the Crow Women and other pagan recording artists.

What was new in Year Two?

Year 2 ran from February 2020 through until the present: February 2021. Living through the pandemic was tough on musicians. We didn’t do any concerts or serve as the featured guest at any pagan festivals during this time. The enforced isolation did create space for a lot of creative work, though. Alane wrote the first draft of a book on pagan music. All of our songwriters continued to create new songs–sneak previews of a few of these started turning up in blog posts, like this one, by Marilyn.

We also tuned up the website as a whole. An important step was setting up our own online store so that our readers can buy our physical CDs directly from us. (Digital downloads of songs and albums is still handled by Apple Music/iTunes.) In addition to being an Amazon affiliate site, we began working with Etsy, too. During year 2, we expanded our presence on Spotify–you can find our music there and check out the many playlists that include our music.

The Pagan Song website: An annotated site map

Our website is driven by our blog. A post comes out each week and appears on the blog page and is emailed to subscribers. (Please subscribe!) It’s also added to the material for one of the permanent pages on the site. So, as Ostara approaches, you’ll read our spring seasonal material on our blog as the posts are released. And, those posts are cuddled in with their siblings on our Spring Equinox page. Anytime you want information on a Sabbat, or pagan musicianship, or mead making, or any of the other topics we write about regularly, you can visit the relevant page to see everything we’ve written on the topic.

Look at all there is to explore!

Blog. With twelve different authors, our posts have a lot of variety!
As heard on… This page offers links to music services and internet radio shows where you can hear our music
Our 3 albums, Crow Goddess, Crow Magic and Seasons. These pages help you learn our songs and teach them to others. We want it to be easy to use our music in your magical work and rituals.Each and every song track has its own page, with
- credits
- lyrics
- a YouTube video so you can hear the song
- a list of blog posts that reference that song, to spark your ideas for using it
Book of Shadows With such a diverse group of blogwitches, we have a real depth of information to share. Because our topic pages are fed from our blog, they are always expanding with new information.
- Magic How-to. Many of these posts provide ritual instructions drawn from our own magical practice
- Music How-toWe’re a pagan band, and have lots to share about the nuts and bolts of music.
- Recipes and CraftsWe strive to live a magical life in all we do, including making wonderful mead and delicious recipes; fun ritual crafts and sacred altars. These posts share the step-by-step instructions.
- Healthy Group Dynamics Being a women’s Goddess worship circle and being a band both require lots of emotional intelligence. This section of our website contains some of our insights in that arena.
Pagan Sabbats We have a page for each of the 8 Sabbats, with a little information about the holiday, links to all our songs for the holiday, a Spotify playlist of music by various artists for the holiday, and a display of the blog posts we’ve written that focus on the holiday. The posts include ritual outlines, song suggestions, astrology, recipes, and other musings.
Rites of Passage This theme on our website is about the transition times of our lives and the ceremonies that honor them. And the music to sing in each rite of passage, of course!
Pagan Astrology Our resident astrologer, the insightful Jon Deer, creates an astrology post for each Sabbat, tailoring it to the interests of pagan readers and including a song that captures the essence the season.

The most popular posts on our pagan music website

Of our 138 posts (so far!), here are the top thirteen most popular posts, as measured by the number of visits. We’ve noticed that if someone shares a post to a Facebook group, website, or email distribution list, it gains readers. So, if you like a post, we encourage you to share it. Here are our most-read posts, in order of popularity.

Chants for Winter Solstice rituals
Ritual to Celebrate the Crone: Ending Menopause
Calling the Element of Earth: A Ritual
Calling the Element of Air: A Ritual (this series also has rituals for fire and water.)
Moon Goddess Magic: A Singing Ritual
Chants for the Lammas Feast
Mask Making for Pagan Rituals
A Sex Goddess Ritual Using Recorded Music
Astrology for Imbolc, 2021 (many of the other astrology posts were very popular, too.)
Party Games for Pagans: Fill in the Blank
Handparting: A Pagan Separation Ritual
Imbolc, Day of Beginnings
Create a Handfasting Wedding

Do you have any favorite posts? Leave us a comment and let us know!

Looking Ahead to Year Three

We’ll still be here for you in the coming year! There will continue to be a weekly blog post about using pagan music in your ritual and spiritual life. Our release date will shift to Thursdays to better fit our work schedules, though.

Our big news is that we’re heading back to the recording studio! Plans are brewing in our cauldron as I write. The current list includes 13 songs, all ready and eager to be recorded. Many of them fit the theme of Goddesses, Gods and Sacred Beings. As with the tracks on our Seasons album, you can support our efforts through song sponsorship. We hope you will help finance these new releases by sponsoring a track and dedicating it to someone or something dear to you. (A few of the tracks from Seasons are still available for adoption. Funds will go directly toward the new recording project.) Over the coming months, we’ll be reporting on our progress through our blog.

In 2021, Alane will be teaching a Pagan Music Retreat at Ardantane, in Jemez Canyon, New Mexico. Students will arrive Thursday, September 30th and spend all day Friday 10/1 and Saturday 10/2 immersing themselves in pagan music. The retreat will run through to the afternoon of Sunday 10/3. If you’re coming from a distance, consider staying in the area into the following week and enjoying a few days of the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, a true bucket list experience. This will be a small group retreat, so register early before the very limited numnber of spots sell out!

In the coming year, we hope to become more involved with the pagan music scene. We’d like more play on more pagan radio stations. We want to be guests on pagan podcasts and vlogs. Most important, we’d like to involve musicians beyond the Crow Women as guest bloggers. If we could expand from being a Crow Women band site to a meeting place for many pagan artists, that would be divine. If you can help us network to achieve these ambitions, please get in touch.

Feedback appreciated!

Feedback delights us! We’d love to know what you like about Pagan Song, and what we could do differently to make it work better. How do you use our pagan music website? Do you have suggestions for topics? What could we improve about the user experience on the site? Please leave a comment below or connect with us privately on our Contact Us page and give us some feedback. It would be wonderful to hear from you.

Pagan Song is a labor of love

The efforts of a whole team of people come together to keep this blog and website going. We do it for you, dear reader. Pagan music is a key part of our lives as pagan priestesses. It’s our honor to share our experiences, our advice, and our music with you. We hope the articles we post here spark inspiration for your rituals, and are fun and interesting to read. Stay with us on our musical journey into our third year of Pagan Song!

Here’s to Year Three!

lead photo of “2” birthday candle by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

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.

Please subscribe to the Pagan Song blog, to receive our blog post each week. Don’t miss any of the musical magic!