You know, one of the things that's the most disappointing when breaking into paganism is the lack of spiritual music. Due to the erasure of European pagan religious groups during the expansion of Christianity, at most we might have a poem that got preserved but the notes and instrumental of the music are lost. I used to adore singing hymns when I was Catholic (Evangelical worship music is usually bad rock and Mormon hymns sound like a bunch of people on lithium humming yankee doodle). I feel that music is such an important part of spirituality that is mostly absent in neo-paganism. I want Psalms praising Persephone, bardic verses beseeching Thor, yuletide carols and other holiday music. *sighs* Maybe we can make our own, if you know of any that have been published please let me know!
May your day be filled with warmth and light, may your dwellings be cleansed of filth and clutter and may you rest this night knowing you are watched over by blessed Brigid!
All-mother to creation. Arbiter and psychopomp to the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. Judge of souls. Maiden of spring, mother of summer, grandmother of autumn and crone of winter. Sacred emergent divine spark.
On this day, as I kneel before your altar, I am here not as a mendicant petitioner but as a joyous devotee. On this day, no more sacred or holy than any other, I wish nothing more than to sing from my soul your praises and lavish my attention at your feet in thanksgiving of what you have blessed me with.
Since I stumbled upon your forgotten grove, you have blessed me in so many ways. You have blessed me with temperance. Rather than the fiery temper of my youth, you have taught me the benefits of being slow to anger, but diligent in enforcing appropriate behavior. You have blessed me with patience, no longer do I speed to go nowhere and instead take the time required to accomplish tasks as needed, even asking for help when necessary. You have taught me discipline, as I pull myself from my bed every morning to lay my offerings at your altar I know the meaning of devotion. You have taught me charity, that I may through the labor of my hands and sweat of my brow, improve the lot of those less fortunate than myself. You have blessed me with strength, as my body became resilient to the toil of my labor, I have become resilient to mere physical exertion. Most of all, you have blessed me with kindness, that I see not my fellow humans as enemies I haven’t met yet, and instead as the flawed but understandable creatures they are.
I feel your presence each day I kneel before your altar, a gentle warmth in my breast that fills my soul with zeal. Ever onward you gently push me to greater heights than I thought imaginable, each day better than the last with your encouragement. I hear your words in the songs of birds, the scolds of crows, the babble of a breeze and the crack of thunder during a storm. I see your face in the eyes of every creature I meet, both large and small. From the diligent woodlice breaking down lignin into usable compost, to the loving gaze of my pets, to the light of intelligence in your emissaries. I feel your presence in the filtering of sunlight through verdant foliage, the determined dandelion growing in concrete and the abundance of my garden. Each day I interact with your flock, your herd, your grove, your orchard, each strand in the web of life you have shepherded for eons, I am blessed by your presence and I know you stand at my shoulder, my guardian and protector from ills both physical and spiritual.
Blessings be upon you, She Who Remembers All, All-Mother to Creation, Great Psychopomp to the Cycle. May I continue to be worthy of your blessings through my deeds.
Your protection I request. Your blessing I seek. Let me stride forth with zeal. Let not my soul become heavy with my sins. Let me not waste.
All-mother to creation. Arbiter and psychopomp to the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. Judge of souls. Maiden of spring, mother of summer, grandmother of autumn and crone of winter. Sacred emergent divine spark.
Forgive me the violence I must commit this day. Forgive me of the waste I must create to safeguard those I love. Let the flesh of these evil folk nourish your blessed decomposers. Let the carrion birds and corvids and crawling things and fungi and microbes all feast on the waste that will soon be those who have taken arms against my kin. Bless my arms with strength and my skin with resilience so that my will shall not falter and these evil folk will not prevail.
Most of all, let not joy in bloodletting seep into my soul, my psyche or my thoughts. Remind me that what I do is out of necessity, not bloodlust. Remind me that these folk, however evil, are my distant kin and should be mourned as such. Let me not be lighthearted in committing a lesser evil to prevent a greater one.
Your protection I request. Your blessing I seek. Let me stride forth with zeal. Let not my soul become heavy with my sins. Let me not waste.
I very much appreciate everyone's recommendations on my last post! I should clarify that I want pagan music kind of like this, haunting choirs in a dead language, a swelling organ and a vibrant orchestra. I know it's not historically accurate but I love the whole vibe of Catholic church music, just not a fan of the main deity. This particular song is what triggered the thought that led to my lamentation for pagan religious music.
I also cannot recommend listening to this particular song more, it's based on Warhammer 40k and has no right being as beautiful as it is.
