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Last week I drove into Atlanta to visit a pagan group that I've known about for a while now and never gotten around to. It's kind of an interesting group; not precisely Celtic Reconstructionist, but it's as close as pagan groups generally go. Anyway, I'm thinking I may go back. Happily for me, I was there for a discussion group, which is of course my natural habitat. We talked about prayer and the pagan theology of prayer.
It always kind of surprises me when people talk about prayer as "too churchy" to be pagan. I think of it as unchurchy, the opposite of church, I guess because I grew up in a Protestant church where there was very little group or common prayer such as you have in Catholic or Episcopal churches. There are periods for silent prayer, and usually a long pastoral prayer to listen to, and fairly often there's a short litany or a few lines alternated between leader and congregation. At best, you recite the Lord's Prayer once all together. But because I didn't grow up with the word "prayer" associated with a whole catalog of formal, set prayers for recitation, I don't particularly think of prayer as a ritual event, but rather something you take time to sit down and do whenever you need or want to -- actually, the mechanism by which you filter the experiences of worship into the rest of your life.
Actually, my interest in set prayers comes out of my paganism, not my Christian background. The whole concept of sacred poetry, filidecht in Irish, is that inspiration is refined and intensified by a relatively rigorous and formal poetic structure. I'm personally a little bit ambivalent about the structural issue: I understand the way that the discipline and practice of it is a whole art of its own, but on the other hand I feel like there's something really inappropriate about being self-consciously archaic with your religion, and that the real usefulness of tradition is as a model, but that what we should be trying to write is excellent poetry, and the modern sense of what "excellent poetry" means is necessarily different than the archaic sense. So anyway, when I write prayers, I try to make them as poetic as possible, but in the more naturalistic style of contemporary poetry. This is either a brilliant merging of old and new, or one of those compromises that negates the entire point of both. I'm not sure.
I'm actually not an excellent poet, nor even a particularly good one. But it's fun, and a learning experience, and I like using the prayers I've written; they're obviously a better expression of my beliefs than something someone else has written might be, and that whole personal element is really helpful to me. When you pray words that you've put time and thought and effort into designing specifically for a particular deity, it reinforces the intimacy of the connection between you.
All disclaimers in place, then, here are a few of my favorite prayers, written at various times between, I believe, the spring of 2000 and now.
[On "To Nuada": Nuada is the original king, according to Irish lore, of the Children of Danu, who are recorded as a semi-human race of mighty wizards and warriors who occupied Ireland before their defeat by the Gaelic Celts. Many, if not all, of the Children of Danu as described in the lore are clearly post-Christian euhemerizations of Irish gods and goddesses; there's no extant evidence for his worship, but he is clearly linked to a god-form known in Britain as Lludd or Nudd, of whom we do have a fair amount of Romano-British evidence. Maybe more interestingly, elements of his myth are very similar to an Indo-European pattern of sky gods and divine kings who lose a hand in battle, suggesting that he's a Celtic reflex of Dyeus Pater, the Indo-European god that's particularly familiar to us as Zeus and Jupiter, though he pops up almost everywhere in the Indo-European world. In his particularly Celtic aspects, we know Nuada to be a king and a warrior, and Lludd/Nudd to be linked to rivers and healing; through comparison to the Dyeus Pater type, I also believe that he's a god of justice, the rule of law, and the binding force of law. I link him here to three goddesses: Danu and Macha are reliably attested Irish goddesses, and then I include "Liberty." Although whether or not she is a "real" goddess is controversial among pagans, I think it's fair to call her an American reflex of the Goddess of Sovereignty type.]
Chief of Chiefs
Most faithful Hound of Heaven
Your bright sword above me is Kingship, and, wielding it,
I divide knowledge from ignorance, that Truth should be recognized
Righteousness from viciousness, that Truth should be desired
And justice from pettiness, that Truth shoudl be magnified.
Your wide shield before me is Faith, and, bearing it,
I display the device of the goddesses in whose name you reign:
Danu, your mother, in whom your greatness,
as the greatness of all things, had its beginnings
Macha, your wife, by whose power your might on the field
became authority in counsel and judgement
And Liberty, your sister, the youthful maiden queen
who upholds your law with arms of
election, constitution, and courtroom.
On your neckring, all true oaths are sworn
By your silver hand, all true leaders are upheld
At your table, all true heroes are honored eternally.
Courage for the benefit of those who are small
Strength for the benefit of those who are alone
Vision for the benefit of those who are lost
In your name be sought, Nuada, Brother of the Eagle,
And in your name be won
And freedom, peace, and justice everlasting.
