Journey of the soul: Loreena Mc Kennitt/Holiday wishes

Night Ride AcrossThe Caucuses.

Her music also spans all cultures. It never was logical to me why humans kill people we could learn so much from.

The Mystic's Dream

A great song for meditation and bringing yourself to a higher consciousness.

The English Ladye And The Knight

Never-ending Road.

In Praise of Christmas

All hail to the days that merit more praise
Than all the rest of the year
And welcome the nights that double delights
As well for the poor as the peer!
Good fortune attend each merry man's friend
That doth but the best that he may
Forgetting old wrongs with carols and songs
To drive the cold winter away.

Tis ill for a mind to anger inclined
To think of small injuries now
If wrath be to seek, do not lend her your cheek
Nor let her inhabit thy brow
Cross out of thy books malevolent looks
Both beauty and youth's decay
And wholly consort with mirth and sport
To drive the cold winter away.

This time of the year is spent in good cheer
And neighbours together do meet
To sit by the fire, with friendly desire
Each other in love to greet
Old grudges forgot are put in the pot
All sorrows aside they lay
The old and the young doth carol this song
To drive the cold winter away.

When Christmas' tide comes in like a bride
With holly and ivy clad
Twelve days in the year much mirth and good cheer
In every household is had
The country guise is then to devise
Some gambols of Christmas play
Whereat the young men do the best that they can
To drive the cold winter away.

All of her albums are so well done. I think my favorite is An Ancient Muse because it combines so many different elements of Celtic with a Middle Eastern feel. It is truly beautiful.

Every song tells a story.

Though there may be dispute as to actually when on the calendar Christ was born, I celebrate his birth and I find great comfort in his words. He is my ultimate teacher and I love him. I wish his love to stretch across the world this night and last forever and I also wish this:

That all who seek water are refreshed
All who are hungry are fed
All who now know only war see peace
All those alone are comforted.

Seasons Greetings

Not Loreena but Enya, hauntingly beautiful and peaceful too.

She also shares many influences in her music which is one reason why I love it so much.

I hear this and I dream I am standing on a cliff in a flowing white dress, my hair blowing in the wind, the fog lifting to reveal the man I was meant to love...

http://jonimitchell.com/library/video.cfm?id=237

Urge For Going

Beneath A Phygian Sky

Loreena wrote the following about the song:

"There's a piece called "Beneath A Phrygian Sky" that was inspired by my visit to an archaeological site near Gordion just outside of Ankara in Turkey, in Anatolia. And as with various archaeological sites that I visited, I'd be standing there looking at stones -- and on one level they're just stones but you can't help but feel that these stones have been witness to extraordinary periods of history. And in this archaeological site near Gordion they had uncovered some Celtic ruins but it appears that they weren't quite sure whether, in fact, this was a permanent Celtic settlement or if indeed that this was a contingency of mercenaries. For the Celts were well known to be very, very fearsome warriors and that often were off battling other people's wars. And so this theme of stones, this theme of wars, why people go to war, but also the reflection that surely there's enough history behind us, and embodied in that history enough lessons in it, that we should be able to be learning and improving and not making the same mistakes over and over again. So this song is as much a rumination of these threads as it is any definitive statement. But it reaches towards -- if there is one thing that can and should carry us forward, it is a concept of love."

Lullaby. Includes a powerful reading of poem by William Blake by the late Scottish actor Douglas Campbell. We must end war.

The Mummer's Dance

Dante's Prayer

Beltane Fire.

A Midwinter's Night's Dream

In The Bleak Midwinter.