You lit the fire last night. You crossed the threshold. You showed up at the edge of the corridor & walked through it.
Now comes the part that most of us rush past.
The integration. The settling. The quiet, unglamorous, deeply necessary work of embodying what you called in, released or set into motion last night. The Beltane fire doesn't finish its work at midnight. It banks down into something slower & more persistent. The kind of heat that changes things at the root rather than the surface.
And if you're working by the true astronomical cross quarter, the sun doesn't reach 15 degrees Taurus until May 5th. The land itself is still mid breath. You are not behind. You are exactly on time.
I built this playlist for exactly where you are right now. For this, the days between the fire & the full turning, when the work goes underground and the real transformation begins.
It's organized by the natural breath of fire itself. Three movements. Press play on track one and let it carry you through. The full playlist is waiting for you on Spotify, link at the end of this post.
Play it while you journal. Play it on a barefoot walk. Play it while the season finishes what it started in you last night.
This is music that holds ritual weight. You'll feel the difference.
THE INHALE The gathering. The anticipation. The liminal dark. Drawing the energy in.
This is where the playlist begins. In the place you inhabited before the fire was lit. Before the working. Before the crossing. The Inhale is the breath drawn deep into the body before anything is spoken or done. It is the moment of pure potential.
Although your ritual may be complete, this music will take you back to that threshold place, not to re do what was done, but to feel the full weight of what you stepped into. Integration requires returning to the moment of crossing with new eyes.
Heilung- Fylgija Ear / Futhorck Raw, ancient & visceral. Heilung reconstruct ritual music from historical texts using organic percussion, throat singing & chant. This is not background music. It is an invitation to alter your state. Their live Lifa recording on YouTube carries an energy the studio version can only gesture toward, definitely worth seeking out for your next working night. Note on this song, I tend to skip the beginning with the 'shakers'....
Wardruna- Algir- Stien klarnar From their 2009 album Runaljod, Gap Var Ginnunga. Wardruna's music inhabits a frequency that once heard has always seemed just adjacent to everyday consciousness. Let this one slow your nervous system down into something receptive.
Dead Can Dance- The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove Lisa Gerrard's voice is one of the few sounds that genuinely feels like it arrives from the Otherworld. This track carries that particular hunger, the pressing of the living world against the skin of what's possible. It is Beltane in sound form.
Faun- Walpurgisnacht A song written literally for the Night of Witches, with Faun's signature blend of medieval instrumentation and pagan lyricism. Let this one take you back to the edge of last night, to that moment just before everything shifted.
Omnia- Alive! Omnia sits between whimsy and something darker and more animist. This track pulses with the sovereign, wild energy of a practitioner who knows what this season actually is. The Inhale ends here. Full, ready, poised at the edge of the flame.
THE HOLD The working. The peak of energy. The moment between inhale & exhale where magick lives.
The Hold is the most potent moment in any breath, the split second of suspension where the inhale is complete & the exhale hasn't begun. Nothing moves. Everything is possible. This is where your magick comes together.
These tracks carry the energy of that suspended moment, the corridor of fire, the ordeal, the full commitment of crossing through. Play these when you need to sit inside the working rather than move through it. When you need to feel the heat on both sides.
Heilung- Krigsgaldr The opening chant will raise the hairs on your arms before the first minute is over. That is entirely the point. Seek out the live version on YouTube, watching this performed with full ceremony adds a dimension the studio recording can't come close to.
Loreena McKennitt- The Mummer's Dance This is your Beltane fire song. McKennitt evokes the memory of dancing at the old sabbats in a way that bypasses the analytical mind entirely. Your body will remember something your thinking mind has forgotten. Trust that remembering.
Forndom- Flykt Swedish dark folk rooted in pre-Christian Nordic tradition. Slower and more meditative than Heilung, this is the track for the moment in The Hold when the energy peaks and stillness becomes the most powerful thing you can offer. Breathe here. Don't move yet.
Wardruna- Helvegen The Road to Hel. Not morbid, transformational. This is the sound of crossing between what you were and what you are becoming. The Hold releases here into something inevitable. Wardruna's live performances of this track on YouTube are among the most quietly devastating things on the internet. Find them.
THE EXHALE The release. The integration. The torch coming down from the hill. What remains after the fire.
This is where you are right now.
The Exhale is not the diminishment of the breath, it is the completion of it. The release of what was held. The witch who walked through the corridor of fire doesn't emerge unchanged and immediately move on to the next thing. She sits with what she is carrying. She lets the smoke settle. She feels the weight of the torch in her hand and understands, perhaps for the first time. What it means that she is the one who carried it down from the hill.
