ADSOP’s Top Ten Albums of 2011:

10. Metal Mother - “Bonfire Diaries” [Purchase]

A project of Bay Area singer-songwriter Tara Tati, Metal Mother is a winsome mix of ethereal textures and tribal art-pop that do a great showcasing Tati’s expressive vocal style. Tati, a “student of many esoteric traditions,” sings about connection with the earth, politics, relationships, and freedom in way that evokes that California spiritual ethos she has emerged from. Check out the (somewhat NSFW) video for her song “Shake” (which she also directed) to get a feel for the sound, aesthetic, and vision of this intriguing new artist.

09. The Moon and The Nightspirit - “Mohalepte” [Purchase]

At this point in their career Hungarian Pagan folk band The Moon and The Nightspirit have reached a point of maturity and confidence in their output that almost guarantees a solid album of new songs on every new album. They make their unique mixture of ethnic folk and neoclassical darkwave sound almost effortless. The vocals of Agnes are as strong as ever, and I’ve even come to appreciate the metal-growl accents of her partner Mihaly. One of the very best explicitly Pagan bands operating today.Check out this live video of them playing at Germany’s Wave Gotik Treffen to get a taste of what you’re missing if you haven’t already jumped on this bandwagon.

08. Arborea - “Red Planet” [Purchase]

For those who are looking for a fantastic hybrid of archaic British folk styles, American twists on the form, both old and new, and ghostly atmosphere, you simply can’t go wrong with Arborea. Their latest album, “Red Planet,” is their most developed, and I hate to use this term, but, mature-sounding release yet. Shanti Curran’s vocals are like taking a walk in a fog-laden forest, and the duo’s interpretation of songs like “Black is the Colour” or Tim Buckley’s “Phantasmagoria in Two” are remade into narcotic anthems, psychedelic folk that is more natural entheogen than artificial lysergic acid diethylamide. This is music to watch trees grow to, though they can be short and sweet, like on the single “Careless Love.”

07. Seventh Harmonic - “Garden of Dilmun” [Purchase]

Do you like Dead Can Dance? Do you like thematic explorations of “the muses, the wheel of the year, and the seasons of the heart”? Then you’ll love Seventh Harmonic’s new album “Garden of Dilmun.” After nearly a decade away, composer Caroline Jago’s band returns with an immensely strong album that features a new lead vocalist in soprano Ann-Mari Thim of Arcana, and weaves in and out of tribal, martial, and ethereal styles creating a dynamic and engaging trip through the Pagan ritual year. This is ritual music of a different and unique sort.

06. Faun - “Eden” [Purchase]

German Pagan folk act Faun’s new full-length “Eden,” is the follow-up to 2009’s “Buch der Balladen.” Unlike that album of largely sedate, well, ballads, “Eden” follows more in the footsteps of 2007’s “Totem” or 2005’s “Renaissance,” the album that helped introduce them to the United States. For those of us in the states who were lucky enough to catch them live at Faerieworlds, you’ll find much of the energy and charm in this new work that won over so many new fans. “Eden” features a guest performances from the Mediaeval Baebes, and they honor their recent experiences with the Faerieworlds crew by including contributions from storyteller Mark Lewis and illustrator Brian Froud. This album feels like something of a capstone on their previous accomplishments, and I look forward to what shape the band will take on their next album.

05. Julianna Barwick - “The Magic Place” [Purchase]

Julianna Barwick is a celestial choir of one, the “indie rock Enya,” as some would put it. The layers and loops of her voice creating a feeling of otherworldliness, of sacred song, while never specifically tying herself to any one interpretation of what context that transcendent  experience should happen in (according to Barwick, the “magic place” the title refers to is “a tree on our farm” ). This could be called New Age music if that genre had retained some bite, some hint of darkness in its heavenly synth washes and choirs of ascended masters. The site Tiny Mix Tapes calls Barwick’s style of music “holy ambient,” and that seems to get to the heart of this captivating sound. Truly singular.

