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A Book of Pagan Rituals
There are many reference books on elaborate pagan rituals but never until now a guide to the most basic of prayers and offerings. A Book of Pagan Prayer provides the pagan community a comprehensive and thoughtful selection of prayers and shows readers how they too can create their own. After an introduction on why to pray, author Ceisiwr Serith explores how to pray through words, posture, dance, and music. He explains how to prepare for and compose prayers, how to address and honor the deities, and how to conclude a prayer. Serith also answers important questions, such Why should pagans pray? Should prayers be spontaneous? What are offerings about? Is all this just trying to buy the gods off? Gathered from many traditions including Celtic, Germanic, Egyptian, Greek, and Zoroastrian this guide includes nearly 500 sample prayers organized by for the family and household/ times of the day, month, and year/ life passages/ thanksgiving, grace, and petition/ as well as litanies and mantras. Whether offering a blessing, celebrating new life, safeguarding travel, or honoring the seasons, readers will discover timeless pagan prayers for worship, spiritual connection, and personal relationship with the gods.
164 pages, Paperback
First published January 15, 1978
6 people are currently reading
216 people want to read
About the author
Ceisiwr Serith
14 books51 followersI have been married since 1981 and a father of a daughter since 1982. My wife is simply amazing; quite easily the smartest and nicest person I have ever known. She has a very successful career as a vice-president at an insurance company and as an actuary, a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries. On top of all this, she is cute. I don't just mean cute in a physical sense (although she is). Cute is as cute does, and she does cute. I sometimes wonder how I ever won her.
My daughter is, of course, equally amazing. As well as being beautiful (not just my and my wife’s opinion, by the way), she is brilliant. She speaks Spanish fluently, and shows an interest in languages in general that makes me very happy. Like her mother, she has a big heart, but like her father she still can accept some of the hard facts of the world without blinking. I hope this will come in handy in her chosen field of social work. She's a truly amazing combination of the best of both of us, with her own mysterious nature added.
I myself was born in 1957, in North Tonawanda, NY, and spent my early years in Tonawanda. These two towns, separated by the Erie Canal (they are, in fact, where the canal really ends, despite what the song says), are delightful reminders of a nicer time. Visiting them is like taking a trip back in time.
I didn’t live there long, though, since my father was in the Air Force. We lived in a number of places, including Germany. It was while we were there that I went to Berlin. This was while the Wall was still up, and I was privileged to see it, and to cross it into East Berlin. The contrast between the two was shocking -- the West, a vibrant, colorful, living city, and the East, a city of grey, with rubble left over the WWII, even then in the late 60s. When I was taking classes at the University of Massachusetts years later, I would see Communist students handing out copies of the Daily Worker, and I would want to shake them and scream, "You've never been to East Berlin. You've never seen the Wall."
For college I went to Holy Cross, a good Catholic school, where I met my wife. I received a degree in psychology, with a secondary concentration in Eastern religions, in 1979. The fact that after twenty-five or so years my training in psychology is obsolete leaves me with mixed feelings. I am grateful, however, that pyschology majors were required to take a course in statistics. That has stood me in good stead, and I think that everyone should be required to take it, on at least a high school level. We are confronted daily with statistics -- polls, gambling odds, and such -- but few of us really understand them. Many people still believe that if a series of coin flips has come up consistently heads, the odds against the next flip coming up heads are greater than 50%, or that the odds against a shuffled deck of cards being in order by suit and number are greater than those against any other order. Just the other day I read how in a poll the majority of people polled believed in one thing, with the breakdown something like 49/47%, with the rest undecided. A plurality rather than a majority, but it was even worse; the error of measurement was 4%. In other words, statistcally speaking, the question was tied. People should know these things. But I digress.
After college I served in the Air Force myself, as a communications officer, stationed in England. (I had gone to college on a ROTC scholarship.) My wife and I developed a love for England and the English, and have been back a number of times. We have even considered living there after my wife retires.