[On "To Brighid": There's a *lot* of information and speculation out there about the nature of Brighid. Suffice it to say that for my part, I believe that she was originally the personified spirit of the hearthfire, related to Hestia/Vesta in the classical world, but that it's important to remember how much the perception of the gods shifts over time. Brighid took on a prominence among the Celts that made her worship more widespread, vibrant, and enduring than any other Celtic deity, with the possible exception of Lugh. The Romans identified her as "the Celtic Minerva" because of her authority over healing and crafting; she is a "transfunctional" goddess, like Sarasvati in India, whose power makes humans able to partake in the creative energy of the divine, and she is widely known as a "triple goddess" of poetry, smithcraft, and healing, the primary crafts of the priestly, warrior, and producer functions. In the Christian era, she retained most of her symbolic associations as St. Brighid, and she also underwent the process that happened many places in Europe, where all the vital roles of multiple goddesses were subsumed under one figure, normally the Virgin Mary. In Scotland and Ireland, however, Brighid has as much prominence or more than Mary herself, and I believe that it was through the negation of other goddesses that Brighid took on their "jobs," as it were, making her as much of an earth and fertility related figure as a transfunctional culture-giving goddess. This prayer is sort of weighted toward a broader vision of Brighid, as contrasted to the next one, where she is invoked in a more abstract ur-form, as the spirit of the hearthfire. Some of the specific language here is cribbed and adapted from Christian-era Scottish and Irish prayers to St. Brighid.]
Brightness of red gold
Sweetness of gold honey
Greatness of honey harp-strain
Are in you, Brighid the Beautiful.
With your mantle around my shoulders
I cannot be wounded, I cannot be slandered, I cannot be imprisoned
With your cross above my door
Fire will not burn me, hunger will not starve me, sickness will not weaken me
With your eye upon me
Man will not, fae will not, woman will not
Rob me, strike me, curse me
for fear of your powerful magic, Brighid my companion.
To you may kitchens be sacred
So that mothers, both the barrowed and the reborn,
might continue to work the old charms,
grain and green, guiding and guarding.
To you may wells be sacred
So that women -- sisters, neighbors, lovers, each to another --
might continue to circle around,
gathering to draw up the clear water of wisdom and life unquenchable
from the womb of Earth.
To you may fields, gardens, and barns be sacred
So that the Three-Colored Cow, the Goddess of inexhaustible wealth,
might continue to give birth,
to nourish and be nourished wherever the tribe makes its home.
Goose Mother, the print of your foot consecrates the hearth where the clan meets
Cow Sister, you nourish the clan's future on rich milk and butter
Snake Daughter, with knots of grain,
with threads of song,
with coils of DNA,
you twine and bind us, you make the clan whole.
Knowledge of oracles,
Gentleness of midwives,
Strength of blacksmiths,
With your blessing I seek, praiseworthy Brighid,
and with your blessing may I find.
[On "Prayers for the Household": Neopaganism tends toward broad cosmologies and abstractions, sadly at the expense of the local and specific all too often. Plenty of people have criticized neopagans for "worshipping the Earth" without having the first idea how their own local ecologies work, which is valid and relevant, but my pesonal ideological hobbyhorse is that neopagans have a bad habit of latching on to the biggest, flashiest, most powerful gods and goddesses out there, while ignoring the fact that actual pagan practice was largely home-centered and revolved around the worship of one's own ancestors and household gods. Of course, that kind of thing is harder to recreate from the available lore, which generally deals with battles and other dramatic happenings. Working out the details of what neopagan hearth worship should look like is kind of a challenge, but I've been enjoying it. What I've done here is to create a little mini-ritual in three parts, inspired by the ADF model of dividing the powers into Ancestors, Nature Spirits, and the High Gods. The first part is a prayer for lighting the physical hearthfire, which in and of itself is a challenge, since I don't have a proper hearth; I use a symbolic candle which I keep in the kitchen, to preserve at least the theoretical connection between the fire and the sustaining gift of the food that it cooks. The second part is a prayer to the minor protective spirits of the house, who have survived into modern times as elves and brownies and whatnot; even within living memory, a lot of perfectly devout Christians from more traditional cultures were in the habit of putting out a dish of milk for the helpful fairies. The third part is a prayer to my disir, which is a Norse term for a collection of powerful female ancestors who continue to actively look after their own lineage; although the worship of one's maternal ancestors didn't find a place in much written material, except in a few Germanic references, there's a lot of inscription evidence throughout western Europe to what are generically called the Matrones, and I believe that they are not symbols of one specific goddess or a set of specific goddesses, but part of a widespread Celtic, Germanic, and Italic worship of these family-specific ancestors. The fourth part is specifically addressed to the divine power of the hearthfire itself, and I am very much indebted to Ceisiwr Serith for reconstructing a couple of possible proto-Indo-European names for the goddess of the hearthfire. The fifth just wraps the whole thing up tidily. Because we lack a lot of specific names for the powers being honored here, I had some freedom, which I took shameless advantage of; since my background is broadly Celtic and Germanic and Mary's is broadly Germanic and Italian, I