04. Bjork - “Biophilia” [Purchase]

I have no idea what I could possibly say about Bjork that hasn’t been said already. Her identity as an artist, as an innovator, as an activist, has long since been secured. So let me just say that “Biophilia” is a truly ambitious work that stretches the idea of the “album” in new directions, and to new heights. But leaving aside the interactive applications and the ornate choral concerts, the music itself finds Bjork exploring the natural world and the mysteries and wonder of our universe. This is Bjork gone cosmic, an observer to the very birth of existence itself. I have no idea where she could go from here, but I’m sure she’s already working on it, and that it’ll be brilliant.

03. The Machine in The Garden - “Before and After the Storm” [Purchase]

American Darkwave duo The Machine in the Garden, while not a Pagan band, use myth and mysticism as a lyrical anchor throughout their new album “Before and After the Storm,” their first in six years. According to singer Summer Bowman she “looked to mythology and mysticism when I was writing the lyrics for these songs. I wanted to think about other cultures and their origin stories as a mirror of returning to many of our musical roots with this work.” Songs like: “Cimmerian,” “In the Vanir,” or “Power and Prophesy” drip with allusions to an ancient folkloric past while marrying them to their dark modern sound. A truly excellent release, buy an immensely talented band.

02. Atrium Animae – “Dies Irae” [Purchase]

The Italian band Atrium Animae was formed in 2007, their name is “considered as a symbolic representation of the passage from physical world toward an immaterial world.” The heavenly soprano of Alessia Cicala, a member of the band Chirleison, partnered with the compositions of Massimiliano Picconi, together create music on their debut “Dies Irae” that is stately in its atmosphere, a sacred enveloping that is almost funerial in outlook. Or as the band’s promotional material puts it: “A symbolic voyage in a silent wasteland made of treachery, defeat and spiritual hunger. A world where the locked embrace of loss and despair are represented through a reinterpretation of passages taken from religious and pagan texts.” Sublime, and an excellent addition to the genre of neoclassical darkwave.

01. Soriah with Ashkelon Sain – “Eztica” [Purchase]

Soriah with Ashkelon Sain, a duo whose album “Atlan” made my A Darker Shade of Pagan top-ten for 2009, returns in 2011 with “Eztica.” Described as “a neo-tribal, mystically ethereal, paranormally enrapturing musical experience” this mix of throat singing (what Soriah calls “an offering to nature in her own tongue”), atmospherics, and ritual, is truly captivating. While something of a companion to “Atlan,”  I think “Eztica” is the stronger album, one that sees more complex arrangements, and a sound that can be driving as well as atmospheric. This is a shamanistic ritual art experience, one that documents Soriah’s explorations into his own ethnicity and heritage, amplified by the amazing soundscapes of former Trance to the Sun guitarist Ashkelon Sain. This is the kind of musical spiritual journey that most others simply aspire to.

You can download my latest podcast, featuring songs from all these albums, here. I hope you’ll explore these releases, and perhaps find some new music to love. As always, apologies to all the other artists who released great albums this year, I only have room for ten.

