Living Prayer, Sweet Water, Equinox Blessings

by Ruby Sara

Kore! Maiden Savioress, Child of Hyacinths, Bringer of Rain – She!  Sweet Abandon, Sister to Daylight, Lightning Woman! She who swallows the moon and the stars! She who calms Aegean pools and break Ionian shores! She who Rises Up from Hades’ throne and Leaps across the River Styx! She who Races past the snapping jaws of Cerberus and bursts forth from the Cave Mouth, bringing with her all the glories of Spring!—The Willow and the Honeybee, the Storm and the Sap!

-From Invocation of the Kore, by Ruby Sara and Johnny Rapture

Greetings, Pagani, from the brilliant, laughter-stirring blue skies of the pretty-damn-wild urban midwest!  It was a moody weekend – from snow and slush on Saturday to heart-breaking, breath-catching, wind-racing perfection on Monday…a weekend shot through with Spring.  I will say it again (and again and again)…Io Kore!!  Evohe!  I was so enamored of the season that I missed wishing you all a Blessed Ostara, so I’ll just have to do that now.  Blessings of the vernal equinox, beloveds!

What emotion is laid down and kept under wraps in winter rises with the sap in spring.  And I am all over the map, beloveds, like the weather.  One minute the terror of thunder in my heart, the next a gray sky sadness, the next the splintering shock of total joy.  But always, the moss grows green over the weary earth, and the crocuses stir and toss and wake, those ancient messengers.

I have been thinking about prayer.

I talk about prayer a lot. I feel as though I talk about it almost as much as I talk about poetry (though lately, I have been talking about poetry even more than usual).  Is this because they are both beholden to the fundamental necessity of aesthetics in spiritual practice…because aesthetics/prayer/poetry/ritual/magic are actually all the exact same thing?  Maybe…maybe…(and later…later).  I certainly talk about prayer more than I talk about magic.  Which is interesting, because I see no difference between them.

But if there is a difference, then it may be true that prayer, rather than spellcraft, is the operative form of magical expression for me.  So what do I mean by “prayer?”  Clever Pagani with your interesting questions.

I know there are those who dislike the idea of prayer because they believe that it robs a human being of personal agency – to give everything “up to God” and to annihilate the ego, the self, the will.  And some forms of historical prayer certainly do this…prayer that postulates unworthiness in the face of top-down, monarchical domination for instance (oh all powerful god-king, whose feet I’m not worthy to lick, please help lowly, disgusting, wormy me, out of your infinite mercy, etc).  Now personally, my gods don’t dig on groveling, so this is not a form of prayer I ever engage in, or encourage anyone else to engage in.  I do understand feeling humble when faced with overwhelming Immensity (standing in a sorghum field in West Texas as a thunderstorm comes in over the expanse comes to mind…), and I also believe that Pagans overemphasize the radically individualistic “will.”  Yes, I believe that there is merit in sometimes giving it “up to your god,” and allowing for the astonishing lessons of interdependency to sink into the skin of the soul.  But authentic humility and interdependency are most emphatically not the same thing as self-debasement and groveling, which in my opinion comes way more out of Empire’s need to keep the Other down in order to maintain control than out of any kind of actual spiritual impulse or theological requirement.

Some dislike prayer because it implies an unequal relationship.  That’s a little more tricky for me, and a matter of one’s personal opinion of the gods and relationship with them.  I personally don’t believe that I am “equal” to all spirits, gods and powers in all ways, and therefore asking them for their uniquely qualified help is not out of the question.  So for me, prayer as a supplication in some circumstances makes an equal amount of sense as would me asking a surgical expert to perform surgery on a broken ankle – it’s not something I can do myself (well, it’s not likely anyways), and they have skills and knowledge I do not possess.

But that still presupposes prayer as solely existing for the purpose of supplication and asking for aid, which while a completely valid form of prayer is hardly the only one.  There is also prayer as mystical communion, or prayer as praise.  In these ways, prayer knocks up against mystical practice – actions that bring one closer to the ineffable shocking beauty of things, etc.  That kind of prayer can look very different for different folks.  Mine tends to be verbal, because I’m a wordy, verbally-cued person.  I like repetition, alliteration…prayers littered liberally with epithets and pieces from Greek lyric poems, Aztec laments, grimoires, contemporary poets, Sufi mystics, and my own phantasmagoria.  And I am a huge proponent of repetitive group prayer; I once participated in the recitation of the rosary with a small group of Gnostic worshipers in the back room of a bookstore that took my breath away.  But these are specifically verbal prayers…and prayer is certainly not required to be verbal.  Prayer can also look like dancing.  In the rain.  It can look like breathing in and breathing out.  It can look like reciting nursery rhymes while kneading bread.  It can be kneading bread.  It can be standing at the root of summer mountains, staring out onto the limitless horizon at the star breaking over the rim of the planet, inhaling the scent of lilies suddenly and unexpectedly in the midst of the grocery store.  It can be communal.  It can be private.  It can be public.  It can be sleep.  And fire.  And laughter in the woods.

To whom am I praying?  What is the nature of the prayer?  This changes.  Guadalupe, Lady of Roses!  Place your hand on my head and cool the fever in my heart.  Dionysos!  Lord of Madness and Ecstasy!  Liberate the dove in my body made captive by fear!  Mama!  You are a million times beautiful – the seeds we have planted in our pots outside the door are breaking open and reach towards the sun – the story of radishes unfolding in the darkness and revealed in the light.  Light, heat, grass blade and morning air – the marvel of the earth turns outward.  And I pray as I wander through it, sometimes empty and sometimes full:

Yes, the night and the returning cricket singing.
Yes, the lengthening day.
Yes, the forge of the sun in the belly of the earth.
Yes, the wandering moon.

Yes, Kore, the plum blossom is opening.
Yes, Kore, the rose canes are putting forth new fingers.
Yes, Kore, the birds know a serpent is stirring.
Yes, Kore, the world rocks and burns with your breath.

Sweetness, the lightning.
The rock, the living water.

In the fire of the blessing desert.
In the salt of the blessing sea.

Grok Earth, friends Pagani.  Pray your prayers ever without ceasing.