wanted language from all those traditions present. I've already mentioned the terms "Matronae" and "Disir," but I also use some other possibly unfamiliar words: "Afliae, the Powerful Ones" comes from a specific inscription to the Matrones found on an altar near Cologne, "Bean Sidhe" is a term that's put to many uses in Irish legend, including the most famous, the "wailing woman," the banshee, but literally all it means is "woman of the sidhe," which I like because it blurs the distinctions between the sidhe that is the fairy-mound and the sidhe that is a burial mound, which I suspect may be a false distinction to begin with, and "Belli Signuri" simply means "Beautiful Women," and I took it from Renaissance witch-trial accounts from Italy, where it refered to otherworldly women, "women from the Outside," who attended sabbats; I am indebted to Carlo Ginzburg's *Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath* for the connection between the women from the Outside and the Matronae. Westya and Demespotya are both proto-Indo-European names, again, which I borrowed from Ceisiwr Serith, along with some of the language of the prayers, and I also use Brighid to specifically pinpoint the Celtic relfex of the form. The other name I use is Hlodyn, which is actually pretty shaky speculative usage; the evidence I have that links the Germanic name Hlodyn to the hearthfire is probably pretty specious, and it's more likely to be a byname of Frigga or another Germanic earth-related goddess, but right now I don't have anything else to call the Germanic reflex of the hearthfire, and I didn't want to leave that element out entirely. I'm still looking for a good replacement term. The main body of this mini-ritual includes offerings to the three categories of powers I've included; I usually use breads, grains, butter, milk, beer, or cheeses. Ocassionally chocolate.]
I. Fire glowing softly in the heart of my home,
Westya of the Hearth, life of my dwelling,
keep my family free from discord,
free from want, free from fear,
free from all that would disturb us
and that would disturb your perfect peace.
II. You wights of weal who help my home
We bid you welcome.
Come in for kindness
And kindness keep in your heart toward this house.
Bring in the gift of luck,
and find a full plate for you.
III. Your names are lost to me; I call you
Matronae
Disir
Afliae, the Powerful Ones
I call you my Ancestors
You who were born
Gave birth
Met death
And gained might through each transformation.
I honor you, Kin-Mothers, and all your deeds
For the peace you wove between enemies
For your defiance
For your rulership and your service
The meals you cooked, the thread you spun, the cures you wrought
For your art, your labor, your lore
For the children you bore out of love
For the children you were forced to bear
For blood
For sickness
For grieving
For the power of your love
For that which you knew and that which you dreamed of knowing
For your lives, which have not ended,
I honor you.
I am your daughter,
and your legacy lives in me.
I pray for your protection, Bean Sidhe
I pray for your deep wisdom, Belli Signuri
I pray for you to be near me, to keep me in your hearts,
And to receive me into your company
When I have come to my grave and gone beyond.
IV. A burning point are you, Westya
A center point are you, Brighid
A place of light are you, Demespotya
A source of warmth are you, Hlodyn
The heart of our lives are you, Lady of many names.
V. I have tended a flame on my family's hearth
and praised Demespotya, the Queen of the Household.
I have set out offerings for our Blessed Ancestors
and to the spirits who share this house with us.
Hear my words, see me as I perform these actions,
receive the gifts I offer to you.
[On the "Sun Prayer": I have two goddesses that I consider "patrons" or particularly close to me, and this is one of them. I prefer to call her Ekwamedha, which is a reconstructed proto-Indo-European name/title -- the distinction between names and titles is pretty thin in traditional paganism, so I don't concern myself with it too much -- one part of which means "Intoxication/Inspiration" and the other part means "Mare," so that you can interpret the name as "Drunken Mare," "Intoxicated Mare," "Mare Who Inspires," and so forth, all of which are applicable. I like the reconstructed name because so much of the Horse Goddess' cult is buried and fragmented that recovering it relies heavily on comparative mythology, and it seems appropriately respectful to use an umbrella name that doesn't exclude any of her reflexes. At one point I was convinced that there was a proto-Indo-European goddess of the sun with horse associations, and over the years I've amended my theory: what I see now when I look at the evidence is a proto-Indo-European horse goddess with solar associations. Interestingly, I think that there is no major Indo-European god or goddess "of the sun," but that the sun was viewed as a minor power in its own right, gendered male in some parts of the I-E world and female in others, whose religious significance was not as itself per se, but in its usefulness as a symbol at different times for several different deities, including the Horse Goddess. Therefore, I try to maintain a distinction in this morning prayer between the Sun Herself (who is, in fact, gendered female throughout northern Europe) and Ekwamedha, who is sun-like, but not "the goddess of the sun." The word "artus" is also a proto-Indo-European reconstruction that I might loosely translate as "fate." The artus is the whole pattern of the universe, similar to the Germanic concept of wyrd, and it refers to the interplay of forces, the dynamic balance of order and chaos -- basically, the Artus is what makes things what they are, as opposed to whatever they are not. I have chosen to extend the usage somewhat, so that just as the universe has Artus, so individual beings have their own artus, their own internal, natural law. Again, this is in close accord with the idea of fate or wyrd in Germanic theology, which is both universal and individual.]
