Soundscapes For Ritual Magick

You can use soundscapes to evoke and exaggerate moods, and develop group-grown chants for rituals and spell-casting.

The idea of Soundscapes is for the group to explore how to use words, tones and sound patterns to build up a “picture” – creating the atmosphere appropriate to the chosen theme.

This example of a vocal Soundscape is one produced by an experimental drama group, when asked to express the theme of “Sweets”. The group members each chose “mantras” used in advertising jingles and developed individual rhythms, so that the resulting Soundscape was a mix of:

“Only the crumbl-iest, flaki-est choc-late, tastes like choclate nev-er tasted bee-fore!” (drawn out, sung high)
“Hot choclate, Drink-ing choclate.” (Chanted fast).
“Skit-tles” (repeated with a pause in between).
“Mars-Bars” (Bass chant).
“Smartie-People-are-happy-people” (light refrain)

Another example might be centered around ghostly supernatural beings. This might be something fun for Samhain, or other ritual magick that centers around the dark side.

Wind beats at the windows now, creatures of the night will prowl!” (drawn out, sung high)
“Ghosts Ghouls Scary Things” (Chanted fast).
“Ooooh – Eeee” (repeated with a pause in between).
“Bump in the Night” (Bass chant).
“You can’t scare me” (light refrain)

Get the idea? It’s useful to get people to brainstorm ideas about a particular subject or theme, and then to choose one word or phrase to use as the beginnings of a chant.

From The Magical Use of Voice