Greek Pagan Basics: How To Write A Prayer

Greek Pagan Basics: How to Write a Prayer

When it comes to prayer, there aren’t a lot of rules. Prayer can be as simple, direct and informal as talking to the gods, off the cuff, in a time of need or just because you feel like it. Prayer can also be something you plan and prepare for, whether by making use of the many existing historical or modern prayers to the gods and reading or memorizing them, or by writing your own modern prayers.

You do not have to write your own prayers–it is not a requirement of worshipping the gods. But if you feel called to do it, it can be a wonderful and meaningful way to connect with deity. And while the act of prayer is not an offering, the work you put into creating it can itself be a gift to the gods.

The idea of writing your own prayers to the gods can be intimidating. You look at the readily available surviving texts, the Homeric Hymns, the Orphic Hymns, and they are so beautiful. If that’s the standard, how can we ever attain it?

But it isn’t the standard. It never was. Not all historical hymns were the Homeric hymns. Not all hymns were high art. (And certainly not all prayers were hymns, although the two terms have a lot of overlap in meaning. I usually use the term “prayer” to refer to my own writings, in part because it feels more like I’m focusing on function.)

The Homeric hymns and similar pieces were often performed at festivals and in competitions. The beauty of these hymns, while not separate from their religious significance, is not solely related to their liturgical function. Many of the hymns actually used in ritual were more to the point–more focused on that function. Few of these works survive, and those that do are of widely varying literary quality. (I personally, as a writer of my own prayers, find this idea quite comforting. :))

The Rhetoric of Prayer

I will admit it, I write a lot of prayers of praise and prayers of thanks. I don’t often pray for something and if I do it’s usually pretty informal. (I suspect that says at least as much about my life as it does about my theology.) But many of the same techniques can be used just as effectively in prayers of supplication.

Reciprocity. Like most Indo-European cultures, the ancient Greeks had a view of relationship that included “a gift for a gift.” This does not mean that you are buying friendship–rather, it emphasizes the give-and-take that is a part of any healthy relationship.

A prayer of supplication might include a reminder of past relationship, which can be either a mention of blessings the god has granted you in the past, or a mention of offerings or other services you have provided the god. It can also mention a gift being given at the same time this prayer is being made. Or it can include a promise of future gifts and services. In all cases, it is a statement of relationship.

Myth. Mythic references can refer in general to the greatness of the god, or can be used to point specifically toward the theme of the prayer. For example, a prayer to Aphrodite to bring love into your life might mention the story of Pygmalion and Galatea as an example of the goddess’ greatness. It goes without saying that these mythic references should be positive ones–you might use stories from the Iliad in a prayer praising Athena, but probably not in one for Ares.

History. Since we lack a large and thriving worship community, for concrete examples I sometimes refer back to the power and prestige a god enjoyed in the distant past. If you are asking Apollo for divinatory help, a mention of his oracular prowess at Delphi would be appropriate; if you are asking his help in health matters, the role he took at ancient healing temples would be more to the point.

Style. Historically, some sorts of prayer were believed particularly appropriate to certain gods. The dignified paean was Apollo’s, while the livelier dithyramb was for Dionysos. For a modern writer, you may want to keep in mind the rhythm of the words and metre when writing.

Voice. While a hymn or prayer of praise may be written in the third person, all the better to tell a good story, a prayer that asks for something is most often written in the second person, thus providing a direct, personal message from the writer/speaker to the god.

The Elements of Prayer

Although there is no precise and standard form that all historic prayers followed, there are a few guidelines, things that a number of prayers tended to have in common. Generally Greek prayers included three parts, each providing a different function.

Invocation. First of all, you need to get the god’s attention, and to get the interaction off on the right foot. Call to the god by name, including words of praise (pro tip, all the gods are beautiful, all the gods are mighty :)) and by the use of descriptive words and phrases. Referring to Asklepios as “son of Apollo” underlines the sort of healing power he comes from. Referring to Apollo as “swift-shooting” has a different meaning than referring to him as “sweet-singing,” although both emphasize his power and skill.

