Thoughts on making a breviary for personal use.
(Image description: A worn, antique book is held open by hands, which appear slightly out of focus in the dark.) Credit: Photo by Sergiu Vălenaș on Unsplash
While Imbolc is over, the festival’s themes of new beginnings are still relevant. Part of this theme is my desire to refocus on incorporating more monastic practices.
An important influence on how I view Polytheistic Monasticism is Oisín Doyle’s A New Monastic Way: Polytheistic Celtic Monasticism. In the book, the author summarizes that three main activities for a monastic path can be study, work, and prayer. The last one is the focus for this particular project I want to start.
When the word breviary comes to mind, one typically thinks of a sacred text with sets of prayers said at certain times of the day. These books will sometimes have ornate illustrations and calligraphy on some letters.
Now, the breviary I have in mind shares these qualities. A key aspect of my spirituality is finding joy in creativity and bringing it into the world. I suppose that these factors will make it have more in common with an art journal and function as a piece of devotional art.
I say formal prayers three times a day and use a digital device to store them on, but I would like a hard copy of the prayers I say. A leather journal I received as a gift some years ago is what I would like to use to record the prayers I say most often.
As for how it will be organized, I have an initial idea of including daily, occasional, and seasonal prayers. I also want to include offices for healing and the dead. Given Brighid’s connections to healing and keening, it’s appropriate for them to be there.
Some of the prayers I will be using pull from other sources. Some of those include the Clann Bhríde Book of Hours, some from the Carmina Gadelica, and my own prayers.
Depending on how much room these prayers take up, I will add in quotes or things that remind me of Brighid. While there will be some order to its pages, I want the breviary to develop organically, like nature does.
I hope to have the pages featuring different types of art media, but I will also have to keep the thicknesses of the media in mind while adding them to the pages. I don’t plan on having a table of contents to keep track of the sections, but I’ve had an idea of using a leather bookmark with different colored ribbons to indicate each portion.
There won’t be a rush to complete my breviary, as I want to enjoy taking my time while creating it. As I’ve said before, my spiritual journey is about gaining insight as I go, rather than any artistic destination I might have. As I go along, I aim to show the process as I make designs for the various prayers. I imagine some designs will be symbolic, while others will be more of a literal interpretation of the prayer’s contents.
I sometimes feel prayer is an underrated subject in Paganism and Polytheism. Prayers aren’t always the written or spoken words, but it can also be the art we create. They can take a myriad of forms, and this future breviary will be a small work of beauty with its pages, dedicated to Brighid as a series of visual prayers.
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