Good morning and blessings, great Sun of the Seasons!
My heart rejoices at the sight of you
My companion upon waking
My sustainer in living
My shelter against the perils of night.
You are like my beloved goddess,
Ekwamedha with the Red Mane.
Like her, you are beautiful, you are swift, you are generous.
All the ends of the earth fall under your sight --
All living things recognize your unparalleled power --
At all times you are shining, not for one moment is your light extinguished.
In all of these things, you are like my Ekwamedha.
Like her, you do not fear the journey into darkness
Like her, you rise up again undimmed
This is your nature, according to your artus.
Worthy of praise is the artus
Worthy of praise is my Mother the Sun
Most worthy of praise is Grian Banchure,
The Intoxicating One, the Furious One, the Queenly One
The Wild Mare of Heaven and Earth and the Great, Pouring Sea.
[On "To Frigg": The other goddess I consider my patron is Frigg. She is the first goddess I ever had any kind of real relationship with, when I came into paganism through Asatru, and even though my focus has shifted largely to the Celtic world over the years, she has remained closer to me than any other power. This is probably the weakest of these prayers in terms of its artfulness, and I might have been wise not to try writing a prayer to Frigg at all. The interesting thing about Frigg is that even though the lore consistently records her as a seeress and a powerful knower of hidden things, much like the more celebrated divine sorcerers Odin and Freyja, another consistent factor is that Frigg is said to speak little or nothing of what she knows; she is portrayed as an enigmatic and secretive goddess. Based on my own experience, I don't think she's *secretive,* per se, so much as I think that the type of knowing that is Frigg's primary domain is basically ineffable. Unlike poet-seers like the Irish Fili or Odin and his rune-mastery, Frigg deals with a type of wisdom that can be perceived, but only very imperfectly set into words. Still, I am naturally a wordy kind of person, and the temptation to capture Frigg in a verbal prayer is a constant temptation; this is the latest and, shall we say, the least unsuccessful of those attempts, at least to my ear.]
In a moment of silence, my thoughts turn again to you
Silent and stately one,
Frigg, my counselor, my lady of deep mysteries
And truths too full of weight for words.
The vast stillness of endless space,
Time's shroud that conceals what has been and what will be,
The darkness in which all has its beginning,
These things are your rede and holy writ,
Kindly One, Frigg, who turns the wheel of the stars,
Who spins the threat and sets in motion that which is becoming.
Mother, I have only words for my distaff, to aid my spinning of thought into deed
And this I freely offer to you:
My words, my works, my thoughts, my thanks, my love.
You who are Heaven's Hlaefdige, first among the Asynjur,
It is not beneath even you to pour the mead
To serve your guests at the great feast of the gods.
This, then, I have learned from the Mighty Queen of Asgard,
The lady of Crowns, Cups, and Keys:
Only the most noble claim the honor of service,
And she whose hands are open need give way to no one.
Mother, let it be in your name that I labor,
And your example that I follow in both pride and devotion.
You, Frigg, who are Fjorgynn's fair daughter, mistress of the Marsh Hall,
You do not soar so high on your falcon's wings that you forget yourself.
You are a giantish goddess, kinswoman of the eldest beings
And you make your home on the rich, yielding ground
On the cool water's edge.
A heron for grace are you, a strong fearless swan, a goose in full-throated cry.
This, then, I have learned from the Queen of Sokkvabekr where the cool waves glimmer,
The lady of the Lake:
The court of love is not a greenhouse garden
The Beloved walks with bare feet in the fen
She keeps the company of Var who turns against the oathbreaker and Syn who bars the door against intruders,
But also of Sjofn who guides the hearts of lovers and Lofn who strikes down all obstacles before them.
Mother, help me remember that all growing things put down roots in the moist earth
and to keep your ways always,
Which are the steadfast ways of the earth's rock bones
And also the green and living ways of the sapling and the wildflower.
Weiss Frau, Shining Goddess Frigg,
You are before and behind the woven wyrd
You hold the moon like a jewel in the palm of your hand
And yet you were once a new bride among a new people
You were once a mother plunged into grief at the loss of a son.
