I’ve gotten into the habit of praying the Benedicite (“All ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord…”) as part of my morning prayers. I was originally doing it a while back as part of my “extended prayer” days, like on Sundays or Wednesdays, but since I get a good feel from the prayer and since it goes by fairly quickly, I decided to just throw it into my normal prayer schedule.
For those who are unfamiliar with the prayer, it’s a prayer used in Catholic liturgy and in some Solomonic rituals (which is where I first saw it used in magic). It basically exalts and exhorts all of creation in the celestial, terrestrial, and humane realms (or as I prefer to call them, the cosmos, universe, and world) to praise the Creator. It was originally used in the Old Testament (Daniel 3:56-88), sung by the three Jewish youths Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego while being preserved by an angel in a furnace. The Song of the Three Children became a thanksgiving prayer, rejoicing in all of creation, and I use it partly for that and partly for praise.
I preface the prayer with the Paternoster and complete it with the Gloria Patri. I build a complex visualization as I pray the Benedicite: at first, I start with just an all-encompassing Light, then as each verse is chanted I add in that image to the overall visualization, first building up the heavens, then the earth, then mankind, recreating in my own mind the entire world that I live, work, and Work in. At the end, I sort of “release” the visualization into the actual world around me, overlapping the world with my visualization and linking them together.
At the end, I say a little extra, adding on my own exaltations to the Benedicite, exhorting my own self to praise and prayer:
O my Self, bless ye the Lord, praise him and magnify him forever.
O my Body, …
O my Soul, …
O my Spirit, …
O my Mind, …
O my hands and feet, …
O my comings and goings, …
O my actions and productions, …
O my sight and sense, …
O my blood and humours, …
O my voice and breath, …
O my emotions and feelings, …
O my dreams and visions, …
O my thought and reason, …
O my speech and words, …
O my divine spark, …
O my friends and family, …
O my associates and allies, …
O my colleagues and coworkers, …
O my entire life, sphere, and surroundings, …
