For me in my life, music has always been magic. The greatest source of it - a mystical well where I, with my meager human shaped bucket, can, at any time in any place, gather that elixir to hydrate my soul.
And as we at Missing Witches also gather names to add to the list of people who help us define what magic is, what a soul is, what it might mean to be a Witch, I hear the music of Alice Coltrane. Alice Coltrane who, no stranger to loss, found music, and found God.
Alice released or played on more than 20 albums, wrote at least three books, opened an Ashram, but she’s probably best known as Wife of Saxophonist John Coltrane. We see this all the time. Wife Of more famous but likely less interesting Man, influencing from behind and beside the spotlight.
So let’s take today to dig through my record collection and amplify the tones of Alice Coltrane who hoped her music would be “a form of meditation and spiritual awakening for those who listen with their inner ear.” (liner notes - Journey…)
Let’s listen to her story with our inner ears, and hear her music with our guts.
In 1972, she told DownBeat magazine, "I would go through all the great scriptures of the world, and in every religion I found the same thought: 'The divine sound is the creative force in the universe.' Music is that sound."
Listen now, transcript below.
It’s not been an easy year - globally, greed, violence and the struggle for power claw at the skin of a loving Earth, everything hurts, Risa is sick, my best friend’s father is slowly dying, a new friend died, an old friend died, a flood washed away a chunk of my land, and it’s all got me thinking too much about the impermanent nature of everything I hoped or naively assumed was forever.
I return to learning the stories of role models, and sharing them with you that they might give you hope, strength, tools, or understanding.
And I return again and again to the little room where thousands of wax discs tell my life story. I return to turntables that spin in circles like planets. Like time. I weep. I laugh. I dance. Reborn on repeat. I’ve heard many people say that music saved their lives. Music saves my soul - pulls me back from the brink of despair, and connects me to divine beauty that has always, always existed.
You see, the universe as we know it was structured by sound waves emitted by the Big Bang, or as Alexa Rose sings it, “we are created by sound. We are created by the song of the universe…All creation sings.”
For me in my life, music has always been magic. The greatest source of it - a mystical well where I, with my meager human shaped bucket, can, at any time in any place, gather that elixir to hydrate my soul. And as we at Missing Witches also gather names to add to the list of people who help us define what magic is, what a soul is, what it might mean to be a Witch, I hear the music of Alice Coltrane. Alice Coltrane who, no stranger to loss, found music, and found God.
I titled this episode Spiritual Jazz for two main reasons. First - it’s jazz music that has some kind of influence of spirituality, like an older, cooler, wiser, deeper, 3rd cousin twice removed of christian rock. It’s a music genre. One that Alice Coltrane embodied and exploded in musical fractals of auditory kaleidoscopes. Unlike christian rock, most spiritual jazz has no lyrics, so rather than telling you about spirit, spreading an idea with words, spiritual jazz encourages us to experience what spirituality is, means, feels like, conceive of an idea, through the vibrations of a universe explained in the emotion of notes. Spiritual Jazz.
Second, when I think of jazz, I think about complexity, simplicity, Whiplash style perfectionism and wild improvisation, avant garde ways of rethinking time signatures and expectations. It’s soft, cool, free, acid, bebop, swing - joyful, angry, soothing, confrontational, celebratory, mournful. All things. And to me, Witchcraft is a kind of Spiritual Jazz, where we are free to follow, create, bend and break the rules - where reverence, play and choice lock into a rhythm to honor the Universe. Spiritual Jazz.
I am currently listening to Alice Coltrane’s album Journey In Satchidananda, recorded in 1970. Cecil McBee comes in on bass, Tulsi on tamboura, Vishnu Wood on oud, and Alice, who wrote all the songs, makes her grand entrance to the party with the sweeping of harp strings. Heart strings. My heart sings. And I am in a state of spiritual jazz.
Alice released or played on more than 20 albums, wrote at least three books, opened an Ashram, but she’s probably best known as Wife of Saxophonist John Coltrane. We see this all the time. Wife Of more famous but likely less interesting Man, influencing from behind and beside the spotlight.
So let’s take today to dig through my record collection and amplify the tones of Alice Coltrane who hoped her music would be “a form of meditation and spiritual awakening for those who listen with their inner ear.” (liner notes - Journey…) Let’s listen to her story with our inner ears, and hear her music with our guts.
In 1972, she told DownBeat magazine, "I would go through all the great scriptures of the world, and in every religion I found the same thought: 'The divine sound is the creative force in the universe.' Music is that sound."
One source I found says that Alice was born Alabama in 1937, and her family moved to Detroit soon after. Every other source says she was born in Detroit, so we’ll just stick with that. Detroit in ‘37 was a city at a crossroads. A place of industrial might, opportunity and economic challenges, racial tensions, and growing labor movements. It was also already laying the foundations to be one of the great hotbeds of American music. And Alice came from a musical family - mum in the church choir, brother a drummer, sister who would go on to become a songwriter at Motown, and a father who encouraged it all.