Of all your mysteries, Frigg, this is the greatest:
At the core of your vastness,
The heart of you is a woman's heart, and your love for your people is not only profound,
It is personal, palpable, and present.
In a moment of silence, I become aware of it again,
And I am transformed again by gratitude and love.
It always kind of surprises me when people talk about prayer as "too churchy" to be pagan. I think of it as unchurchy, the opposite of church, I guess because I grew up in a Protestant church where there was very little group or common prayer such as you have in Catholic or Episcopal churches. There are periods for silent prayer, and usually a long pastoral prayer to listen to, and fairly often there's a short litany or a few lines alternated between leader and congregation. At best, you recite the Lord's Prayer once all together. But because I didn't grow up with the word "prayer" associated with a whole catalog of formal, set prayers for recitation, I don't particularly think of prayer as a ritual event, but rather something you take time to sit down and do whenever you need or want to -- actually, the mechanism by which you filter the experiences of worship into the rest of your life.
Actually, my interest in set prayers comes out of my paganism, not my Christian background. The whole concept of sacred poetry, filidecht in Irish, is that inspiration is refined and intensified by a relatively rigorous and formal poetic structure. I'm personally a little bit ambivalent about the structural issue: I understand the way that the discipline and practice of it is a whole art of its own, but on the other hand I feel like there's something really inappropriate about being self-consciously archaic with your religion, and that the real usefulness of tradition is as a model, but that what we should be trying to write is excellent poetry, and the modern sense of what "excellent poetry" means is necessarily different than the archaic sense. So anyway, when I write prayers, I try to make them as poetic as possible, but in the more naturalistic style of contemporary poetry. This is either a brilliant merging of old and new, or one of those compromises that negates the entire point of both. I'm not sure.
I'm actually not an excellent poet, nor even a particularly good one. But it's fun, and a learning experience, and I like using the prayers I've written; they're obviously a better expression of my beliefs than something someone else has written might be, and that whole personal element is really helpful to me. When you pray words that you've put time and thought and effort into designing specifically for a particular deity, it reinforces the intimacy of the connection between you.
All disclaimers in place, then, here are a few of my favorite prayers, written at various times between, I believe, the spring of 2000 and now.
[On "To Nuada": Nuada is the original king, according to Irish lore, of the Children of Danu, who are recorded as a semi-human race of mighty wizards and warriors who occupied Ireland before their defeat by the Gaelic Celts. Many, if not all, of the Children of Danu as described in the lore are clearly post-Christian euhemerizations of Irish gods and goddesses; there's no extant evidence for his worship, but he is clearly linked to a god-form known in Britain as Lludd or Nudd, of whom we do have a fair amount of Romano-British evidence. Maybe more interestingly, elements of his myth are very similar to an Indo-European pattern of sky gods and divine kings who lose a hand in battle, suggesting that he's a Celtic reflex of Dyeus Pater, the Indo-European god that's particularly familiar to us as Zeus and Jupiter, though he pops up almost everywhere in the Indo-European world. In his particularly Celtic aspects, we know Nuada to be a king and a warrior, and Lludd/Nudd to be linked to rivers and healing; through comparison to the Dyeus Pater type, I also believe that he's a god of justice, the rule of law, and the binding force of law. I link him here to three goddesses: Danu and Macha are reliably attested Irish goddesses, and then I include "Liberty." Although whether or not she is a "real" goddess is controversial among pagans, I think it's fair to call her an American reflex of the Goddess of Sovereignty type.]
Chief of Chiefs
Most faithful Hound of Heaven
Your bright sword above me is Kingship, and, wielding it,
I divide knowledge from ignorance, that Truth should be recognized
Righteousness from viciousness, that Truth should be desired
And justice from pettiness, that Truth shoudl be magnified.
Your wide shield before me is Faith, and, bearing it,
I display the device of the goddesses in whose name you reign:
Danu, your mother, in whom your greatness,
as the greatness of all things, had its beginnings
Macha, your wife, by whose power your might on the field
became authority in counsel and judgement
And Liberty, your sister, the youthful maiden queen
who upholds your law with arms of
election, constitution, and courtroom.
On your neckring, all true oaths are sworn
By your silver hand, all true leaders are upheld
At your table, all true heroes are honored eternally.
Courage for the benefit of those who are small
Strength for the benefit of those who are alone
Vision for the benefit of those who are lost
In your name be sought, Nuada, Brother of the Eagle,
And in your name be won
And freedom, peace, and justice everlasting.
