[Main Blog Post] [Heathen Rosary] Draft "Hail Holy Forebears"

[jprussell]

I am so very, very close to having all of the bedes of the "Heathen Rosary" at least to a stead where you can say the whole thing, but the draft of the closing bede still feels a bit "flat," and so once again, I am asking for your help in working out what I might change about it.

Your thoughts on the "Hail Idun" and "All-Father" have been very worthwhile and truly helped them take shape, so even more so than usual, kindly share them on this one as well so I can have a full set of prayers I'm happy with and get to working out the "mysteries" to go with them.

Thanks ahead of time if you choose to share any and all thoughts, big or small.

Comments

An update

[borealbear]

Hey, hope you don't mind a late reply on this, but I figured I'd give you a quick update and let you know I appreciate the ongoing effort. Anyway, after some postal mishaps I've finally received and put together the physical components of the Tally, and I'm happy with the result. Again, I know this is a serious religious project and not a LARP, but I really enjoyed matching the different parts and putting it all together.

When it comes to the Bedes themselves, though, I have to admit I'm still struggling with the translations. It's just so hard to keep the alliteration and intent intact in another language without some really torturous contortions. Especially since my ambitions are more in prose writing than poetry, which I have very little experience with.

So I think two things are becoming increasingly clear to me: first, if I'm going to practice this as presented here, I'll probably have to recite them in English as written. And second, maybe my best bet would be to take a little more time and start from scratch with the Catholic Rosary prayers as a loose template. Your Bedes are beautiful, but they also feel very personal and idiosyncratic, so maybe I'd be better served finding my own interpretations anyway (ie. more of a focus on Frigg than Idun, among other things).

Either way, I'm thankful you gave me the idea to do this, and I'm determined to find an approach that works for me eventually.

Re: An update

[jprussell]

Thanks for the update, and no worries on it being "late."

I'm glad to hear you've gotten the materials for your beads! I agree that there's a certain tendency to turn it into a LARP, but I also think that the material part of it is one of the attractions - it's certainly what first grabbed my attention for this kind of praying, so I'd say don't feel bad about enjoying it.

And yeah, fair enough on the struggles with translation. Translating poetry is always very hard, and as you say, these poems/prayers are indeed very idiosyncratic, so that makes things even harder. I think either approach you mention has merit, and it makes me wonder if I ought to have picked a "liturgical" language like Old Norse or Old English and just leaned into "don't worry about translating, the poems are in this language, it doesn't have to be what you speak" like Catholics historically did with Latin for the Rosary.

That being said, I obviously find value in praying in the language I actually know, and have crafted some prayers that work for me along those lines, so I certainly can't begrudge you doing the same for yourself! Whatever you end up coming up with, I'd love to see it.

Good luck, and may you find the praying helpful, whatever shape it takes!

Cheers,
Jeff