She played gigs, mostly piano, wherever she could in Detroit - church, weddings, funerals - until she moved to Paris in the late 50s where she studied classical music and jazz. It was in Paris that she met her first husband, Kenny, whose heroin addiction drove Alice to take her young daughter Michelle back to her family in Detroit.
Now John Coltrane was also a heroin and alcohol addict, but he had already kicked by the time he and Alice met. He called his recovery a spiritual awakening and divine intervention. When John met Alice in 1963 at Birdland, a jazz club in New York City where Alice was performing as piano accompanist to vibraphonist Terry Gibbs, the two soul mates hit it off immediately, both sharing a deep love of jazz and an ever expanding definition of and devotion to their spirituality. He introduced her to meditation and Eastern philosophy.
For me, part of what elevates the musical genius of both John and Alice, and maybe part of what connected them on that soul level musically, was their ability to improvise. To be moved equally by education and intuition - to hear what music wants to be in the world in this exact moment - to be so ‘in the pocket’ as musicians say, that you can go off into the clouds while keeping feet rooted and eyes connected to the people you’re making music with. It requires confidence and imagination. It’s how we Witches can improvise our Craft. Finding that point of intersection between our bodies, minds and spirits. What do we feel? What do we think? What do we dream? How do we combine these into a spell that works? And indeed, Alice Coltrane’s music just works - as a devotional offering to God, as a means for meditation, as a way to connect with our inner selves, as a spell - it works.
Alice and John had three children together, Alice appeared on many of John’s albums, and together they revolutionized music. Then, in 1967, at the age of 40, John died of liver cancer.
Alice was rocked, but channeled her grief into music, recording and releasing her requiem for John, an album she called A Monastic Trio, “music dedicated to the mystic, Ohnedaruth, known as John Coltrane…”. (liner notes - AMT)
She said:
"After John passed, my deep concern was to rise above the normal, human, mundane feeling of loss... I had to transcend it. I began looking for help, searching for guidance." (The Guardian, 2004) "I had to take that experience into another realm, to go beyond the loss, to find a deeper understanding of the universe and my place within it." (New York Times, 2004) "It wasn’t until after John passed that I began to understand more deeply that music can serve as a vehicle for the soul’s expression of the divinity." (JazzTimes, 2001)
I’m currently listening to A Monastic Trio. Trying to transcend loss. I can hear the freneticism of grief in Alice’s piano playing. Scattered emotions run as fingers hit keys, keys hit hammers, hammers hit wires. Low notes mourn and rhythms dance. Tumbling octaves, sometimes discordant, sometimes like butterfly wings, sometimes bat wings give our inner ears a soundscape of the spiraling nature of contending with loss. Her harp enters, and we imagine angel John, halo aglow. “”[T]he spiritual theories of John’s Spirit are a code sprinkled in the endless arpeggios.” (liner notes - AMT - LeRoi Jones)
The massive golden harp that Alice played was a gift from John - he had ordered it for her before he died, but it wasn’t delivered until after he was gone. To Alice, this was a message from spirit to continue John’s work and musical explorations. To encode his spirit in arpeggios.
The liner notes of A Monastic Trio include an interview that Alice gave to Pauline Rivelli who wrote:
“Sitting with Alice Coltrane in her home, one could actually feel the presence of John Coltrane.
Surrounded by his children, John Jr. (who looks exactly like his father), Ravi and baby Oranyan, a feeling of great love permeated the air. Spiritually, John Coltrane was there too. A huge, golden harp sat next to a concert grand piano; drums and cymbals, bells and gongs were about the room, reminding us of John Coltrane's explorations in sound.
The quiet dignity of Alice Coltrane, the tranquility and graciousness of her home, confirmed the belief that John Coltrane truly left a great legacy to those dear to him - peace and love.” (liner notes - AMT)
According to Alice, John wasn’t looking to make music. He was trying to channel a “universal sound.” (liner notes - AMT)
How to even attempt to conjure the soul’s expression of divinity into music, a universal sound? To accomplish this, Alice blended everything she could find from the whole world. She went through a profound period of grief and soul-searching, which led her to explore many religious and mystical traditions as pathways to peace and understanding. Alice threw herself entirely into this spiritual seeking, her search leading her to study the teachings of several spiritual traditions from around the world, including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, as she sought a greater understanding of life and the universe. Spiritual Jazz.