Note that there is nothing wrong with using an epithet you’ve seen in historical texts, “ox-eyed Hera” and “thundering Zeus” were common phrases and had all the more meaning because they were known and understood by all.

Argument. Here you give reasons why the god should look favorably on your request. (See Reciprocityabove.) You can also include reasons based on something other than personal relationship–for example, asking for help in matters of love from Aphrodite, or in matters of justice from Zeus, because those are among their respective realms. This is where you make your case.

Request. Finally you ask the god to look kindly on your request, to grant you their blessings and gifts.

Example: Invocation: Grey-eyed Athena, daughter of thundering Zeus, Argument: if ever I have poured out sweet wine for you, Request: look kindly on me and grant me your wisdom.

The Act of Prayer

It was traditional to stand while praying, with arms raised toward the heavens.

If praying to a chthonic deity, it would be appropriate to kneel (placing yourself symbolically closer to their realm), or to focus your attention toward the earth in some other way.

(It is more than appropriate, by the way, to sing hymns, as was often done historically, if this is something you feel drawn to do. A performance, again, is work that is a gift to the gods.)

Miraculous in-universe memes

@kumalimited’s excellent ml memes inspired me

984 notes View Post

thatgurlpersephonee

1 month ago

not my lady please not my lady

Emrielle headcanons part 2

Emily comes from an ancient noble family

The ancestor of her family was of royal descent

Emily is a good dancer. She was engaged in ballroom dancing when she lived on the estate

She practiced horse riding and equestrian polo for five years until she broke her leg. After that, her parents forbade her to ride

She had a horse named Peggy

She had a sweet beautiful laugh

She was proud of her thick curvey golden hair

As a teenager she secretly composed poetry and music for the piano

She had the title of Lady

Despite the fact that she had renounced her title and family, she had observed etiquette all her life

Initially her family wanted to marry Emily to Colt Fathom. But she didn't want that, so she went to study in France to postpone the wedding

When she fell in love with Gabriel, her father was very angry and forced her to choose between love and family. Emily renounced her title and inheritance to stay with her beloved

She had a cold relationships with her parents

She hid her origin from Gabriel

When Gabriel found out the truth he jokingly started calling Emily "my lady"

15 notes View Post

thatgurlpersephonee

3 months ago

recently saw a video on insta where a woman was talking about her acts of micro feminism (shaking hands with both women and men, asking women's opinions first, turning to female specialists). in the comments, men started writing that these were "rather acts of hatred towards men", that is, what men did and continue to do with women is normal, but asking women's opinions first and shaking their hands is hatred? wtf is wrong w men??

1K notes View Post

thatgurlpersephonee

4 weeks ago

286 notes View Post

thatgurlpersephonee

1 year ago

NEW YEAR, NEW ME

( A collab with thee lovely lele @bloombabydoll )

If you want to reinvent and rebrand yourself, or just continue to make positive improvements in 2024, the first thing is to evaluate your current year.

EVALUATION

Reflect on how things went for you. Was there continuous growth? Were there many difficult times? Did you discover anything major about yourself and so on. Try to summarise your year in (a) paragraph(s) at least.

Oversee your goals. Which ones you didn’t, did achieve, difficult ones, easy ones and the impacts it had on your life.

Compare your dream girl then and now. Is your visualisation of your life currently different to the one you have now and why?

List any major losses or successes you’ve had in your life, and how they have helped you or why it matters to you.

This evaluation can be as detailed or simple as you like, but as long as you have a decent outline of your year.

PREPARING & PLANNING

To prepare for 2024, you want to know what you want life to be like in 2024. Something realistic to a point, but still is a growth journey.

Think of something that you can associate with 2024. This can be a word, a symbol, art, a song, a book, a movie, a place, or even just all of these things. When you think about your goals and your journey, this is your theme. This is something that should relate to your goals or your dream girl somehow.

For me, I chose a word and a song. My word is growth because, for me, 2023 was a year for just being able to shed my old self which I did achieve however I just felt there wasn’t much growth as an actual person and not just in my environment.

