A Choir Witch Finds a Spiritual Haven in Song

by Erika Ginnis

I have been influenced by music for as long as I can remember. My family says that when I was a baby, people remarked that my voice was "clear as a bell." Maybe that was a nice way to say, "Boy, that kid can squawk!" but it is still something I hold onto on days I feel frustrated with my voice.

My mother played classical piano, and there are Chopin preludes that are magickal to me and connect with emotions that are prelanguage, since I first heard them when I was so young. I also found my love of performing quite young. I vaguely remember and have been told many times about how my mom found me at three years old dancing for nickels out in the lobby of the Rialto Theater during the intermission of a ballet school performance. Much to my embarrassment, she still has a picture of me from then wearing my "musical note" costume.

My first experiences of connecting spirit with music happened during that time. I spent many afternoons playing my mother's piano. She told me that when she played, the birds outside would sing along. I found that amazing and made a point to give them music whenever I could. I believe this was my first instance of playing music for the fey. I was also the Fairy Queen in fourth grade when we presented the musical Down Among the Fairies, but I don't know if that counts.

I also sang in the Episcopal church choir. There was something very powerful to me about being part of the ritual and processional. I loved being in the robes and getting to learn all the secret passageways in that old stone building.

I was not always the model choir angel, however. Once I remember being next to one of my friends, another soprano who was really good at making me laugh, in the choir pews by the altar during a service. I had to literally stuff my face into the hymnal because I was ready to burst into laughter. I had tears running down my face; they got the hymnal really wet. Maybe it looked like religious ecstasy. One can only hope.

Since that time, my spirituality has expanded a lot, and I find myself drawing easily from a variety of spiritual traditions. One of these is working with magick as a witch. The chants we do in rituals are always powerful for me. I can be anywhere and softly sing, "We all come from the Goddess, and to her we shall return, like a drop of rain, flowing to the ocean," and I am transported to a rocky path down a hill to the sea, remembering where I come from and to whom I return. The music brings me to an altered state of mind, one in which I am more open to the mystery. It also connects me with other times and places and supports me with history and continuity.

I remember the power of my first time in a skyclad circle, by candlelight, holding hands while doing a spiral dance and chanting the Goddess chant, "Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna." I could hear the shifting harmonies and the different voices as I moved toward and away from the other participants. I remember feeling the divine energy of the Goddess so strong, and thinking, "Yes, I am a witch! This is what we do!" When I write that chant down, I can't help but sing it out loud, and it continues to give me chills.

When I first started working with Yemayá, I was at a party for a friend in the late summer in a backyard. As it turned out (an odd coincidence), someone started a rhythmic chant traditionally used to call Yemayá. I was afraid at first to sing it, since Yemayá has a formidable energy and I wasn't sure what would happen. I finally couldn't resist and joined with the drumming and chanting. My energy shifted, and I could feel the hair on my arms rising. I felt her really there, felt that if I knew where to look I could physically see her. I felt very connected to her. Since I have an affinity with her energy, the experience wasn't at all unpleasant; still, I was glad that I didn't enter into it lightly. The power of tone and vibration is something to be respected.

In my grove, we often use toning to raise energy. Something about the vibration goes past my conscious mind and enters this place of immense power and love. We did a sound healing ritual recently in which I felt myself tap into this immense pool of energy. I could energetically see the vibrations and how they shifted us all emotionally and even on a molecular level. Everything is a vibration, including the atoms and molecules that make up our bodies. Sound with intent is a powerful example of magickal working. We do such workings ourselves all the time, often unconsciously. We are also constantly exposed to other sound workings (all those advertising jingles). How nice to use sound to bring us back to wholeness in a healing ritual.

One of the ways I have expressed myself musically over the last nine years is by singing in the Choir of Light. This is the choir from the Center of Spiritual Living (CSL), a Religious Science Church and one of my spiritual homes (www.cslseattle.org//splash.asp). I love CSL because it is eclectic, like me. Its teachings honor all the major world spiritual traditions such as paganism, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, even Christianity (this is only the short list). CSL puts forward the concept that we come from original innocence, not original sin, and I resonate with that concept strongly. And I love the choir!

