Chanting is practised in a number of systems as a technique for inducing mystic or transcendent experience. This includes Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam including some Sufi schools, Zoroastrianism and Christianity, where it may be one factor in experiences described by some Christian mystics. There may be repetition of a mantra, a passage from scripture, one or more of the names of God - in Islam the practice of chanting the 99 names of Allah is referred to as the "Beautiful Names", in Christianity there is the "Kyrie Eleison" or "Lord have mercy" - the "Jesus Prayer", in full "Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner". The word or words are chanted in rhythm and sometimes in cantillation; it is frequently very beautiful, as with the well known Gregorian chanting, which may in fact have arisen due to formalizing the early Christian practice of [jubilatio]
(singing in tongues), which is a spontaneous chanting or singing when each person sings as the Spirit moves yet the result is total harmony. The harmony of chanting is said to aid meditation and to be a factor in healing disease and disunity between people. In some religions and in witchcraft, the chanting of some sacred formulae, ritual chants or incantations may be used to keep someone under a spell, in healing ceremonies, to conjure up spirits. It is absolutely integral to [Vodoun]
and African tribal religions, where the words for ceremonies are part of tribal tradition, and often the associated rites also include dancing in rhythm. Some North American Indian rituals, referred to as [chantways]
, may last up to nine days and include complex and precise chants, prayers and paintings among other rites, all of which must be absolutely correct or will cause the calamity they are designed to avert; they are still much used in healing both physical and psychic problems, often in conjunction with "conventional" medicine.
Behind many of these examples is the belief that particular sounds and vibrations have power not only over people but over the forces of the universe, or that they can be used to tap these forces; in the case of chantways, that they can restore harmony to forces that have become unbalanced.
