A Pagan Ritual Prayer Book (51 page)

Staal, Frits.
Agni
:
The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar
(2 vol.). Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983.

Tolkien, J. R. R.
The Lays of Beleriand
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

———.
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún
. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. A modern version of a medieval Germanic tale, told in the alliterative style. Good discussion of Germanic poetic style.

Watkins, Calvert.
How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. An analysis of Indo-European poetry, especially meters. Most of the texts are prayers from ancient cultures. Very technical.

West, M. L.
Indo-European Poetry and Myth
. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Deals with the form and imagery of Indo-European poetry, as well as basic religion. Many excerpts from prayers and hymns. Not as technical as Watkins.

Willis, Garry.
Lincoln at Gettysburg
:
The Words that Remade America
. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.

Adkins, Lesley and Roy A. Adkins.
Dictionary of Roman Religion
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Descriptions of Roman deities, and many Gaulish ones.

www.avesta.org/avesta.html
. Includes translations of all the Zoroastrian hymns.

Bell, Catherine.
Ritual: Perspectives and Dimension
. New York: New York University Press, 1977. Academic, but not too hard a read.

Book of Common Prayer
.
www.eskimo.com/~lhowell/bcp1662/
. Although Christian, the style of this book of devotions has shaped much of what we have come to expect from prayers. The imagery is wonderful, and the prayers are good examples of how noble spoken English can be.

Boyce, Mary (ed. and tr.).
Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism
. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1984. Includes translations of a number of Zoroastrian hymns, different from
http://avesta.org
, and perhaps more reliable.

Budge, E. A. Wallis.
The Gods of the Egyptians
(2 vols.). New York: Dover Publications, 1904. His translations are out-of-date, as are his commentaries, but they are all suggestive of the style of Egyptian prayers. Particularly valuable is that he gives many titles by which each deity may be called.

Carmichael, Alexander.
Carmina Gadelica: Hymns and Incantations Collected in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland in the Last Century
. Edinburgh: Lindisfarne Press, 1992 (1909). Originally published in four volumes in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. The original version included the Scots Gaelic; this edition does not. Christian, but with a Pagan appreciation for nature. Many Pagans have used prayers from this source, with the substitution of Pagan deities for the Christian God and saints.

Dangler, Michael J. (ed.).
The Fire on Our Hearth: A Devotional of Three Cranes Grove, ADF
. Columbus, OH: Three Cranes Grove, 2008. Rituals of a modern Druidic grove. Available from
www.threecranes.org
.

Eliade, Mircea.
Essential Sacred Writings from Around the World
. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1967.

———.
The Sacred and the Profane
. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. The classic work on sacred space.

Evelyn-White, Hugh G. (tr.).
Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica
. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936. The Homeric Hymns are prayers to the Greek gods.

Fitch, Ed and Janet Renee.
Magical Rites from the Crystal Well
. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1984. Neo-Pagan rituals, with some beautiful prayers.

Hollander, Lee M. (tr.).
The Poetic Edda
. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1962. Translation in a very Germanic poetic form of one of the major sources of Norse mythology.

Laurie, Erynn.
A Circle of Stones: Journeys and Meditations for Modern Celts
. Chicago: Eschaton, 1995. A rosary using Irish texts. Available for purchase as a PDF file at
www.seanet.com/~inisglas/publications.html
.

Lipp, Deborah.
The Elements of Ritual
. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 2003. Wonderful book on ritual theory and practice. Much useful advice on the practical side of things.

Matasovi
, Ranko.
A Theory of Textual Reconstruction in Indo-European Linguistics
. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. Indo-European (primarily Vedic and Greek) poetic metaphors and structures.

McMahon, Gregory.
The Hittite State Cult of the Tutelary Deities (Assyriological Studies 25)
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Hittite rituals and prayers.

Panikkar, Raimundo.
The Vedic Experience
:
Mantramañjar
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. Collection of excerpts from Vedic prayers and other texts. Available online at
www.himalayanacademy.com/resources/books/vedic_experience/VEIndex.html
.

Propp, V. J.
Down Along the River Volga
:
An Anthology of Russian Folk Lyrics
. Tr. and ed., Roberta Reeder. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975.

Rananujan, A. K. (tr.).
Speaking of
iva
. New York: Penguin Books, 1973. Hymns to the Hindu god
iva.

Regardie, Israel (ed.).
Gems from the Equinox
. Newburyport, MA: Red Wheel/Weiser, 2007. Ceremonial magical rituals, with some lovely prayers.

Rig Veda
. The
Rig Veda
is a collection of hymns from ancient India. There is no completely reliable English translation. However, except for those interested in academic research into Vedic religion, what's available will be enough. See Griffith, Ralph T. H. New York: Book of the Month Club, 1992. Completed in 1896, this version is dated (he translates all of one hymn and part of another that he considers indelicate not into English, but Latin), but complete. It's easy to find, and is even available online at
www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/
. See also Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.
A Vedic Reader for Students
. Designed, as the title implies, for those learning to read Sanskrit. It includes translations of thirty hymns and descriptions of the deities they're addressed to. Another good source is O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. New York: Penguin Classics, 1981. Incomplete (about one tenth of the hymns), and criticized by some scholars, but beautifully written and inspiring.

Roberts, Elizabeth and Elias Amidon (eds.).
Earth Prayers from Around the World: 365 Prayers, Poems, and Invocations Honoring the Earth
. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991. Prayers from around the world, in a number of religious traditions.

Serith, Ceisiwr.
A Book of Pagan Prayer
. Boston: Weiser Books, 2002. The first third presents the theory of how prayers are constructed and performed; the rest is a collection of prayers.

———.
Deep Ancestors
:
Practicing the Religion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans
. Tucson, AZ: ADF Publishing, 2009.

Lady Sheba.
The Book of Shadows
. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 2002.

Sturluson, Snorri.
Edda
. Tr. Anthony Faulkes. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1987. Snorri gives titles (“kennings”) of deities, as well as Norse myths.

Wolkstein, Diane and Samuel Noah Kramer.
Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth
:
Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer
. New York: Harper and Row, 1983.

Frost, Robert.
The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged
. Ed. Edward Connery Lathem. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979. A master of American poetic style, Frost uses nature imagery as metaphors for human life, linking us to the natural world. He was a close observer of seasons.

Haiku
. There are many books on haiku and related verse forms, as well as many websites.

Heaney, Seamus (tr.).
Beowulf
:
A New Verse Translation
. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000. A translation of this classic that keeps to the Old English alliterative scheme, but loosely enough to correspond to modern English poetic sensibilities.

Shakespeare, William. Naturally. He demonstrates the thin line between prose and poetry.

Sturluson, Snorri.
Edda
. Norse poetic theory, including kennings.

Whitman, Walt.
The Complete Poems
. One of the prime inventors of American poetic style. The tendency of his poems to dissolve into lists is actually a good model for prayers.

Yeats, W. B.
The Poems
:
The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats
. Ed. Richard J. Finneran. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. The most famous poet of the Celtic Revival, Yeats nevertheless wrote in English. This gives us a feel for how Irish rhythms and imagery can be adopted by English writers.