Forms of prayer in the religions of the world

Religions of nonliterate peoples

Prayer is one of the most ancient expressions of religion. The practices and rites of contemporary tribal peoples might offer a glimpse into remnants of earlier forms of religious behaviour. An adherent of a tribal religion is aware of his dependency both in relation to his tribe and to the Supreme Being. He often addresses his prayers, however, to various numina (spiritual powers): the dead, the divinities of nature, protective gods or actor gods, the Supreme Being localized somewhere in heaven, or a feminine divinity linked to the earth (i.e., the great mother). It is impossible to determine the historical precedence of one over the others, and it is difficult to describe the most rudimentary prayer because certain forms escape modern scholars, so much so that it has been assumed by some that prayer was absent in earliest religion. The first form may have been a cry, then brief formulas repeated as incantations, such as “Come…hear me…have pity” (e.g., Algonkin Indians of North America).

Internalized prayer is found among the Eskimos and the Algonkin tribes of North America, the Semangs of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, and the Aborigines of Australia. Prayer in gestures is also found among the Semangs. Another form is spontaneous prayer, without any precise formulation, which is found, for example, among the Aeta, Baluga, Ita, and other aboriginal peoples of the Philippines and the Alacaluf (Halakwulups) of Tierra del Fuego. More developed liturgies and prayer vigils are found among the aboriginal peoples of the Philippines and the Pygmies of Gabon.

The prayers of peoples of a nonliterate society generally are concerned with the self (egoistic) and concerned with well-being (eudaemonistic) at the same time; they are clearly pragmatic, concerned above all with food, protection, and posterity. But the higher forms of adoration and recognition of obligations, of confidence, and self-abandonment are to be noted. Among the Australian Aborigines are found prayers on tombs for the dead, so they may be received in heaven, and prayers are also addressed to the spirits of ancestors. Request and pardon accompany sacrifices in the propitiatory rites of the Semangs. Of special interest is the fact that the Wiradjuri-Kamilaroi of Australia practice public prayer on only two occasions: the burial of a man and the consecration of puberty. They believe that excessive prayer serves no purpose.

Ancient civilizations

From the 3rd millennium bce to the beginning of the Common Era, forms of prayer changed little among the Assyrians and Babylonians and their descendants. The oldest forms are composed of hymns and litanies to the moon goddess Sin and to the god Tammuz. Though some songs of joy have been found, most are adjurations. Some hymns of thanksgiving tell of gratitude to the divinity for victory over an enemy. One such hymn, addressed to Marduk (the Babylonian sun god), apparently goes back to the 12th century bce. A number of hymns of later date celebrate the king, but their intent is to request divine protection first for him and his country. Preserved in the library of Ashurbanipal (7th-century-bce Assyrian king) at Nineveh is a rather long hymn to the goddess Nana (queen of the world and giver of life), the consort of the god Nabu, son of Marduk and a god of wisdom and science. There also is a long acrostic poem in praise of the god Marduk, creator of heaven and earth, and hymns that the Babylonians recited at the new year, at the beginning of spring, and at the celebration of Marduk.

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Other hymns accompany sacrifices, such as in the offering of a young gazelle in place of humans. A most important form of prayer, however, is found in the conjurations and exorcisms of a priest or believer and in lamentations, which are particularly numerous and which often end in a refrain similar to a litany.

Ancient Egyptian piety is preserved in numerous precepts engraved on the backs of scarabs. These engravings sometimes include praises of the divinity (“All good fates are in the hand of God”), statements of confidence, or requests for protection for the one praying and for his whole family (“God is the protector of my life; the house of one favoured by God fears nothing”). Hymns of thanksgiving, such as that of the artist Nebre, who obtained from the god Amon the healing of his son who had been struck with illness because of Nebre’s fault, are numerous in ancient Egyptian religion. Protective magic, widely practiced, also utilized formulas of incantation, recited or written, and amulets (charms). Some of the incantation formulas (anonymously written) come from the earliest times, and others, more recent but no less efficient, were composed by magicians. In order to increase their authority and efficacy, several, such as those composed by pharaoh Ramses III (12th century bce) and preserved in Cairo, were attributed in origin to the gods themselves.

Collections of formulas, such as the Egyptian Pyramid Texts and the Book of the Dead, were compilations of magical prayers that allowed the dead to forestall all the dangers and meet all the eventualities. In particular, they contain negative confessions in which the dead person justifies himself before the court of Osiris (god of the dead). The funeral liturgies of the ancient Egyptians have preserved lamentations that echo the family in mourning. Hymns written on papyrus that are compositions in honour of a divinity and that were recited during sacred ceremonies have also been preserved. Such are the hymns of the pharaoh Akhenaton (Amenophis IV, 14th century bce) to the god Aton and the hymns in honour of the god Amon-Re that boast of divine benefits and sometimes confess misery and sin.

In Greece, poetic prayer can be distinguished from ceremonial prayer. The first, like all of the liturgical prayers, contains three essential parts: the invocation of the god, a justification for fulfillment (e.g., sacrifices offered, favours given and received), and a conclusion that formulates the request, such as in the prayer of Diomedes to the goddess Athena in the Iliad of Homer. Generally, the ceremonial prayer followed a ritual pattern: washing of the hands, the prayer proper, then sacrifice and libations. The prayer initiated the liturgical action; without it there could be no ceremony. Prayers often were transformed into hymns, a characteristic of Greek religion. One of the oldest known Greek hymns is that of women devotees of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility. That such hymns were not always sublime in character is attested to by the comment of a 6th-century-bce Greek philosopher in regard to a Dionysiac festival.

If they did not hold a procession and sing a hymn to the genitals, it would be an outrageous performance. Hades and Dionysus, in whose honour they rage and celebrate the Bacchus rites, are one and the same.

Another ancient hymn is a morning hymn to Asclepius, the god of healing. All the hymns begin with invocations of the names of the gods to whom they are addressed. The invocation was believed to have an almost magic value. Though there are many individual Greek hymns in existence, the only official collection remaining contains the Orphic Hymns (addressed to the ancient hero Orpheus); it dates from the Greco-Roman period (c. 3rd century bce–c. 4th century ce).

Roman prayers begin with an invocation to the divinity. Addressing the god is of capital importance and one must be careful not to address the wrong god. In order to avoid this error, there were litanies of 15 gods and goddesses. The prayer itself generally takes two forms, depending on whether it implies a request or is simply limited to praise. The prayer of request has a juridical pattern in which the offering, as a contractual element, dominates. The offering is what jurists call bail bond, a guarantee. The prayer of request’s effectiveness depends on a precise formulation, with parallelisms, solemn repetition, and accumulation of synonyms. The verb precor (“I pray”) is reinforced by many synonyms. Prayers of praise developed out of meditation or experiences of religious elevation and utilized various patterns in both public and private ceremonies. An example of collections of prayers of praise is preserved in the Verba pontificalia (“Priestly Words”).

Another form of prayer is the votum (“vow”), in which a person undertakes to offer to the divinity, in exchange for divine favour, a sacrifice, the building of a temple, or other such offerings. It is a kind of bargain in which is still felt the prudence of the peasant who has experienced failure. These vota (“vows”) become more numerous than other prayers the farther one goes from the historical origins of Rome. The most solemn form of the vow is the devotio (“act of devotion”), by which a chief offers himself to the divinity in order to obtain victory.