[On "To Brighid": There's a *lot* of information and speculation out there about the nature of Brighid. Suffice it to say that for my part, I believe that she was originally the personified spirit of the hearthfire, related to Hestia/Vesta in the classical world, but that it's important to remember how much the perception of the gods shifts over time. Brighid took on a prominence among the Celts that made her worship more widespread, vibrant, and enduring than any other Celtic deity, with the possible exception of Lugh. The Romans identified her as "the Celtic Minerva" because of her authority over healing and crafting; she is a "transfunctional" goddess, like Sarasvati in India, whose power makes humans able to partake in the creative energy of the divine, and she is widely known as a "triple goddess" of poetry, smithcraft, and healing, the primary crafts of the priestly, warrior, and producer functions. In the Christian era, she retained most of her symbolic associations as St. Brighid, and she also underwent the process that happened many places in Europe, where all the vital roles of multiple goddesses were subsumed under one figure, normally the Virgin Mary. In Scotland and Ireland, however, Brighid has as much prominence or more than Mary herself, and I believe that it was through the negation of other goddesses that Brighid took on their "jobs," as it were, making her as much of an earth and fertility related figure as a transfunctional culture-giving goddess. This prayer is sort of weighted toward a broader vision of Brighid, as contrasted to the next one, where she is invoked in a more abstract ur-form, as the spirit of the hearthfire. Some of the specific language here is cribbed and adapted from Christian-era Scottish and Irish prayers to St. Brighid.]
Brightness of red gold
Sweetness of gold honey
Greatness of honey harp-strain
Are in you, Brighid the Beautiful.
With your mantle around my shoulders
I cannot be wounded, I cannot be slandered, I cannot be imprisoned
With your cross above my door
Fire will not burn me, hunger will not starve me, sickness will not weaken me
With your eye upon me
Man will not, fae will not, woman will not
Rob me, strike me, curse me
for fear of your powerful magic, Brighid my companion.
To you may kitchens be sacred
So that mothers, both the barrowed and the reborn,
might continue to work the old charms,
grain and green, guiding and guarding.
To you may wells be sacred
So that women -- sisters, neighbors, lovers, each to another --
might continue to circle around,
gathering to draw up the clear water of wisdom and life unquenchable
from the womb of Earth.
To you may fields, gardens, and barns be sacred
So that the Three-Colored Cow, the Goddess of inexhaustible wealth,
might continue to give birth,
to nourish and be nourished wherever the tribe makes its home.
Goose Mother, the print of your foot consecrates the hearth where the clan meets
Cow Sister, you nourish the clan's future on rich milk and butter
Snake Daughter, with knots of grain,
with threads of song,
with coils of DNA,
you twine and bind us, you make the clan whole.
Knowledge of oracles,
Gentleness of midwives,
Strength of blacksmiths,
With your blessing I seek, praiseworthy Brighid,
and with your blessing may I find.
[On "Prayers for the Household": Neopaganism tends toward broad cosmologies and abstractions, sadly at the expense of the local and specific all too often. Plenty of people have criticized neopagans for "worshipping the Earth" without having the first idea how their own local ecologies work, which is valid and relevant, but my pesonal ideological hobbyhorse is that neopagans have a bad habit of latching on to the biggest, flashiest, most powerful gods and goddesses out there, while ignoring the fact that actual pagan practice was largely home-centered and revolved around the worship of one's own ancestors and household gods. Of course, that kind of thing is harder to recreate from the available lore, which generally deals with battles and other dramatic happenings. Working out the details of what neopagan hearth worship should look like is kind of a challenge, but I've been enjoying it. What I've done here is to create a little mini-ritual in three parts, inspired by the ADF model of dividing the powers into Ancestors, Nature Spirits, and the High Gods. The first part is a prayer for lighting the physical hearthfire, which in and of itself is a challenge, since I don't have a proper hearth; I use a symbolic candle which I keep in the kitchen, to preserve at least the theoretical connection between the fire and the sustaining gift of the food that it cooks. The second part is a prayer to the minor protective spirits of the house, who have survived into modern times as elves and brownies and whatnot; even within living memory, a lot of perfectly devout Christians from more traditional cultures were in the habit of putting out a dish of milk for the helpful fairies. The third part is a prayer to my disir, which is a Norse term for a collection of powerful female ancestors who continue to actively look after their own lineage; although the worship of one's maternal ancestors didn't find a place in much written material, except in a few Germanic references, there's a lot of inscription evidence throughout western Europe to what are generically called the Matrones, and I believe that they are not symbols of one specific goddess or a set of specific goddesses, but part of a widespread Celtic, Germanic, and Italic worship of these family-specific ancestors. The fourth part is specifically addressed to the divine power of the hearthfire itself, and I am very much indebted to Ceisiwr Serith for reconstructing a couple of possible proto-Indo-European names for the goddess of the hearthfire. The fifth just wraps the whole thing up tidily. Because we lack a lot of specific names for the powers being honored here, I had some freedom, which I took shameless advantage of; since my background is broadly Celtic and Germanic and Mary's is broadly Germanic and Italian, I