Inspirational People and a Laugh

Every once and a while the Goddess brings inspirational people into our lives . . . sometimes she even sends them through cyberspace. I've had two such blessings in the recent past that I want to share. I started my blog so that I would have a way to explore and express my faith. I did it for me and I thought it doesn't really matter if anyone reads it . . . but, in fact, it does make a great deal of difference especially if the people inspire me! I'm very happy that Debra from the blog She Who Seeks comes to my blog and says something positive and inspiring on every entry.

After my last entry on developing the Rosary she shared with me a version of the Jennifer Berezan's Hail Mary from the track, She Who Hears the Cries of the World. Her version goes:

Hail Mary, Full of Grace,
The Power is with thee.
Blessed are you, Queen of the Universe
And Blessed is all of creation.
Holy Mother, Maker of all things,
Be with us now and always.
Blessed Be.

I think this is beautiful and eliminates some of the parts of the prayer that I had problems saying. I am going to use a hybrid of this and the original for my Rosary. Thanks Debra!

Another inspirational person who has touched my life through cyberspace is Alex. I actually met him through Facebook and he's been very open to me about sharing his faith. He's been so kind to let me bounce ideas off him and I ask him questions. He has both a blog and videos on YouTube. In fact, when I was developing my Rosary, I wrote to Alex to ask him about it and apparently he has his own set of prayer beads which he made (smart and talented) and he created a video for it!! Here's the video:




NOW to finish with a little humour (I'm always too serious on here) . . . let's poke fun at some patriarchal Christians. If Facebook had existed In the Beginning:

Wiccan Goddess Rosary

I've been thinking for a long time that I wanted to revise the Catholic Rosary that I grew up with to reflect my Wiccan faith. I still like the prayers to Mary although there are a few issues that I'm still ironing out with them but it was the other prayers and the Catholic Creed I had a problem with. I think the Rosary is a wonderful meditation tool and I feel connected to the Catholic Rosary as a physical object, as its part of my spiritual roots but I don't like guilt prayers asking Jesus to "save us from the fires of hell." I think if I don't ask Jesus to do this, I'll still be just fine :)

So, the first thing I did on my newer Rosary (not the family one) was to cut off poor dead Jesus. I told Jesus: I think you've done some wonderful things and you're a inspiration. I'll add you to my pantheon of Gods and Godesses but I want you off my Rosary and I'm removing the guilt prayers. I then sewed a Goddess figure that I found when I was shopping in Shanghai, China onto the end of my Rosary. She looks much more filled with life, ready to worship, meditate and pray! [picture seen to left]

I then searched around for appropriate prayers to replace the Catholic ones. I wanted to keep the general feel of the Rosary but choose more appropriate and meaningful words. To show you what I've done I'm providing three tools: 1) the prayers typed below (2) a diagram labelling which bead is for each prayer [especially helpful if you've never done this before] (3) A recording so you can hear how it flows. I had a lot of problems with this recording. I did it several times. I apologize that it skips. I was using my internal mic and it sometimes does that . . . but I do have a nice meditation drone in the background to help :)

I hope that you enjoy this! If you've never done this type of prayer, I hope you find this interesting and inspiring. If you have done the Catholic Rosary . . . I hope this is liberating! I hope to inspire others to develop their own meaningful methods of prayer, meditation and enlightenment. Blessed Be!

Great Goddess, Lady of Life
Whose Garment is the shining Heavens.
You are the white moon among the stars
And the beauty of the green earth.
You are the Oneness of all things
And the Completion of the Spirit
You are the mystery that if that which we seek
We find not within
We will never find it without
For you have been here since the beginning
And you are that which is attained at the end of desire. (Excerpt from The Charge of the Goddess)

(Optional to Sing) We All Come from the Goddess
And to Her we shall return
Like a drop of rain
Flows into the ocean

Hail Mary, Full of Grace
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb*
Holy Mary, Mother of God
Pray for us sinners* now,
and at the hour of death.

*I removed "Jesus" and I contemplated removing "sinners"

Blessed Be, O High and Holy Lady;
Thou who art the Cauldron of all manifest existence!

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy!
Our life, our sweetness, and our hope!
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve,
to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley, of tears.
Turn, then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us;
and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb;
O clement, O loving, O sweet virgin Mary.
Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.