Last month, we sang in the shrine room of the Sakya Tibetan Buddhist Monastery (it's in Greenwood! I had no idea!). The space was beautiful. Shrines and sacred art filled the room; candles and a huge golden Buddha sat behind us. Our audience was small, but the space was incredible. When singing, I looked out and saw people crying. I was truly moved.

We are also a guest choir every year at Black Nativity that the Total Experience Gospel Choir puts on at the Intiman Theater. I see the divine even in traditions I don't specifically follow myself, and singing that traditional gospel music is amazing. That gospel energy carries me into such a charged place -- talk about raising energy! I wouldn't miss it for the world.

Singing with this choir has been the most consistently profound musical-spiritual experience I have ever encountered. Anywhere from 60 to 75 of us sing at a given performance. We set our intention before we sing; we try to be conscious of what we do. Singing with the choir is magick in action, as far as I am concerned.

When we sing, I feel the energy move through me. I watch the sound flowing from the universe and through me and back out into the universe. My heart almost breaks from the love I feel coming into me, moving through me and then flowing from me. It is a huge continuous circle. I have to really ground myself to let this take place (thank the gods for grounding). I know at a deep level of profound certainty that the Universe/Divinity (or whatever name we choose to call it) totally, completely and utterly loves us. Though I know I am feeling just a fraction of that love come through me, it is more powerful than I can convey. This is all happening, mind you, in, through and during remembering words, pitches and harmonies. It is like being in the eye of the storm.

When I find this place, I am totally and completely in a state of gratitude. It's amazing. I am grateful for being alive, for being able to feel love, for being able to have the honor of being right there at that moment in time and being able to do something that I know without a doubt is exactly what I am supposed to be doing. I feel so at peace, even in the midst of all the activity, and in such joy, all at the same time. Whew.

One of the things I love is that we sing such a variety of music, all having spiritual origins but in very different styles. Last year, we did a piece that was in Chinese and was a section of the Tao de Ching. Last spring, we did a chant that persuaded me to change the god I am dedicated to, a chant to Ganesh done in Sanskrit. Ganesh is the Hindu God who is the remover of obstacles. My new love is Sanskrit chanting.

The musicians who originally did this piece are Shanti Shanti (http://shantishanti.com/). Shanti Shanti features two sisters who have been reading, writing and chanting this 10,000-year-old "dead" language since the ages of 7 and 9. Born in Reno, they are now counted among the world scholars in Sanskrit. Basically, they came into this life with information about this language and have blown a lot of people away.

Sometimes. I am amazed at my own prejudice. I missed several chances to see them. At Seattle Sacred Music Festival, I saw them on a poster and thought, "That's nice, a couple of sweet young girls doing some kind of New Age chant stuff. I don't need to stay for that."

When I saw them perform in another venue, I realized how clueless I had been. When they went on stage, it struck me: They really chant Sanskrit. They channeled this intense, amazing energy into the room. Watching with my eyes closed, I psychically saw the energy behind them and through them -- energy that is them, but not in this particular time and place. From my point of view, it stands behind them and sings with and through them. I wondered if they knew about this energy, and I thought how cool I was to see it. I assumed I knew about it better than they did, because they're two cute young women. Damn, I can be dense sometimes, me who talks about spirit and looking beyond the visual!

Afterward, I bought their book, which has a CD in it. One of the CD covers reproduced in the back of the book showed a picture of exactly the being/energy I saw. I guess I should have given them more credit, huh?

Trust me that Shanti Shanti are phenomenal. I have been listening to their CD and chanting all over the apartment. My cats love it and try to get next to my cheek when I sing, which is sweet and also a challenge. Thanks to them, I often find myself singing standing up.

I look back over my life, and I see music has been and continues to be a huge part of it. No matter what my tradition, music has always connected me to something deep within me, something bigger than me, and it has done so consistently, which I find amazing.

I had a reading once where the person told me that as spirit I use music to remind me of who I am and that I set this up specifically in this lifetime to anchor me to my real self. This information rings true for me. I have had many powerful psychic and spiritual openings and healings, specifically as a result of music.

As a Pisces, I am plagued often by indecision, so it is a great experience for me to actually know something without a doubt. Music is one of those things for me. My doubts may surface about learning a piece, or how my voice sounds on a given day. However, once I am on stage or in a circle and the tones start to flow, I know I am in line with myself, my gods and my life path.