Hey there! I wanted to let you know about some exciting **Wiccan meetups** happening in our area. If you're interested in Wicca or just curious to learn more, these gatherings are a great opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals and expand your knowledge. Wiccan meetups are **informal gatherings** where individuals with an interest in Wicca come together to share experiences, learn from each other, and build a supportive community. These meetups are usually **open to everyone**, regardless of their level of experience or knowledge about Wicca. Participating in Wiccan meetups can be a **valuable learning experience**. You can expect to engage in discussions about various aspects of Wicca, such as rituals, spells, deity worship, and the use of tools and symbols.

Vespertine at 20: Our guide to Björk’s romantic opus

In a way befitting of its creator, it was daring to release Vespertine in the dog days of summer. Released 20 years ago today, on August 27, 2001, Björk’s fourth full-length album took the icy exteriors of 1997’s Homogenic and went even further. She wanted to craft an album bound by domesticity, inspired by her newfound partnership with avant garde artist Matthew Barney, and delivered a record overflowing with wintry choirs and strings, icicle-delicate music box keyboards and beats. These tones and arrangements provided an idyllic backdrop to songs that mostly take place inside the home, wrapped up with a lover.

Conceived while filming Lars von Trier’s divisive musical, Dancer in the Dark, in which Björk starred and for which she wrote the film’s melancholy, whimsical soundtrack, Vespertine is a respite away from the business and chaos of the world. It may be a frosty record — the title literally means ‘relating to or occurring in the evening’, when the air is coolest and quietest — but it’s not alienating. There are moments here that may seem eerie or strange, but Vespertine also happens to be Björk’s most accessible and cohesive record in her sizeable catalogue. It has a welcoming character, feeling less like being stranded in the snow in subzero temperatures and more like pondering life from inside the warm cabin in the woods.

The album got a similar type of critical response as her prior records. Homogenic and Post in particular received the kind of critical adoration that artists can usually only dream of, but Björk continued her streak with Vespertine. From here, Björk would continue down her own various rabbit holes, experimenting with the human voice on the dense Medulla, creating obtuse pieces about the natural world on Biophilia. She got almost perversely personal on 2015’s abstract and winding Vulnicura, a heartbreaking sequel to Vespertine in that it found her constructing brutal orchestral pieces to background her processing her split from Barney and what it meant for her family. It was something she was still working through on her ninth album, 2017’s Arca-assisted Utopia.

Vespertine is, by some metric, the final album of hers that feels like a ‘pop album’ in any traditional sense. That it happens to be her strongest statement in a career of strong statements is testament to its timelessness – although that was achieved somewhat fortunately. Björk was aware that, in 2001, most people acquired their music on CDs or through illegal download platforms like Napster, and ultimately would listen to compressed files through computer speakers. She wanted to create an album using instruments she believed would be less compromised by these listening circumstances, and opted for minimalist beats beneath light, glistening, delicate sounds, created by harp, clavichord, and custom-made plexiglass music boxes (seen in the image above). Of course, Björk being Björk, they were recorded in pristine fashion, and still sound gorgeous, if not better, today in the age of audiophilia where this kind of instrumentation is much more commonplace in popular music.

In recent years, Björk has finally begun receiving her rightful recognition as a composer and producer of her own music. When Vespertine came out, her male contributors often got the majority of the credit. Electronic duo Matmos, for example, worked with her on the beats, but despite Björk laying claim to about 80% of them, she got almost none of the credit. In light of this, and simply because the record has aged beautifully, Vespertine’s 20th birthday is surely cause for celebration. Now go bundle up and luxuriate in its humane, tender, and emotionally resonant winter light. – Jeremy J. Fisette

Side A

01. “Hidden Place”

A soft, thrumming electronic loop. “Through the warmthest cord of care, your love was sent to me”: so begins Björk’s remarkable Vespertine, an album that emerged from the stresses of working on Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark and the joys of new love with artist Matthew Barney.

The hypnotic “Hidden Place” is the album’s gentle clarion call: Björk had originally intended to call the album Domestika, and “Hidden Place” is both a musical and lyrical evocation of homespun bliss. “I have been slightly shy,” goes one lyric, as references to hiding under blankets, seeking solace and sanctuary, and lulling love to sleep signal the sharp volte-face from the occasionally strident Homogenic.

“Hidden Place” manages to convey this almost too-precious domestic paradise with a beautifully restrained vocal, skittering beats like insects’ feet programmed on her laptop and assisted by Matthew Herbert and Matmos, and a simply sublime choral arrangement. It sounds like music made in a secluded ice cave. The electronics, choir, bass, and vocal knit together like a chunky sweater. It’s utterly riveting, and quite as fresh today as twenty years ago. The beautifullest, fragillest, yet still strong, dark, and divine – the beginning of a remarkable piece of art. – Matthew Barton

02. “Cocoon”

Despite there being no shortage of songs about sex, there aren’t too many that sing about it with as much tenderness, seriousness, and emotional specificity as Björk does on second track, “Cocoon”.

