Let It Begin Now: Music from the Spiral Dance (CD)

By Starhawk and Reclaiming & Friends
Reviewed by Abel R. Gomez

The Bay Area Reclaiming Community is renowned for their annual Halloween Spiral Dance ritual. Each year thousands flock to San Francisco to partake in the Spiral Dance remembering the beloved dead, journey to the Underworld, and dance the spiral the renews the world.

LET IT BEGIN NOW is the soundtrack to the magickal and inspirational music of the Spiral Dance. It opens with prayer to the four elements then proceeds into elaborate and colorful invocations to the elements, the Goddess, the God, and a journey to the Underworld. The ritual climaxes at the title track, Let It Begin now, during which participants dance the spiral and spin their musical spell to bless the world. Singers sing of this blessing: “Let it begin with each step we take, and let it begin with each change we make, and let it begin with each chain we break, and let it begin with each time we awake.”

The musical sound of LET IT BEGIN NOW is similar to many Pagan chant CDs, relying strongly on drums and a cappella arrangements in such tracks as Lyke-Wake Dirge, The God Song, Set Sail, and the Gates. LET IT BEGIN NOW does not stop there, though, it also incorporates a fiddle, guitar, saxophone, bass, cello, and many others. Its strength is both in talented singers and colorful musical arrangements.

Perhaps the greatest strength of LET IT BEGIN NOW is in its lyrics. The album is, in fact, ritual poem in song. Tracts like There is No End to the Circle: Goddess Invocation can bring listeners to tears with just one listen. Another particularly powerful song is the conclusion track, There is No End to the Circle: Goddess Devocation in which the chorus sings, “For we are the guardians of the world, and we can heal the earth again. As the hills turn green from winter rain, ours is the power to sustain. And we can dream what’s never been, unbounded love for women and for men, for all that grows, all that leaps and flies and swims, and ours in the power to begin.”

Rating: 5 out of 5 magick wands!