i've been singing since before i could talk apparently, and i think that is why musical magic has been my longest-held practice—i was doing it before i really identified as a witch, when i was a child. i'm going to describe some simple healing-song methods i've used throughout my life—all of these are solitary practices, require no knowledge of instruments, and you do not need to be a good singer at all to utilize these techniques for magical means.
divider by @suupersonic
play a plain chord song (or use a piano, or another instrument) and hum along to the note. hum up and down, and individually focus your attention to the sensations in your face, mouth, throat, chest, shoulders, arms, then stomach. if you are familiar, try to harmonize along to the chord. this is a great meditative start for any other musical rituals.
choose songs pertinent to specific spells, and sing them to enchant these workings. when i do this, i try to incorporate a rhythmic body component (dancing, clapping or snapping, rocking back and forth, etc.), as well as starting with some kind of simple meditations or trance-entering practice. when singing, try to lean heavily into the lyrics and song, emotionally, and sing it from the heart and not to sound perfect.
as an act of ancestor veneration, when songs that deceased loved ones enjoyed come on the radio (and i'm alone), i will allow these spirits to temporarily and partially take over my throat and mouth to sing the song how they used to. it is a noticeably different sound than i typically make, and sometimes involves a lot of voice cracking if the song is far out of my range. at the end of the song i thank the ancestor for watching over me, and bid them farewell for now.
when i was younger, i taught myself to enter what is now my spirit-world work space, but at the time was more akin to sherlock's mind palace. in here i would imagine myself burning and saving cds with individual songs that i wanted to remember, then i'd put them on the shelf, press them, and sing while listening to the whole song in my mind. i still utilize a similar method for much more then songs, but when it is songs i choose ones pertinent to my life or magical goals, as a method of manifestation through imparting the song messages onto my mind.
i will sing songs as simple spells on their own sometimes. some songs out there are entirely a spell in their own right, and don't need an accompanying ritual to have an effect after magically singing it. songs can be to curse, to bless, to heal, to ward, for anything that you find a song about really.
in healing-song applications specifically, i sing songs which are pertinent to my life or magical goals aloud, while doing basic visualizations of energy flowing from my throat and mouth, around my head and body, back into my crown and root energy centers. if doing it for another person, it's a similar application except the visualization of energy goes from your throat and mouth around to the other persons crown and root energy centers.
ive found music to be a good gateway for me to practice mindfulness, especially coloring, as it can be used to progress from having a distraction, to an infrequent distraction (music stuck in my head), and using that to practice redirection in mindfulness. i utilize mindfulness a lot in my spiritual practice so i thought this was pertinent.
i hope some of these methods prove helpful to someone! feel free to reply with any songs that are spells by themselves: one of my favorites is sympathy magic by florence + the machine.
have you seen the theory that sansa has empathy magic? if so i’d like to know your opinion on it
Dear nonny,
I’m not sure tbh. On the one hand Sansa has lots of empathy and her empathy clearly influences people, even some as brutal as the Hound. But on the other hand empathy magic is not really part of the magical system in Westeros - although I must admit it is most of the times a pretty vague system.
I do think that she has one of the magics of the CotF. Jon and Arya have warging, Bran greenseeing, and Sansa singing. The singing that is the kind of magic that moves peoples emotions:
“Old Nan says the children knew the songs of the trees, that they could fly like birds and swim like fish and talk to the animals,” Bran said. “She says that they made music so beautiful that it made you cry like a little baby just to hear it." (AGOT, Bran VII)
You probably could call this empathy magic, but I prefer to identify this as the magic of song and singing - not only that is sounds much more ‘magical’ but also for the wonderful Sansa/Luthien parallel. Sansa as Luthien fits so well to Jon as Beren, that you would have to snatch Sansa as a singer of magical songs who sings Jon’s soul back into life by singing “Florian and Jonquil” to him from my cold dead hands.
And I think we haven’t yet see the full force of her magic, because we’ve only witnessed the incident with the Hound after the Blackwater and nothing else yet.
I don’t know when I started doing it but I started singing my spells. I like it because I can use the music itself as part of the magic (minor key to indicate cursing or dampening an effect/using a trill to generate energy/holding notes to emphasis key points to the spell/etc, etc forever).
Does anyone else do this? I can’t be the only singing witch out there.
