jprussell | (Reply)

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Thanks for this summary. For me personally, the crux is probably this bit: "To my mind, prayer is first and foremost about deepening your bond with the Gods that you worship." That is, I never saw this as an operative magic tool to change things in the world, but more as a way to give more focus and structure to my worship. I already have the Heathen GD curriculum with a whole toolbox of rituals for the practical side. No, what this "recovering atheist" needs is more a way to connect with the Gods with some of the same structured framework, if that makes any sense. Still, rather than praying for specific outcomes in the physical world, I could see the value in using some of these methods to "focus" the prayers more.

And thanks for going into more detail on the Mysteries. That's another aspect I find really intriguing about the original Rosary, and I was hoping you'd discuss them more. To me this feels like another situation where having a polytheist approach is a big strength, since we can draw on many more myths and Gods than just the life of Jesus. IIRC the Catholic Mysteries are linked to days of the week, so I was toying with the idea of doing the same and taking advantage of the fact that the English (and Norwegian) days of the week are literally named after Heathen Gods. Unfortunately it might be hard to find enough material for a full set of mysteries of all of them, like Tyr. (On a side note, I'd be in favor of keeping the term "Mysteries" rather than "Riddles". There's something very evocative to it, and it lines up nicely with how JMG talks about the Golden Dawn/Merlin's Wheel, Dolmen Arch etc as being "mysteries" or "mystery schools".)

I've also been working on translating the Bedes. On a note that will surprise absolutely no one, translating poetry is hard! Especially when you're not a poet. I settled on some halfway workable wordings, but I'm not fully satisfied. As a supplement, I tried going back to the official Norwegian versions of the Catholic prayers and starting from first principles. I ended up with a "Hail Frigg" I kind of like that way, but we'll see. After some consideration, I think it might make more sense for me personally to invoke Frigg rather than Idun, but in the spirit of JMG's "do the practice as set out by the creator before you tinker" I'll start with the Idun Bedes. While we're on the subject, I like your poetic and evocative Bedes much more than the Catholic ones. To use a charming Norwegian term, they struck me as kind of "blood-poor" in comparison, ie. bland, non-descript, lacking in flair.

One last point, re. names for this thing: the Catholic Rosary is called "the rose wreath" in Norwegian, and after some thinking, it struck me that "the Apple-Wreath" could work if you want to keep the botanical theme, at least for your Idun-centered version.

Apologies for the length of this comment, but I do find this project really interesting as a potentially valuable supplement to the Heathen GD, and I have no one to talk about this kind of stuff with in real life since everyone I know are strict materialists, haha.