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Ok I was just wondering what people thought or believe as to the Wiccan prayers and the Christian prayers. Many say that the Wiccan prayers are paganized versions of the Christian prayers, which I feel in actuallity they are just the contrary.

That many of the Christian prayers are in fact christianized versions of Pagan prayers.

I mean there are two ways to pray to our God and Goddess. The first is from our hearts, using gentle prayers, spoken out of love directly to the Lord and Lady, and in one's owns words.

The second is by using the help of prayer that has been written by others.

So my question is which do you feel it is? Is it christian using pagan or pagan using christian prayers?

I mean according to history man has been using Religion for over 25,000 years, and some may actually challenge the Validation of Pagan prayers, So what are your thoughts.

This is just for discussion please do not knock anyones religion or how they may believe Thanks...

Well myself I feel it is the christians whom took from the ancient pagan prayers.. but that is just me I am wiccan and to me as long as you pray to something / someone you believe in then it does not matter.. LOL I myself am not sure which has been around longer. pagan / wicca or christianity or even the catholic religion. I mean the catholic prayed to goods and images and such where the christians did not believe in such things... and well Wiccan / pagans have many things that they pray to and for and tools that we use so .... good thread and I would like to find the answer to that as to which is the oldest religion and whom copied whom if any did... thanks for starting this maybe some one will put up some info on this...

I personally don't know if I feel it is either.

No matter the religion there is communication with the deity the religion worships.... some may call it prayer, others may call it something different, but at the end of the day we each have our own way of having a relationship with our deity and they can each be different or similar and not have to be related to or taken from anyone. Of course they may be similar as in the way it is done, but most probably not similar in the words spoken.

Prayers are words no matter where they come from, it is our own personal conversation with whom we pray to.

I don't believe anyone one faith systems prayers are more powerful than another. A prayer is a prayer, the power comes from the faith in the person's heart.

As for which religion stole the prayer from who, I guess, I just don't think it's relavant.

Not saying that this topic isn't relavent because it is, and I think it's a good one.

I'm just saying prayer seems to be universal for all belief systems.

well that was the point Dabbler for some to actually think about it and give soem imput to the thread.. thank you for your itemized input.. :)

a christian and a wiccan? so your a polytheist/monotheist? i guess im just confused.
as to whether or not christian prayers are just wiccan prayers or vice versa....what about islamaic prayers? would they then be altered christian prayers or altered pagan prayers?


if its just people talking to what they consider to be deity, then does it really matter?

Does Wicca require the worship of multiple Gods? I thought that the deities of the Lord and the Lady were simply the male and female manifestations of creation. To my understanding that does not necessarily constitute more than one God.

I can definitely see how one could be both Wiccan and Christian, though I'll admit I don't have a thorough understanding of Wicca.

Like you ImageMaker, I am not fully versed in Wicca either, but The manifestation of the God and Goddess are what ever form you choose.

Wicca has the Pantheons. By that I mean the Egyptian God/dess, Greek god/dess, and so forth. Some Wiccan's choose one form of the God or Goddess to worship. It does help I beleive to have a face to what you are praying to. In my opinion only.

They choose the form based on what is most like them.

That's all I have read on it.

I was once Wiccan, and while I still have many Wiccan friends, I now just term myself heathen, as my faith is more of a Germanic polytheism. Wicca seems to be pretty much whatever the worshiper wishes it to be, so thinking on it, I guess I could see how one could be a Christian Wiccan. It does seem a bit different, but hey, if it works for ya, more power to you.

prayers are use of word and along with that conscious is used and the each part and spheres of universe is within reach of the conscious.

well I agree that you may be christian and practice wicca as well they are of your choosing and how you wish to worship. as to one god and then to the gods of the universe/ nature in general.

I know it is a very iffy subject yet prayer is essential I feel to many, this is why I opened the thread.

Thanks for your posts..

I am a solitary wiccan and I write my own prayers for the Lord and Lady, as how it should be. I have no christian connection.

Wiccan prayers are the same thing as Christian prayers, except to the Goddess and/or God, when Christian prayers are to their God.

for me this is a bit confusing,i believe prayers to be of book religions and always considered spells were for wiccans just as it is for pagans and such practitioners,honestly i feel the prayers that once were pagan have been corrupted by xtians and would not be good for a pagan to use them but thats jsut my personal thoughts on the matters.

if prayer is just the act of speaking to ones god/s, then all faiths would have it. the pagan/heathen peoples, wiccans, the monotheists (xtian, islam, jew) and any others you might wish to include. all faiths include the act of speaking to deity, and to say that any one faith had cornered the market on it seems rather an odd thing to think.

I believe that prayers requires "belief" and without the aforementioned, they are just "words".

Doru

Yes very well put and simply.

Yes xtains adopted the prayers of the druids/celts/pagans and so on. But in all honesty, it doesn't matter what the words are it is your belief in them. I mean I can attend mass with my son at the church that my parents attend,its a house of worship regardless of what it says on the sign out front. And there for any scriptures read or prayers that are stated during the mass are just words spoken unless you have the faith behind them.

I belive that wiccans mean well but are to christion in there ways

and yes the prays call to the christion angels and even the christon god himself

the beginning of this thread asks if xtians have taken pagan prayers to use as their own. i found that confusing, but if someone can give an example of one that was modified, it might be helpful.