• The New York Times does a profile of Lady Rhea, “the Witch Queen of New York.” The article focuses on how Lady Rhea doesn’t fit the profile of the fantasy witch, noting that she is “no cartoon witch. She is a no-nonsense Bronx native who drives a Ford Focus and tells it like it is. No black robe and pointy hat here. On Wednesday night, she wore slacks, a sweatshirt and designer glasses and jewelry.” Actually, Lady Rhea’s non-pointy-hat wearing fashion sense is pretty much the norm for most Pagans, and it seems strange that the fact that we don’t dress like Elphaba Thropp is still a story hook to hang a profile on. Still, it’s a positive look at a local figure, and I’m glad the NYT devoted time to doing the story.
• Remember all my talk about Pope Benedict XVI meeting with Vodun leaders in Benin? Turns out it didn’t happen, at least according to the National Catholic Reporter. Quote: “One might think the trip afforded a chance to open lines of communication with a religious movement that enjoys a vast following, estimated at between 30 million and 60 million people worldwide — comparable to the global footprint of, say, Methodism. Yet Benedict never made any reference to voodoo, and didn’t meet a priest or other exponent. His rhetoric in Ouidah, asserting that Christianity represents a triumph over “occultism and evil spirits,” was taken by some as a swipe.” NCR reporter by John L Allen Jr surmises that the controversy over Pope John Paul II’s 1992 meeting with Vodun leaders made Benedict gun-shy about doing something similar. So much for the “importance of dialogue with practitioners of indigenous African religions.”
• The Los Angeles Times looks at Pagans and Paganism in the Air Force Academy, focusing on the $80,000 outdoor worship center for “earth-based” and Pagan religions that was recently installed. Quote: “Witches in the Air Force? Chaplain Maj. Darren Duncan, branch chief of cadet faith communities at the academy, sighs. A punch line waiting to happen, and he’s heard all the broom jokes.” It’s a fairly decent story, but I have to say, and maybe I’m biased, but I felt Cara Shulz’s recent story for PNC-Minnesota focusing on the same topic (which was reprinted here) was better.
• Ritch Duncan, co-author of “The Werewolf’s Guide to Life: A Manual for the Newly Bitten”, writes about the bizarre media panic that ensured after a “Satanic sex ritual” resulted in a man being hospitalized, and his book was listed as being found at the scene. Quote: “Even worse than being misrepresented in the media was how lazy it all seemed to be. If the reporters charged with covering this story actually spent five seconds looking up what the book was about (they certainly had the time to do a Google search and steal an image of the cover), they could have mentioned it was filed under the “humor/parody” section.” The piece is a great look at how moral panics are fueled just by shifts in emphasis.
• Amanda Marcotte writes an editorial for Reuters on the “increasingly Godless” American future. Quote: “The more that religion can be pushed off into the realm of private practice and out of the public square, the better for public discourse, as we can dispense with the God talk and move on to reality-based discussions about what we want and how we can get it. The Millennials have the right idea when it comes to dismissing the belief that religion somehow improves politics. Now we just have to wait for the religious right to finish with their temper tantrum over this, and then we can move on to the future.”
• This year the Christmas Tree at the United States Capitol was given a traditional Native American blessing by an elder from the Tuolumne Band of Me-wuk tribe, the first time such a thing has happened. Quote: “It was an amazingly moving ceremony they sang and blessed the tree and blessed the people there on site and blessed our safe journey for the tree.” You can watch a video of the blessing, and the tree being harvested, here.
• The Guardian looks at the rise and mini-revival of “occult rock,” highlighting Rise Above Records, the return of Black Widow, and Swedish band Ghost.  Quote: “Whether it’s a heartfelt expression of devilish beliefs or simply a good excuse to wear a spooky mask and annoy a few Christians, occult rock can hardly fail to provide a welcome antidote to an increasingly soulless and cynical music world that prizes profit over atmosphere, and perfection over power. Perhaps more importantly, its newest exponents seem to have abandoned shock tactics in favour of a subtle, persuasive approach worthy of Eden’s duplicitous serpent himself.”
• The Times of India has yet another article about the spread of Wicca in India, this time focusing on Swati Prakash, head of The Global Wicca Tradition. Quote: “In the middle and dark ages, anyone who followed any ancient belief was falsely accused of ‘consorting with the devil’ and was tortured into accepting the new faith. Ironically, you will note that male wizards are always depicted as wise old men in fiction and art throughout history while women witches were shown as cunning and ugly. Clearly, there has been a gender bias in favour of male spiritualists and gurus.”
• The Associated Press explores American Indian reactions to the James Arthur Ray verdict, with some hoping that it will result in better safety when non-Natives try to appropriate Native ceremonies. Quote:  Bill Bielecki, an attorney representing the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge reservation, said the trial would encourage non-Natives to focus on safety when running sweat lodge ceremonies. “They’re going to look at the facts,’’ said Bielecki, who also was party to the lawsuit, “You don’t use a large sweat lodge, you make sure people can leave and you don’t coerce the occupants into staying beyond their limits or capabilities. If you do that, then you avoid gross negligence.’’ You can see a round-up of my coverage regarding this case, here.
• Why do Catholics think the worship of Maria Lionza is so popular in Venezuela? Why, “poverty and poor education are contributing factors,” naturally. But they better be careful what they wish for, because isn’t Catholicism’s main growth areas with the very same “people lacking education and social services?” Do I sense a double-standard here? Are the poor and uneducated Catholics actually wise, then?

