Hellenic Devotional

[maenad nuri]

Crossposted from my wordpress, A Twisted Kind of Ingenue

Growing up, one of my favorite times of the year (depending on whether or not I was an eye-rolling teenager) was advent. My family lit candles on an advent wreath, sang and read from a little booklet that was available from the Church. These little readings were meant to focus our thoughts on the birth of Jesus, and prepare our minds and thoughts for Christmas. They were never very long, maybe 5 minutes at most, and it was a great little time out for the day.

I’m sure I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn’t a little ADHD brat.

But a project that’s been weighing on my mind is to do a little devotional booklet like this one — a month-long one. Little stories, prayer suggestions, meditation on values, gods — that sort of thing. Partially for myself, but also a community resource. The Hellenic community has gotten into devotional anthologies in a big way for poetry and short stories, but not really like this. I’d like to offer it in an e-book format.

What I want to ask the community at large is: What would you want to see in something like this? A Theme? Suggested topics? And what do you think about the project in general.

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What do you guys think -- even if you aren't Hellenic. I'm just in the brainstorming part right now, so input is greatly appreciated.  

[Chaos Blue]

Sounds great! I have a personal book kind of like this. in it, I write down mostly poetry to the gods and short stories in relation to them and a couple of their epithets.

I don't have much in the way of ideas for a theme, but personally, I'm a fan of stories as told by people who have an active relationship with their gods or their spiritual practices. I love reading about how others celebrate things such as festivals and spiritual days of worship or practice.  

[kyndryana3]

I've thought of similar ideas, on different scopes (like a series of teaching stories to follow a cycle of the phase of the moons or the seasons in a year).

When I was little, we used to have an advent calendar with an accompanying book. Every day you would open a little window on the calendar and read the page in the book that corresponded. I absolutely loved it.

I would definitely be interested in something like this. I think there are a lot of different ways it could be done. As far as theme, I would think that any fairly broad topic (such as healing, inner peace, tranquility) would have great potential for this. The strength of this type of devotional booklet is that you can come back to it, time and time again, and depending on where you are in life, you can appreciate different things as you work through it again.  

[Chaos Blue]

kyndryana3

The strength of this type of devotional booklet is that you can come back to it, time and time again, and depending on where you are in life, you can appreciate different things as you work through it again.

You know, because you said that, it reminded me, I figured that after I filled the notebook with my devotional in it, I would go back and do something akin to bibliomancy and open up a random page and see where the words would take me.

Slightly unrelated, but I also do something similar with Delphic Maxims. I've written them out, and cut them into separate strips of paper and then fold them up and randomly pull one up from out of a bowl on my Apollo shrine. Something to ponder on every day. And hey, maybe that could even be a theme, for a devotee of Apollo; the Delphic Maxims in a devotional book, how they perceive them and what the different maxims have taught them at certain parts of their lives.

I'm only pretty much speaking from a Hellenic Polytheist view. I think this kind of thing is great for everyone, and I especially like what you said about healing and seasons, Kyndryana!
My mother has an angel calendar and each day of the year has an inspirational angel-themed quote. She encourages me to read it from time to time and they're often quite nice as well!  

[aoijea23487]

I remember reading somewhere that authors Joyce and River Higginbotham are working on a Pagan Book of Hours. I'm sure that some have already been published.

I know next to nothing about Hellenic religion, but Romans are expected to worship at the lararium every day. Since there's bajillions of holidays on the Roman calendar, devotionals are kind of a matter of course, but they're impromptu.

What would be awesome is a set of devotionals set for each deity, or a month (like you suggested), etc. i've been throwing around the idea of making daily devotionals to the god/goddess who rules that day of the week, but I've not really followed through with this. The closest I've come is making a special offering of rosehips to Venus on Fridays, and then using that herbal offering to infuse my bath water for a ritual bath as a secondary offering/devotional in the late afternoon/evening. The smell is divine.

For Romans, there's a huge distinction between sacra publica and sacra privata (public religion and private practice, respectively). Although Roman rituals are enormously orthopraxic, for sacra privata, establishing your own unique family tradition is key, though you have to follow your own rules *pun* religiously.

I wonder if you could also tailor devotionals to specific needs, like a Catholic novena. So when you're down on money, or are having relationship issues, or just feel like connecting better with whatever deity, there's a ready formula for that.

Anyway... those are my ideas. Not exactly helpful, but I totally connect with you on the devotionals bit.