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Praying

  
  

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Leidan
15:04 / 13.03.06
The power of prayer is an unavoidable aspect of the major religions, one that is credited with great things and used both as ritual and as a personal tool by many millions of people. Can it also be useful outside of a codified religion; does it retain its power, and if so, what form can or does it take?

There seem to be many examples of prayer existing outside of, or rather transcending, codified religion (by this I mean a single set of teachings that give specific instructions on how to pray, and the nature of that that you are praying to) - for instance, Alice Bailey's 'Great Invocation' is specifically inter-religious, or pan-religious, while many people engage in private prayer while rejecting for instance a specifically monotheistic approach.

However, personally, while I've often felt a certain drive to pray, I've never known how - what I mean by this is that the words that started to form immediately went along the line of 'O Lord..' or 'Father', which do not correspond with my conception of the possible forms of God (which is more toward the Hindu conception of an ever-present force residing in and comprising everything). Do people you find prayer reconcilable with this idea of God at all?

As to why I find the idea of prayer attractive - the verbalising of various internal states, questions, emotions, and directing them outwards, appears quite a healthy thing to do - a release for things which are not relevant or appropriate to inter-human relations. Also, I'm open to the idea that such an activity has a certain power in the world 'outside' my own psyche. So, to reformulate the question yet again, how do people - those of you who do - direct such things outwards without specifying a hovering 'identity' to direct them *to*? While it is certainly possible to simply say 'thank you' or express a wish without directing it to a personality, this would take away the 'ritualistic' elements which appear to contain much of the power, if power does indeed reside in such things - i.e, those elements which approach the mantra or invocation.

How do you personally approach these things? It occurs that the direction that may often be taken is towards polytheistic dedication - however the use of the term 'prayer' to refer to such activities doesn't seem very widespread (for instance a search on this forum doesn't really turn up anything..). I'm very interested of course in hearing from the ideas of people involved in the codified religions as well.
 
 
grant
15:13 / 13.03.06
Well, as a former Catholic, I don't really have a problem praying to Our Father or Holy Mary, Mother of God, or the Holy Spirit when the occasion calls for it.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
15:38 / 13.03.06
Some relevant ground already covered over in the 'On Faith' thread, starting perhaps from this post, though the whole thread may interest you (and is only a few posts more than starting from there).
 
 
Dead Megatron
16:53 / 13.03.06
Well, as a former Catholic, I don't really have a problem praying to Our Father or Holy Mary, Mother of God, or the Holy Spirit when the occasion calls for it.

I second that
 
 
il-brikkun
19:51 / 13.03.06
I've always treated prayer as communicative and intended to create a space where dialogue can be effectively achieved. When I feel the need to offer thanks/praise, on the other hand, I form litanies intended to strengthen the bond between myself and the object of adoration (purely ritual recitations, working like matras as 'distraction' for long enough to get the message out there).

The codification of prayer seems to work on several layers... the fact that Catholics all around the world are saying the Hail Mary to the same BVM no doubt strengthens the collective bond they feel individually/as a unified Church. Not to mention egregores and such.

Either way, prayer is such a versatile tool because it can work any way you want it to; self-reflection, meditation, devotion, communion... put any spin on it. Just remember... 'enflame thyself with prayer'!
 
 
Leidan
10:18 / 14.03.06
Thanks; Iconoplast's post is very illuminating.

Well, as a former Catholic, I don't really have a problem praying to Our Father or Holy Mary, Mother of God, or the Holy Spirit when the occasion calls for it.

Do you feel/think that each time an entity is named by the prayer, that is the specific recipient of it? Or do such names serve one of any number of other purposes, such as giving a known mental framework for the prayer?
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
10:43 / 14.03.06
Do you feel/think that each time an entity is named by the prayer, that is the specific recipient of it? Or do such names serve one of any number of other purposes, such as giving a known mental framework for the prayer?

