Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Durgadas Allon Duriel, author of the new The Little Work: Magic to Transform Your Everyday Life.
Many of us in the Pagan community connect with nature through ritual. It’s common, for example, to hold observances of the lunar cycle on full and new moons, and the solar cycle with the Wheel of the Year, where we mark the course of the seasons. An additional way of attuning ourselves with nature and bringing magic and spiritual connectivity into our everyday lives (which is the subject of my new book, The Little Work: Magic to Transform Your Everyday Life), is by observing the Sun’s movement throughout the day with adorations, which come from Thelema.
Adorations are traditionally practiced at sunrise (or after waking), noon, sunset, and midnight (or before bed). Performing them involves facing a given direction (East, South, West, and North, in that order), assuming a particular posture and offering ritualistic words. In Thelema, these words feature Egyptian imagery and are geared toward aligning Thelemites’ minds with the Great Work throughout the day. The Great Work is the Thelemic term for spiritual enlightenment, which comes from Alchemy. The postures actually originate from the Golden Dawn, of which Aleister Crowley was a member before founding Thelema.
The general concept of adorations can be used by anyone, though, and we’re free to perform adorations with whatever postures and words feel intuitively or symbolically meaningful to us. My experience is that these can profoundly impact the day. Each one becomes an anchor point for aligning with Spirit (however we understand and conceptualize that), as well as connecting with the vitalizing energy of the Sun and whatever else we weave into the practice. Donald Michael Kraig, for example, integrated elemental visualizations into adorations in Modern Magick, having each adoration involve connecting with the energy of one element per adoration, in the order of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth (the Golden Dawn postures used corresponded to these respective elements). Because adorations provide such a potent opportunity to sync up with our spiritual path, I recommend writing your own, expressing whatever intentions you hold for the relationship you wish to develop with the Sun, elements, gods, or other things.
This is what I say during my adorations:
Sunrise (East): Hail to the powers of Air and inspiration at the rising of the Sun. May each thought be dedicated to the Great Work and placed at the Feet of the Divine Mother.
Noon (South): Hail to the powers of Fire and creation at the midcourse of the Sun. May each word be dedicated to the Great Work and placed at the Feet of the Divine Mother.
Sunset (West): Hail to the powers of Water and intuition at the setting of the Sun. May each feeling be dedicated to the Great Work and placed at the Feet of the Divine Mother.
Midnight (North): Hail to the powers of Earth and formation at the midnight hour of the Sun. May each action be dedicated to the Great Work and placed at the Feet of the Divine Mother.
When possible, it’s best to perform adorations outside, so we can feel and see the Sun. When that’s not possible, I find benefit in imagining it filling me with its light relative to the vantage point I would observe it from outdoors (i.e. overhead at noon, fading in the distance at sunset). I’ve found that consistently performing adorations helps me feel more connected to nature, as well as more in the flow of my magic. My experience and belief is that magic isn’t something we simply do during spellcraft and then move away from the rest of the time; we are constantly navigating the energies around us and offering energy of our own. When we come into alignment four times a day with adorations; they give us a feel for how our energy is flowing, and also provide us with an opportunity to line it up with our intentions of well-being, spiritual connectedness, etc., which will in return support whatever magic we have in that arena.
Our thanks to Durgadas for his guest post! For more from Durgadas Allon Duriel, read his article “The Checklist: A Most Unexpectedly Powerful Magical Tool.”
