Beginning Romanist Practice
Beginning spiritual practice can be difficult and awkward. Am I doing this right? Is this working? Should I feel something?
Doubts are a natural part of the process. To make things more difficult, Gentile religions often have unfamiliar ritual tools like alters, statues, incense etc.
So, what's the best way to get started practicing Romanism?
First off, let's answer an important common question: Do you need an alter, incense and any physical objects to practice Romanism?
No. While a physical alter is a great practice to keep it is not required. The Gods are ever present. As the great sage Iamblichus said, "everything is full of gods". The purpose of an alter is to focus our worship and give ourselves and our families a dedicated place to engage in spiritual practice. It merely elevates our worship.
So what can you do to get started?
Prayer is the essential first step.
Many people don't really know how to pray. So let's look at a few types of prayer that are good for starting Romanist practice.
The Structure of Prayer
First, let's look at the simplest structure of prayer. Romanist prayer gets more complex when we perform daily rites at an alter but without an alter we can strip it down to the essentials.
1. The Preface
The preface is where we invoke the Gods. In your prayers focus on one God at a time. Invoke them by calling their name and using epithets and hymns, for example;
"Great King Jove, Thunderer, Father of Gods and Men, who conquers all things, to whom everything belongs."
These epithets create a mental picture of the God. It focuses your intention on the God by making them clear in your mind.
Using Hymns
This is also a great place to use a hymn. The Orphic hymns are particularly useful and I suggest the Thomas Taylor versions as they are poetically composed and use the Roman Gods. The hymns themselves contain many epithets and call forth a clear image of the God you wish to invoke. Hymns are most effective if they are sung or chanted. To chant a hymn, you simply find a comfortable note and sing the chant in a monotone on that note. Once you are comfortable with that, you may add endings to each line that break from the monotone. I suggest using predefined psalm tones for this which are made for this exact purpose.
“O Jove, much-honour’d, Jove supremely great,
To thee our holy rites we consecrate,
Our pray’rs and expiations, king divine,
For all things to produce with ease thro’ mind79 is thine.
Hence mother Earth and mountains swelling high
Proceed from thee, the deep and all within the sky.
Saturnian king, descending from above,
Magnanimous, commanding, sceptred Jove;
All-parent, principle and end of all,80
Whose pow’r almighty shakes this earthly ball;
Ev’n Nature trembles at thy mighty nod,
Loud-sounding, arm’d with light’ning, thund’ring God.
Source of abundance, purifying king,
O various-form’d, from whom all natures spring;
Propitious hear my pray’r, give blameless health,
With peace divine, and necessary wealth.”
If the tones seem complicated, don't worry, just chant on a monotone. I will provide more instruction in the future on how to use these for the Orphic hymns.
2. The Prayer
Next is the prayer itself. Prayers can have many purposes so lets look at a few.
Adoration
The core of all prayer is based on love for Jove and the Gods. Love is an attractive force that brings disparate parts into union. By increasing our adoration and love of the Gods, we raise ourselves to their nature and fill our souls with their divine light.
A prayer of adoration is simply to behold the God in your mind and meditate on their immensity and greatness. It is nearly impossible for us to fully grasp a God as immense and powerful as Jove but push yourself to focus your mind fully on Him. Hold in mind that he is the father of all Gods and men, The creator of all things. Within him are all the Gods and through him all nature has existence. He is everywhere and in everything.
Gratitude
Gratitude is appreciation for what the Gods give to us every day. The Gods have created all the things in our world and hold the order of the cosmos together. By cultivating gratitude for the Gods, we better understand our place in the cosmos. We are not the center of the universe; we are under the Gods. They are not our friends or coworkers. Nobody “works” with the Gods. The Gods are our superiors in every way. By thanking them, we place ourselves correctly in the divine hierarchy. We look up to them as glorious perfections and appreciate their power and unfailing grace.
This gratitude humbles us, which brings us toward virtue and the divine. It also erodes the sickness of our narcissism and self-importance. Without this gratitude, we cannot fully love the Gods because we will fail to appreciate their higher nature in relation to our confused ignorance.
To do a prayer of gratitude, hold the God in your mind and call to mind all the amazing and wonderful things this God has done for you, your family and the whole cosmos. You can thank Jove for creating the world and all the creatures within it; For giving us a soul with the ability to escape rebirth and rejoin the Gods; thank him for the order, safety and protection he bestows on you and your family. This gratitude will restore your faith and bring you closer to the Gods.
Atonement
“Repentance is the beginning of philosophy.”
-Hierocles
Repenting our sins is an essential function of prayer. It is impossible to move from vice to virtue without recognizing and paying attention to when we sin against the peace of the Gods. When we do this, there may be requisite sacrifices to be made to restore the peace. However, sins come in many sizes. There are grave sins, and then there are more minor daily sins we commit. We should keep track of these daily sins and ask for the Gods’ forgiveness in our prayers. But, like our offerings and sacrifices, the Gods do not need us to refrain from evil; rather, we need to do it so that we do not destroy ourselves and violate the peace and order of the Cosmos.
By tracking our sins and vices, we take an inventory of where we are on the ladder of virtue that leads us to the Gods. Repenting and asking for atonement is asking the Gods to make our soul whole and pure again from the damage we have inflicted.
“The very essence of the soul is only in danger when swerving from the good, it plunges itself into what is contrary to its nature; and then when it returns to what is consonant to its nature, it finds again its Being, and recovers its original purity.”
-Hierocles
To ask for atonement, we confess our sins to Father Jove in silent mental prayer and beg for his forgiveness. More importantly, we ask to be guided toward virtue and away from the vice that afflicts us. Excessive shame is its own vice; we should not dwell on our evil acts and make them worse. To err in vice is a part of our mortal nature and difficult to overcome. Have compassion for your faults but seek tirelessly to perfect yourself.
“Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.”
-Plotinus
Blessing
Blessings do not just mean asking favors of the Gods. However, we should ask Jove and the Gods for favors and blessings. We are not alone in the Cosmos, we are Children of Father Jove, and like any of his children, we have the right to ask him favors. The myths are full of petitions to the Father, and he grants those favors to those who come to him.
More than favors, we receive blessings from the Gods in return for our earnest practice and faith. We mustn’t spend all our time in prayer talking at the Gods. We must cultivate the space in between to receive their blessings as well. Prayer is communication with the Gods, and any good communication requires talking and listening. We listen to the Gods by leaving space for blessings in our prayers.
Regardless of what type of prayer you do, whether it is for adoration, gratitude, atonement or a favor, leave a space for silent reflection after your prayer. It is in this silence that the Gods may respond to your prayer. Listen carefully.
3. Conclusion
After the prayer, we end with a conclusion. This is simply thanking the God once again and closing the prayer. To officially close our prayers, we say, Fiat (Fee-aht) which means, “Let it be so”.
“Father Jove, thank for you blessing and hearing these humble prayers. Fiat.”
So go forth and pray in confidence. Remember always that prayer is a practice. It takes time and effort to grow that practice and make it more impactful. As your practice grows, the blessings will become more clear and you will begin to feel Jove’s presence in your daily life.
For the Glory of Jove.