In the Northern Hemisphere, we are approaching the Pagan festival of Litha, more popularly known as Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. The light and energy have been building and reach their apex on June 20th. Litha is a fire festival celebrating midsummer, often with dancing, feasting and bonfires.
Ever since I was a child, music has carried me through the seasons. It was my earliest connection to my severed Pagan roots. I listened to certain music at certain times of year, if for no other reason than I had done it the year before and I was trying to create some sense of cyclical continuity in a modern, American life that was often out of sync with the cycles of nature.
Songs of Litha is a playlist I created last year for a small women’s circle Summer Solstice gathering. The playlist features the songs of twenty eight Goddess musicians and groups to set the mood the summer season. Songs honoring the elements and Mother Earth, the energy of expansion, opening and sacred celebration, as well as several songs specifically about Litha. While it would be quite lengthy to describe each of the artist and bands featured in this collection of songs, I would like to highlight a few of my favorites.
Mariee Siou
Mariee Siou writes songs that are pure poetry, enigmatic, embedded in the body of Mother of Earth. She describes using music “to fill a cultural void left by severed connections to her Polish, Hungarian, and Indigenous North American heritages and to thereby address the broader cultural voids felt by Americans today.” Her song “Coyote with the Flowering Heart,” begins with the words,
I’ve bathed in the yarrow and the rose
Remember it’s not just babies that grow
Though they might hold the miracle first breath
Air’s not the only beginning you’ll know
Aurora
Norwegian singer, songwriter and record producer Aurora is a self-described “forest person,” who loves to be in isolated places in nature, climbing trees and being near the ocean. With an etheric voice and eccentric personality, Aurora’s music is other-worldly. Featured in this Summer Solstice collection is her song “Queendom,” reclaims and revamps patriarchal language to imagine a realm where we “hunt the ground for empathy,” and where “the sun on my head is my crown.”
Mary Isis
Beautiful Chorus
Mary Isis is a healer, teacher, singer-songwriter and musician who creates what she calls “Visionary Medicine Music.” Her songs are power prayers and transmissions that evoke reverence, praise and celebration. She is featured twice on Songs of Litha, with two tracks from her album, “Elemental Being.” Of this album she writes, “We are all a part of this sacred web of life and we have the power to intentionally co-create our realities as embodied “elemental beings,” and become clear channels to the source of power that created this dream of life.”
Another group I featured twice is Beautiful Chorus, an angelic foursome who create what they call “High Frequency Love Music.” Created by Alexandra Love, “Beautiful Chorus” is truly a divine chorus of women, dedicated to rhythmic, fun and loving music, resonance therapy, meditative bliss, and personal alignment. Their song “Breath It In” is a simple, mystical breath meditation while “I Wanna Live,” the closing song of the playlist, is an affirmation of our personal commitment to being alive on this planet to grow and participate fully in the evolution in human consciousness.
What follows is a collage poem comprised of the first line of each song to give you a sense of the narrative of the songs and their coming together as a whole.
We are the women, we come to drum, we are the channel between the earth and the sun
Deep down deep into the Earth my roots grow
Rise up daughter greet the sun
The earth, the air, the fire, the water
Here and now connect down deep to your elemental being
Breath it in, let it out
I give back to the forest, I give back to Mother Earth
We all come from the Goddess
I remember your eyes amplified, old and golden beside the fire
On the earth my feet do go
May the circle be open and unbroken
When I look to the east I see sunrise, I see light
The underdogs are my lions, the silent ones are my choir
Grandmother speak to me, I am the Earth and the Earth is singing
Like the potter, spinning time, like the weaver, weaving lines
Look at the river as it winds down, rise like a tear goin’ down cheek-side creek
From the highest mountains down to the seas
Let us enter the forest, sylvan abodes of faeries and fauns
And who are you, my pretty fair maid, who are you me honey?
Now welcome Somer
We are a coven of wildflowers
Before the dawn on the longest day
I’ve bathed in the yarrow and the rose
Who is this one who calls, whispering so late in the night and in the light?
Fire, sacred fire, burning through the night
Sun shine out strong, make the day last long
I am whole, I am filled with light
I wanna be here, I wanna shift, I wanna grow, I wanna live