Those of us who call ourselves Pagans owe a debt to all those who came before us. Before trying to define our own modern Paganism, therefore, we should find out as much as we can about what the ancient Pagans did. To do that, we'll look at their prayers. Then we can either follow their lead, or, if we choose to be different, we can at least choose from knowledge rather than from ignorance.
The most reliable sources on how the ancient Pagans prayed are the prayers recorded by the Pagans themselves. There are several types of sources of ancient Pagan prayers, such as the literary and the epigraphic. There are quite a few literary sources for Greek and Roman Paganism, even more for the Egyptian tradition, and a great wealth of material from India. Anthropologists in modern times have supplied us with large amounts of material from all over the world. We most certainly do not lack information.
We also have stories written down in the Middle Ages by monks. These present both problems and benefits, however. When people in Irish stories swear “by the gods my people swear by,” is this repeating an ancient Irish oath, or just the sort of thing that the monks figured Pagans would say? We don't know. This sort of reference is inspiring, however; if not in substance, at least in style. Maybe these monks were on to something.
The epigraphic evidence comes from inscriptions on offerings, temple walls, etc. Offerings sometimes have a short prayer inscribed on them that gives the name and intent of the one making them. Inscriptions found on Egyptian temple walls are particularly rich in information.
Even in areas from which information is otherwise scanty, we find examples, such as in travelers' reports and late versions of myths. Whether we can rely on these sources has long been debated. Even if this type of evidence does not accurately reflect the culture it claims to depict, however, it can at least tell us how the culture that recorded the stories and reports saw prayer. And this, in turn, can inspire our own prayers.
Two very different sources of information on ancient Pagan prayer are the local styles of modern prayer and surviving folk customs. Many people think that when Christians pray in a particular way in a particular culture, the practice must come from the pre-Christian days of that culture. There is a tendency to act as if Christians had no creativity of their own. It's very possible, however, that local prayer styles, no matter how ancient they may seem, were invented by local Christians rather than Pagans. This doesn't mean we can't use these styles in our own prayers, of course. Never ignore inspiration. Just don't assume you are following some ancient Pagan tradition when you use this sort of source.
Folk customs often contain prayers and songs. But these can present a similar problem. We can rarely know how much of the customs come from a Pagan culture and how much from other sources. To make the situation worse, sometimes the person who recorded the folk material “improved” it, further obscuring its Pagan roots.
So what is a poor Pagan to do? We must educate ourselves as best we can, using all the sources we can find. We must look carefully at what has been passed on to us from ancient times, weighing its possible antiquity and Pagan nature carefully. Most important of all, however, we must have an active prayer life. We must ask the gods for guidance on how they wish to be prayed to, and we must listen carefully for their answer. Then we can share the results with our fellow Pagans, so that the stock of prayers we hold in common will grow.
Almost all religious people pray and most make offerings. Yet a search through the literature of neo-Paganism turns up only a small number of prayers, and even fewer references to offerings. There is much ritual material, to be sure, but the sort in which the worshiper stands before their deities, addresses them with respect, and offers them gifts is in short supply. Invocations, declarations, and spells are found in great number, but acts of praise and devotion, or simply requests rather than demands for help, are not.
This is a modern development, though. If we look through the writings of the ancient Pagans, we find huge numbers of prayers. We have inscriptions left by the ancient Celts. We have many prayers from the Greeks; characters in their tragedies were wont to pray at the drop of a corpse. The most ancient Hindu texts, the four Vedas, are essentially long prayer books. From the Americas, from Asia, from Africa, from Oceania, from Australia, we find more and more prayers, building up higher and higher, until we are crushed beneath the obvious: the most common form of Pagan religious expression is prayer.
Closely allied to prayer is the offering—the second most common form of worship. This makes sense; prayers and offerings are the same thing. They both present gifts to the gods—one of words and time, and the other of objects. Prayers usually accompany offerings, and offerings frequently accompany prayers. A line between them cannot be drawn, and I have not tried to do so. When we come before the numina, it's wise not to come empty-handed. We should come bearing words if not objects; if not objects, then words. And how much better if we bring both!
The ancients may have prayed and made offerings, but what is the point in this modern day and age?
When we pray, we talk to sacred beings. They are like our spiritual friends, or our parents, or our cousins. We talk to our human friends and parents and cousins, so it only makes sense to talk to their divine counterparts as well.