These tracks are built for that sitting. For the days between the fire & the full turning of May 5th. For the integration that looks like ordinary life but is anything but.
Eivør- Trollabundin Faroese folk with a voice that sounds genuinely spellbound. The perfect descent from ritual space back into the body, grounding without being jarring. Let it bring you all the way home to yourself.
Dead Can Dance- Sanvean Lisa Gerrard wrote this while separated from her family that& ache lives in every note. No words your mind can decode, no framework your theology needs to negotiate. Just pure feeling moving through the body until the song tells you it's time to move.
Wardruna- Rotlaust tre fell A rootless tree falls. A rooted one stands. This is your integration track, the one that names what you just crossed through and anchors it in the body. What you reclaimed in that corridor of fire belongs to you now. Let this music remind you of that.
Omnia- Fee Ra Huri Joyful, wild, completely alive. After the ordeal. After the fire. After the working. This is the sound of the witch who came down from the Brocken with the torch in her hand & is just now realizing she's been changed by the carrying of it. Play this one loud. You earned it.
Loreena McKennitt- Dante's Prayer For the very end. When the candles are burning low and you are sitting quietly in what remains. This one lands in the chest every single time. The Exhale completes here, slowly, fully, with warmth.
THE DAYS BETWEEN Beltane through May 5th. For journaling, nature walks, Book of Shadows work, and the ordinary magic of a season still mid breath.
The breath doesn't stop after the Exhale. It begins again, slower, more integrated. These five tracks are for the in between days. The ones that don't look like ritual but are. The morning coffee before the altar. The walk where the land speaks to you. The journal entry that surprises you with what it knows.
Dead Can Dance- The Host of Seraphim One of Lisa Gerrard's most haunting compositions. For the quiet moments when you feel the full weight of what you've crossed through and need music that can hold that with you, without trying to fix it or rush you past it.
Heilung- Othan A gentler entry point into Heilung's world, more meditative, more breath based than Krigsgaldr. Beautiful for movement, stretching, or simply sitting outside in the May air & letting the season finish its work on you.
Wardruna- Raido From the new Birna album. The rune of the journey, which is exactly what this season has asked each of us to take. A perfect closing track for the full playlist & for the Beltane season itself.
Faun- Andro From their 2003 album Licht, one of Faun's earliest and most purely folk recordings. Gentle, flowing & deeply nature rooted. Perfect for a barefoot walk or a quiet morning with your journal and the last of the Beltane energy still humming in the air.
SKÁLD- Níu Ancient Nordic chant that feels genuinely timeless rather than reconstructed. Níu, nine, holds the weight of nine worlds in a single sustained note that seems to come from somewhere older than memory. Let it expand whatever the season has opened in you.
Danheim- Ymir From the body of the primordial giant the world itself was made, bones became mountains, blood became seas, breath became wind. The entire playlist closes here, on something vast and older than the fire that started it.
When this one ends, you who pressed play is not the same one who walks away from it.
THE PLAYLIST IS READY
The Breath of the Fire is live on Spotify, twenty one tracks, three movements, built to carry you through the full depth of the Beltane season, from Eve through the true cross quarter on May 5th to the new moon on May 16th.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3WnFKwuGHLeNtRMWBk1hJA?si=CJYFBBj4SKa29aRHh0M5-Q&pi=uz_Rmhn8RR6RY
If you find yourself pulled deeply into any of these artists, follow the thread. Faun will lead you to Omnia. Wardruna will lead you to Forndom. Dead Can Dance will open a door into an entire world of ethereal sound your practice will thank you for finding. And for Heilung & Wardruna specifically, seek out their live recordings on YouTube. Both perform with a ceremonial depth that transforms the listening experience entirely.
The breath of the fire is still moving through you. Let the music carry it all the way through.
BUT WAIT! THERE'S A SECOND PLAYLIST
Because the magick doesn't only happen in ritual space.
Into the Green was built for the everyday wild self, the witch moving through the height of the growing season between Beltane & Litha with the windows down and the land humming beneath everything she does. Fifteen tracks of modern, celebratory, untamed forest energy. Indie folk, dream pop & ethereal alt, curated for the witch who carries their magick into ordinary life.
Unlike The Breath of the Fire which follows a deliberate ritual arc, Into the Green flows as a single unbroken current. Wild, celebratory & completely alive. There is no Inhale or Exhale here. Just the forest at its most unapologetically lush, pulling you deeper into the growing season with every track.
