Vespers ✨ My non-denominational evening movement prayers

I’ve been slowly reading a book by Dean Radin called Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and a Guide To The Secret Power of The Universe. I’m not sure I’d recommend it (the author clearly has some axes to grind on certain topics), but this paragraph was worth the cover price:

The essence of magic boils down to the application of two ordinary mental skills: attention and intention. The strength of the magical outcome is modulated by four factors: belief, imagination, emotion, and clarity. That’s basically it.

The ceremonial robes, somber settings, black candles, secret handshakes, chanting in ancient languages, sex, and drugs — all are good theater, which may help in withdrawing the mind from the distractions of the mundane world, but ultimately, they’re unnecessary.

How liberating: the specifics don’t matter! There’s no “right way” to do your spiritual practices, as long as you’re applying attention and intention. Lighting a candle or flipping a light switch? It doesn’t matter, as long as you’re paying attention to it, and putting some intention into it.

Seen this way, vacuuming can be magic — if you’re focusing on it (attention!) and seeing it as a way to clear out the things you’re ready to release (intention!).

Seen this way, your commute from work can be magic — if you’re staying awake and alert during it (attention!) and using it as an opportunity to shift gears from hard workbrain into soft homebody (intention!).

Easier said than done

But let’s get real here: applying attention is fucking hard these days. This is the information age, and we’re in full swing with the attention economy. Your attention is a commodity that’s being bought and sold daily.

Powerful economic forces are pulling at your attention from all directions — most alluringly, from that smartphone in your pocket. It’s a feat to manage your attention, when you’re resisting the pull of monopolistic media companies clambering for it, buzzing lovingly against your buttcheek, seducing you to scroll, teasing you to click, all in pursuit of Q1 profits.

It’s even harder when your attention has been weaponized. I’m convinced that America is several years into a brutal attention war, its citizenry exhausted from push notifications that jack our nervous systems, morale weakened by the neverending news cycle. In this vulnerable state, there’s no need for our enemies to bomb or physically invade our borders (ug, too expensive!). They can just confuse and depress us, isolate us from each other, and then make sure we’ve got access to opioids and guns. 21st-century attention warfare is efficient — we’re killing ourselves.

In this challenging climate, your attention is the most precious, vital commodity you’ve got. Retaining it, cherishing it, and applying it to your own intentions is powerful magic indeed.

I’m just as jacked as everyone else, of course. Focus is a tremendous struggle for me. All I can do is practice. In the mornings, I practice a few minutes with my daily dance devotional and my seated meditation practice. Then, a few times a month, I also practice for an hour in the evenings, as part of what I call vespers.

I still feel timid about sharing my spiritual practices, but I’m sharing today not because I think my form of evening prayers are the best way (remember: it’s all just theater!), but to model one of many ways that you could focus your attention and intention.

I hope that it inspires you to find and share the ways that work for you.

WTF are vespers?

Let’s start by looking at this word I’m using to describe these nondenominational evening prayers: vespers.

I was introduced to the phrase at summer camp back in the ’80s. Twin Lakes 4-H Camp started on Sundays, and that first evening we would all gather in a little forested clearing and sit on log benches and light candles and sing quiet camp songs. It was secular, but there was a soft, solemn vibe, and the camp leader would welcome everyone, and then we’d walk with our candles back to our tents.

So that’s my context for vespers, but the phrase has a whole religious history, and I’m aware that I’m appropriating the word in possibly clumsy ways. Then again, I’m descended from a long line of French Catholics, and vespers is very Catholic, so maybe I’m just tapping into my lineage? Going back farther, the word vespers comes from hesperus, and so my practices might be a nod at evening Venusian goddess worship from way back in the day? Who knows!

My goal is just to have an evening devotional practice a few times a month to keep myself sane during the information wars.

