Hello!
Today I wish to share with you a charm of protection, an excerpt from an Old Irish prayer attributed to Saint Patrick, whose feast day is coming up on March 17th. This prayer is said to have saved Patrick and his fellow travellers from ambush by making them appear to be a herd of wild deer followed by a fawn. This style of incantation is pre-Christian in origin, and called a “lorica,” which is Latin for “breastplate.” The idea is that by saying or singing the prayer one armours oneself with the powers of nature and divinity for protection from harm. The full song is called St. Patrick’s Breastplate and is a relatively well-known Christian hymn in English.
Here I’ve replaced the word “Christ” in the English translation of the prayer with “love” to make it more broadly accessible. You may like to listen more than once to this wee video to fully receive the transmission. If you want to sing the section I share here, it goes like this:
Love be with me, Love within me,
Love behind me, Love before me,
Love beside me, Love to win me,
Love to comfort and restore me.
Love beneath me, Love above me,
Love in quiet, Love in danger,
Love in hearts of all that love me,
Love in mouth of friend and stranger.
Another verse of this song that really inspires me personally invokes the powers of nature explicitly and with some poetic heft. I didn’t change anything about this verse, as it’s already bursting with pagan sentiments:
I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the star lit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
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