For my song, it is Mayflowers by Proleters and Taskrok. This song is the epitome of what I would imagine, is the most polished mindset. I would say perfect, but having a perfect mindset is near impossible. I want to have a mindset glow up because I’ve just been hard on myself lately which has caused my confidence to plummet.

Before we get into the fun part of the preparation stage, we have to do some organisation in our life. I want you to take a look at your daily lifestyle and your habits, and be completely unashamed about this.

Then categorise these habits into two sections; Leave and Leap. Leave habits are habits that you are leaving behind in 2023, leap habits are habits that are leaping into 2024 with you.

Any habits that are self-destructive, addictive or generally harmful are leave habits. Beneficial habits and self-building are leaping with you into the new year.

I want you to do the same for people in your life, all environments (school, work, online etc) and anything else you believe needs to be sorted out.

This works better if you can reason with yourself why it is a leaping or leaving habit, but don’t try to convince yourself a bad habit is good or vice versa.

Now, I want you to document an honest paragraph about who you are right now. List your bad and good habits, your strengths and weaknesses and your behaviours. This one requires a bit more detail.

Then, write a paragraph about who you will be in 2024, your dream girl. List her habits, lifestyle, behaviours, mindset, strengths and anything else extra. I’ll explain later but do not include materialistic desires in this your dream girl. Once again, this one also requires details.

Stemming from those paragraphs, I want you to create specific and achievable goals. SMART goals are best, but I want to introduce you to how I set goals.

I divide my year into quarters. For each 3 months, I have 3-5 goals for those months. Usually, it’s one from each area of my life. Then, I break down these goals.

Questions and How They Help

Why do I want to do this goal - For motivation and commitment.

How it’ll benefit me - For the sake of improvement.

How can I involve myself in this goal - To achieve your goal.

I prefer this method because it is a lot simpler for me, as I am just a young girl and my bigger goals are more in the future in which I’ll utilise SMART goals.

To create good goals; Make sure they align with your current values and life principles first. Try to avoid creating goals that you have just taken from the internet. Those goals just aren’t it and you most likely won’t follow through with it.

Be specific. Don’t say you want to eat more healthily, instead say you want to include (a certain group of veggies/fruits) in your diet and reduce the intake of ( food/drink).

E.g using eating healthy example

I want to eat healthy -> I want to start including foods that boost my immunity system and support my skin while reducing those that have the opposite effect.

Then break down those quarterly goals into monthly, weekly and daily goals. Make these habits that you can establish in your lifestyle and have a way in which you can refer back to your progress.

EXAMPLE GOAL BREAKDOWN

Quarterly Goal - Read 6 books.

Monthly Goal - Finish 2 books.

Weekly Goal - Be or near half way of one book.

Daily Goal - 20 minutes of reading per day.

AREAS TO SET GOALS IN YOUR LIFE

Academics

Spiritual

Fitness/sport

Health and wellbeing

Mental health

Personal life

Relationships

Hobbies and recreation

Now for the best part- vision boards! Collect all of your favourite images that embody your quarters or the whole year, then put them in one place where you can see them regularly!

Some ideas are a scrapbook, Pinterest boards, mood boards, playlists etc.

Choose your theme; It can be your healthy girl era, your academic come back or whatever you want. You can have more than two btw.

Use quotes! Then actually say them in your daily life as a way to shift your mindset to reflect said quote.

Include inspirational people. It doesn't even have to be a millionaire or a very well established person, it could be your friends or someone on the internet.

Be imaginative. Your vision board doesn't have to realistic in my opinion, as the whole point of it to me is that viewing it daily and considering it to be part of your life one day allows for you to open up to those opportunities.

Materialistic Wants

I feel obligated to make this a separate section. This section is practically tangible objects that you want.

However, when choosing this said object that you want, mindfully think about why you want that thing specifically.

It doesn’t have to be meaningful, but as long as each thing on that list has got a purpose to you, and will serve you, I think it’s all good!

