[Book] Thoughts on How to Pray the Rosary and Get Results

[jprussell]

After having it on my stack for a good long time, at last I got to reading How to Pray the Rosary and Get Results, recommended to me by open_space back when I first started poking at the Heathen Rosary undertaking.

Short take: some good, hands-on tips for bringing magical techniques into your prayer, but a bit short on some of the warnings I think ought to come with any use of magical techniques.

Comments

[borealbear]

1) Makes a lot of sense, and "find a way to bring together what you want or need spiritually and materially in a subtle, nuanced fashion" is a good way to sum up my feelings on it. To be clear, I do have an interest in the practical side. Without boring you with a lot of personal stuff, I'm broadly unsatisfied with many aspects of my life, and I'd be happy if ceremonial magic could help bring me more balance and happiness. I'm also fascinated by ceremonial magic as an art in and of itself. That said, I also instinctively agree with JMG that the most important application is changing yourself for the better and letting the material aspects follow as they will, and I feel I still have some work to do there. For the Rosary in particular, though, I see it more as a religious tool than a practical/ceremonial magic one, but maybe there's no reason it can't be both.

3) Thank you, appreciate the well-wishes! Will definitely let you know how it goes. I've ordered the supplies I need, so now I just need to wait for it all to arrive and put it together. Another thing that appeals to me with invoking Frigg is related to a comment I saw from the Pope, who talks about how the invocation of Jesus at the center of the Hail Mary acts as a sort of "spiritual fulcrum", for lack of a better term. Even if Heathenry obviously doesn't share the same hyper-focus on the Bright Son, I'd still like to experiment with the same Frigg/Balder duality in a Heathen context, especially since it also goes well with the HGD ALU Ritual that primarily calls on Balder to heal and bless.

4) Glad to hear you found it an interesting suggestion :) And I had no idea about that etymology, that's fascinating too.

[jprussell]

1) Fair enough on all counts. As for whether the Heathen Rosary can or ought to be turned to practical ends, I suspect that will be a matter both for experimentation and individual variation.

3) Yeah, that makes good sense. The Catholic Rosary draws on the Father-Mother-Son triad, through the "Our Father" and "Hail Mary" for prayers, and then meditation that focuses mostly on Jesus. Despite the epithet of "All-Father," the prayers as I've put them together focus a bit more on Man-Woman-???, with father and mother kinda-implied, but I'm not sure how much focus they'll get in the mysteries/riddles, or in the bede to Ask and Embla. I can well see a Frigg, Woden, Balder focused set of prayers and meditations hitting the core familial triad as well, but obviously with a different focus and implications than Christianity's approach, so it sounds like it ought to be fruitful to explore.

One further thing that's come up as I've read about the Rosary, but I haven't talked about much, as it's a touch awkward, is that the Rosary seems to really get at the heart of the mixed up feelings men have about women as both mother-figures and objects of romantic interest, and how those kinds of love can be related/blended/whatever. Mary seems to represent one seemingly-impossible reconciliation of these things (among other things, of course), being a mother to all, and a suitable target for romantic (but distant and not-physically-consummated) love, by being both a virgin and the mother of the embodiment of divine love. A lot of the symbolism (rose gardens, roses themselves) had overtly sexual or romantic connotations in the cultural milieu it developed in (15th century Germany/France), and a lot of the writings about it were very similar to writings on courtly love. All of which is incredibly interesting, and possibly quite spiritually significant, but not really what I've been going for with this set of prayers. Just something I thought I'd mention, in case it's interesting or useful.

Cheers,
Jeff