Vespertine is very much an album about new love, but “Cocoon” is decidedly about sex with this new partner, namely the first sexual encounter with them; that feeling of being absolutely astonished that they’ve chosen to stay with you, that it wasn’t a one night stand or a feeble flame blown out too soon.

Atop a bed of gorgeous plinking keys that perfectly mirrors the music box aesthetic Björk had in mind while making this record, and skittering beats kissed with the lightest of vinyl hiss, she sings so close to the mic it’s like she’s inside you (much like the man is described as being inside her in this song). It’s explicit, but never tawdry, retaining her knack for intriguing wordplay — “He slides inside, half awake half asleep / We faint back / Into sleephood” — that’s both evocative and shockingly direct. The song now has an inky, sad cousin in Vulnicura’s “History of Touches”, which is about the final sexual encounter with this partner. But, writing a song that’s as sexual as “Cocoon” without ever feeling plainly lurid or bawdy is a feat; that Björk does it with such sparkling warmth and grace is only more impressive, and that can’t be understated. – Jeremy J. Fisette

03. “It’s Not Up To You”

Arguing the most beautiful song on Verspertine is the equivalent of arguing which colour of tastes the best in a packet of M&Ms. However, the third track on the album, “It’s Not Up To You”, with its playful yet heavenly strings, harp and choir, is certainly up there.

As a child, my mother constantly had Björk’s albums residing in her car with the frequently played trilogy Debut, Post and Homogenic being on constant rotation. Her music has always had a very emotional weight beyond what my six year-old self could really contemplate. I couldn’t fathom any meaning in the lyrics back then, but some instinctual part of myself recognised that the music was beautiful. Why else did I break down in tears when the rousing strings in “Isobel” suddenly appeared after its chorus?

Vespertine, however, was an album I properly discovered as an adult, and perhaps that was the optimum time to unearth such a gorgeous project. Undoubtedly one of the more grown-up albums, she finds a freedom in its erotic and romantic nature that is sung without a trace of cynicism. However, my favourite song on the album is one that lacks the sexuality that pulses within many of Verspertine’s tracks.

A glorious shapeshifter, “It’s Not Up To You” finds Björk coming to terms with something I still haven’t quite accepted: life is unpredictable. There are many directions such a theme could take, yet she makes the track a very bright spot that, rather than revealing all its marvellous cards at once, takes its pleasure in the slow unfurling. The beginning is a red herring with its ominous gurgling synths which are then joined by dreamy strings that gently swoon beneath the beat. “I wake up and the day feels broken…” Björk begins, which may initially seem miserable until she sings: “The evening I’ve always longed for / It could still happen.” It’s this healthy notion of not giving up hope completely, of remembering that what hurts this morning could be forgotten by the afternoon.

In the second verse, there’s even another attempt to create a semblance of an “ideal life” (“How do I master the perfect day? / Six glasses of water / Seven phone calls / If you leave it alone it might just happen / Anyway…”). Soon, however, a freeing logic finds itself in the song as it shifts into the euphoric chorus. “It’s not up to you” she sings with an aloof energy as the music soars around her before clarifying “Oh it never really was.” There’s a relief in relinquishing that belief that you can be prepared for every eventuality and that every structure created in life is assuredly sound. It feels as if Bjork has created a realm not of existential dread but rather existential empowerment where we can contemplate life without necessarily being crushed by it.

This track resounds more with me now than it did when I properly heard it some years ago. Sometimes you just need someone to tell you that life, for all its ugliness and tragedy, can be the most affirming thing if you simply acknowledge that there are things you cannot control. The true beauty of this song is that it neither coddles you or slaps you – it gives you an admittedly harsh reality while urging you not to succumb to its harshness. – JT Early

Side B

04. “Undo”

(Yes) The movement of two bodies. The sound of strained whispers. The clicking of nerve endings. The pleasure of fingertips. The echo of “ooooooh”s and “aaaaaaah”s. (Wait)

There is something wonderfully brittle and fragile about “Undo”. It is explicit – yes – but even moreso: intimate. (Now) Björk’s voice breaks, at times drops into gasps, then all of a sudden echoes. A choir, a string section – bodies and blankets. (Yes) Progressing from Opiates’ beat, the electronics sounding like flashing lights in total darkness (More) to harp, then to wet electronic rustling, “Undo” chronicles movements and impacts, while Björk’s anticipatory performance (“You’re trying too hard…” – “Sweetly”) explores the sonic space of in-betweens like lovers bodies do. (YES)