That’s it for now! Feel free to discuss any of these links in the comments, some of these I may expand into longer posts as needed.

Rob Young, author of "Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music."

You seem to touch often on the theme of there being a Britain, and an “Other Britain.” The “Electric Eden” or “Albion” created by “fragments and survivals” from a distant and often romanticized past. The thing that links Cecil Sharp to “The Wicker Man” to modern artists like Sharron Kraus, Julian Cope, or Kate Bush in your book. Could you talk a bit about how this Other Britain came to be?

I feel it’s something that has slowly, organically formed itself over decades, even centuries, mainly through a very particular seam of cultural artefacts and artists. A figure like William Blake is crucial here – in poems like ‘Milton’ and ‘Jerusalem’ he invoked a Britain of the Druids, and painted ancient monuments like Stonehenge (without actually having seen it), and a spiritual lineage in Britain that connected with the pre-Christian era. For him that would have been a way of evading the strictures of the organised church which was an anathema, and of course he was fascinated with the myth of Adam and Eve, the pure state of mankind before the Fall, which seems to underlie much Romantic nature writing of the same period. Blake’s distrust of the ‘dark Satanic mills’ of capitalism was taken up by the likes of William Morris, another figure very important to the opening pages of my book, with his passionate opposition to the destructive forces of Victorian industry and ‘improvement’.

It’s a very complex question, but really I think the industrial revolution has much to do with it – beginning around 1760, when a Parliamentary act called ‘Inclosure’ forcibly removed common lands from the folk and scooped them into private ownership. That pushed many agricultural workers towards the new cities and factories where the only remaining employment opportunities lay. This displacement is at the bottom of so much of the British empathy with the countryside, I believe, as so much utopian thought and music here seems to desire to tap into folk memories of an unsullied rural state of mind which now appears like a golden age. Surviving relics from the world before that industrial ‘Fall’ are revered: old buildings, texts, songs, etc, are like talismans to be treasured, as a connective chain to the past. A lot of the artists you mention in the question have made work which seems to reach back to this mythical age – the fantasy/fairytale aspects of Kate Bush; Julian Cope’s interest in prehistoric megaliths, The Wicker Man which is like an encyclopedia of British folk customs and costumes, imagining a fully functioning British pagan society, one untouched by the later Catholic/Protestant schisms.

You connect folk music in Britain with “the cyclic revolve of the seasons and the ritual year,” with each generation drawing its own interpretations and meanings from folklore. How relevant do you feel this emphasis on the ritual year is today? Where do you see this impulse’s strongest embodiment in modern British music?

Unfortunately I don’t see it all that much in music except in very tiny micro-scenes of ‘wyrd folk’ made by people who appear to genuinely crave a kind of return to an idealised, medievalist, Anglo-Saxon way of life. The experimental band Coil made a highly successful series of ‘Solstice’ records, recorded actually on each solstice, sometimes out in the open air, and released as soon as possible after the event. I thought that was an interesting exercise that actually produced some great music. More generally I think there are some artists – like Sharron Kraus, who you mentioned above, and Alasdair Roberts, who are very aware of the magical aspects of rural song and their set lists are accordingly loaded with appropriate material, either traditional or self-written. In the world of modern composition people like Peter Maxwell Davies, Michael Finnissy, Harrison Birtwistle and Judith Weir are a few names whose music has connected with occult aspects of the landscape and folkloric traditions.

I found your sections dealing with the intersections of folk music, folk artists, and the revival of Pagan Witchcraft to be very interesting. You state that the two are “strikingly similar?” Could you expand on this a bit for my audience?

