In Endless Search of Prayer Beads

I have loved prayer beads for years. I love their beauty, the feel of them beneath my fingers, the comfort and power they accumulate through repeated use. Despite this, I have yet to create a set that has 'stuck'.

It's no secret that my practice has been in flux for some time. For years I struggled to find a balance in my solitary practice between diving into my tradition's pathworking and what my practice had been before.

It was my teacher who first introduced me to prayer beads. I created a lovely set as one of my first tasks as a dedicant. To this day they sit in the right pocket of my winter coat and I rub my thumb over them as I wait for the bus in the cold. But the gods they are dedicated to are not gods I work with any longer (or ever really did in my solitary work).

I've experimented a few different times since then. I made a set dedicated to Brighid for an e-course I was doing that had different beads for Her flame, Her well, Her forge, and a single large one for Her mantle. But while I have great affection for Brighid, she does not have a consistent place in my practice and attempting to add the prayer beads actually served to disrupt the flow of the devotions I was already performing for her.

I was also inspired by someone somewhere in the depths of the internet to create a set with one bead to each deity that I honour in my path. I eagerly started to collect them. Black for Hekate, wood for Demeter, blue glass for Poseidon, a key for Persephone, a shell for Aphrodite, a bear for my power animal, a quartz for the sibyls, bone for the ancestors, etc. But I realized before I even finished the set (let alone strung them) that it didn't feel like me.

And now I am in search again. An article on Witches' Voice turned me on to the idea of prayer beads as a reflection of ritual. A bead for purifying and grounding, one for each element, one for the God, one for the Goddess, etc. Through all my searching for a consistent spiritual home practice, my love of ritual has always held true. So today I think I will pull out my unfinished collection, see what beads can be repurposed for this new idea, and make a list of what I'm missing.

We'll see how it goes!

(The article that inspired this new attempt, by the way, can be found here. I'm not big on the whole ritual 'cheat sheet' thing, but the idea of prayer bead devotions as a microcosm of ritual is something I can get on board with.)