Why do we need to talk in the first place? Don't the gods already know what we want or how we feel about them? Let's go back to the human equivalent. Do you talk to your friends, or do you just assume they know how you feel and what you want? Do you send notes to your grandparents thanking them for gifts, or do you figure that they'll understand how thankful you are, even if you don't tell them? If Cousin Harry does something great, do you give him a call and say, “Nice going,” or do you decide his own feeling of self-accomplishment should be enough? Surely the gods deserve at least as much consideration as Cousin Harry.
Maybe the problem is the way you see the divine beings. Pagan gods aren't omniscient. Unlike Santa Claus, they don't see you when you're sleeping, or know when you're awake. They have to be invited into your life. Give them a call and tell them how much you've missed them; tell them how wonderful you think they are; and, while you're at it, maybe ask for a favor or thank them for favors done. You might find you like talking to them.
While the “why” of prayer may be pretty obvious, the “why” of offerings is a bit harder to see. Why would the gods need, or even want, our gifts? What can a spiritual being do with a bottle of wine or a piece of art?
The various Pagan religions give a variety of reasons for making offerings. Each justifies the practice according to its own theology and social structure. Neo-Pagans, with their lack of common theology and without a distinct society, have to review the many reasons given by other traditions to decide which ones are acceptable. When we do this, we may find our beliefs regarding the gods changing. A god we make offerings to is different from a god we don't. Since Paganism is a religion of action rather than belief, this is to be expected. What matters is that we do the right thing.
Why do the gods demand material gifts from us, then? Why aren't they satisfied with prayer and a sincere heart? In part, it's because there's no sharp line to be drawn between the material and the spiritual. By asking for material offerings, the gods remind us that the material is sacred, too.
Offering material gifts also ensures sincerity. Anyone can give words, and anyone can pretend sincerity, but to offer something shows we care for the gods at least as much as for our material possessions.
When we make offerings, we take part in the way of nature. Just as there's a mystery in the natural order of eating and being eaten, so, too, there's a mystery in the natural dynamic of giving and receiving gifts—not in the sense of “you wash my hands and I'll wash yours,” but rather, the same hands that reach out to give also reach out to receive.
We enter into this reciprocal relationship with the gods so that they may become active in our lives. They long for this, waiting for us to approach them with gift-laden arms. This is, quite likely, the origin of the sacred nature of hospitality. The gods are the ultimate hosts, inviting us in when we knock. We must be the best of guests, returning their generosity by acting as hosts in turn. It is the bonds of hospitality that tie people together and communicate the truth that they are not so separate after all.
The giving of offerings is hospitality toward the gods. We invite them into our lives and, as their hosts, we give them gifts, and they give us gifts in return. This is no different from our everyday rules of hospitality. I invite you to my house for dinner, and now you have an obligation to invite me to yours. If I'm always the one doing the inviting, our chance for friendship will fizzle out.
It's the same with the gods. We offer to them, and the gods have a social obligation to repay us. Since the divine beings can't invite us over for dinner, they repay our invitation in other ways—prosperity, health, success, etc. By this exchange, we become friends with the gods.
An offering is an act of completion. So many things come to us from the gods. If we keep them, the flow ends there. By holding tightly to the gifts of the gods, we create an interruption in the natural rhythm of the world, a dead end into which the universe flows and then stops.
Neo-Pagans, though, are dedicated to the idea of circles and cycles, of things changing and transforming. There are no dead ends in nature. Even if we hold tightly to our possessions, in the end, of course, we will lose them. We will die, and they will go to others. The gods will not allow a dead end to persist; they will not permit interruptions of their cycles.
This is not something we can take comfort in, as we grasp our goods ever more tightly. If we are indeed Pagans, then we must live the way the gods want us to live. While we are alive, we must not be “dead ends.” We must give freely of what we have, to each other and to the gods. When we make offerings, we tell the gods that we know this, and we remind ourselves of it, so we will be less likely to do the wrong thing in the future. Such a wonderful return from so small a gift as a glass of milk, a bowl of grain, a painted stone!
Writing neo-Pagan prayers presents special difficulties. The prayers of many religions incorporate mythical themes, either making reference to myths or actually telling them. Although neo-Paganism has embraced many ancient myths, Wicca, the most widespread form of neo-Paganism, has few myths of its own. I've dealt with this in several ways.
First, not all prayers incorporate myths. Second, there are indeed some Wiccan myths—the most obvious being the Legend of the Descent of the Goddess and the myth of the year implied in Wiccan rituals. Third, there are the myths told about ancient deities. Although not actually absorbed into Wicca, these deities find devotees among neo-Pagans, who might therefore be expected to be interested in prayers to their favorite deities.