This was one of the most fascinating sections of the book to research. Throughout the process I was very aware of the ideas – often conflicting – of ‘authenticity’ that always come into play when folk music and culture are discussed, and as I went on I realised how much of what’s popularly thought to be ancient and sanctioned by time is often an invention of more recent provenance. From reading people like Ronald Hutton you begin to realise that the same applies to the history of Pagan Witchcraft in Britain – current practice seems to be a patchwork of texts and rituals collated by the likes of Gerald Gardner. I met people who had been studying folklore of witchcraft in the late 60s, a couple called Dave and Toni Arthur, and who befriended Alex Sanders, who I’m sure many of your readers will know as the ‘King of the Witches’ in the UK at the time. Dave was loaned Sanders’s Book of Shadows to copy and study, and he found that much of it was cobbled together from older books like Aradia and even bits of Shakespeare. (As an intriguing aside, Toni is famous here as a former presenter of kids’ TV programmes in the 70s).

For them, it simply proved that the Witchcraft rituals were inauthentic in the usual sense. And you can apply the same logic to the main body of folk music, when you learn that much of what’s considered medieval or even dating back to pagan times was often printed on Broadsides in the 18th and 19th centuries. But for me, it doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that these survive as genuinely useful traditions, which are still being passed on and mutated, in a folkloric process of transmission. Hundreds of thousands of pagan witches practise with these things all over the world, so how can that invalidate the tradition? Similarly with folk music, I don’t really care how the stuff was gathered, or whether things are 50 or 300 years old – the music is there, its materiality is undeniable and it’s put to use in all sorts of ways by all sorts of musicians with all sorts of contrasting agendas. That for me is what makes these sectors of culture so exciting and robust – that they persist and endure with or without the permission of the media, State-sanctioned culture and all the usual gatekeepers and tastemakers.

How overt was interest in the occult, magic, and Witchcraft among the British folk singers and folk-rockers? You mention Synathesia’s planned odes to Roman gods, Nick Drake being described as a “modern pagan,” a folk duo collaborating with Alex Sanders, and a member of Pentangle noting experiences with the “lighter side of the occult” in America. How much do you think the two scenes interacted and influenced the other?

A lot of it was anecdotal. Obviously the late 60s was a time when the counterculture and underground movements were pretty open to the rich world of mythology, fantasy, magick and so on. John Renbourn of Pentangle named the band after the shield design in the medieval Arthurian poem Gawain and the Green Knight and he told me he was reading Jessie Weston’s From Ritual To Romance around the same time. Slightly aside from folk-rock as such, the keyboardist Graham Bond was one of the most overt at the time, into a very Crowleyan vibe on albums like Holy Magic and We Put Our Magick On You, which are kind of funky stews of Dr John-style groove with magickal chants and spells invoked over the top. He killed himself in 1974, but not before, as I mention in the book, teaming up with a former member of Yorkshire folk group Mr Fox for an unrecorded project. Mr Fox – the duo of Bob and Carole Pegg – also had a witchy view of things, their track ‘Pendle’ was inspired by the Lancashire covens and they described some very uncanny experiences to me which you can read in the book. Carole made a great solo track called ‘A Witch’s Guide To The Underground’, which sounds kind of proto-Kate Bush. And then of course there was Jimmy Page installed at Crowley’s former lodgings in Scotland. And so it goes on. The Incredible String Band were probably the other really significant group here; a band who in their quest for a genuinely usable religion (which ended with Scientology), dabbled with the Tarot, Wicca, mystical Christianity and a variety of Eastern religions, all reflected in various ways in their albums of 1967–69.

But I don’t think there was much systematic infiltration of each other’s scenes, if you want to look at it like that. I think it was more about a lot of this stuff being in the air around the late 60s and available to any creative person who wanted to pick up on aspects of it. The Nick Drake thing was a quote from a former friend of his, and I’m not sure how reliable that really is – it’s certainly the only reference I’ve ever found to Drake being into ley lines, UFOs, etc, and it somehow doesn’t ring convincingly. But in other ways, his music is perhaps the profoundest expression of a genuinely other, possibly pagan state of mind, in the sense that he seems to be aiming at an organic sense of time and to escape the human realm that’s dominated by the clock, by responsibilities, by what he saw as the terror of romantic relationships. His tracks like ‘Way To Blue’, ‘Northern Sky’ and ‘River Man’, for me, are songs of deep longing to project into the being of a tree, or the sky, something other than the city life. Which all sounds very cliched hippyish when you say it, but the seriousness and the beauty of the way he does it force you to take these ideas seriously.

