The PAGAN MUSIC LIST is an attempt to create a comprehensive list of Pagan, Heathen, Esoteric, Animist, and related music that we listen to and love. We include embedded YouTube, Soundcloud, or Bandcamp links when possible for each artist.

Previous collections in this series have been archived here, and new collections of reviews will be posted monthly (supporters get early access to new collections—find out more here).

We also provide a constantly updated index of artists that we have reviewed by name and genre.

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Collection 11: Irfan, Sun & Moon Dance, Tori Amos

Irfan

Electronic, Folk, Medieval, Darkwave

Recommended Album: Seraphim

Artist Website: https://irfantheband.bandcamp.com/

Irfan (عرفان) is the Persian word for “inner knowledge” or “mystery,” and it also means '“gratitude” in Arabic, and is a core sacred concept in Sufism. It’s a fitting name for this band electronic folk/darkwave project out of Bulgaria, whose music focuses heavily on the sacred in its various forms throughout eastern Europe, the Middle East, and India.

Fans of bands such as Dead Can Dance or Qntal likely already know Irfan (and if not, they’ll especially love this band). Dark chants and ecstatic intonations mix seamlessly with electronic Persian and Indian rhythms and traditional near-eastern and North African instruments (including the dudek, oud, bağlama, darbouka, and riq, amongst many others).

One of their best songs is the deeply hypnotic track, Return to Outremer. Outremer (pronounced “oo-tra-mer”) literally means “overseas,” and was the word Crusaders often used to describe the holy lands. This song is a song of longing for a lost lover, begging them to finally come back home.

Also fantastic is their song Simurgh, a prayer to the divine bird of that same name known to Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, and Arabic peoples. The Simurgh (part peacock, part dog, part lion) is a benevolent mythic healing creature which is said to connect the earth and sky together and to give prosperity and fertility to the earth.

Tori Amos

Pop, Singer-Songwriter

Recommended Album: Boys For Pele

Artist Website: http://www.toriamos.com/

Why include Tori Amos on a list of pagan music?

Anyone whose listened to her lyrics knows this answer.

Tori Amos is known for her intense piano playing (she often plays two pianos at once in live performances), her deeply erotic vocals, and sometimes apparently dissociative lyrics. But she has also probably specifically mentioned and referenced more pagan gods and goddesses in her songs than even the most explicitly pagan bands.

For instance, her most popular radio hit, Caught a Light Sneeze, uses the lore regarding Inanna (a name she also chants in multiple times in concerts, as well as during this song) and her visit to her sister in the underworld. The album that song is from (Boys for Pele) references the Hawaiian volcanic goddess, and the song Hey Jupiter references the Roman god.

It’s difficult to find an album of hers that does not reference some pagan deity or myth, and one album in particular, Night of Hunters, is drawn heavily from the Welsh lore of Taliesin and the myths of the Wild Hunt (see particularly her song, Battle of Trees).

Two songs in particular, however, bleed pagan imagery from every note. My absolute favorite is Sister Janet, which is densest with esoteric references. The most obvious of these are to Odin (“the Wanderer”), Aleister Crowley (“demon and an Englishman”), to necromancy and initiation (the references to “Marianne,” a ghost who appears repeatedly in her songs) and to the “Great Rite” (“slipping the blade in the marmalade”):

Master shaman, I have come
With my dolly from the shadow side
With a demon and an Englishman
I'm my mother
I'm my son
Nobody else is slipping the blade in easy
Nobody else is slipping the blade in the marmalade

All the angels all the wizards, black and white
Are lighting candles in our hands
Can you feel them, yes, touching hands before our eyes
And I can even see sweet Marianne

And in her song Apollo’s Frock, she references the story of Apollo’s jealousy of his twin sister Artemis in which he tricks her into killing her own lover, as well as the “ninefold” (the nine muses) and the Shekinah (the feminine presence of the Jewish god, likely a goddess he displaced).

Sun and Moon Dance

Nordic, Folk
Recommended Album: Ginnungagaldr
Artist Website: https://sunandmoondance.bandcamp.com/

Sun and Moon Dance is a brilliant and simple Nordic folk project from Appalachia by Chris Welsh, which I first learned about while researching Rúnahild. The two have collaborated several times: she has performed on his very first recorded track, Hymne til Freyja, and he has remixed/expanded her song Seidrúnar.

As with many amazing projects, there is criminally little written about Sun and Moon Dance (this short interview is all I could find), but also as with such projects, the music speaks for itself.

I recommend two tracks particularly. Thursamegin, particularly for its almost erotically repetitive nyckelharpa. The title means “strength of giants” (or “of the Jotun”).

Also, Pulse of Ginnunga (the primordial void in Norse Mythology) is equally enchanting, especially if you liked the previous track (it’s the nyckelharpa that does it…).

I traveled beyond the stars.
Beyond the form of Ymirs bones.
Beyond time and beyond space.
There, where no light dwell.
A yawning void, there at the beginning.
No sound but not silence.
I felt the pulse of nothing.

The Pagan Music List 11: Irfan, Tori Amos, Sun & Moon Dance