gnu;

well this is a complex question (or three!) you have asked...

When many pagans find out there is a name for what they believe, they often describe recognition and great relief, like "coming home." This was true for me. It is also true that when I first discovered traditional Celtic music as a singer, it was like coming home. Interestingly, it was while I was singing in a pagan choral group that this experience with the music occurred...

I like to sing songs with some sort of mystical bent, whether they are actually about witches or what have you. I also feel a deeply spiritual connection to songs from the Celtic countries (which eventualy led me to study Irish and Gaelic langauge to further this connection). It is hard to describe, but when I am perfroming I often manage to place myself in the world of the song: historically, the character, the language, the story etc. For me perfroming is a "magical" experience in that I enter the same sort of space I would while working magic in circle.

Anyone here who has see/heard me sing may have noticed I almost always have my eyes closed the whole time when singing anything traditional. I also sing many sad songs, and to truly enter the emotional state of the song, closing my eyes allows that journey to occur...

Again this is hard to explain; but I honestly believe my spiritual beliefs have made me into a far better singer now that I would have been if I had never found paganism; some people have said they "get chills" and what not when I sing certain songs and I know this is because of something that is neither in me or even the song but an alchemical process hapening in the moment..."magic" if you will. All the more so if the song is an ancient one, or is about the ancient world; it is almost akin to channelling past lives on some level, I imagine...

Of course non-pagan performers have this same experience and would call it something else entirely....

Anyway does any of that make sense?

Peg