Finally I’d like to direct people to the chapter in Electric Eden on the great British outdoor festival, which goes into detail about the incredible origins of the Glastonbury Festival, which was originally designed along very clear geomantic and ‘Earth Magic’ lines (why do you think the main stage to this day is the ‘Pyramid Stage’? The original organisers  in 1971 were influenced by, and even friends of, the late great John Michell and his book The View Over Atlantis which was published shortly beforehand. It’s possible to view the prevalence of the outdoor festival in the UK as the point where paganism meets rock ‘n’ roll meets countercultural forces.

While your book has a generous wealth of information about the formation of Other Britain, of England’s various folk revivals, and how different artists interacted with these threads, there isn’t too much (comparatively) about the modern era past the mid-1970s (I’m assuming due to space considerations).  Are you planning a follow-up? If not, what resources would you recommend for those wanting to further explore the territory you’ve mapped?

There are plenty out there who disagree with me, but in my opinion on a musical level, the folk tradition as a well of inspiration had largely dried up by the mid-70s; although there were plenty who still drew from it, few were sonically innovative. That’s the cyclical thing – there are always going to be periods when something like folk is going to feel more useful to musicians and artists as a springboard, followed by a more fallow time (we happen to be in one of the more fertile periods right now, especially in the States).

Lessening space and, to a certain extent, deadline time were certainly factors in my stepping more lightly over the territory post-1975, but also, by then most of the story I’d wanted to tell had been enacted and many figures who remained making interesting work (Nic Jones, Spriguns, Peter Bellamy, Martin Carthy, John Tams and Home Service, etc) were by and large keeping something alive rather than massively innovating. I’m not sure a follow-up would do much more than fill in such gaps and I simply am not enthusiastic enough about the generic folk music of the 80s and 90s to really want to sit down and tell it in detail.

But – and this is kind of an exclusive – I AM beginning work on a follow-up; or perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a companion. That is, I’m trying to write an alternative history of Britain’s film and television culture, looking at ways in which British moving pictures – cinema and domestic TV – have expressed the kind of tensions between progress and nostalgia, past and present, country and city, conservatism and radicalism, etc, which I explored through looking at music in Electric Eden. I do make a lot of passing references to various relevant films in the book – The Wicker Man, A Canterbury Tale, The Owl Service among them – and as I was writing Eden I began thinking there could be a whole book there – it’s an angle surprisingly seldom taken in studies of British film. So I’m shifting the focus from Electric Eden to… celluloid Albion! (That’s not the title, though…)

Otherwise, for further research. my blog at http://electriceden.net has a mass of links to sites musical and beyond, which all reflect my interests in these areas.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFuxq_J1VuA

“In terms of their status in popular understanding, British Pagan Witchcraft and folk music are strikingly similar. Both are believed, even by many of the people who practice them, to afford a link to the distant medieval past or pre-Christian antiquity, but many of their identifying features are actually relatively modern inventions.”

Bert Jansch

During his career Jansch recorded at least 25 albums and toured consistently, inspiring Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and Johnny Marr of The Smiths with his unique guitar style. Towards the end of his career he collaborated with contemporary artists like Hope Sandoval (of Mazzy Star), Beth Orton and Devendra Banhart, inspiring a new generation of psych-folk and “freak” folk performers. Still, to many of us, he’ll be remembered as part of that band with the pentagram logo, which, along with the mythological and folkloric themes in their music, was more than enough to consider them one of “our” bands in the Pagan movement’s early stirrings. For his deep contributions to music, and for all those he inspired, Bert Jansch will live on for generations to come.

Another death that will have reverberations among many modern Pagans is the passing of actress Diane Cilento, famous to many as the first wife of Sean Connery, but beloved to us as “Miss Rose” in the 1973 cult-classic film “The Wicker Man”.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLbpf-VNmMs

Cilento would go on to marry “Wicker Man” writer Anthony Shaffer, and was a spiritual seeker who eventually studied Sufism.

Diane Cilento

“It doesn’t really matter what basically the religion is, it’s all the same thing. It’s all oneness. And I don’t think you can divorce or segregate or pigeonhole life in that way much. It is just life, and poetry’s part of that.”

