Music with no apparent source?

QUESTION - I have been studying Wicca for a few months now and doing a few simple spell. Last night I had to get up and take my dog out. It was pretty late. I walked into my living room and I could hear flute music.Everyone was asleep at the time but me, no radios or televisions on. I listened for a couple of minutes and then took the dog out. I came back in and it was gone. The music was very calming and pretty, almost native american like. What could this mean? Thank you for your insight.

ANSWER - Its not often I get a question with so many possible answers so thank you, this one is quite a conundrum. What I'm going to do is go through all the possibilities one by one and then at the end I'll tell you which I personally think is the most likely.

1. There is a source of the music but it just wasn't obvious to you. This could be something like a car parked outside your house with the speakers turned up or an ipod still playing in your bag, that sort of thing. Possible but I think you probably know your home well enough to know if its a probable explanation or not.

2. You have a physical problem with your hearing. There is a recognised medical condition known as musical ear syndrome which could offer an explanation for hearing music that isn't there. It seems to be linked to tinnitus and other disorders of the ear so if you have a history of partial deafness and hearing problems, that may well be a factor in what you experienced.


3. You entered a state of hallucination. I'm presuming you were neither drinking heavily nor taking mind influencing drugs. However certain combinations of food and medically prescribed pills can affect an altered state of consciousness. Certainly some medications react badly with alcohol. Again, you're in a better position to know if these could have played a part in what you heard or not.


4. You are suffering from a psychological disorder. Hearing random music is a very very unlikely first symptom of psychosis. If you have a history of mental disorders this could be a new symptom, if you have never suffered with psychological issues in the past I think it very unlikely that the music you heard could be attributed to such a cause.

5. You could have a highly developed sixth sense known as clairaudience. This is the ability to hear sounds not available to those perceiving the world with the primary five senses. You could be experiencing a sound memory, an imprint of the music played in your house at a previous time. You could be foretelling a future event and hearing the music as it will be played at a future point in time. You could even be picking up on an experience somebody close to you is having and tuning into the experience they are having at the same time.  (I'm oversimplifying a little bit here - technically experiencing a time slip, a precognition of the future or an insight into the mind of another are three very different abilities. But in this case I certainly wouldn't want to rule any of them out.

6. You may be making a connection with the spirits. Music is a universal language and it would therefore be unsurprising to discover that it is an easier way to breach the link between the worlds than word based languages would be. What you heard may have been the attempt of a spirit to contact you. Think about the music you heard, does it have any relevance to you, to your ancestors? Could there be a message in it for you? Did it feel personal or do you feel you stumbled across something not intended for you? I can't answer that bit for you - you tell me, did it feel like somebody was trying to communicate with you?

So more theories there than the assassination of JFK. But as with all good mysteries, here's the bit where I tell you what I think really happened... When you start to open yourself to the spiritual world, be it by studying witchcraft, religion, Buddhist meditation, whatever - you start to discover new abilities and you gradually start to develop as a person with a greater understanding and affinity with the world around you. The more you start to work with your new gifts, i.e. meditation, spell work, manipulating energy flow etc, the more you start to appreciate the fluidity between the scientific world of absolute and the magical world of possibility. I think that your mind, prised open from your study of Wicca and magic has developed to the point where you are subconsciously open to the possibilities that were simply not available to you before. And that night, in a state of relaxation and quiet in the middle of the night with nothing to interrupt the contemplation of your mind, your mind opened to temporarily experience something beyond your five senses. As to whether it was a memory of your house past, a glimpse into the future or a calling from the spirits, I don't know. I'd guess any one is equally likely. But what I do think is that at that moment when the circumstances were just right for you to slip out of the grip of the real world for a moment, you experienced something of a more spiritual/ghostly/clairvoyant nature (take your pick of the words). It will probably happen again and as you become more confident with your own abilities you may even find it is something you are able to control. So good luck with it, a very interesting ability to have and if I'm right one that you may well encounter again. Do let me know if you do.


Image http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1295764 (ba1969)

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