In Monument Eternal: The Music of Alice Coltrane, Franya Berkman, an accomplished music scholar and composer herself, wrote:
“[She] clearly drew from "whatever sources were available.” In her prose, she moved between disparate styles: poetry, first-person diary confessions, and the mystical direct writing of God's word. She borrowed liberally from the King James Bible, from translations of the Bhagavad Gita, and from her own colloquial speech. In a parallel fashion, her music synthesized gospel progresions, Western art music, and dissonant, free-meter improvisations.
Alice produced a hybrid artistry that spoke in tongues. She uttered the insider, ritual tongue of glossolalia, drawing on the sacred and secular vernaculars of Detroit's African American subculture. She also spoke in the multiple public discourses of art music and jazz modernism. Her work achieved a complex synthesis that does [...] ultimately "both affirm and challenge the values and expectations of the reader"
That said, her oeuvre moves completely beyond these binaries: her self-proclaimed mysticism disrupts these relational modes. In fact, I believe that Alice was trying to transcend the "complex subjectivity" [...] and to do so required moving beyond the realm of the material world and its limits and conditions.”
Alice became particularly drawn to Hinduism and the teachings of Swami Satchidananda, a prominent Indian spiritual leader who was known for building bridges between Eastern spiritual wisdom and Western audiences. Swami Satchidananda’s teachings on the inner self resonated deeply with Alice’s growing and expanding spiritual inclinations. The details of how they met seem to have gone undocumented, but we do know that Swami had at some point moved to the U.S. and gained recognition for his ability to bridge Eastern wisdom with the Western world. His teachings focused on yoga, meditation, and the philosophy of oneness and universal consciousness, concepts that resonated with Alice's own evolving spiritual understanding.
Throughout the early 70s this connection to the Swami, to Hinduism, and to this calling deepend. In 1970 she made the aforementioned album Journey in Satchidandana, named in honour of Swami, and Universal Consciousness the following year.
I am currently listening to Universal Consciousness. But listening is the wrong word… I am experiencing what it might sound like to dig past the depths of consciousness to reveal something deeper, something stranger than anything we understood before. It’s wild. Almost as if Alice is going through the stages of grief with each piece or each album. Universal Consciousness rips at my sanity, confronts my anger. I hear and feel a release of confusion and comfort. For a moment, I transcend loss and enter a state of spiritual Jazz.
“In 1976, Alice Coltrane had a revelation in which she received divine instruction to renounce secular life and don the orange robes of a swami, or spiritual teacher in the Hindu tradition. Thereafter, she was known as Swamini (the feminine form of "swami") Turiyasangitananda; she translated her "anointed" name from Sanskrit as "the Transcendental Lord's highest song of bliss." Typically, a Hindu monk or guru ordains a swami into a recognized lineage; however, according to Alice, her initiation came directly from the Lord, resembling the call to preach in her family's Baptist faith. In the last interview she granted before passing away, Alice recalled her experience:
It started with taking sanyas. That was a total mystical experience. It was God's deliverance of his anointed mercy on me. I was told the night and time, and to be prepared, so I got ready and put on a white dress and all, and I noticed when the time came, the colors of orange were poured into the cloth of the dress I was wearing. And I just watched it happen. I just watched everything go into that beautiful saffron color. And my name was given, of course, and the whole outline of the duty, the work and mission were also revealed.
One of the directives given to me was to start the Ashram... At first, I don't think my idea was on sanyas (renunciation) as much as it was on having the availability to seek the Lord, to be able to study spiritual scriptures and just to really immerse myself in living the spiritual life as much as possible. My children, I had raised them, my husband had passed some years ago. I had reached a point where most of my duties as a householder were fulfilled. It gave me the time to want to see, to want to strive, to want to devote quality time” (Monument, 162)
In 1983 Alice founded the Sai Anantam Ashram in Agoura Hills, California, a spiritual center devoted to Hindu teachings, meditation, and devotional music. At the ashram, she was known as Swamini Turiyasangitananda, or Turiya for short.
We can imagine Alice at the right hand of Sarasvati, goddess of music.
And like Sarasvati, Alice Coltrane invented a new language. A fusion language between gospel and kirtan and everything in between. She said, “In music, I don't think I have real preferences about form. Especially when it comes to a religious faith or a spiritual conviction. Because when you express your heart, it has to come from you.” (ME 174)
And this, too, is how Alice Coltrane approached her spirituality.
Her ashram’s mission statement reads: “The Ashram serves as a sanctuary where seekers of all faiths can receive and experience the sublime teachings on spiritual life.” (ME 170)
The creed of the ashram says, “The Sai Anantam Ashram appreciates the contributions of spiritual wisdom and insight from other faiths and religions. Studies undertaken at the ashram include not only Vedantic or Vedic scriptures, the oldest of the world's literatures, but also exemplary narratives and scriptural texts from more recent revelations of God found in the Bible and in the Islamic and Buddhist texts.”
