[Opinion] Read from the book or recite from memory?

[Morell]

I'm thinking about how I read here about reading the Psalms daily. Interesting food for the thought. There are many spells in the books that are to be used for praying alone or in the ritual and some are quite long. Especially when it comes to stuff like evocations, it feels to me to start being... difficult to perform properly.

I think that if you pray for the reason of praying and focus on what you read or say, reading it from the book is quite fine and well. But when it comes to stuff where you need to focus your attention on something else than the text, then I think the memory needs to be used so that your focus doesn't go two ways.

So far I always took the pain of remembering the spell, as well as the prayers. These too long to remember I do not use... at least not right now.

How do you solve this issue in your practice?

 

[StarOfSitra]

I don’t pray to anyone; I draw support from the deities so that my achievements become their victories. I cast spells and evocations—I don’t memorize them for two reasons:

If you read them too many times to memorize them, you strip them of their emotional power. Repetition makes them monotonous and dull—just look at the prayers in a Catholic mass or a Rosary.

I prefer to focus all my energy on the ritual itself and on channeling my will, rather than wasting some of that energy and attention on remembering something by he
art.

 

[Amadeus]

The psalm method, doing the long readings, you can't really memorize all of them. There were some monks who actually did that. In a book about Porphyrios. He memorized all 150 in Greek, which is absolutely crazy achievement. Memorizing 100 pages sounds like totally mad. Then again he was a maniac who spent most of the time on it. A fast reader can read the psalms in less than 2 hours anyway, no point to memorize.

When I'm doing long mantra or prayer readings and the prayer is important then I memorize it. They are not so long let's say... psalm 91, less than a page. It is better to memorize it than read because after very long sessions you will get eye strain, possibly a headache.

The question always is: what are you doing, what is the goal?

Yes for certain, for some rituals you better memorize whatever than read it off the book. Especially those rituals where you are supposed to read something for X number of times for X days, very long sessions.

Then you have another problem, pronunciation. When doing the Sufi methods; you have the "west vs east" where some keep saying it is important to say zzzzzz and others say "dh". Saudi Arabia vs... (insert something here). One set of practitioners feel more connected when they use one way of pronounciation and the others prefer another. Is it about unlocking...? It might change after you read the whatever for x number of times. Some people I know feel a huge difference.

It is the same with the Hindu mantras. India vs Nepal & Tibet. There's a difference between how they are said out.

In conclusion I think it is a good idea to memorize something when it's important part of your active ritual work.
Speaking of memorization. I thought I was going mad when I memorized Quranic verses, some stuff in Latin and Old Church Slavonic, the ayatul kursi and other chapters. They all sound like "bla bla bla bla bla". This felt like a lobotomy

 

[glaive]

I think memorizing can be really powerful! In a practical sense, no, I don't memorize as much as I'd like, but spiritually, I think my relationship with a text is elevated when it's inscribed into my mind. I learn more from it the more that I visit it, and it's easier to focus on the "stuff" behind the text when you already KNOW the text and aren't tripped up by an unexpected/forgotten word or phrase.

My experience is more for prayers and contemplation though. I have a few rituals I would eventually like to have memorized. I'm reading Yates' The Art of Memory right now so it is an area I am planning to focus on in the near future...