The attention ingredients

There are so many different methods for getting out of your head and into a slightly altered, more devotional mind frame. Here’s my current recipe, but it’s always changing, and yours might be super different:

• Solitude
  Last month, I tearfully came out to my boyfriend: “I know I might not seem like it, but I just realized that I’m super codependent!” “Aww, sweety,” he said tenderly. “I already know. What’s cute is that you thought you don’t seem codependent. A woman who’s been single for maybe two years of her entire adult life? …Codependent? …Ya think?!” HA! The conversation was such a relief! I may be the only one fooled by the indie-bitch snarky exterior hiding my squishy, codependent heart. Long story short, it can be hard to stay grounded in myself when I’m around other people. Solitude is essential for me.
• Darkness
  Must! Limit! Visual distractions! I spend all day looking at screens, and sometimes for vespers, even Studio Haaay’s twinkly lights are too bright for me.
• Burning things
  I light candles and incense, and take a toke or two from a joint — I’m not aiming to get super high, so I don’t smoke much. It doesn’t take much to get me a little twinkly.
• Music
  It’s always been what’s gotten me there. Since I stream from Spotify, I have to be diligent about my phone — it’s a danger zone, but I put it phone on “focus mode,” so no communications of any kind come through during vespers.
• Movement & elevated heart rate
  There’s a lot of anxious energy in my French Catholic lineage! But we all know that a tired dog is a good dog, and I’ve learned to keep my body moving, so my bitch of a brain will be more likely to sit down and wag her tail instead of lunging and snapping and chewing the furniture.
• Offerings
  Sometimes I set arrange plants, rocks, books, and other talismanic objects against the mirror of Studio Haaay, but other times it’s just a single candle in each direction. More about that later.
• Blank pages
  Sometimes I have two notebooks out: my journal for personal insights, my notebook for biz dev barf. Other times, I intentionally don’t put the books out because I want to focus on being less verbal/cognitive.

The intentions

Ok, so that’s how I focus my attention. What about the other half of the equation: the intention I’m setting for these evening prayers. These are different every time, but here are some frequent ones:

• Release the week
  I love doing vespers on Friday nights, as a way to say farewell to the week. This week specifically, I had my first press interview about Shitshow, which took a left-hand turn and became an interview about PROS BEFORE BROS. Afterward, I had a big reactionary wave of fear go by (I’m losing control of my story! but if I want to release my work to a broader audience, I have to let go of control!) which is to say: I had some grit to move through this week.
• Sensing the future
  Sometimes visions or ideas pop up, and I scan them from a distance and watch for patterns. I’m able to get deeply attuned to patterns, and I’ve learned that my discernment is better when I’m in a slightly less intellectual mind frame.
• Listening
  I’m just a tube that thoughts and words and stories flow through. That’s great (I love the feeling of letting it all pass through me! I was born for this!), but it’s also essential for me to practice listening. Vespers are part of how I practice getting quiet and listening.
• Flexibility & Proprioception
  On a physical fitness level, vespers are about moving my body to keep it limber, elevating my heart rate to keep the muscle strong. I’m in this ever-changing body for a very short time, and I like to move it through time and space and take the time to notice how it feels. It’s part of how I show respect and gratitude to this vessel I chose to incarnate into. I’m consciousness itself, bending and stretching the human body/toy I chose to be born in! Make it fitness, but WOO!
• Reclaiming my power from the trenches of the information war
  God I love my phone. God I love information. God I love pretty pictures and funny memes and psychospiritual insta inspo. I go out looking for a loaf of digital bread, and spend hours a day scurrying through the trenches of the information wars, dodging infosec snipers, my nervous system hair-triggered by algorithms. Drones and bots monitor closely from the shadows, my behaviors and actions tracked, monetized, harvested, exploited. I leave tracers of data trailing behind me, data that’s mined and processed and sold to the highest bidder. It feels good on a certain level — because it’s designed that way! The best soldiers enjoy their tours of duty, so of course the system is well-gamified. I enjoy my sprints through the trenches, riding the wave of digital divination, seeing where it takes me next. But I must take time to reclaim my sanity from the collective mental constructs and digital egoic performances. I must focus on the inner consciousness. My attention is MY power. I gather it, and hold it close.
• Surrender
  #tryhard is my default mode of existence, and I’m always looking to find ways to let my controlling ways relax into surrendering to the suchness of life. Part of vespers is just seeing what happens, not managing the experience, not grasping the reigns too tightly. I try to set the stage, and let the theater enjoy itself.

