The Evolution of a Prayer

 
I've been thinking a bit about a short prayer I've written and that has played an enormous role in my spiritual life for many years now. If you read my writings or correspond with me often, there's a good chance you've come across some version of this prayer before. In this post, I thought I'd share the evolution of this prayer through its various versions. The oldest version of the prayer is as follows. 

Lord God Almighty, Creator and Maker of Heaven and Earth, please give me wisdom and understanding, please help me become more compassionate, and please help me become a magician. Amen. 

I came up with this version of the prayer near the very beginning of my magical training and used it for a long time. Sometimes, I still share this version of the prayer with those who are comfortable referring to God as the Creator, which many people are. As for me, at some point I read in Daskalos's book The Esoteric Teachings that nothing is ever created, and that everything that exists now has always existed within God. After reading this, I thought that maybe from an esoteric point of view it's not technically correct to refer to God as the Creator, so I removed the phrase "Creator and Maker of Heaven and Earth." Thus, the prayer was shorted into the following version. 

Lord God Almighty, please give me wisdom and understanding, please help me become more compassionate, and please help me become a magician. Amen. 

One day after I'd used this version for a while, I was reading about how Christ was the ultimate example of a loving and compassionate person. This inspired me to also pray using the prayer "Lord God Almighty, please help me love as Christ loves. Amen." It later occurred to me that I could combine this new prayer with the other prayer I was using, so instead of alternating back and forth between two prayers, I just used the following combined prayer.

Lord God Almighty, please give me wisdom and understanding, please help me love as Christ loves, and please help me become a magician. Amen.

This was the version I used until I went through a period of time when I wasn't sure whether or not I was truly called to the magical path. When this happened, I replaced the last petition in the prayer with another one. The prayer was then transformed into the following version. 

Lord God Almighty, please give me wisdom and understanding, please help me love as Christ loves, and please help me develop humility. Amen. 

I liked this version of the prayer because it reminded me of TMO, even though I didn't have TMO or anything Qabalah-related in mind when I wrote it. Wisdom is associated with Chockmah, understanding is associated with Binah, compassionate love is associated with Tiphereth, and humility is associated with Malkuth. However, in Christianity, humility is considered the mother and foundation of all other virtues, including compassionate love. Therefore, it made more sense to me to ask for help developing humility before asking for help developing compassionate love. Thus, I rearranged the petitions of the prayer as follows.

Lord God Almighty, please give me wisdom and understanding, please help me develop humility, and please help me love as Christ loves. Amen. 

In Christianity, humility comes from knowing oneself and wisdom and understanding are closely related to knowledge. Because of this, there was also a certain elegance to asking for wisdom and understanding before asking for help developing humility. Wisdom, understanding, the virtue of humility, and a heart that loves as Christ loves are all priceless assets for those walking the magical path. This final version of the prayer is, I think, one of the best things I have ever produced and something I definitely want to leave behind after I die. If you can, get a komboskini and repeat this prayer every day, starting with one hundred repetitions and working your way to higher and higher numbers of repetitions until you are saying this prayer almost ceaselessly. The spiritual benefits you receive from doing this will greatly help you in your magical advancement. 

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