In this book, I have also taken elements that are found in a number of myths and applied them to the Wiccan God and Goddess. Essentially, what I am doing here is writing new myths for Wicca. I think it best to be honest about this. Of course, the divine beings to whom these prayers are addressed are not just the Wiccan God and Goddess. Worshipers from many of the modern Pagan religions will find prayers to their deities here. I hope that those who encounter deities from traditions other than their own will be inspired to pull out some mythology books and learn more. Learning is never a waste of time.
Prayers are often accompanied by offerings. These have traditionally included animal sacrifices, libations, food, incense, and just about anything else. Because of its importance in ancient times and because what is subtle in other kinds of offerings is clear in it, I will begin with sacrifice.
The why of sacrifice has been argued over by scholars for many years with no resolution. I think one reason for this is that scholars have seen sacrifice through their own ideology, the culture they've studied the most, or their own culture. A Freudian will find a Freudian meaning, an anthropologist who spent his career studying the Nuer will apply Nuer theology, and a member of PETA will find the whole thing offensive.
But the major problem is seeing sacrifice as a single thing. It is one only in the sense that a raised hand is one thing. Is it raised in greeting? To strike? To swear an oath? There is no one meaning to an upraised hand, and there is no one meaning to sacrifice—there are several.
One of these is that something is being given to the sacred. This is the origin of the word “sacrifice”; it is “making sacred.” This is usually seen as giving something up, and that's how we tend to use the word in everyday speech. A religious sacrifice, however, is not so much a giving up as a giving to. It isn't, “Aren't I great for depriving myself?” but, “Isn't it great that the deities are getting what they want?” The gods aren't impressed by how much you suffered by making your sacrifices.
The giving by ancient Pagans was not one-sided, though. Just as people gave gifts to the deities, so the deities were expected to give some back.
Something like this on a human scale was found in many societies, such as early Germanic ones. There, warriors gave service to their chieftains, who in turn gave them riches, to the point where “ring giver” became a kenning for “chieftain.” A significant aspect of this is that the socially superior was expected to give more than they received. This was how they maintained their status and was a form of noblesse oblige.
This operated on the divine scale, too. The deities were seen as superior and were therefore expected to return more than what was offered. The sacrifice of a single ram might be expected to increase the fertility of an entire flock. This theory could lead to a certain amount of “manipulation” of the deities by varying the size of the offering. If a single bull was expected to bring certain blessings, how much greater the blessing from the Greek hecatomb, in which a hundred animals were sacrificed? A certain one-upmanship was initiated, in which the gods, because of their superior status, would give greater gifts than they received.
This is sacrifice in terms of reciprocity. Bonds are established and maintained through reciprocal giving. These can be seen as the bases for all relationships.
Sacrifice can also be seen as hospitality. We find this in what was, in fact, the point of most sacrifices—that they involved a shared meal with the deities. Almost all of the edible parts of the animal (except for a small portion burned for the gods) were cooked and eaten by those present; sacrifices were like sacred barbecues. Through them, humans acted as hosts to the gods, providing them with hospitality and drawing them near.
Since so many ancient deities were fond of sacrifices, it's good to do them; since modern sensibilities may be offended by them, it's good not to do them. There is a way out of this dilemma, a way that has been used by Pagans both ancient and modern: the use of symbolic substitutes. Something else is named an animal, then treated as one.
Bread has always been the most common substitute. Under the influence of vegetarian Hinduism, for instance, Zoroastrians in India took the bread and butter that had accompanied sacrifices (Jamaspasa 1985) and used it to replace the sacrifice itself (Modi 1922, 296–8). A modern example is the replacement of goats with rice wrapped in banana leaves in a 1975 celebration of the Vedic agnicayana ritual (Staal 1983, II:464–5).
Bread can be more strongly identified with an animal by forming it into an animal shape. Baking pans in such shapes are available for use as molds for forming bread or to make a cake (another possible substitute) in the proper shape.
Other substitutes are possible and were made in ancient times as well, possibly by those unable to afford an actual animal. Clay animals have been found in ritual contexts and make good sacrifices. They do, however, make sharing with the deities impossible. A piece of meat taken from a meal is another possibility. Butter, especially when clarified, is a great substitute for cattle. It comes from cows, can be part of a shared meal, and burns well.