You could probably distill about 80% of the discussions in this forum down to wrangling over that very question...
 
 
Unconditional Love
11:44 / 14.03.06
What does anyone make of the relationship between prayer and positive affirmations?
 
 
grant
14:34 / 14.03.06
Do you feel/think that each time an entity is named by the prayer, that is the specific recipient of it? Or do such names serve one of any number of other purposes, such as giving a known mental framework for the prayer?

Well, yes and yes, if that helps.

Dual nature of Christ as fully human and fully divine, thus coexistent with the Creator and the Holy Spirit (through Him, with Him, in Him, etc. etc.), being both a specific instance of a specific person and a mask for something greater than personhood, a something which also exists in (and as) a "known mental framework" -- a mental machine or a psychological system.
 
 
iconoplast
15:01 / 14.03.06
I wish I had more of a cosmology to explain prayer with. Prayer's just something I was told to do, with or without belief. And, as I continued to just pray, some faith and a (very) little understanding came.

Prayer, to me, is like attunement - in the sense of fine-tuning a radio station. It adjusts my mindset and keeps me in tune with my life and my day. Without it, I tend to drift off into what I expect/want/think ought to happen, lose track of what is actual, and just end up grumpy and frustrated at people's horribly obstinate failure to be telepathic.

So, yeah - here's a prayer, attributed to St Francis, that AA printed as an example, when people asked the founders what all this prayer stuff was about:

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace,
that where there is hatred, I may bring love;
that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness;
that where there is discord, I may bring harmony;
that where there is error, I may bring truth;
that where there is doubt, I may bring faith;
that where there is despair, I may bring hope;
that where there are shadows, I may bring light;
that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;
to understand, than to be understood;
to love, than to be loved.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.

See that 'where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness' part? For literally years, every time someone read this prayer (which happens fiarly often), I would think 'where there is wrong, let me bring right.' Yeah. Took a while to get over that one.
 
 
electric monk
15:39 / 14.03.06
Iconoplast, thanks for sharing that. It's quite beautiful.



Strange and silly as this may sound, I've been using a Qabalistic mantra and breathing as a form of prayer. If I have an immediate need or just need a bit of inner peace, I do this:


- Breathe in slowly and visualize a ball of light rising from the soles of my feet up thru me and out the top of my head to a spot about a foot above my head. Inwardly, I vibrate the god-name "Ateh" ('Lord', I think).

- Breathe out slowly and visualize the ball of light descending from the 'Ateh' spot back to my feet, inwardly vibrating "Malkuth" ('Kingdom'). After this first set, there's a channel of light open, going right thru me.

- As the light rises and falls, I keep the inner mantra going, "pushing" whatever my present desire is up with the light, and letting an answer descend with it on the way back down. Taking it to the Lord in prayer, as it were.



When I do this, I don't feel I'm praying to the God of my youth (and thus feel no need to impress It with pretty words or cleverness). I'm not even really using words to express my needs. The best I can think of to describe what I'm giving and receiving is "emotional aggregates", but I've just punched myself in the chin for typing that, so I think I'll say no more.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
08:26 / 15.03.06
"Ateh" is not a god name, it means 'Unto thee'...
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
08:27 / 15.03.06
ADNI is 'Lord'...
 
 
Unconditional Love
10:17 / 15.03.06
I was doing a very similar meditation to monk last night, i use the english, I mentally sing I AM to myself in an imagined powerful chest voice with a sort of gregorian flavour and vibrations of I like eeeeee as i breath in and AM as i breath out emphasise on the vibration of mmmmm, similar to aum. The I flows up from the feet and the AM down from the head.( a flow between malkut and keter)

Its simple but very effective in filling me with a sense of unification.

I notice in kabbalah as well that I AM is at both the top and bottom of jacobs ladder, so the unification becomes between keter in azilut and malkut in assiyah.