Of all the sweet and sexy songs on Vespertine, this is the one that rises above, finds expressions for the expressionless, allows Björk full sensuality and simulate the authentic. A promise: a whisper: a choir: two beats. (MORE) – John Wohlmacher

05. “Pagan Poetry”

In a post-Vulnicura world, a song like “Pagan Poetry” hits different. The dissolution of Björk’s relationship with Matthew Barney may have inspired some of her best and most emotionally devastating recent work, but its burgeoning infancy 20 years ago gave rise to the glistening, romantic, auditory bliss of Vespertine, which, at its fluttering heart and centre, featured a song that had the music fall away entirely so that Björk could repeatedly insist, “I love him, I love him, I love him.”

“Pagan Poetry” sees Björk wrestle between two elemental, internal forces: her sexual desire and her emotional needs. It’s a battle over her sense of self, over her identity as it shapeshifts under the aegis of committed coupledom: “this time, I’m going to keep me all to myself” she asserts as multi-tracked Björks coo like like Disney squirrels and bluebirds all around her, “but he makes me want to hand myself over.”

Elsewhere, the track is rich with erotic imagery, as in a quintessentially Björkian phrase, she describes the “blueprint of the pleasure in me.” It’s all made mysterious and darkly menacing by the custom music box that forms the song’s central musical hook, whilst the tectonic violence of the beat subverts Vespertine‘s reputation as being all lace and brittle icicles. This is a physical song about the physicality of giving oneself over sexually and emotionally, and within it, it contains the kernel of the pain that would come to pass many years down the line.

Its accompanying Nick Knight-helmed video finds a visual representation of that sacrifice of self and long-gestating pain that was too visceral for MTV and too wince-inducing for this music writer to watch more than once on his DVD of Björk’s collected music videos: a wedding dress literally sewn into her skin. A piercingly direct visual metaphor for Vespertine‘s most strikingly forceful song. – Andy Johnston

06. “Frosti”

To most, the 100-second long “Frosti” is just a lovely interlude amidst a series of wintry dreams. But this is a Björk album – there are no ‘just’ anythings.

Having composed the song, and initially intended for it to have vocals, Björk sent the melodies to specialist music box maker Jack Perron and his team, who – carved? transcribed? – let’s say ‘put’ them into the stunning device. Far from the wooden music boxes of yore, Björk decided she wanted colourless, plexiglass boxes – much to the creators’ chagrin. “They couldn’t get their head round it – they were like ‘Why?’ They wanted to make the plonky sound softer with wood but I wanted it as hard as possible, like it was frozen,” she told Record Collector. Of course, ultimately, Björk got her own way: “In the end, they said it was the best thing they’d ever done.”

Just listen to the wonder of “Frosti”, and you know this to be true. It takes the homespun whimsy of a traditional music box and expands it into an immersive snow globe of sounds. While there are the tones of these custom boxes heard throughout Vespertine, this is the song where their magic shines clearest. – Rob Hakimian

Sixteen Björk songs that will convert anyone into a lifelong fan

Everybody has a story about Björk. Everybody. Whenever someone on Twitter or Reddit asks people for their weirdest celebrity encounters, my very amateur mathematics would suggest approximately 45 per cent of them are about her. In fact, even in my own life, people seem to constantly want to inform me they have met Björk, probably in part because I am absolutely obsessed with her: a friend of a friend went to Reykjavik and on his first night found himself at dinner with her. Two met her at a gay bar in East London. Another attended a Drag Race viewing party in Brooklyn that he’s sure she DJed (she absolutely does DJ at Drag Race viewing parties, by the way: here's a video of her remixing Calvin Harris at one. But Daniel is unsure if he was seeing her or a drag impersonator at this particular event. Again: this is the kind of mundane surrealism that Björk anecdotes are peppered with.)

This is because Björk – a woman who has spent most of her career cultivating an experimental body of work – is also cursed with the way her work and behaviour breeds a very different, slightly problematic mystique in its reception. She is someone who just seems to constantly engage with the world and a lot of the time, the world actively wants to make it sound like she is an Icelandic fairy godmother, rather than a real human being. Does she actively release vinyls the colour of slug puss and star in insane arthouse films? Of course she does! She’s Björk! But society has often put her in the box of a spaced-out, paparazzi-attacking, swan dress-wearing proto-pixie dream girl who has made it through life by deals with Cthulhu rather than talent. This is not the Björk her music or conversations prove her to be: she is curious, engaged with how every facet of the arts is growing and changing. Listen to her in any interview and it is clear she is not just one of the most important musical artists of the last century, but one of the most interesting artists across any discipline in the last century too.