Conclusion

If you want, you can definitely start implementing habits before January. However, I believe that as long as you go into 2024 at least knowing who you want to be and shedding away any limiting beliefs, you’ll be fine.

Make sure to incorporate some self care rituals into your daily life as well✨

To end this, I hope everyone has a very merry Christmas! And that 2024 they will achieve to close that gap with their current selves and their dream girl selves! 💖🙏

2K notes View Post

thatgurlpersephonee

1 month ago

ladybug discovers that chat noir can speak english with a PERFECT british accent and she is FLOORED. chat noir has never seen ladybug so fascinated with him before. after she first finds out she literally sits across from him and is like "oh my god can you say 'squirrel' in english??' he says it flawlessly and she's like 'WHOAAAAA DO IT AGAIN!!!!!'

647 notes View Post

thatgurlpersephonee

1 month ago

pov: u just opened youtube in mlb universe

1K notes View Post

thatgurlpersephonee

4 months ago

Men masturbate to shit that would be considered an actual fucking crime in literally any other context outside of porn and then act like that has no influence whatsoever on how they view and interact with women.

7K notes View Post

thatgurlpersephonee

4 weeks ago

The Attic Calendar

I’ve been wanting to make a post on the Attic Calendar, which was the lunisolar of Athens. Despite the numerous resources available, our knowledge of it still remains patchy due to the fact that since it wasn’t used outside of Athens, no one really bothered to make an extensive examination of it. I’ll try to explain the calendar as best as I can, and in a future post, I’ll try to cover every festival I can (Including Roman and non-Athenian festivals).

New Moon, Hekate’s Deipnon, & Noumenia

Before we discuss the months, it is quintessential to learn these three very important dates. Despite what I’ve seen from others, the new moon does not correlate with Noumenia. The Noumenia takes place 2 days after the new moon. This is because the Noumenia was marked when the first sliver of the moon was able to be seen.

“Ok, but why should we know about the Noumenia and Hekate’s Deipnon?”

Well, the Noumenia was the start of an Attic month. Hekate’s Deipnon was the end of the Attic month. I’ll explain the importance of these dates.

Hekate’s Deipnon

The day right after the new moon, Hekate’s Deipnon, also simply just called the Deipnon, was a meal served to Hekate. It was believed that on this day, Hekate called upon the restless spirits of the Underworld to roam the living world for a night. Because of this, it was incredibly unlucky to leave the house during the night hours.

To appease them, the Athenians would lay out a meal at a crossroads (typically in front of the doorway), as the crossroad is sacred to Hekate. This was done to purify the household of misdeeds and to return favor with Hekate. The Athenian would not look back on the offering, due to believing the spirits would be angry with them doing so. This meal typically consisted of raw eggs, cakes, loaves, fish, garlic, leeks, and/or onions. Incense was also lit.

This also had a secondary purpose, of which was feeding the poor. It was believed that Hekate encouraged the poor to eat the food laid out by the rich Athenians:

“From her (Hekate) one may learn whether it is better to be rich or to go hungry. For she says that those who have and who are wealthy should send her a dinner each month, but that the poor among mankind should snatch it before they put it down.’ For it was customary for the rich to offer loaves and other things to Hekate each month, and for the poor to take from them.“ - Aristophanes in the Suda,(Suda Epsilon 363, C10th CE, trans. W. Hutton)

If the household felt they were polluted, each member would touch a dog and put all their misdeeds onto it, and they would sacrifice the dog to Hekate. This is unfathomable nowadays, and in modern practice the sweeping and cleaning of the house should work just fine. (This is also when you should clean out the kathiskos made in honor of Zeus Ktesios)

In summary, the day was used to appease restless spirits and to purify the house before the new month begins.

Noumenia

The Noumenia was the first day of the Attic month, and the second day after the new moon. Household deities were honored and worshiped on this day, but also including Selene and Apollo Noumenios.

This was a day of relaxation and no work, considered the “holiest of days” by Plutarch. No festivals were allowed to take place during the Noumenia. Frankincense, wine, flower garlands, and barley cakes were common offerings during the Noumenia.