I served my hitch in the Air Force and got out. I won't say that the Air Force and I parted on the best of terms, but I know that both of us seemed relieved. My wife and I didn’t like the idea of someone else raising our daughter in daycare, so we decided one of us would stay home and take care of her and the house. My wife wanted to try the working world. Fortunately, I was quite eag
My daughter is, of course, equally amazing. As well as being beautiful (not just my and my wife’s opinion, by the way), she is brilliant. She speaks Spanish fluently, and shows an interest in languages in general that makes me very happy. Like her mother, she has a big heart, but like her father she still can accept some of the hard facts of the world without blinking. I hope this will come in handy in her chosen field of social work. She's a truly amazing combination of the best of both of us, with her own mysterious nature added.
I myself was born in 1957, in North Tonawanda, NY, and spent my early years in Tonawanda. These two towns, separated by the Erie Canal (they are, in fact, where the canal really ends, despite what the song says), are delightful reminders of a nicer time. Visiting them is like taking a trip back in time.
I didn’t live there long, though, since my father was in the Air Force. We lived in a number of places, including Germany. It was while we were there that I went to Berlin. This was while the Wall was still up, and I was privileged to see it, and to cross it into East Berlin. The contrast between the two was shocking -- the West, a vibrant, colorful, living city, and the East, a city of grey, with rubble left over the WWII, even then in the late 60s. When I was taking classes at the University of Massachusetts years later, I would see Communist students handing out copies of the Daily Worker, and I would want to shake them and scream, "You've never been to East Berlin. You've never seen the Wall."
For college I went to Holy Cross, a good Catholic school, where I met my wife. I received a degree in psychology, with a secondary concentration in Eastern religions, in 1979. The fact that after twenty-five or so years my training in psychology is obsolete leaves me with mixed feelings. I am grateful, however, that pyschology majors were required to take a course in statistics. That has stood me in good stead, and I think that everyone should be required to take it, on at least a high school level. We are confronted daily with statistics -- polls, gambling odds, and such -- but few of us really understand them. Many people still believe that if a series of coin flips has come up consistently heads, the odds against the next flip coming up heads are greater than 50%, or that the odds against a shuffled deck of cards being in order by suit and number are greater than those against any other order. Just the other day I read how in a poll the majority of people polled believed in one thing, with the breakdown something like 49/47%, with the rest undecided. A plurality rather than a majority, but it was even worse; the error of measurement was 4%. In other words, statistcally speaking, the question was tied. People should know these things. But I digress.
After college I served in the Air Force myself, as a communications officer, stationed in England. (I had gone to college on a ROTC scholarship.) My wife and I developed a love for England and the English, and have been back a number of times. We have even considered living there after my wife retires.
I served my hitch in the Air Force and got out. I won't say that the Air Force and I parted on the best of terms, but I know that both of us seemed relieved. My wife and I didn’t like the idea of someone else raising our daughter in daycare, so we decided one of us would stay home and take care of her and the house. My wife wanted to try the working world. Fortunately, I was quite eag
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 3, 2020
An American classic of modern Paganism. In the late 1960s, a small group came together to compose a set of new rituals and training materials, largely as a response to Susan Roberts' book, Witches U.S.A. They named it The Pagan Way.
As Aidan Kelly recounts in his Patheos blog, "
In creating the Pagan Way, Joe Wilson, Ed Fitch, John Hansen, and the other members of the Committee of Correspondence created a form of Witchcraft that was Gardnerian in all but a few oath-bound details. They hoped it would allow more people to become Witches than could possibly be accommodated by the extant Gardnerian covens, with their fairly strict rules on how long candidates for admission had to remain in training. The founders combined knowledge from their various traditions and created new rituals to replace those that were oath-bound." (https://www.patheos.com/blogs/aidanke...)
The original material was distributed free of charge through the mail, and eventually collected and published as a booklet by Herman Slater, owner of the Warlock Shop and later The Magickal Childe. A second volume, containing materials from Donna Cole Smith and Herman Enderle's Chicago Temple of the Pagan Way, was published shortly after the first.