It also makes me think of the phrase I AM THAT I AM, which i am beginning to see as a movement of creation through out the worlds and sephiroth, a loop of sustanence is hidden in that phrase once you see the I AM ' S in jacobs ladder.
 
 
Unconditional Love
10:25 / 15.03.06
I think some prayer where we imbue a diety with qualities is like positive affirmation, we imbue another with those qualities to impress them into ourselves.

The advantage in this from my point of view is, that it encourages people to focus on what is outside of them as a source of good, but also encourages those values within them.

When it comes to just asserting and affirming the self without recourse to another, a kind of selfishness can present itself.

It reminds me of a definition between magic and miracles ive recently read. Magic is done for simple self gain, where as miracles are performed for the good of others and cosmic good. Its a very simplistic attitude but seems to ring true to me at present.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
11:34 / 15.03.06
Not entirely relevant to the thread overall, but sort of relevant, and while we're here: Ancient Hebrew had no past, present and future tense.

It had an imperfective aspect and perfective aspect which were used to indicate time - the perfective referring to that which was complete ("I am") and the imperfective referring to that which was incomplete but which may (or may not) be completed later on...without any definite yea or nay. Hence time.

EHIH, the word in question in the phrase used above (and often mis-translated) as in "I Am that I Am" is imperfective aspect, referring to an incomplete work...so the usual translation is undoubtedly incorrect. This 'God name' is thus not really "I AM" at all.

More properly the phrase Eyheh Asher Eyheh means "I will be that I will be" or "I become what I become".

Every other use of the word (EHIH, Eyheh) in the OT of the Hebrew Bible was translated by Greek scholars, correctly, as imperfective aspect, except this one instance, after Moses enquires as to the identity of the Great Unnameable. Apparently squeamish at the notion that God might still be a works-in-progress, the esteemed translators bottled it and went with the definite article.

Sorry, just wanted to pipe in there.
 
 
Unconditional Love
11:58 / 15.03.06
I am means i am being, which is why i think zev ben shimon halevi uses I am, which is my reference point for reading and understanding kabbalah. I am is to be, i am in heaven as i am in earth. I AM is an expression of what it means to be.
 
 
Unconditional Love
12:02 / 15.03.06
Another way of expressing it would be that I AM affirms a sense of being. I am being in and of all worlds, united in my being.
 
 
EvskiG
14:16 / 15.03.06
Might as well note something that confused me for a long time: that damned TH in terms like Malkuth and Kether.

As I understand it, the letter tav (ת) originally had an aspirated variant that was pronounced with a "th" sound. This may be the closest to Biblical Hebrew, and still is used in some academic transliteration (especially by non-Hebrew-speaking people such as Christian scholars).

However, the aspirated version eventually dropped out of Sepharidic Hebrew (used by Middle Eastern and Spanish Jews) and modern Israeli Hebrew, both of which pronounce the letter as "t." Ashkenazic Hebrew (used by Eastern European Jews), on the other hand, pronounces the letter as "s."

So, depending on your background, the term for "crown" can be pronounced "Kether" (which I believe the Golden Dawn and Crowley used), "Keser" (which I believe Regardie used in some early works), or "Keter."

I've always used "Keter" because that's the form of modern Hebrew I was taught in Hebrew school. Which form do other people use, and why?
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
15:01 / 15.03.06
I am means i am being, which is why i think zev ben shimon halevi uses I am, which is my reference point for reading and understanding kabbalah.

That's as maybe, but EHIH, means 'I will be' or 'I become' in its nearest English equivalent. Just to be clear.

Found it very interesting to note, as well, that 'Lo tirtzack', properly translated, means 'Thou shalt not kill any living creature'. Important, and behaviourally very important, distinction from the rather more vague 'Thou shalt not kill', in that it would seem to require absolute vegetarianism, and not just a moral stricture to avoid murdering other people. Moses, Morrissey, Moses, Morrissey. Meat, it turns out, really is murder...At least in the omniscient gnosis of EHIH YHWH ADNI...