Holy Days

You got the Noumenia and Hekate’s Deipnon down? Good, because there’s actually more. The first couple days of each month was holy to a specific God. The 1st day was for the Noumenia, 2nd day was for the Agathos Daimon, 3rd day was for Athena, 4th day was for Aphrodite, Herakles, Eros, and Hermes, 5th day was considered very unlucky so no Gods had a holy day there (except for the Erinyes and Eris), 6th day was for Artemis, 7th day was for Apollo, 8th day was for Poseidon and Theseus, and the 9th day was for Rhea, Helios, and the Muses.

The Years

The final thing we need to talk about before we even get to the months is the years. Every 4 years completed an Olympiad, which was used to determine the Olympic games. Each different year in a Olympiad was generally the same, though some festivals could only be on a specific year. Some years also had an additional month (it was unclear which month would be duplicated, but nowadays we always duplicate the month of Poseidon) in order to keep the lunar dates in line with the solar dates. For example, this year (2020 before the Athenian New Year) is the 3rd year of the 699th Olympiad. This means in 2021, it will be the 700th Olympiad, which is quite rare since every 100 Olympiads is 400 years!

Whew. Time to finally talk about the months!

Hekatombaion

Hekatombaion was the first month in the Attic calendar. It always took place after the first new moon of the summer solstice. (This was how they kept the calendar in tune with the seasons; it was necessary to do so since Greece has very pronounced seasons). It generally correlates to July and August.

Hekatombaion 1st was the Athenian New Year, but unlike in the modern day, it was of very little importance to the regular Athenian. The actual new year festivities would take place during the Panathenaea, which took place later in the month.

This month would also host the Kronia and Synoikia.

Metageitnion

Metageitnion was the second month. It generally correlates to August and September.

This month hosted the Eleusinia (NOT related to the Eleusinian Mysteries) and the Herakleia.

Boedromion

Boedromion was the third month. It generally correlates to September and October.

This month hosted the Niketeria, Genesia, the Greater Eleusinian Mysteries.

Pyanepsion

Pyanepsion was the fourth month. It generally correlates to October and November.

This month hosted the Proerosia, Pyanepsia, Oskhophoria, Theseia, Stenia, Thesmophoria, Apatouria, and Khalkeia.

Maimakterion

Maimakterion was the fifth month. It generally correlates to November and December.

This month hosted the Pompaia.

Poseideon

Poseidon was the sixth month. It was also the month duplicated if need be, resulting in the month Poseidon-2, but it is unclear if any festivals were repeated or if there was any new festivals for it. It generally correlates to December and January.

This month hosted the Poseidea, Plerosia, Lesser Dionysia, and Haloa.

Gamelion

Gamelion was the seventh month. It generally correlates to January and February.

This month hosted the Lenaia and the Theogamia.

Anthesterion

Anthesterion was the eighth month. It generally correlates to February and March.

This month hosted the Anthesteria, the Lesser Eleusinian Mysteries, and the Diasia.

Elaphebolion

Elaphebolion was the ninth month. It generally correlates to March and April.

This month hosted the Elaphebolia, Asklepia, Greater Dionysia, and Pandia.

Mounukhion

Mounukhion was the tenth month. It generally correlates to April and May.

This month hosted the Delphinia, Mounukhia,and the Olympeia.

Thargelion

Thargelion was the eleventh month. It generally correlates to May and June.

This month hosted the Thargelia, Bendideia, Kallynteria, and Plynteria.

Skirophorion

Skirophorion was the twelfth and final month. It generally correlates to June and July.

This month hosted the Arrephoria, Skira, and Dipolieia/Bouphonia.

Where can I check these dates?

Hellenion is pretty amazing for this, here is 2020. It has links to each festival with further explanations too. HMEPA is also great as you can go through really every year. Here’s the link to it.

Hope you enjoyed! On the Athenian New Year I plan to release a wave of posts for each month (in the Gregorian months) for all festivals (including Roman and non-Athenian) with details and how to do them. Thanks for reading!

142 notes View Post

thatgurlpersephonee

1 month ago