Songs in Ritual
This week’s prompt from Trace:
I want you to write about songs, in a spiritual context. What can songs do for folks coming together in spiritual ways? What songs do you have feelings about, good and/or bad, from previous spiritual experiences? What do you hope to do with music and songs to help yourself and others connect?
Singing together is one of my most core experiences of large organized religion, and it’s one that I have probably the most fondness for. Whether it was the simple bits of song that everyone is supposed to know, or a hymn I’d never heard before and was just trying to follow along, I always loved it. I was in kids’ choir for years and don’t fully know why I even stopped.
I’m not sure I realized how much I missed it, but as soon as I found a way to include it in pagan practice, I was eager to do so. I think one of the first things was rewriting Christmas carols to sing at winter solstice gatherings. I’m now in a larger pagan group that does chants sometimes, and I’m always the first to ask “are we going to do a chant at this ritual” and very eager to help lead them.
In general, I think singing in unison is one of the best ways to get people mentally in sync. It has a sort of flow to it, a pulling-along, that doesn’t really come through from just speaking in unison. That can feel stilted, sometimes creepy, but singing never does. Sometimes I feel a bit scared to suggest it, but that feels like it comes out of a sense that being in that sort of connection together can feel too intimate, vulnerable, “silly” in its earnestness.
I think a lot about the difference between Christian hymns and pagan chants. Hymns are almost always more complex, both in terms of tune and words, with multiple verses and sometimes choruses. The feel of a hymn can change from one verse to the next, telling a story over the course of the whole song. Of course, the flip side of this is that few people know full hymns by heart; singing a hymn together usually requires a book (or projection screen) to read from.
Chants, in contrast, are often sung with a simple pentatonic melody and repeating lyrics. In this regard, they’re very effective at setting a mood, though any movement or progression will have to come from something other than the words themselves. Sometimes chants speed up or slow down over time, which can be a good effect. And another lovely thing about chants is that, because they’re so simple, the leader can usually just sing them through once or twice and then the whole group can pick up the tune and words.
I would like do more singing in the course of my rituals. I’ve found ways to add it a bit more at Blazewing rituals, whether it’s a chant before or during the circle, or getting together to sing solstice carols after. I’ve also heard from other people how much they like to sing at ritual, even hearing that from some people who I wouldn’t expect to have liked it if they didn’t tell me so.
I think at this point the biggest thing getting in the way of doing that more is just song selection. I’ve looked through a lot of lists of pagan chants, and the vast majority don’t seem like they fit right. Some are simply too trite, but more often they focus on things that don’t resonate for our circle, like leaning on a god/goddess duality, or getting a bit too deep into specific traditions or other esoteric contexts. I have a small handful that hit right, but I wish I had more. I think I would also like to sing more complex songs at circle. Part of me really misses hymns (even if some of those had lyrics that didn’t hit very well either!)
The answer to all of this I suppose is to try to write more chants and/or adapt more other songs. I’ve done this a bit, but it feels pretty fraught and stressful at times too. Like I said above, sometimes singing together can feel really vulnerable for me, and it feels only moreso when it’s words that I wrote. With other stuff, there’s at least a screen of “we’re all doing this together”, with my things the feeling of “Is this right, is this connecting to folks, is this too much” is a lot stronger. Adapting hymns has an added complication of, I worry that folks will have difficult associations with hymns. It feels safe enough with holiday carols, since even the religious ones are somewhat decontextualized, but the last thing I want to happen at ritual is for someone to be thinking back to an uncomfortable unwilling fundamentalist church experience. Still, I think it’s a good goal to have some more things to sing, and I am working at it.
One thing I’m interested in trying out is asking other folks to bring songs to ritual. They may not even have to be “religious” songs, they likely won’t be, but things they like to sing, that move them on a spiritual level, that they’d want to sing together. I am really curious what sorts of things might come up.