Sorry, as you were.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
15:05 / 15.03.06
Evskig - in Aramaic it is definitely a 'th' sound...albeit quite a short one. Probably this is closest to Ancient Hebrew...
 
 
HCE
15:17 / 15.03.06
I have been asked to pray for friends before, even though they know I have no religious beliefs. What I have done is sat quietly and thought of my friend, and tried to imagine him being happy, not in pain, and to be present to all the love I have in my heart.

I didn't say or think any words.
 
 
electric monk
15:59 / 15.03.06
"Ateh" is not a god name, it means 'Unto thee'...

Thanks for pointing that out, Money Honey. I appreciate it.
 
 
EvskiG
20:43 / 15.03.06
Um . . . unless I'm mistaken "atah" means "you" (or "thou"). For example, "Baruch atah Adonai": "Blessed art thou, God." (Pronounced Ba-rooch a-taw A-do-naye.)
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
10:56 / 22.03.06
"Thou", or "Thine", which can also be "Unto thee"...

For solid exposition about this (tangential to the thread) matter, look here

Been meaning to pop in here for ages, but lost the link, and got pissed off with Barbelith completely. :-)
 
 
EvskiG
13:56 / 22.03.06
Just pulled the Webster's NewWorld Hebrew Dictionary from the library here at work. "Atah" is simply the Hebrew masculine second person pronoun -- hence, "you" (or "thou" if you want to be flowery and King James-ish sounding).

The only translations of "atah" as "thine" or "unto thee" I could find (online) are occult works, which I consider far less reliable than, um, real Hebrew dictionaries.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
14:45 / 22.03.06
You are absolutely, um, right, um, Evskig...though in the context of the Qabalistic Vibration of Names, um, which is, um, sort of, um, what we were talking about, um, the occult is kind of, um, more relevant to the discussion maybe, um, you think, than, um, the strict Modern Hebrew Webster's?

Um.

With regard to my analising over the AHIH / YHWH mistranslation, that seems somehow more pertinent to a discussion of Praying and That Which is Prayed To, to me, than whether Atah can be taken to mean, preceding 'Malkuth', either 'You, The Kingdom and Queendom, the Ancient Ruling Principle, The "I Can" of the Universe' or 'Unto You, The Kingdom and Queendom, the Ancient Ruling Principle, The "I Can" of the Universe'.

Although one is dedicated to a principle, while the other is addressing the principle directly, the principle itself is of more import than the manner of devotion, I suspect. Understanding the name by which the Divinity which spoke to Moses wishes to be known is, possibly, more relevant to this particular thread than understanding the Webster's non-occult definition of the Hebrew 'Atah' (informal and personal as it may be, what with AHIH being our good buddy, and all).

Since the traditional translation of 'I am that I am' is as erroneous as the notion of the name 'Jehovah' and based on nothing so much as sqeamishness about the actual translation and poor transliteration of Hebrew characters into Roman/Greek ones, and exists way outside of occult writings, again, I think it somehow bears more relevance to a discussion of Praying than whether a bunch of Thelemites decided to make their opening address sound both paradoxically more and at the same time less formal (By making it sound all Olde Englishe, for formality, while using an informal Hebrew address, intended to imply close companionship not deference to authority).

What do you, um, think?
 
 
EvskiG
15:40 / 22.03.06
Let me be blunt.

You acted like you knew what you were talking about. You were wrong. Get over it and stop making excuses.

Yes, I'm familiar with "Atah Malkot V'Giburah V'Gidulah L'Olam Amen." (In fact, I did the Cabalistic Cross twice a day for several years.) But the 19th century English occultists who came up with that little phrase (and other phrases) very well may have made a few mistakes with their Hebrew. I don't know that that's the case, but I do know that in the last couple of days I haven't found a proper, genuinely supportable translation of the Hebrew "Atah" as "unto thee" or "thine."

