This is blog post is an update to my previous post about Creating Prayers. This past weekend, I attended Mystic South and, as usual, had an amazing time learning about aspects of my spirituality that I needed to expand my understanding of or things I had not learned of before.
One of the subjects that came up for me personally was communicating with the deities. I’ve felt that you need to write excellent prayers (they do have a purpose and are very useful, don’t get me wrong), but I didn’t get that you could just talk to them.
I talked with a friend of mine who told me how she had taking the same approach I had thought I needed to do and had been even carving her own altar idols and trying to get everything just right until something happened that made her realize she could just simply…talk.
I asked her to explain the complicated idea behind just talking to a god. What phrasing do you need to say and how…
Yeah. Sometimes you can just talk to them. That simple. They can hear us without all the pomp and circumstance, but the niceties help. They show you care and honor them. But they aren’t always necessary.
Sometimes a simple, “Hey there. I’m struggling right now and am glad to know that you are out there” would work.
It’s the same for the ancestors. The Fair Folk might be more finicky and someone who knows more about that could better explain that than I can, but I imagine they would appreciate just being acknowledged rather than waiting for a big formal offering.
It’s like how warm and fuzzy it is when a friend reaches out to you just to give you a brief hello and tell you that they were thinking of you.
From what I heard, you can just simply talk to them without any formalities, but it can help to start off the conversation with something like having a line or two of kennings before just speaking what you want to them.
For example, you could say “Cerridwen, creator of the Awen and keeper of the Cauldron of Knowledge, I wanted to tell you that I’m hoping to learn more about and be better at transformation. Right now, I’m feeling…”
It’s only a bit of kenning to directly reach out to her and call out to no one else but her, while the rest of it is just speaking from your heart.
They’d rather hear from you, than not hear from you because you are waiting to make everything perfect with the right offerings and ideal ritual format.
You need to establish a connection somehow and even the little prayers and reaching out to share your day can help you move forward.
Give it a try and see if it helps when you are overthinking how things should be like I’ve been doing until this past weekend (7/21/19).
