Alternate Resh vel Helios With Greek Deities

Solar Prayers For The Four Stations Of The Day. Written, as always, without authority.

Introduction:

Since I was 13 years old, I have been doing the solar prayers from “Liber Resh vel Helios”. I have picked up and set aside the practice many times, but I have been consistent in the practice since December of 2019. However, at a certain point the lived realities of my spiritual life required me to change the material.

While I am not actually a Hellenic reconstructionist, I work almost entirely with Greek deities. I have been called all my life, since I was 6 years old reading Edith Hamilton’s “Mythology”, to the Greek deities and to the Greek cosmology. I first heard both the Bible myths and the Greek myths at the same age and firmly chose the Greek. At age 11, a year before I even began doing magick, Ares had already been calling me. I have an adorable picture of me dressed as Ares for Halloween of my 11th year on my Ares altar now.

As I grew older, I became more concerned with primary texts, learned Greek (passably), and learned a lot more about the amazing depth and breadth of Greek history and culture, including their wonderful modern culture, some members of which were so gracious as to invite me in and embrace me in so many ways during my days in Santa Cruz. I will always remember being a reader at Prophet Elias Church fondly, even if that situation did not end well.

Over the years I have established relationships of patronage with several deities, I have become a priestess of Aphrodite, and I have been taken in as a sort of foundling by Demeter (long story). This path has taken me on an amazing journey and I’m still on it.

Over that time, I adapted my daily solar adorations to work with my actual experiences and spiritual resonances. It took a little fine-tuning, but I think I got all the correspondences right and I kept the basic structure and language so it would still fit well into the standard Thelemic practice. Obviously Greek myth doesn’t have a solar barge myth-cycle to draw upon, so I had to play a little fast and loose with some of the wording. I can attest, however, that it feels, energetically, like doing Resh, at least to me, so I consider it a successful variation.

For my god-forms, I do the standard ones for each station and then I do the sign of my grade for the adoration. This was how I was taught to do it by my teacher.

For my adoration, instead of reciting “Unity uttermost showed…”, I do some spiritual hygiene combined with a quick and dirty empty-handed passive shield spell.

1. First I circulate the elemental energy associated with each time of day as a pentacle through my body in a banishing Earth pentacle starting at right foot and going to head, then down to left foot, etc.

   1. Dawn – Air

   2. Noon – Fire

   3. Sunset – Water

   4. Midnight – Earth

1. I visualize the energy in the appropriate color for each element at the appropriate time of day.

   1. Air – Yellow

   2. Fire – Red

   3. Water – Blue

   4. Earth – Green

1. I breathe and visualize such that I inhale deeply and fully, pulling the elemental energy in for each arm of the pentagram with each full breath.

2. Then when I finish the pentagram, I close it with a clockwise vertical circle around my body starting and ending at the right foot.

3. I take a few breaths, circulating the energy, until I feel balanced and at ease.

4. I allow the pentagram and circle to fade from my view, confident that it remains.

This circulates the elemental energy of the time through the body, and when you do it after each solar adoration you end up balanced out each day with ongoing cycles of purified elemental energy of each of the proper kinds. The circle closes the pentagram and makes it protective as well as circulatory. It’s only a passive shield, but that’s usually all you need for day to day life and going around too heavily-shielded attracts the wrong kind of attention and should only be done when necessary.

Prayers

Dawn:

“Hail unto Thee who art Eos in Thy rising, even unto Thee who art Eos in Thy beauty, who travellest over the heavens dancing in the dawning hour of the Sun. Hermes standeth in His splendor at the prow and Ares abideth at the helm. Hail unto Thee from the abodes of Night!”

Noon:

“Hail unto Thee who art Helios in Thy triumphing, even unto Thee who art Helios in Thy strength, who travellest over the heavens in Thy chariot in the mid-course hour of the Sun. Hermes standeth in His splendor at the prow and Ares abideth at the helm. Hail unto Thee from the abodes of Morning!”

Sunset:

“Hail unto Thee who art Atraeus in Thy setting, even unto Thee who art Astraeus in Thy Wisdom, who travellest over the heavens in the stars in the setting hour of the Sun. Hermes standeth in His splendor at the prow and Ares abideth at the helm. Hail unto Thee from the abodes of Day!”

Midnight:

“Hail unto Thee who art Nyx in Thy hiding, even unto Thee who art Nyx in Thy silence, who travellest over the heavens in the darkness of the midnight hour of the Sun. Hermes standeth in His splendor at the prow and Ares abideth at the helm. Hail unto Thee from the abodes of the Evening!”

Conclusion

If you have any questions, please feel free to hit me up either here in the comments or in private messages. I’m always happy to talk shop.