Cilento was also the mother of Jason Connery, who played the second Robin Hood in the Pagan-drenched English series “Robin of Sherwood.” Her role in creating a “microcosm of what sacred and profane life in a village might be like if Christianity had never been imported to the Isles” will forever endear her to generations of modern Pagans. May her spirit be united with the oneness she sought in life.

“I was reading “The White Goddess” by Robert Graves, [a book] that really investigates the mythology from ancient Ireland. When I read about the power of the poets in those days, it took me a while to really comprehend that sort of world, because we don’t have a world like that. It’s almost going to an alien world where that exists. It excited me, but to get my head around the prose was tricky. That took quite some time, to deal with “Battle of Trees.” Probably the longest of everything — it was being worked on through this whole process, when I was building all the other works, this was constantly on the drawing board.”

Music critic Ann Powers, who co-wrote a book with Amos that explored her links to archetypal goddess figures, delves into some of the mythic themes utilized in “Night of Hunters.”

“A song cycle based on familiar pieces by composers including Satie, Chopin, Schubert and Bach,Night of Hunters tells a multidimensional tale of a couple torn asunder and a woman’s search to find unity within herself. The story is animated by characters and motifs that any Amos fan will recognize as characteristic: a shapeshifter; ancient poets, battling in a ring of trees; a Star Whisperer; a Fire Muse. [...] Night of Hunters is ambitious, but it’s also personal — not in the confessional sense, but musically. Amos shares vocals in four tracks with her 11-year-old daughter Natashya Lorien Hawley (whose precocious throatiness suggests a more spritely Adele), and her niece Kelsey Dobyns also makes an appearance. Leave it to Amos to find a way to challenge the classical tradition of masculine mentorship by working a little matrilineal magic. It’s just her style to reinvent tradition, even as she honors it.”

The links between myth, archetypes, and Amos’ music run deep, or as Wired says, she’s “centuries-old-school.”

“With help from a Fire Muse (voiced by Amos’ niece) and a character named Annabelle (inspired by the Children of Lir from Irish mythology, and voiced amazingly by Amos’ 10-year-old daughter, Tash), the woman is reborn. By the album’s end, she vows to “Carry” (video above) her lost love with her. “I thought that if Annabelle represented the duality of nature and was able to shape-shift from fox to goose, hunter to hunted, and show this woman a different perspective, I could jump in and out of Irish mythology, because I had a pivot point in her,” Amos said.”

I personally think that labels like “Pagan” probably matter little to Tori Amos, and that anyone who walks so deeply into faerie is “with us” in all the ways that truly matter without having to pin it down. As for her reliance on Robert Grave’s most controversial book (at least among Pagans), I think using his poetic mythic history in a poetic mythic album is exactly the context the work should be explored (and one Graves would no doubt approve of). In any event, “Night of Hunters” is a triumph of an album, one that should interest old fans who’ve drifted away, and attract new fans who see the connections between the mundane and the mythic. You can listen to “Night of Hunters” in its entirety at NPR Music, and you might also want to check out an interesting dialog on her new album between a pop and classical music critic.

Faerieworlds communal altar.

Throughout the day people will add offerings to it, while others will offer prayers to their respective gods and goddesses, and it is an integral part of the experience at Faerieworlds. In addition, as I pointed out at the beginning of this post, a variety of Pagan bands and musicians play here, and last night I got to witness the birth of a new one. Treguenda, a group made up from members of Woodland and cellist/composer Adam Hurst, who performed live for the first time last night.

Treguenda

With a sound very close to that of Woodland’s (for obvious reasons) but enhanced with Hurst’s cello and added electronic elements, Treguenda performed a raft of songs about Pagan festivals, the gods, and a special composition dedicated to Aradia. The audience, Pagan and non-Pagan alike, swooped, danced, cavorted, and enjoyed themselves as the night grew darker (some, no doubt, anticipating that evening’s closing act Delhi 2 Dublin). I’m very much looking forward to hearing recorded material from them.

