Doreen Valiente has written in Witchcraft for Tomorrow that everything in nature is circular:
The mating dances of birds, the amazing springtime antics of hares, even the constant swarming of gnats on a summer evening, are all part of the same instinctive impulse. The earth, the moon, and all the planets join in a great circling dance about the sun. The island nebulae seem to be circling about a centre. The merry circle ance of the witches was a deeply instinctive response to the living Nature with which they sought kinship.
As the circle is an essential part of magick, rhythm is just as important, IMO. The ancient rite of dance, another "deeply instinctive response" to nature, channels energies and acts out sympathetic magicks, although it now unfolds on modern dancefloors instead of sacred groves. Music speaks directly to the subconscious -- so gathering your favorite songs on tape or CD and putting them on when you're going to the altar can only help in your workings.
What to choose? Filter through your collection and look for the stuff that's really special. You don't have to go with all happy-New-Agey stuff -- it's good to include things that whip you into a frenzy, things that calm you into a trance state, things that make you ecstatic and sorrowful and enraged and transcendent, things that pull a really strong reaction from you. Kind of like bottling each emotion and keeping it stored for when you need its influence in a spell or rite.
Mood is more important that what exactly the lyrics are saying, so if the words don't exactly "match," tune them out and pull only the music forward into your emotional state.
Below, some of my favorite altar soundtracks.
Download: Beehatch, Sigesang, Attalal(the Biosphere remix), Noh
Man's Land V, Base Metal(any mix), Seeeping Solus
Jane's Addiction: Up the Beach, Mountain Song, Ted, Just Admit It
Sleep Chamber: Only an Angel, Dream ov Life
This Mortal Coil: Dreams Are Like Water
Tori Amos: Caught a Lite Sneeze, Talula
Wench: Radio India
Dead Can Dance: pretty much anything, but especially the entire Spiritchaser
album
Meat Beat Manifesto: Repulsion, It's the Music(that's a Jimmy Swaggart
sample, isn't it?)
Juno Reactor:God is God
Cenobita: Cairo
The Cure: Plainsong
Prodigy: Weather Experience
Orbital: Halycon and On
Mother Destruction: Fetch
Skinny Puppy: Riverz End, Choralone
Future Sound of London: Slider
Ministry: Dream Song, Cannibal Song
This Ascension: Adonis, Amapala
Laeatherstrip: The Carnival Is Over
Lorena McKennitt: The Mummer's Dance
The Shamen: Moment
FrontLine Assembly: Prayer
Kid Spatula: Dirtwah
Black Sabbath: Planet Caravan
C-Tec: Let Your Body Die
Moby: Porcelain, Inside
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult: Starmarytr(those samples are from The
Occult Experience documentary and include Luisah Teish, Margot Adler and
Janet Farrar)
