What makes an “original prayer” original?
"Creation has been left incomplete, and human beings, that is all of us, are needed by creation--and the Creator--to do the ongoing work of completing it."
Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, The Receiving
Friends, soul writers, and lovers of prayer,
What makes an original prayer, original? There’s a question I never expected to ponder.
It’s not a question I’ve ever heard posed by anyone. No one uses the term “original prayer.”
But, like “prayer artist,” it was given to me.
Perhaps you’ve heard the story. Prayer artist simply showed up in the night, out of the blue, whispered in my left ear. In one moment, my world changed. It was an instantaneous and total transformation.
I went to bed thinking I knew who I was and where I was going and what I was writing and teaching.
But I woke someone else.
With those two words, the Divine Feminine picked me up off the life I thought I was living and set me down somewhere else. Somewhere I’d never been before. And, it sure looked like I was somewhere no one else was exploring.
Overnight, I was no longer able to write the books I thought I would write or teach the courses I’d taught for eleven years.
And I am grateful. Utterly grateful. I didn’t plan this life—how could I—no one calls themself a prayer artist. But oh, do I love it!
But Original Prayer is different. It didn’t come as a middle of the night announcement.
Looking back, I can see that original prayer was sneaking up on me. About a year ago, I began to use the term without really knowing what it meant.
I think original prayer first showed her face during a consultation with the Masters and Teachers of the Akashic Record. I turned to them for help understanding what prayer artist meant and what I was being called to do.
They began by showing me a small circle of women dancing in joyful prayer around a sacred fire. The circle slowly grew as more women joined, and then some men, and it grew and grew, until it held everyone.
This image, they said, is a “regressed memory.” The memory of how we prayed tens of thousands of years ago before any patriarchal religious influence.
And that memory, they said, is like “original starter,” like a bowl of sourdough or yogurt starter handed down woman to woman to feed the family.
I found that analogy really helpful.
Oh, it’s the starter, the original starter, an ancient memory of original prayer is somehow in me. And in you.
They were very clear that many of us carry this original starter. And my part was to bring this original starter, this ancient regressed memory back into the world.
All of this is making more and more sense during our time of quarantine, which, my Divine Feminine voice reminded me one night, “is not a quarantine; it’s a pilgrimage.”
So, on this sacred pilgrimage, I am spending two or three hours every morning in deep soul writing and deep soul reading in my tiny backyard. I read a bit, stop and soul write a bit, and digest it all by staring off in space. In this big empty space that lasts till 1 or 2 in the afternoon, I am receiving massive amounts of new information.
I say “new” only because it lands in my body as new to me. But, of course, it isn’t new at all. It’s ancient truths.
What’s new is that these ancient truths are weaving themselves together on my pages in ways I’ve never seen before.
They are showing me that the mysteries of the rosary are the mysteries of the Tree of Life, and as we pray either of those, we experience the radical freedom that comes through the ancient Shamanic prayer of forgiveness, Ho‛oponopono or walking an ancient mystical labyrinth.
And all those prayers are found not in books—although thousands of books have been written about them and there is great value in many of those books.
But the living truths of these ancient mystical prayers are waiting to be discovered in their first and most ancient home—your body.
And it is anointing, Mary Magdalene’s sacrament of wholeness that cracks open your body’s ley lines and awakens your original light.
You are those prayers.
You are those women and men dancing around the first sacred fires.
You carry the original starter.
And the time, to bring that starter out into the open is now. Right now. During our radical pilgrimage of transformation brought to us by Coronavirus.
Do you see the bizarre humor in that? Corona means crown.
In this strange time, we are called to step away from our frantic lives in order to remember who we really are—the embodiment of the Queen of Heaven and Earth.
So, on Sunday, April 26, as I was pondering all this under the shade of my big Arica Palm, I suddenly “knew” why I’m in love with these 5 ancient—original—prayers.
Anointing
Goddess Rosary
Kabbalah Tree of Life
Ho‛oponopono
Labyrinth
Pause for a moment as you look at that list and ask yourself what they all have in common.
The first awareness that flew through my hands was that these are sacred technologies that our ancestors understood and cherished.
All original prayers:
- Activate the living presence of the Divine Feminine--this is their number one hallmark, their "watermark"
- Honor and cherish the human body
- Move—these are body prayers, not mental prayers
- Root us into the mystical power in the earth
- Generate a vibrating force field overflowing with holiness and grace
- Deliver deep alchemical transformative power
- Are circular, not linear
- Restore us to wholeness
- Were altered and de-energized by patriarchal religions
- Had to be hidden to protect their real mystical power
- Have potent sacred geometric symbols
- Drop us into a trance-like state (which we now recognize as mystical theta)
When I finished capturing all that on my pages, I stared off in space for a very long time.
And as I stared, I knew my part in restoring original prayer is to offer a prayer intensive on each of the five.
Little did I know when we started the rosary intensive in March, that the quarantine/pilgrimage was about to begin and I had actually started my 5 original prayer intensives.
We just started the Tree of Life with Rabbi Tirzah last week—and what a jewel it is!
Yesterday, I spent a few hours with Kahu Lahela Johnson planning a June intensive on how Ho‛oponopono can bring us to wholeness.
And soon I’ll be working with Catherine Anderson on a labyrinth intensive.
The summer will wrap up with Emma Kupu Mitchell and me offering a very deep exploration of the power of Anointing.
I love every one of these ancient prayer practices and pray them every day.
- It is these prayers who have changed me.
- These prayers who have awakened my original starter.
- These prayers who have helped me transmute this time of fear and quarantine into a time of beauty and pilgrimage.
- It is these prayers that are praying me into being.
Next week, I’ll talk about the strange paradox about prayer buried in that word, “original.”
For now, I hope reading about original prayer is tickling some dormant memory in you. Because, the truth is, you carry the starter, too. Or you wouldn’t be reading this.
to bringing the original power of prayer to life to heal our world,
Janet
PS: We are a tad flabbergasted by the powers in the Tree of Life. We just opened last Tuesday. You can still join us.