Wiccan Rosary--Devotions to Goddess Mary

In planning a blog post about developing a new Rosary meditation, I realized that I had a lot to say. So, I'm dividing this post into two. First, many Wiccans will ask, why Mary? Why am I worshipping a Catholic Saint as a Pagan Goddess? I think this is a very important question. Here's my story of my relationship with Mary.

Having grown up as a Catholic we prayed to Mary everyday in school. Little did I know what effect this had on me and how much I actually enjoyed or appreciated it. Later in life, after I rejected the Catholic church for reasons such as not accepting me as a gay person or ordaining women, I started attending United and Anglican churches. Mary disappeared from my life almost completely . . . well, except for Christmas and Easter when she would miraculously appear to give birth and then reappear to mourn Jesus' death. It wasn't until a few years ago that I went to an Anglo-Catholic service for friend (which is way more Catholic than the Catholics!) that I was moved by the presence of a Mary in the form of a statue at the side of the church. I couldn't follow the service, which included all kinds of Gregorian and Anglican chant but I kept looking at the statue and I realized that I missed my conversations to Mary in prayer.

A year or so later I was walking in downtown Toronto when I had a calling to visit St. Michael's Roman Catholic Cathedral, the largest and oldest Catholic church in Toronto. It was strange experience and I was surprised but I went. When I got there and sat down people started to recite the Rosary in a group. I had never heard this cycle of prayers. What kind of Catholic grade school did I go to that I never learned the Rosary!?! I was moved by this and I asked my mother who explained it and sent me a family Rosary. I went everyday that summer and prayed and meditated with it. Around this same time I was attending a Zen Buddhist temple and taking a meditation class. I thought the Rosary was a wonderful meditation tool that connected me to my religious roots. After having engaged in this form of prayer for a while, which I combined with lighting a candle at the Mary altar (how very pagan!), I was guided to create a large creative project that involved my new connection to the Rosary. I don't want to say what that project was but I will tell you that I had great success with it. The day I finished that project a group of nuns, who I had never seen before met me outside the church and gave me a medal with Mary on it. I asked them if I should pay them for it. They said no, they just wanted to remind me to pray the Rosary. I told them that I had been everyday and they were surprised. For me, this was confirmation that the Mary was listening . . . and strangely, I never did see that group of nuns again.

So, where does that bring me to today? After many years of contemplation, research, prayer and meditation . . . I realized that I'm trying to cram all my beliefs into religious boxes that didn't accept my ideas . . . or me for that matter! They had wise ideas that I could incorporate but I wasn't completely comfortable worshiping in that space. My strong belief in the Feminine Divine, the God/Goddess in all nature, Paranormal events, my intuitive understanding of people and the universe was not Christian or Buddhist . . . or even a combination. I was Wiccan!

This did not mean that I had to give up previous beliefs. It was Mary who guided me here in the first place! In fact, it was one Catholic principal that had been drilled into my head in grade school that made the most sense, "God is omnipotent!" If that is true, then God . . . or the Goddess can manifest Herself into any form . . . and I'm quite sure that our tiny human brains can't begin to conceive how She works in our lives. She is part of everything and Her energy flows through us all. I know this best when I sit in quiet meditation and feel Her energy flow through me. I always thought it was appropriate that the Catholics called Mary, "Mother of God" . . . because She is God and She gives all life. I love that in many pictures she has healing light flowing from her hands.

I also think of those early Pagans who were converted to Christianity. How did they find new ways to worship the Goddess in a Catholic context so that they were not burned at the stake or violently tortured? Am I rescuing old Pagan rituals that were disguised as Catholic? Did Catholics refurbish Pagan rituals to make their religion more appealing to the people they wanted to covert? As a friend points out, the layout of most churches does resemble a womb, complete with fallopian tubes! How did Mary become the centre of much Catholic worship? We know for a fact that the missionaries used Mary in many Latin-American countries to covert people who had been worshipping Goddesses. Perhaps I am just reviving old traditions and seeing Her in Her original form. [I'm going to read the book to the right very soon.]

So now to refine my rosary to make it more meaningful for me and hopefully I can inspire others. I needed to take it and redefine it in a way that erased Catholic guilt, years of brainwashing and control and make it something to celebrate the beauty of the Goddess. I will share with you in my next post how I did this.
Thank you for reading. Blessed Be!