I fell in love with Björk the moment I watched her documentary with David Attenborough about the intersection of nature and art: it was during the release of her album Biophilia, for which she designed instruments specifically to record and perform the work. She released an app at around the same time that allowed you to experience the album as a kind of educational, ambient solar system. It was so wacky and yet came from such a place of knowledge and ability. I was smitten. Even in her fifties she continues to push the boundaries of what any of us expect, working with queer innovators such as Arca, the designer James Merry and making the incredible VR accompaniment to what many might argue is her magnum opus, the heartbreaking Vulnicura. Even on her latest album, Utopia, she is putting out songs I am still hearing at 4am in converted industrial buildings: most artists who have worked for as long as her begin to lose the plot about now. Not Björk. Why? Because she is still out there, in the world, playing remixes of top 40 hits in Brooklyn lofts, saying hello to people in parks, forever making art that reflects a world she still participates in.

I See Who You Are

Lyrics © WARP MUSIC LIMITED, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.

Lyrics powered by LyricFind

You can expect to engage in discussions about various aspects of Wicca, such as rituals, spells, deity worship, and the use of tools and symbols. The atmosphere is often **friendly and welcoming**, providing a safe space for individuals to express themselves and ask questions. One of the **benefits of attending Wiccan meetups** is the opportunity to connect with experienced practitioners who can offer guidance and advice.

12 Comments

I'd like to think the song is purely situational and could be her daughter in one sense and a her partner. love's love in this song and the interprestation in this song is purely spiritual. listen to the message: enjoy your time here on earth and love all you can.

It's reported that this song is written about her daughter, Isadora- similar to My Juvenile, supposedly about her son Sindri. This song is so beautiful- you can hear the love in her voice. I cry everytime i hear this song- beats all her others. No, to all you boys out there, this is not a lesbian song- she loves her daughter. Like that solo acapella section at the end of Pagan Poetry, this is an expression of pure emotion. Bjork has bared her soul, and it's beautiful.

She's talking from the third person. I doubt it's about her daughter because of the whispered 'lover'. She's talking from her lover's POV.

I don't think the word "lover" stands merely for a boyfriend or girlfriend. In this song for example, I think it's more about the passions the person she's talking about (her daughter). She knows she'll grow up to be passionate over everything she enjoys, she sees her just like a reflection of herself, because the girl was inside her. It's a deep, organic, and spiritual connection brewed by motherly love.

I think like PeaceOfGod this is third person and it isn't talking about her. She is talking to all us. About the love of a man to a girl. I think

at first i thought this was about her daughter. but then i saw this: "let's celebrate now all this flesh on our bones let me push you up against me tightly and enjoy every bit of you" those lyrics sound very sexual to me.

This can be easily interpreted as a hug.

i agree with dustybreeze. that part sounds a lot like sex anyhow, this song is so beautiful.. i love the music

Many Wiccan meetups include **workshops and classes** led by knowledgeable individuals who are willing to share their expertise. These educational sessions can help you deepen your understanding of Wicca and its practices. Moreover, Wiccan meetups also provide a supportive environment for **socializing and networking**. You can make new friends, find mentors, and even form or join **covens** - small groups of individuals who practice Wicca together on a regular basis. Being part of a coven can enhance your spiritual journey, as it offers a sense of community, support, and accountability. To find Wiccan meetups in our area, you can start by checking online platforms such as **Meetup.com** or local community forums. These platforms often list upcoming meetups, including details about the date, time, location, and theme of the gathering. Don't hesitate to **reach out** to the organizers or other attendees if you have any questions or need additional information. Remember, attending Wiccan meetups is a personal choice, and it's important to feel comfortable and respected in the gatherings you choose to participate in. If you're curious about Wicca or already a practitioner, these meetups can be a **wonderful opportunity to connect with others who share your interests** and further your spiritual journey. So, why not give it a try and make some new connections with fellow Wiccans in your area? You may discover a welcoming community and learn valuable insights that can enrich your path in Wicca. Blessings, [Your Name].

Reviews for "Discovering the power of community: Join local Wiccan meetups"

1. Karen - 1 star

I recently attended a Wiccan meetup in my area and it was a complete disappointment. I had high hopes of meeting like-minded individuals and engaging in meaningful discussions about our shared beliefs. However, what I encountered was far from that. The group seemed more focused on superficial discussions about witchcraft aesthetics and the latest trendy crystals. There was no depth or intellectual stimulation in the conversations. Moreover, there was an overwhelming sense of cliquey-ness within the group, making it difficult for newcomers like me to feel welcome. Overall, I left the meetup feeling unsatisfied and alienated, and I won't be returning.

2. Jake - 2 stars

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