The Pagan Heart of Florence + The Machine

In Florence + The Machine’s 2025 album Everybody Scream, the track “Witch Dance” describes a group of women in a clearing who tell the narrator, “We’ve been waiting, waiting to meet you, it’s only a matter of time.” Another song, “Perfume and Milk,” recounts the cycle of seasons through decay and renewal and contains the lyric “prayer is a spell.” The words to “The Old Religion” yearn for some kind of release—“it’s the old religion humming in your veins”—and the title track contains Dionysian...