Deep in the woods, far beyond the familiar trails so well-trodden in your life, where trees older than your nation tower above the floor like a colonnade in some cyclopean cathedral, their roots buried deep to the bones of the earth itself, you find yourself alone. For hours you wander, panic beginning to bloom in your chest as you find yourself in a lignin bound labyrinth, each massive guardian tree you skirt further obfuscating your path home. Finally, you find a small clearing, some process be it natural, anthropogenic, or supernatural has seen fit to keep this meadow within the direct path of Sol’s embrace. Within this clearing you find a stone shrine, or at least you think it is a shrine. Whatever long forgotten spirit dwells within this sepulcher calls you forward, gently but insistently.
Seized by an unfamiliar determination, you pull aside the brambles and vines and detritus of centuries of neglect and reveal: Her. A feminine figure carved from stone, wide hipped and heavy bosomed, standing before a broad basin, her arms raised above her head in a circular fashion that is reminiscent of the beatific halos you have seen time and again by faiths more familiar to you. Her face is blank, utterly featureless and by extension expressionless. Despite this seemingly alien visage mask, you feel a distant, faint voice calling to you and you feel… loved. With shaking breaths you reach out and place your hand on the altar.
A billion years of life’s struggle assaults your mind. You watch as life explodes from complex molecules capable of self-replication, then gradually becomes more complex over eons and then explodes into every possible variation of monster and titan, creeping thing and macrocell, fungi and bacteria and animals and… everything. She at the altar whispers “It is not I who created life, but I drew breath when it first began. It is my watch as a shepherd, a guardian, a repose of memory for what once was so that it not be forgotten by time’s inexorable march”.
Your sight returning from being assaulted by a billion years of natural history, your eyes again focus on the time worn icon with its basin and altar. Warily you ask “What should I call you, oh Ancient One?”
She sighs and with a smile in her tone responds “I am far more ancient than the concept of speech. I was prayed to by your ape-like ancestors, beseeched by the first flowering plants, called on by the first tetrapods that heaved their marine bodies onto land and entreated by stromatolites under a sky so old that you would call it alien. I am without name, for I have existed long before sophonts invented language and will exist long after your species is one of my most fondly held memories. I am a Goddess without name.”
You pause. No one has instructed you on how to converse with a forgotten primordial Goddess.
You feel a sensation like a warm hand to your chest “The hour grows late child. I will clear your thoughts so you may find your way out of my sacred grove. Return when you have time and I will show you more. I have watched empires rise and fall in the time since one of your folk have placed a hand on my altar. There is still yet time, young one”.
And you will return, through the sweat of your brow you will cleanse this holy place of the neglect of centuries. You will perform the rites, say the prayers, light the candles and incense. You will conduct yourself in a way that makes the unspeakably ancient Nameless Goddess smile, and She Who Remembers All will take special care to ensure you are treated with the same kindness you so willingly give others, regardless of species.
Welcome to the Temple of the Nameless Goddess. Welcome to the Grove.
Hello weary traveler of the information superhighway and welcome to the Grove of the Nameless Goddess! I’m sure you likely have some questions about what this blog entails and I will do my best to answer your questions in this post, however if my list of answers is insufficient to sate your curiosity, I welcome any questions you may have and will answer them to the best of my ability.
What is this blog?: This blog is an online repository of the various daily prayers I use in my worship of the Nameless Goddess and her various aspects. The Goddess has blessed me with a way with words, and I hope that some may find these prayers useful either in their original form or modified to their liking and need. This will also include occasional posts describing theological or moral diatribes in relation to my developing faith.
Who are you?: You can call me Calamity (username here is soldiernerd). I’m a 31 year old, male agricultural worker in Kansas who, when exploring the recent reemergence of my desire for spirituality, was dissatisfied with existing belief systems circulating in the ecosystem of neo-paganism, and opted to take my own personal spin on neo-pagan theology. I was raised Christofascist, and separated from that religion roughly 12 years ago while in the US Army. I lived as an atheist for most of my twenties, but in the last year I’ve felt called to my altar to satisfy something I didn’t know was there. I hope that others may take comfort in what I’ve discovered and written down. I would love to have a community to discuss these things with, as I’ve had little to no luck with most people in my life.
Who is the Nameless Goddess (Innominata Dea)?: The Nameless Goddess is an emergent gestalt deity formed from the interconnected interactions of a globally connected biosphere in much the same way that human consciousness is an emergent property of a trillion electrochemical receptors exchanging information in a three pound lump of meat. Her goal is the perpetuation of life, as her existence is dependent upon life carrying on. She has existed since complex molecules became capable of self-replication, but her consciousness only bloomed as life became more complex. She holds sapient life (life capable of self-reflection, complex innovative behavior, tool use, complex social behavior and many other factors) to be precious, as we are relatively rare and gift her with a wealth of new experiences and emotions to catalogue into her Web of Memory. Humans are by no means the only sophonts on this world, we are joined in this category by numerous other life forms such as: corvids, psittacines (parrots), cetaceans, proboscideans (elephants), octopi, great apes, portid spiders and potentially many more that are yet to be identified. She wants humans to behave in a manner that is pro-social (beneficial to both yourself and others in your society) by encouraging charitable, kind and cooperative behavior. Additionally, she abhors waste as she is the arbiter and psychopomp to the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. As a result, she wants humans to cooperate not only with each other, but with the environment as a whole for the benefit of the global biosphere. I could speak at greater length in this regard, but for a more succinct explanation of her nature and expectations I would recommend reading through the prayers I have posted and I will happily answer additional questions if any are present.