The present volume collects both of these. Slater sold his publishing rights (such as they were) to Weiser to meet expenses from his business.
Although Slater did not claim authorship, he was listed as "editor" for both volumes, causing much distress over his perceived theft of what was formerly free materials. The were hard feelings among some of the contributors towards him as well, which furthered the adoption of the nickname of "Horrible Herman".
Nonetheless, Slater's publication and sale of the books helped further the goal of getting this information into more hands than the mail request ever had.
I recommend this book. (It should be noted also that a third volume of A Book of Pagan Rituals was also published by Slater, which consisted of the training material for the New York Coven of Welsh Traditionalist Witches, crafted by Slater's former business partner, Edmund Buczynski.)
As Aidan Kelly recounts in his Patheos blog, "
In creating the Pagan Way, Joe Wilson, Ed Fitch, John Hansen, and the other members of the Committee of Correspondence created a form of Witchcraft that was Gardnerian in all but a few oath-bound details. They hoped it would allow more people to become Witches than could possibly be accommodated by the extant Gardnerian covens, with their fairly strict rules on how long candidates for admission had to remain in training. The founders combined knowledge from their various traditions and created new rituals to replace those that were oath-bound." (https://www.patheos.com/blogs/aidanke...)
The original material was distributed free of charge through the mail, and eventually collected and published as a booklet by Herman Slater, owner of the Warlock Shop and later The Magickal Childe. A second volume, containing materials from Donna Cole Smith and Herman Enderle's Chicago Temple of the Pagan Way, was published shortly after the first.
The present volume collects both of these. Slater sold his publishing rights (such as they were) to Weiser to meet expenses from his business.
Although Slater did not claim authorship, he was listed as "editor" for both volumes, causing much distress over his perceived theft of what was formerly free materials. The were hard feelings among some of the contributors towards him as well, which furthered the adoption of the nickname of "Horrible Herman".
Nonetheless, Slater's publication and sale of the books helped further the goal of getting this information into more hands than the mail request ever had.
I recommend this book. (It should be noted also that a third volume of A Book of Pagan Rituals was also published by Slater, which consisted of the training material for the New York Coven of Welsh Traditionalist Witches, crafted by Slater's former business partner, Edmund Buczynski.)
January 26, 2018
This book was invaluable to me as a new Neopagan. It is simple and accessible and I relied on it for inspiration in planning rituals well into college. I somewhat regret selling it off... but I haven't needed it in a long time. I still have chunks of it memorized! I will probably invest in a digital copy someday.
January 12, 2009
This was my first real treatment of Pagan rituals. There's not a lot of background nor histories here...just straightforward, barebones rituals. A great introduction to this aspect of Paganism that doesn't aspire nor pretend to be something it's not...
September 6, 2008
Essential classic for those following a Wiccan or Witchcraft-oriented path.
December 10, 2012
Wiccan. This was okay.
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October 26, 2017There are many reference books on elaborate pagan rituals but never - until now - a guide to the most basic of practices: prayers and offerings. A Book of Pagan Prayer provides the pagan community a comprehensive and thoughtful selection of prayers - and shows readers how they too can create their own. After an introduction on why to pray, author Ceisiwr Serith explores how to pray through words, posture, dance, and music. He explains how to prepare for and compose prayers, how to address and honor the deities, and how to conclude a prayer. Serith also answers important questions, such as: Why should pagans pray? Should prayers be spontaneous? What are offerings about? Is all this just trying to buy the gods off? Gathered from many traditions - including Celtic, Germanic, Egyptian, Greek, and Zoroastrian - this guide includes nearly 500 sample prayers organized by purpose: for the family and household; times of the day, month, and year; life passages; thanksgiving, grace, and petition; as well as litanies and mantras. Whether offering a blessing, celebrating new life, safeguarding travel, or honoring the seasons, readers will discover timeless pagan prayers for worship, spiritual connection, and personal relationship with the gods.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews