Prayer
Prayer is speech or thought addressed to a god or other sacred being, whether to praise, thank, ask for help or seek forgiveness. It may be spoken aloud or silently, alone or in a group, in fixed words or freely. Many traditions surround it with ritual actions, from incense to set times of day.[1][2]
Prayer as offering
The historian Susan Ashbrook Harvey shows how ancient Jewish and Christian writers came to describe prayer as a kind of sacrifice. The Dead Sea Scrolls community compared correctly offered prayer to an acceptable fragrance. The Christian theologian Origen wrote that the altar of a righteous person is their mind, from which the incense of prayer rises.[3] Later, Basil called the singing of psalms spiritual incense, and Augustine described the Lord's Prayer as daily incense offered on the "altar of the heart".[4] Ambrose called evening prayer "the hour of incense", drawing on Psalm 141.[1]
Repetition
Many prayers are repeated, sometimes many times over. The scholar Robert Yelle traces some modern Western suspicion of repeated prayer to Protestant readings of Matthew 6:7, which warns against "vain repetitions". Reformers used the verse against repeated Catholic prayers such as the Hail Mary, treating them as attempts to pressure God; British critics later turned the same argument on Hindu mantras. Yelle presents this as a historical attitude, not a neutral description of how prayer works.[5] He also notes that cognitive scholars connect repetition with memory and the passing on of tradition.[6]
In Zoroastrianism
Jenny Rose describes daily prayer as central to Zoroastrian life, using the term hambandagi, "bondedness together" in prayer. Prayers are said while retying the kusti, the sacred cord worn around the waist, and the morning prayers are often followed by burning incense for the household.[2] Two short prayers, the Ahuna Vairya and Airyema Ishyo, are among the oldest Zoroastrian texts. In later Zoroastrian cosmology, the Ahuna Vairya is said to have stunned the evil spirit at the beginning of time.[2][7]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. University of California Press. pp. 75–76.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Rose, Jenny (2014). "Zoroastrians Present and Past". Zoroastrianism: An Introduction. I.B. Tauris.
- ↑ Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. University of California Press. pp. 21–24.
- ↑ Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. University of California Press. p. 81.
- ↑ Yelle, Robert A. (2012). "Transformations in poetic performance: the coordination of Protestant literalism and print culture". Semiotics of Religion: Signs of the Sacred in History. Bloomsbury Academic.
- ↑ Yelle, Robert A. (2012). "The poetics of ritual performance". Semiotics of Religion: Signs of the Sacred in History. Bloomsbury Academic.
- ↑ Rose, Jenny (2014). "Eranshahr: The Sasanian Center of the World". Zoroastrianism: An Introduction. I.B. Tauris.