Or maybe it’s not just pop music. Maybe not just healing magic either. Maybe the air is filled with magic for love, success, shadow work, meditating, visualizing – whatever it is that a Witch may need. When I had no tools or materials, all I needed were my headphones.
I’ve been listening to music as long as I can remember, though it has taken me a while to find the ones I can do Witchcraft. But after I started doing it, exercising my imagination and trying different things, there’s more than one track that has worked for me. Most of them are Lady Gaga songs, because whoever knows me knows how much I love that woman, and so there’s a lot of her music here.
However, like with Witchcraft in general, music is not a perfect remedy. It doesn’t help every time, it doesn’t always manifest the best results, and it’s a matter of practice. However, it’s worked more often than not for me, and so I hope it does for my readers as well.
A DJ at a turntable [Pexels]
I discovered Gaga when I was 14. LoveGame became one of my favorites because of how direct it is. Before I knew the whole meaning, I would listen to it to imagine myself in different situations, trying to break free from the cage I felt in for being so shy and insecure. It made me feel brave and confident, and store those feelings for when I needed them. It was a light in my chest helping me breathe, literally. The effect is stronger when I listen to the remix with Marilyn Manson.
This was an easy one. Since I started listening to it, I’ve felt more in tune with my divination skills, I’ve understood better the messages that I get and my feelings. Every time I listen to it, I visualize myself in a black space with shooting stars raining around me and a white mist-light floating around, going inside my third eye. During the last minute, I imagine I’m going up and being surrounded by light, nothing escaping my sight. I pair it with “PSY or DIE”, with Carnage, for manifestation, freedom, and energy.
I use this song to confront a part of my shadow that wants to control everything and everyone, that toxic idea of love that tells me that I should be needed for them to be happy, a monster that eats my heart sometimes while I lay in bed, making me wonder what would happen if I let it all out. Picturing a ball of thick, black, lightless liquid dripping inside of me, between my ribs, I mouth and sing the lyrics picturing myself in a lonely home, letting the liquid out, my body clean by the end of the song.
This album brought me a lot of peace and happiness countless times, imagining myself in a little boat in the middle of the ocean, dark waters with lights all shades of blue, purple, and pink, a starry sky above me, as I let the sounds repair the bones I felt were broken at the beginning. I’d listen to “So Much Is Lost (String Version)” for a condensed, quick effect, but it would be way more powerful after all the other 15 songs in the Japanese Edition. It also sparked my productivity and creativity to a new level.
The whole album is amazing, but “Hair” is my all-time favorite. Period. It’s helped me get through life time and time again. I’d picture myself covered in lightning, fire, running around every place I could imagine, crying in silence as I mouthed the lyrics, imagining I was shouting them to a crowd made of every single person that has hurt me, abused me, used me, insulted me, and mocked me. All the emotional scars I’d hidden inside would appear like bright, red cuts on the surface as I screamed, and they’d heal right away. I’ve also used to work on my self-esteem and self-image, my hair being the thing I’ve hated the most.
This was a recent one. It helps me be conscious of my destructive behaviors, my toxic traits, my past, my mistakes, and the things I hate the most about me. Picturing all that negativity wrapping itself around me and suffocating me, I see it going inside as I try to escape, alone with no one around. It’s a form of reminding myself that nobody will save me if I don’t save myself first. Sometimes my body cracks under the pressure, and sometimes I barely make it. Either way, it’s a catharsis every time.
I’ve used it as a prayer a lot. When I started honoring my ancestors and I felt miserable, like I wasn’t going anywhere, I would play this song in my head and sing it in a low voice, remembering that I come from a family of immigrants, that I’m an immigrant, and that I’m not alone, that I’ll travel one day and will go back to visit sooner than later. More than visualizing, I felt the lyrics as I asked for help to get through the day.
A crowd at a concert [Pexels, Teddy Yang]
The whole album is a musical ritual to drain hate, regrets, poison, and thirst for revenge. Almost all of the songs incorporate fire, and that’s what I picture: rains of fire, a forest burning in a thunderstorm, blazing flames coming out of the ground, my body ablaze as it’s reshaped, a ring of fire around me… It’s a perfect catharsis to let out all of the stress and ill intentions, breaking free from my worst desires. The most useful have been “Half God Half Devil”, “River of Fire”, “Roots”, and “Joan of Arc” (for now).
I listened to this song to heal from my biggest heartbreak, a toxic relationship that took me years to recover from. The video was my visual aid while visualizing, picturing different memories as they shifted from one another, and I’d let them burn and fade and melt and whatever other option I had, trying to destroy whatever tied me to them: the need, the shame, the dependency, and the guilt of allowing myself to be fooled by someone else to that degree. Another song that helped me in the same way was Taylor Swift’s “Out of the Woods”, with elemental visualizations.
This is another for violent healing magic, and a video that helps with the visualizations. For this song, I’d be fighting myself, a corrupted version, as my body cracked and black tar came out of it. It felt much more real than before at the end of 2022, when I was suffering from auditory hallucinations, and so it became a prayer to break free from my own head. I also started using the Synthwave Edition for meditation and recovering.
My favorite album so far. There’s not a song I don’t love, and they all healed me and keep healing me as I listen to them. All of my fears, insecurities, guilts, and traumas find a way out when I listen to Chromatica, each song a prayer, a spell, a meditation, and it’s different every time. I do try to keep the pink color that represented this era so well, but my mind goes the wildest with this album: my face distorted, colored lights coming out of my body, fantasy landscapes in full detail… I’ve also used a few songs from the remix album, Dawn of Chromatica.
And more…
Of course these are not the only songs I’ve used. I’ve meditated with Faun’s “Satyros Niel Mitra Remix”, connected with my ancestors with Lidnsey Stirling’s “Mirage”, used Adrian Von Ziegler’s “Forest Sanctum” in countless reiki sessions, healed myself with Kerli’s “Diamond Hard”, and casted a curse with Strvngers’ “Swan Dive”. I’m constantly looking for new things, news ideas, and forms to put this practice to the test. It’s a constant work in progress that I wouldn’t change for anything.
The Wild Hunt is not responsible for links to external content.
To join a conversation on this post:
Visit our The Wild Hunt subreddit! Point your favorite browser to https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Wild_Hunt_News/, then click “JOIN”. Make sure to click the bell, too, to be notified of new articles posted to our subreddit.