A lot of things separate Alice from many gurus whose stories or actions give us the ick. Alice funded her community entirely by herself, her own royalties and the estate of John Coltrane meant that she never had to focus on attracting new members, never had to come up with new ways of enticing people and their money into her fold. And Alice never told people what to think - she would often respond to pleas for guidance by telling the seeker to meditate on it and come to conclusions themselves, adding ‘don’t be so dependant’. Icky gurus rely on our dependence. Alice advised against it.
She encourages us to defy dogma and explore, to find the voice of god anywhere we can, not just in the words of teachers. She transcended loss by building a community, not a power base. She chanted to call out the names of god, like searching for a lost friend in the woods, where to call out their names alerts them, lets them know you are missing them, and eventually they hear you, and you find each other.
“Bhajan chanting extols the magnificence and the holiness of God. It celebrates the divine glories of the Lord. Chanting consists of worshiping God through song and music... Chanting removes agitations or vrittis from the mind, and brings peace. It edifies one; uplifts the spirit, purifies the atmosphere, and elevates the consciousness.” (Alice Coltrane - Monument, Berkman)
I think of Tina Turner, whose voice, already a force of nature, became a sacred tool in her practice of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. She chanted like casting spells, each syllable a vibration of power, an invocation of resilience. Her voice, once bound in pain, transformed into an alchemy of healing and liberation. Tina began practicing Nichiren Buddhism and chanting the mantra in 1973. She was introduced to the practice by a friend during one of the most challenging periods of her life, while enduring an abusive marriage with Ike. Chanting helped her find strength, inner peace, and ultimately, she says, the courage to leave the toxic marriage in 1976.
Tina credited chanting with transforming her life, allowing her to reclaim her power and embark on her legendary phoenix-rising solo career. Throughout her life, Tina continued to practice Buddhism and often spoke about how chanting played a pivotal role in her personal and spiritual growth.
Additional studies suggest that mantra chanting can improve the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and increase cerebral blood flow in individuals with Alzheimer's disease.5,6
I am currently listening to “Kirtan: Turiya Sings” where harp strings are replaced by vocal cords and Alice is singing. Her cadence pleads, voice deep and strong, singing that haunts and uplifts. Gone are the frenzied, running arpeggios, replaced with warm, meditative, calming stillness. Melodies infused with a restrained but almost funky sensibility. Just Alice and her organs. Praying. I feel tears of both pain and relief welling in my eyes.
In 1981, with the album "Kirtan: Turiya Sings," Alice offered up her prayers, channeling ancient vibrations through Sanskrit chants (translated into english in the liner notes to help us connect), and sacred breath. Her voice, a beacon of healing, transcending an echoing loss, merges with the drone of her organ, guiding seekers like me toward peace and beyond, and into transcendence. Spiritual Jazz.
Alice lived in ritual, and her music is an offering, not to me, not to her audience, but to the infinite. She made spiritual jazz and through it, found answers - discovered cosmic truth.
Alice Coltrane was a cosmic priestess, a bridge between realms, who birthed music from the ethereal, and emerged as Swamini Turiyasangitananda, a mystic on the threshold of sound and spirit. She didn’t just play music; she conjured it—harp strings like webs between galaxies, her Wurlitzer humming the Om of existence. Alice's compositions were acts of devotion, spiraling out from her soul, reaching for the divine.
She became a high priestess of the sound current, her devotion lifting the veil between the worlds. Alice Coltrane wasn’t just a musician; she was a shaman, a healer, a spirit guiding lost souls through the sonic journey to oneness. Her legacy hums in every note she left behind, a reminder: music is magic, and all creation sings. She died in 2007, but lives on as we chant her name here today. Alice Coltrane. Turiya.
If you, dear Coven, like me, are looking for a brave, safe space to be reminded of the great vibration that connects us all, trying to transcend loss and grapple with grief, put on your headphones and find Alice Coltrane there, in the space between your ears, to guide you to explore spirit for yourself, and maybe even find something permanent. Something that can’t die or be washed way. A musical legacy. A spiritual legacy.
Then sing. Sing anything. Or chant for alpha brain waves. Because when you express your heart, it has to come from you. All creation sings, sweet Witches, and you are a member of a universal choir that awaits your improvised harmonies. It’s a spell that's been working for me. The spell of Spiritual Jazz.
Alice wrote:
“For eternally, divine music shall always be the sound of peace, the sound of love, the sound of life, the sound of bliss.” (Endless Wisdom - 3, 5, 18)
Amy (she/they) is the co-founder of Missing Witches and co-author of Missing Witches: Reclaiming True Histories of Feminist Magic and New Moon Magic: 13 Anti-Capitalist Tools for Resistance and Re-Enchantment.
Amy supports the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal and Black Witch University.