This is probably subjective, but factual that Christians and Jews have been praying since before they ever knew of anything close to Wicca. I would beg to differ Christian prayers are Wicca rip-offs.

I am agree with Lord Doru

You believe in, is the magic and do not believe in, is eject your concern from the things, and intellact must be testing before rejecting it, intellact is the tool of conscious.


yu must believe in the prayers before you adopt them as the basic.

I do not have the pagan or wiccan prayers, i lost my Four Pentagon Cross Banishing Qabbal prayer which included the celestial-conscious too. if it is done well, one can do the grounding successfully and other energy exercises too. my that teacher, I lost her for her dominating nature of self-centered in formation of one clan based on non-ambitious equality.

I don't know thee wiccan prayer, but if it is provided me, I will read it carefully.

Are you sure that the christians and jews have been around longer than the Wiccan, pagans etc.. I am not too sure about that one. yet, it is all about ones faith whatever you believe and they are all simular.. because they are all praying to something..

it all comes down to Beliefs and how a person chooses to pray or not pray... Yet, I feel that everyone in some way shape or form believes in something.. I could be wrong yet... isn't that the very fiber that holds us together.

What we believe or do not believe in.? ..

WELL PAGANISM WAS HERE LONG BEFORE CHRISTIANANITY, SO I BELIEVE THAT THE CHRISTIAN PRAYERS CAME FROM WICCAN,,,

People chant invocactions to living people, as well as gods, and goddesses.
Devotions are personal reflections based on an established belief.

The origin of prayer, and the recorded history of oral tradition, would be just as obscured as the history of prayer.

Neptune guide this vessel, is just as likely to have outdated God bless this food. The use of prayers by clergy, and guidlines would be more likely to have records then prayers in general. The Christians, and Catholics are very structured in their prayers, all the adopted aspects of other faiths, as someone mentioned above, would need to be viewed on a case by case basis.

wow...reality check time.
yes...the pagans were here before the christians or jews (or moslems), but not all pagans are wiccans (im not for instance).
wicca was invented in the late 1940, early 1950s by gerald gardener...a good friend of alaster crowley (and many believe that it was crowley that ghost wrote the book of shadows before he died).

i would just like an example ...a single example of a pagan prayer that was adopted by any christian sect.
i can only think of two christian prayers.

the first starts off with "our father who art in heaven"
and the other starts off with "now i lay me down to sleep"
are either of these prayers examples of those "stolen from the pagans"?

as i said before, i AM a pagan...an asatruar to be precise, and ive never heard of any of our prayers that are used by christians.

Pagans came first, Christians incorporated their religion - Christianized it - in order to more easily convert the "heathens" they were "civilizing." A prime example is Beowulf: it is a CLEARLY pagan story, yet some extremely awkward sounding points have the "heavenly father" in them or random other Christian bs.

Lord Wolf, it wasn't necessarily the prayers they stole, at least I don't think so, I'm not exactly as well-versed in Wicca or paganism as I would like. But I know they took symbols and stories and teachings and tweaked them so they would fit their Christian verision of religion.

No one "stole" it from anyone, its just a belief, and a power of words from the heart. And in each belief system, it is different.

Is this about the origin of invocation, or of specific use of verse. Invocation would be just as hard to track as Oral Tradition.

VampiraDracul didst state:
"Pagans came first, Christians incorporated their religion - Christianized it - in order to more easily convert the "heathens" they were "civilizing." A prime example is Beowulf: it is a CLEARLY pagan story, yet some extremely awkward sounding points have the "heavenly father" in them or random other Christian bs"

yes, certainly pagans were here for tens of thousands of years before the first known monotheist religion (that of the aton in ancient egypt), and true, christians did incorporate many things to help convert nations....and YES...beowulf is absolutly a pagan story that was altered later for christian consumption....but i thought we were speaking of specific prayers. if someone is just asking who prayed first, my answer might be a rather disrepectful "DUH"! LOL
my take on the question tho was are wiccan prayers taken from christian. from my experience as a wiccan, most wiccan prayers are either redone christian prayers, or original works...but very modern in creation.
hence my confusion.
pax yall
~Wolf~

Hmmm, well as I understand it, early Christians probably borrowed from pagan prayers, in order to make Christianity more appealing, and then in the 1940’s perhaps Wicca borrowed ideas from Christian prayers. I’m sure a lot of prayers don’t sound very alike, but perhaps that’s because the borrowed ideas are mixed with different ideas and so the end result sounds like something new. These are just assumptions though I don’t know any specific examples of this.

i also believe it was the christians who took prayer from the pagans ...... just like the catholics the holy water is just a pagan purifie spell or prayer said on the water......

every religion, society, philosophy, and culture, in the history of mankind, borrows ideas from each other.
the wording of a prayer is entirely irrelevant, it is the intent of the prayer that matters, as the saying goes, you cannot pray a lie

ok, this is my take....
people talk to their gods....pagans, and monotheists do it. atheists talk to themselves as well! lol
to ask who talked to their god first, that just is asking what beliefs came first, obviously that would be the pagan peoples....
but i dont think the early christians in judea were busy stealing prayers from pagans. if anything, they were takeing their prayers from the jews, whose faith the christians sprang from.
~Wolf~

With regard to prays I think everyone takes a bit of what they like and there own and there is a new pray. Nothing in my mind is pure.

TheXmeaningXofXlife