a personal prayerbook
On both Kemetic Orthodoxy and KIN forums, there are places for people to request prayers. Until now, I have avoided those forums, being far too susceptible to news of others’ pain and misfortune. I would love to lend a voice, but keeping a strong and positive spirit while praying for terrible things is frequently beyond my capacity, let alone doing that for several different things in a row.
However, I figured out a way that I can give my prayers to those who need them without dropping myself into a state of reflection upon all the terrible things in the world. I bought a blank book, wrote on the inside cover a book blessing and caveats for safety (such as “for the highest good for all concerned” and “with harm to none”), and wrote the dates, names, and prayers inside for those who had posted recently.
The key, however, is that I haven’t written anything in English. It’s all in Kalash, a conalph of mine (visual example). I can write fluently in Kalash, but I can’t read it just by skimming like I can English, so I can write something down without being distracted and weighed down by all the prayers I’d written previously.
Thus, I can pray for those prayers written within to be heard and answered, focus on the book as a whole, and stay steady and positive.
It’s a similar to the idea of a sigil or other symbol, created to represent a goal/desire in other forms of magic (chaos magic, I’m lookin’ at you) – you create the sigil in full consciousness, then focus on just the sigil, so that your subconscious mind gets the work done and your intellect doesn’t get in the way. That’s an oversimplified explanation, but you get the idea. So, rather than my intellect lingering on sadness, I can funnel positive energy into the book itself and give the prayers within a boost.
I’ve filled two pages so far. It feels good to be doing this.
[…] November, I started my personal prayerbook, a spiral-bound unlined notebook that I filled with the prayers from and for my community, written […]
[…] November 2011, I began recording prayer requests from the Kemetic community in Kalash, a script of my own invention, and in that way offering my energies and prayers to those […]