wanted language from all those traditions present. I've already mentioned the terms "Matronae" and "Disir," but I also use some other possibly unfamiliar words: "Afliae, the Powerful Ones" comes from a specific inscription to the Matrones found on an altar near Cologne, "Bean Sidhe" is a term that's put to many uses in Irish legend, including the most famous, the "wailing woman," the banshee, but literally all it means is "woman of the sidhe," which I like because it blurs the distinctions between the sidhe that is the fairy-mound and the sidhe that is a burial mound, which I suspect may be a false distinction to begin with, and "Belli Signuri" simply means "Beautiful Women," and I took it from Renaissance witch-trial accounts from Italy, where it refered to otherworldly women, "women from the Outside," who attended sabbats; I am indebted to Carlo Ginzburg's *Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath* for the connection between the women from the Outside and the Matronae. Westya and Demespotya are both proto-Indo-European names, again, which I borrowed from Ceisiwr Serith, along with some of the language of the prayers, and I also use Brighid to specifically pinpoint the Celtic relfex of the form. The other name I use is Hlodyn, which is actually pretty shaky speculative usage; the evidence I have that links the Germanic name Hlodyn to the hearthfire is probably pretty specious, and it's more likely to be a byname of Frigga or another Germanic earth-related goddess, but right now I don't have anything else to call the Germanic reflex of the hearthfire, and I didn't want to leave that element out entirely. I'm still looking for a good replacement term. The main body of this mini-ritual includes offerings to the three categories of powers I've included; I usually use breads, grains, butter, milk, beer, or cheeses. Ocassionally chocolate.]
I. Fire glowing softly in the heart of my home,
Westya of the Hearth, life of my dwelling,
keep my family free from discord,
free from want, free from fear,
free from all that would disturb us
and that would disturb your perfect peace.
II. You wights of weal who help my home
We bid you welcome.
Come in for kindness
And kindness keep in your heart toward this house.
Bring in the gift of luck,
and find a full plate for you.
III. Your names are lost to me; I call you
Matronae
Disir
Afliae, the Powerful Ones
I call you my Ancestors
You who were born
Gave birth
Met death
And gained might through each transformation.
I honor you, Kin-Mothers, and all your deeds
For the peace you wove between enemies
For your defiance
For your rulership and your service
The meals you cooked, the thread you spun, the cures you wrought
For your art, your labor, your lore
For the children you bore out of love
For the children you were forced to bear
For blood
For sickness
For grieving
For the power of your love
For that which you knew and that which you dreamed of knowing
For your lives, which have not ended,
I honor you.
I am your daughter,
and your legacy lives in me.
I pray for your protection, Bean Sidhe
I pray for your deep wisdom, Belli Signuri
I pray for you to be near me, to keep me in your hearts,
And to receive me into your company
When I have come to my grave and gone beyond.
IV. A burning point are you, Westya
A center point are you, Brighid
A place of light are you, Demespotya
A source of warmth are you, Hlodyn
The heart of our lives are you, Lady of many names.
V. I have tended a flame on my family's hearth
and praised Demespotya, the Queen of the Household.
I have set out offerings for our Blessed Ancestors
and to the spirits who share this house with us.
Hear my words, see me as I perform these actions,
receive the gifts I offer to you.
[On the "Sun Prayer": I have two goddesses that I consider "patrons" or particularly close to me, and this is one of them. I prefer to call her Ekwamedha, which is a reconstructed proto-Indo-European name/title -- the distinction between names and titles is pretty thin in traditional paganism, so I don't concern myself with it too much -- one part of which means "Intoxication/Inspiration" and the other part means "Mare," so that you can interpret the name as "Drunken Mare," "Intoxicated Mare," "Mare Who Inspires," and so forth, all of which are applicable. I like the reconstructed name because so much of the Horse Goddess' cult is buried and fragmented that recovering it relies heavily on comparative mythology, and it seems appropriately respectful to use an umbrella name that doesn't exclude any of her reflexes. At one point I was convinced that there was a proto-Indo-European goddess of the sun with horse associations, and over the years I've amended my theory: what I see now when I look at the evidence is a proto-Indo-European horse goddess with solar associations. Interestingly, I think that there is no major Indo-European god or goddess "of the sun," but that the sun was viewed as a minor power in its own right, gendered male in some parts of the I-E world and female in others, whose religious significance was not as itself per se, but in its usefulness as a symbol at different times for several different deities, including the Horse Goddess. Therefore, I try to maintain a distinction in this morning prayer between the Sun Herself (who is, in fact, gendered female throughout northern Europe) and Ekwamedha, who is sun-like, but not "the goddess of the sun." The word "artus" is also a proto-Indo-European reconstruction that I might loosely translate as "fate." The artus is the whole pattern of the universe, similar to the Germanic concept of wyrd, and it refers to the interplay of forces, the dynamic balance of order and chaos -- basically, the Artus is what makes things what they are, as opposed to whatever they are not. I have chosen to extend the usage somewhat, so that just as the universe has Artus, so individual beings have their own artus, their own internal, natural law. Again, this is in close accord with the idea of fate or wyrd in Germanic theology, which is both universal and individual.]
