Looking Into the "Our Father" and Link to My Main Blog

[jprussell]

I've finally gotten my personal website up and running more or less how I like it, and I've decided to start publishing my stuff there. That being said, for anything likely to be relevant to the Ecosophia community, I'll post a link here and take comments here, as my current very-static set up doesn't have any way to handle comments.

At any rate, my latest post is doing a deep dive on what the Council of Trent had to say about the "Our Father" and then taking what I learned from that to propose a framework for writing a functionally-similar prayer for other religions. I'd be delighted if you check it out here:

Looking Into the "Our Father"

Comments

[boccaderlupo]

Just an addendum to the above to clarify that I did not mean to imply that this was the only such prayer: I meant merely that there is an ontological/metaphysical aspect to any "true" prayer that ought to be considered (you touch on this in your August 5 post). Regarded from a (Neo)Platonic perspective, the early part of the prayer effectively invokes the divinity, with the supplicant asking to "participate" in the divinity's will; as Iamblichus might note of any effective ritual, this would develop resonance between the divinity in question and the soul of the supplicant, from whence action can be taken to put the divine will into practice. This is, admittedly, my personal view, but such a theurgic quality, I would argue, needs to be weighed considerably, at least if one accepts the Platonist outlook. In some cases, it may indeed require, first of all, a theophany to convey the divine intent to the supplicant, although I believe a person adequately attuned to their particular deity can uncover said resonances...

[jprussell]

Thanks very much for your thoughtful comments!

1) Huh, I had not linked "On Earth as it is in Heaven" with that Hermetic maxim, very interesting! It seems like a it might be a fruitful meditation to think through the seven Hermetic laws presented in various places with slight variations and how the Our Father/Lord's Prayer might reflect that.

2) Also quite interesting. Personally, I find the idea of an omnibenevolent deity causing evil to be one of the better arguments against monotheism, but even without going there, the thought that you will be presented with just the right amount of temptation to develop spiritually is an interesting one.

3) That's a fair point and one made quite often by the Council (and also by Montford in The Seccret of the Rosary). I glossed over that bit to some extent since it is a prayer given by a Deity I no longer worship, so it seemed like a less-helpful point for non-Christians. That being said, to the degree that holy traditions have words purported to come straight from the divine, those are likely potent religious-magical tools (as a Heathen, I draw a lot on Havamal, for example).

4) Thanks for the addendum - this is fascinating. I'm not going to lie: I'm sometimes jealous of the straightforwardness of "here's a prayer literally straight from the mouth of God, use this and good things will follow." I'm personally at an early enough stage of development that any intimations of the Divine I'm working with are vague and subject to lots of interpretation distortion, but I'm hoping if I keep up my practices, I'll be able to work it out.

Cheers,
Jeff