[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]

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.

[jprussell]

1) Fair enough, and for what it's worth, I'm finding myself in a similar boat. The "practical" side of magic hasn't really done much to grab me, perhaps because I went through a rabid "self-help" phase and and have a) learned most of what I need to be more effective in the world, and b) seen that "getting what you want" is, at best, a minor piece of spiritual satisfaction. Still, I also suspect that for some folks, "striving for what you want" is an important part of spiritual growth, for others "let go of material wants and focus wholly on the spiritual" is, and for still others "find a way to bring together what you want or need spiritually and materially in a subtle, nuanced fashion" might be. So, explorations like this help me work out where my own path might lay, and I hope they might shed some light for others as well.

2) You're correct on the Catholic mysteries and the days of the week. Traditionally, from Monday through Saturday, you pray "Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious," and on Sunday, you alternate which mysteries you meditate on depending on the time of year: Joyful from Advent to Lent, Sorrowful from Lent to Easter, and Glorious from Easter to Advent. Typing this out, I notice that you spend most of the year with an extra "Glorious Mysteries," which is interesting, but not all that surprising on reflection. If you include the Luminous Mysteries, the recommended order, starting on Monday, is Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious, Luminous, Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious year-round.

For the Heathen Rosary, I've given a bit of thought to what to do for days of the week/times of the year, but not much so far. Linking the mystery of each day to the God for whom it is named is an interesting possibility, and one that might broaden the scope of the Heathen Rosary beyond the handful of Gods prayed to directly. One idea I'm considering to "stretch" the myths to fit the needed number of mysteries is to pull out scenes, rather than using a "whole" myth as a mystery. So, for example, if you wanted to get four mysteries out of Tyr's role in the binding of Fenris, you might have one of Him raising Fenris, one of the Gods trying different fetters that fail, one of Tyr pledging and losing His hand, and one of the aftermath (this is off the top of my head!). I don't know if each of these would be "meaty" enough for ongoing meditation through the years, but perhaps.

On the terminological issue, this is mostly coming from my attempt to shoehorn everything into Germanic-derived words for aesthetic reasons. "Mystery" is, indeed, a great word for what these things are and are doing, with all of the connotations you speak of. Unfortunately, it's Greek. "Rune" would likely be the most direct translation, and, in fact, that's how it was used in the Old Saxon Heliand - where the Bible talks about various "mysteries" that Jesus knows and teaches, the Heliand calls them "Runes." Unluckily, that would get very confusing with the prominence of the ancient Germanic system of writing, the symbols of which are each meant to be their own "mystery," and hence called "Runes." What I like about "riddle" is that it posits the idea that there's something to be puzzled through and that hides an answer. It's also a bit playful, which is nice, and riddles were culturally important to at least the Anglo-Saxons, but likely other Germanic cultures as well (Odin's wisdom contest with Vafthrudhnir could be seen as a "riddle contest" a la Bilbo and Gollum, just with a narrower range of acceptable topics). All that said, I'm not set on it just yet, because I share some of your hesitation.

3) Very nice on the translation work! I'm sure that it must be very tough - it's hard enough to do from scratch. I suspect that you might be on the right track by "working from first principles" rather than going for a direct translation, especially since these prayers can't have much of their own egregore yet, since it's basically just me praying them, and that not for all that long. As for which Goddess to pray to, as I said before, my goal is to present both a "do this as is" set of prayers and a framework for building a set of bead-assisted prayers and meditations that works for you, and Frigg seems like an obvious choice - intellectually, certainly more obvious than Idun. So, whatever you end up doing, I wish you luck and would love to hear how it goes.

And thank you for the kind words! Christian and Catholic imagery have pretty much always left me somewhat cold, even when I can appreciate the values or concepts behind them. I will say, I envy the metrical power behind these. I don't know how much of that is just the rhythm of them has sunk in through all kinds of means (I grew up hearing and saying the "Our Father," but not the "Hail Mary," but I was doubtless exposed to enough media including it that it just "sounds like a prayer"), and how much is intrinsic to how they're written, but that's one area where I felt the constraints of the meters I'm using have left me unable to get to the same level.

4) "Apple Wreath" is very nice! I don't know why, but in all my reading about "necklaces of roses" and "rose trees" and "rose gardens" as images for the Rosary (from the French for "rose garden"), I don't think I ever encountered "rose wreath," which is a lovely Germanic word with very deep roots (Tom Shippey's discussion of what Tolkien was up to naming the "wraiths" and how it's etymologically linked to "wreath" and "wrath" and "wrought" in, I think, Tolkien: Author of the Century, has branded the word into my mind). So I'll have to give that some serious consideration!

5) No worries, I think my response is even longer, so obviously that doesn't bother me :) And I know the feeling all too well! I have one friend that I don't get to see all that often who has gotten into this stuff, but not as deeply, but otherwise, all of my in-person friends are either materialists or casual protestants or "spiritual but not religious," so I'm also eager to discuss such things when I get the chance!

Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts,
Jeff