I don't like to use occult tools if they don't work. And I've gotten old enough and fussy enough that I don't use occult terms if I don't actually know what they mean. If "Elohim" isn't actually a feminine word with a masculine plural, even though that's what I was initially taught, I'd like to know that. And if "Atah" doesn't actually mean "unto thee" or "thine," I'd like to know that, too, and not simply bullshit about Hebrew I don't actually know or understand because I read it in an occult book or two and accept it as received wisdom.

Your mileage may vary.

And, for what it's worth, I don't believe that there is any name "by which the Divinity which spoke to Moses wishes to be known." It's simply a myth that may serve as a useful tool or model on some occasions, for some purposes. Again, your mileage may vary.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
15:51 / 22.03.06
There you go, wihtout a single 'Um', this time.

Parabens!!
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
16:30 / 22.03.06
You acted like you knew what you were talking about.

And - newsflash - I did!

Because, as you point out, the vibratory formula for the Cross was a bunch of 19th Century occultists co-opting Hebrew ritual for their own ends, and as such, they pretty much have the dibs on its meaning as a ritual, regardless of the Dictionary definition of the words. After all, the vibration of YHWH after the Cross is not, strictly speaking, intended to mean what the Hebrew's would mean by it, is it now? So when monk mentions he vibrates the god name 'Ateh' and adds that he believes it to mean 'Lord', I corrected him, in terms of reference of the ritual he is deriving it from. So sue me.

Incindentally, I point out to monk subsequently that Adonai is Hebrew for 'Lord', the word ze was looking for. You then subsequently, in your rush to be a smartarse, or fountain of TRUTH, or whatever your schtick here is, translate "Baruch atah Adonai" incorrectly as 'God'. So these wee bodge ups are easily committed, even by towers of FACT like yourself.

You were wrong.

Well, from your standpoint as a Hebrew scholar/student I may well have been, but from the point of view of the ritual performed by monk, vibrating God-names and such like, and from the context of this area of the board as 'The Temple' and not 'The Synagogue' or 'The Hebrew Dictionary Forum', and being more concerned with matters pertaining to 19th century occultists than 21st Century Dictionaries of Modern Hebrew, possibly less so. But in as much as I have said 'You are right, Evskig', I think I conceded your point, and my shame already.

You/Unto You...You suspect the Thelemites 'made a mistake with their Hebrew' here, but I suspect they did not. I do, however, think you are being incredibly anal about a largely irrelevant pronoun in the context of this thread. Perhaps you should also

Get over it

And we can return to the topic at hand.

and stop making excuses.

Take your head out of your arse and I might find it more agreeable to do so. What's all the 'um' about? Barbelith has an already critical mass of smartarses, do you really have to be another one?
 
 
EvskiG
16:48 / 22.03.06
You're correct that "Adonai" does mean "Lord," which I translated colloquially as "God." No argument there. If you'd like to lord that over me (so to speak), feel free, although I think of the two as synonyms.

Lord (or God) knows I'm not a Hebrew scholar, and I don't claim to be. I haven't been a Hebrew student since my bar mitzvah at 13. How about you?

As for the rest of your argument:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
16:52 / 22.03.06
although I think of the two as synonyms.

and

As for the rest of your argument:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

Quoted without comment.
 
 
JohnnyDark
21:51 / 22.03.06
I loop the Hail Mary when I'm in a plane taking off or landing... very soothing.
 
 
xytar with a Z
00:28 / 31.03.06
Hate to bear bad news but I saw this today.

A study of more than 1,800 patients who underwent heart bypass surgery has failed to show that prayers specially organized for their recovery had any impact, researchers said on Thursday.

In fact, the study found some of the patients who knew they were being prayed for did worse than others who were only told they might be prayed for -- though those who did the study said they could not explain why.

link
 
 
*
07:43 / 31.03.06
The only people I think this is bad news for are the people doing poorly after a heart attack.
 
  

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