Press play. Go outside if you can. Let the season finish what it started. 🌿🔥
Florence + The Machine- Dog Days Are Over The undisputed opening track for this season. Florence Welch is the modern witch of mainstream music whether she claims the title or not & this song is pure unleashed, untamed joy after a long winter. The happiness it brings is ferocious rather than gentle. Run if you want to. The forest is right there.
Hozier- Like Real People Do Hozier understands the animist world in his bones. This track carries that tender, forest-floor intimacy of the Beltane season, two wild things recognizing each other in the dark. Quietly devastating and completely alive.
Fleet Foxes- White Winter Hymnal Deceptively titled for a summer playlist but Fleet Foxes' layered vocal harmonics carry an ancient folk memory that belongs to every turning of the Wheel. This track specifically feels like something remembered rather than heard for the first time.
Novo Amor- Anchor Welsh indie folk artist whose music sounds like it grew directly out of the land rather than being written about it. Grounding, nature rooted, and carrying the quiet power of something deeply anchored in the earth, which is exactly where the Beltane practitioner stands right now.
Paris Paloma- Labour One of the most powerful modern folk tracks to emerge in years. A fierce, sovereign anthem about reclaiming your own energy & refusing to be diminished. This is Beltane sovereignty in a three minute song. Your bones will know it immediately.
Lana Del Rey- Wild At Heart Lush, sun-warmed and completely alive, this is Lana at her most open & unhaunted. The title says everything this season asks of you. Not tamed. Not contained. Not apologizing for the size of what you feel or the space you take up in the growing world. Let this one play with the windows down & the May air moving through.
Gregory Alan Isakov- The Stable Song One of the most quietly magickal folk tracks of the modern era. Isakov writes about the natural world with the reverence of someone who actually listens to it. This track specifically feels like early morning in May, dew on the ground, something large & ancient moving through the trees just beyond what the eye can follow.
Big Thief- Not Adrianne Lenker writes from a place of raw, animist connection to the world that feels genuinely pagan in its worldview, even if she wouldn't use that word. This track is wild, percussive & untamed in exactly the way the forest energy of this season demands. Let it move through you without trying to name what it stirs.
Iron & Wine- Naked As We Came One of the most quietly sacred folk songs in the modern canon. Sam Beam's voice is the sound of a fire burning low in the dark & warm, intimate and carrying the particular weight of things that matter deeply and cannot be said plainly. Perfect for the quiet, integrative heart of the season.
Maggie Rogers- Light On Rogers studied ethnomusicology and her relationship to nature and sound is genuinely rooted rather than aesthetic. This track carries the particular grace of someone who has been through something large & is walking out the other side, still lit from within. The season between Beltane & Litha in a single song.
Hozier- From Eden Hozier returns, because this season deserves him twice. From Eden is sovereign union, raw desire & the shadow side of beauty all at once. It is the most lush and forested of his tracks and it belongs here, at the growing heart of the playlist, where there's wild magick inside you & you're finally ready to stop apologizing for it.
Bon Iver- Holocene One of the most genuinely transcendent pieces of modern folk music. This track does something very few songs manage, it makes the listener feel simultaneously infinitely small & completely held by something vast. For the practitioner moving toward Litha & the peak of the light, this is the sound of arriving somewhere you didn't know you were headed.
Weyes Blood- Andromeda Natalie Mering writes music that sounds like it comes from another time entirely orchestral, mythological & deeply felt. This track carries the particular solstice energy of something at its absolute peak, looking both back at what was & forward at what the descent will eventually bring. The Oak King at the height of his power, knowing what comes next and choosing the light anyway.
Beach House- Space Song Dream pop at its most transportive. Victoria Legrand's voice is one of the most otherworldly sounds in modern music and this track carries the long, golden light of the season between Beltane & Litha, expansive, unhurried and quietly ecstatic. Let it take as long as it needs to.
Florence + The Machine- Cosmic Love The playlist closes where it began, with Florence. Cosmic Love is the Litha track. The peak of the light. The sovereign sun at its fullest. Stars & darkness and the wild love of something that cannot be contained or diminished or asked to be smaller than it is. A perfect closing to the season's musical journey & a perfect opening to whatever Litha asks of you when she arrives.
Both playlists are waiting for you on Spotify.
The Breath of the Fire for the ritual self, ancient, weighted, transformational. Into the Green for the everyday wild self, modern, alive & completely untamed.
Listen to The Breath of the Fire on Spotify
Listen to Into the Green on Spotify
The music is the medicine. Let it work.
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