Events like Faerieworlds tap into a deep cultural hunger for romanticism, for a re-enchantment of the world that has long been denied by both secular and religious institutions in the West. I don’t think the recent fantasy boom is happening in a vacuum, nor do I think it is any coincidence that a growing number of people are opting out of traditional forms of religion altogether while still holding onto religious beliefs. While Faerieworlds, or Burning Man for that matter, aren’t explicitly “Pagan” they tap into a primal need for festival, for gathering to honor the numinous, the changing seasons, each other, and our own creativity. I think that these events, especially as we weather hard times, will continue to grow in importance. There is a vital roots-up form of small-p “paganism” emerging here that is very compatible with our more formal adoption of Pagan religion.

Tonight, I’m looking forward to seeing Stellamara and Faun perform this evening on the main stage. I was lucky enough to interview Oliver Pade of Faun yesterday, to talk about their work, performing in the United States, Paganism in Europe, the intersections of Goth and Pagan music, and future plans. You’ll be able to hear that interview in tomorrow’s A Darker Shade of Pagan podcast, so stay tuned, and if you’re in the Pacific Northwest, it’s still not too late to participate!

• The Seattle Times reports on the passing of Brian Fairbrother, a well-known and liked barista, who was also a member of the local Pagan community. Fairbrother defined himself as an “urban Pagan,” and commissioned the “Sacred Shrine of Caffeina, Goddess of the Waking Day” near his espresso walk-up back in the 1990s. Fairbrother died as a result of head injuries from a bicycling accident. May he rest in the arms of his gods, and may his family and friends be comforted.
• Sarah M. Pike, author of “Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves” and “New Age and Neopagan Religions in America” , writes about the 2011 Burning Man for Religion Dispatches. According to Pike, “for those “Burners” who are true converts, it is a religious event on a massive scale.” Pike also cites the work of Lee Gilmore, author of “Theater in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man”, who argued for the event being “pagan” at its roots.
• Pagan chaplain and activist Patrick McCollum will be speaking this evening at an interfaith event in California. The event will be held at St. Mary’s College and is entitled “Young People on the World Stage.”
• Soriah with Ashkelon Sain, a duo whose album “Atlan” made my A Darker Shade of Pagan top-ten for 2009, returns with a new release for 2011 entitled “Eztica.” Described as “a neo-tribal, mystically ethereal, paranormally enrapturing musical experience” this mix of throat singing (what Soriah calls “an offering to nature in her own tongue”), atmospherics, and ritual, is truly captivating. The CD will be available on October 11th from Projekt Records, you can purchase a digital download now via Amazon (and, I’m assuming, iTunes). The title track, ”Eztica,” can be downloaded for free.
• R.F. Foster, author of “Words Alone: Yeats and His Inheritances”, discusses W.B. Yeats, faeries, and the Irish occult tradition for the Oxford University Press blog.
• Speaking of music that appeals to modern Pagans, Kate Bush is putting out a new album this year, her first since the 2005 double album Aerial. It’s entitled “50 Words For Snow” and will be released on 11/21 via Bush’s own label, Fish People.
• The Dogwood Local Council of the Covenant of the Goddess recently participated in a  24 hour prayer vigil to celebrate unity in prayer.  The event encouraged people of all faiths to experience how others worship,  with displays from many different religions and sects. A picture of the prayer alcove they erected for the event is now on Dogwood’s site splash screen, and Michael Cheiron gives his account of the event. In related Dogwood news, Local Coucil Second Officer, Lady Arsinoe recently conducted a small-scale demographic study of modern Pagans.
• Congratulations to Rebecca Elson at The Magical Buffet on hitting their five-year anniversary. In a press release, Elson said that “The Magical Buffet is proof that if you’re considerate, hard working, and have a good sense of humor you can accomplish amazing things.  I’m really proud of The Magical Buffet and I’m endlessly grateful that so many people read and support it.  The site is really about me and my readers, we’re definitely partners.”
• Transcendental Meditation (TM) is back on the rise. “The rolls of practitioners have tripled in the past three years, according to the Transcendental Meditation Program, the practice’s national organization.”
• A warm welcome to Teo Bishop, whose “Bishop In the Grove” blog has joined the Patheos family.

That’s it for now! Feel free to discuss any of these links in the comments, some of these I may expand into longer posts as needed.