Good morning and blessings, great Sun of the Seasons!
My heart rejoices at the sight of you
My companion upon waking
My sustainer in living
My shelter against the perils of night.
You are like my beloved goddess,
Ekwamedha with the Red Mane.
Like her, you are beautiful, you are swift, you are generous.
All the ends of the earth fall under your sight --
All living things recognize your unparalleled power --
At all times you are shining, not for one moment is your light extinguished.
In all of these things, you are like my Ekwamedha.
Like her, you do not fear the journey into darkness
Like her, you rise up again undimmed
This is your nature, according to your artus.
Worthy of praise is the artus
Worthy of praise is my Mother the Sun
Most worthy of praise is Grian Banchure,
The Intoxicating One, the Furious One, the Queenly One
The Wild Mare of Heaven and Earth and the Great, Pouring Sea.
[On "To Frigg": The other goddess I consider my patron is Frigg. She is the first goddess I ever had any kind of real relationship with, when I came into paganism through Asatru, and even though my focus has shifted largely to the Celtic world over the years, she has remained closer to me than any other power. This is probably the weakest of these prayers in terms of its artfulness, and I might have been wise not to try writing a prayer to Frigg at all. The interesting thing about Frigg is that even though the lore consistently records her as a seeress and a powerful knower of hidden things, much like the more celebrated divine sorcerers Odin and Freyja, another consistent factor is that Frigg is said to speak little or nothing of what she knows; she is portrayed as an enigmatic and secretive goddess. Based on my own experience, I don't think she's *secretive,* per se, so much as I think that the type of knowing that is Frigg's primary domain is basically ineffable. Unlike poet-seers like the Irish Fili or Odin and his rune-mastery, Frigg deals with a type of wisdom that can be perceived, but only very imperfectly set into words. Still, I am naturally a wordy kind of person, and the temptation to capture Frigg in a verbal prayer is a constant temptation; this is the latest and, shall we say, the least unsuccessful of those attempts, at least to my ear.]
In a moment of silence, my thoughts turn again to you
Silent and stately one,
Frigg, my counselor, my lady of deep mysteries
And truths too full of weight for words.
The vast stillness of endless space,
Time's shroud that conceals what has been and what will be,
The darkness in which all has its beginning,
These things are your rede and holy writ,
Kindly One, Frigg, who turns the wheel of the stars,
Who spins the threat and sets in motion that which is becoming.
Mother, I have only words for my distaff, to aid my spinning of thought into deed
And this I freely offer to you:
My words, my works, my thoughts, my thanks, my love.
You who are Heaven's Hlaefdige, first among the Asynjur,
It is not beneath even you to pour the mead
To serve your guests at the great feast of the gods.
This, then, I have learned from the Mighty Queen of Asgard,
The lady of Crowns, Cups, and Keys:
Only the most noble claim the honor of service,
And she whose hands are open need give way to no one.
Mother, let it be in your name that I labor,
And your example that I follow in both pride and devotion.
You, Frigg, who are Fjorgynn's fair daughter, mistress of the Marsh Hall,
You do not soar so high on your falcon's wings that you forget yourself.
You are a giantish goddess, kinswoman of the eldest beings
And you make your home on the rich, yielding ground
On the cool water's edge.
A heron for grace are you, a strong fearless swan, a goose in full-throated cry.
This, then, I have learned from the Queen of Sokkvabekr where the cool waves glimmer,
The lady of the Lake:
The court of love is not a greenhouse garden
The Beloved walks with bare feet in the fen
She keeps the company of Var who turns against the oathbreaker and Syn who bars the door against intruders,
But also of Sjofn who guides the hearts of lovers and Lofn who strikes down all obstacles before them.
Mother, help me remember that all growing things put down roots in the moist earth
and to keep your ways always,
Which are the steadfast ways of the earth's rock bones
And also the green and living ways of the sapling and the wildflower.
Weiss Frau, Shining Goddess Frigg,
You are before and behind the woven wyrd
You hold the moon like a jewel in the palm of your hand
And yet you were once a new bride among a new people
You were once a mother plunged into grief at the loss of a son.
Of all your mysteries, Frigg, this is the greatest:
At the core of your vastness,
The heart of you is a woman's heart, and your love for your people is not only profound,
It is personal, palpable, and present.
In a moment of silence, I become aware of it again,
And I am transformed again by gratitude and love.