Why do you call her “Innominata Dea”?: I feel that including an ancient, functionally dead and already religiously significant language as a conclusionary farewell to prayers adds a certain sensation of sacredness. I had initially attempted to translate her English name into far more ancient tongues (such as Akkadian or Sumerian) but found it nearly impossible due to the lack of readily available and credible sources on the language. Due to a quirk of my schooling, I am passable at translating Latin, and as such feel more comfortable using that language in my prayers.
Why not use already established Neo-Pagan sects such as Wiccan, Neo-Druid, Kemetic, Hellenic, Norse, etc?: When I went seeking spiritual satisfaction, I found myself disappointed with the lack of substance I found in these theologies, this is not intended to offend those who find comfort in these faiths, it just wasn’t what I needed. I do borrow imagery, rituals and vernacular from these faiths and others as well. You will notice that I use Christian Demonology frequently in my prayers to describe hostile spirits of misfortune or misbehavior and that my prayers read much like Christian Psalms. I also call on Gods and Goddesses from a diversity of pantheons in my prayers as aspects of beneficial behaviors or events. This is intentional, as I enjoy syncretism in my personal faith. I missed the traditions and rituals of Christianity, but I cannot bring myself to pray to the same god which allowed me to suffer such cruelty at the hands of those who were supposed to be responsible for my well being. I also don’t enjoy the utilization of magic as a catch-all solution to misfortune or consequences to misbehavior, I believe the Nameless Goddess will help those who help themselves first and my prayers reflect as such.
I like your prayers, but they don’t quite fit what I need. Can you alter them to be more specific to my life?: Absolutely! As I mentioned previously, I’m a male agricultural worker from Kansas and my prayers reflect the daily trevails and the annual hardships of abiding by an agricultural calendar. I will be delighted to discuss what alterations would allow them to more accurately fit your spiritual needs.
I just got followed by an account named “soldiernerd”, what’s up with that?: I apologize for the confusion, soldiernerd is my original account from when I first joined tumblr in 2013. I have no idea why I thought that name was a good idea (I guess it was because I was a soldier and also a nerd?) but you can rest assured that your blog is being followed by me when that occurs.
All-mother to creation. Arbiter and psychopomp to the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. Judge of souls. Maiden of spring, mother of summer, grandmother of autumn and crone of winter. Sacred emergent divine spark.
Death is a part of life, it gives life greater meaning than it otherwise would. All of life must die in order for life to persist. In spite of this, the passing of a loved one is still a time of grief and mourning. I ask of you to usher my much beloved cat, my adored feline companion and treasured member of my family into your Web of Memory this day. Take her paw in your loving hands and guide her across the rainbow bridge where her soul can rest, free of the ailment that claimed her life.
May she frolic in tall grass hunting bugs, sleep in as many sunbeams as she wishes, and be granted feasts of whatever she pleases. She has blessed our lives with a near infinite well-spring of love and affection, and deserves an afterlife befitting such a precious and wonderful creature. May she curl in your lap like she has done in ours so many times, may she greet you with cheerful meows and chirps and may she bring you the same joy she has brought us.
Though we are departing this day, it will not be a permanent separation. I pray that when it is our time to enter the Web of Memory, that she will greet us with the same joy and affection she has shown us in her far too short life. May we make up for lost time then, beautifully reunited with her company once again. We will miss her desperately, but I know we will meet again on the next plane.
I pray that you grant us closure in our grief, and an understanding that this is goodbye for now, not forever. May her memory spark tears of joy in the coming days rather than grief and may she be permanently embedded into the tapestry of our family. Bless us with peace as we commit her into your loving arms, and know that you, Oh Blessed Goddess, will gently guide her through this transition.
May her path be easy.
May her passage be peaceful.
May she cross the bridge surrounded by love.
May all grudges be forgiven and all harm caused be mended.
Thank you for blessing my life with yours, Little One.
I ended up missing Ostara because my fur baby is very sick 😞. My cat, Misha, nearly crossed the rainbow bridge this week and isn't out of the woods yet because she has the very capable vets at our local university vet hospital absolutely stumped. If you have the energy, prayers for her recovery would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you and I hope y'all had a blessed Ostara ❤️