I don't want to give the impression that animal sacrifice is the most common form of offering, especially in this book. Traditionally, the libation was. The Greeks, for instance, poured a libation before drinking anything. You can again see a shared meal.
Libations are therefore the most common form of offering you'll see here. They can be of any drink, although alcoholic ones and milk are the most traditional, and certain deities may prefer certain ones. For instance, a goddess connected with cows, such as Brigid, would prefer milk; whereas deities from Egypt, where beer was an important part of the diet, might like that. Here is another meaning of sacrifice: both milk and alcoholic beverages are offerings of life.
Distilled drinks make especially good offerings into fire, since they burn so well. If you use them, though, be careful; they flare up suddenly. (I once came close to a nasty accident with Drambuie.) Also, when the alcohol burns away, you're left with what's essentially water, which may extinguish the fire, never a good thing in a ritual. Butter and vegetable or olive oil also burn well and are far less dangerous.
Don't pour anything with a lower alcohol content or with none at all (such as milk) directly onto a fire. It will put the fire out. Instead, pour it at the base of the fire.
Bread isn't just a good animal substitute but a worthy offering in itself. It is the “staff of life,” a representative of food in general. By sharing it with the divine beings, we are therefore sharing part of all our meals. Bread burns pretty well, too, especially when it has been buttered.
Some offerings can't be burned or poured. No problem; coins can be cast into rivers, jewelry can be buried, etc. We thereby give something over to the gods.
Do you see now why I brought up sacrifice? Its meanings reverberate throughout other forms. What applies to sacrifice applies to all other offerings—with the appropriate changes.
There are many other kinds of offerings, the only requirement for which is that they are seen as being valuable to the being to whom they are offered. I've included an appendix with general advice on what kinds of offerings are appropriate to what kinds of deities, but individual ones will have their own preferences. These can be found out only by research and/or experimentation.
Of course, a prayer of praise can be an offering. In fact, it always is, and the more beautiful the better.
One way to divide the types of beings Pagans pray to, the numina, is to split them into three categories: the High Gods, the Ancestors, and the Spirits.
The High Gods fall into two categories: the God and Goddess of Wicca (the archetypal male and female) and the gods of the ancient Pagan pantheons—Brigid, Mitra, Isis, and so on. I obviously couldn't write prayers to all of the ancient deities, so I wrote to those who are popular among other neo-Pagans, as well as to those who appealed to me personally. There is a short glossary of the deities in appendix 2. Maybe one you've never heard of before will strike your fancy.
The Ancestors may either be those of a particular family or those of us all—a genetic ancestor or a cultural one. For instance, George Washington has no genetic descendants, but he is a cultural ancestor of all Americans. When I use the term “Ancestors,” I usually mean genetic ancestors, but there are always cultural implications as well. After all, we are, in the end, one family.
The Spirits are a miscellaneous category identified primarily by their limits. Instead of being the gods of a people, they are peculiar to a locale or an object. They may be associated with a tool or a weapon, or they may be connected to a place. You may wish to pray to the Spirit who inhabits an impressive tree near your house or those who live in the woods you visit on a camping trip.
Let me illustrate the differences between the High Gods and the Spirits with an example. One of the early Norse settlers in Iceland was a worshiper of Thor. When he emigrated, he took with him the pillar from his temple. As he approached the coast, he threw the pillar overboard and allowed it to float to the shore. In this way, Thor himself chose the settler's landing spot. As a High God, Thor came to the new land with his worshipers.
The Land Spirits, on the other hand, had been left behind to dwell in the places with which they were associated. In the new land, the Norse discovered new holy places and established relationships with the Spirits of these new places. Having left behind the Spirits who lived in the burial mounds, stones, and forests of their old home, they sought out those who lived in their new one.
In general, the divine beings like us. This is one of the reasons they want our prayers and offerings; if they didn't care about us, they wouldn't care about our prayers. That's why they respond well to petitionary prayers: they want to help us. They really do.
Some are ambivalent, though. Why should the Land Spirits feel warmly toward us when we cut down their forests and pave over their meadows? Don't feel too smug when you've protested against logging in old growth forest. Where do you think the land your house is built on came from? What kind of land was there before it was plowed under to grow your food?
Dealing with Land Spirits can be difficult, then. We have to show them we are grateful for their sacrifice. As I hope I have shown earlier in this book, we do this by giving something back.
All three types of numina are worthy of prayers and offerings, however. I guarantee that if you give them a chance, if you talk to them and give them gifts, your life will be greatly enriched.