Speaking of the theater, let’s talk about that…

The quad-directional dance altar

Oh, the sheer drama of it all, darling! This is the part of vespers that’s just ceremonial theatrics. There’s no reason to do it, other than that it brings me joy and helps me focus my intentions.

Studio Haaay is just my living room. Despite how it might look on insta, my home is only about 800 square feet, the common area being the dining, dancing, living room that the bedrooms open on to. That’s the bulk of my home, other than the stairs up, and the hallway to the kitchen and bathroom.

In this shared space, I set up candles in each of the four directions, creating spaces for different vibes. I put on a song (I try not to think about it too hard — mustn’t derail my prayers with playlist obsessing!), light the candles, and then do gratitude movements toward each direction:

• NORTH (above the heater, overlooking the entry stairs): What am I grateful for that’s in its winter dormancy, down in the dirt and decay? What’s in its bare winter branches phase? What am I grieving?
• EAST (against the mirror of Studio Haaay): What’s on the horizon, just coming up? Where’s that green buds vibe, that “just starting to blossom” feeling? What am I excited about?
• SOUTH (On the mantle of the fake fireplace, under the portrait of my patron saint and holy mutha, RuPaul): What’s in its fullness and being celebrated? What feels good? Where do I feel that warm glow of gratitude and abundance?
• WEST (At the top of the stairs, under the WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE quilt): What’s in its harvest? What’s cozying up in boots and pumpkin spice? What’s in the sweetness of its gentle decline, the wan sun you appreciate a little bit more because you know it won’t last.

First, I go around the quad-directional dance altar and call in each direction. I light the candles and generally acknowledge each of the influences.

Then I go around again (to dance out the aspects of my life that feel like they belong on each altar… I’m grateful for the lost friendship still being grieved on the north altar; I’m grateful for the new work project just firing up on the east altar; I’m grateful for the big parenting success on the south altar; I’m grateful for the aging social media property I’m winding down on the west.

Often, I’ll go around a third time, just to remind myself that it’s all a cycle. No need to get lost in the sadness of the North, nor too exalted in the abundance of the South. I can’t lock it down.

The older I get, the more I recognize that my favorite highs (the exciting ramp-up of the East and the exhilarated success of the South!) aren’t great for my nervous system. I used to spend all my time facing East and South, studiously ignoring the West and the North… but I’m learning more about the beauty of the quiet half of the cycle. These days, I can better enjoy the coming down and composting parts of the circle.

But seriously: the quad-directional dance altar isn’t nearly as structured as I’ve made it sound.

Sometimes I get distracted and start doing whatever, and that feels valuable, too. Since surrender is one of my core intentions, if I sometimes doodle off mid-vespers to eat orange slices… that’s ok, too. I have compassion for how difficult it is to focus attention for a full hour. I flex it like a muscle, and then let it go soft.

Sometimes I only go for half an hour.

Sometimes I only do it once a month.

Sometimes, what shows up is ease and singing, and I go with it and let that move on through. This video was last night, and I started with one rotation around the four directions and then just wandered off into the flow with me and this temporary body in this present moment.

Radin’s outcome modulators

But what about the four other ingredients of magic that Radin mentioned? What of belief, imagination, emotion, and clarity?

I definitely believe in my vespers practice. I know how it feels when I’m in it, I can see the physical effects, and I sense deeply the impact on my soul these the past few years. (And it IS starting to be years, now! I just stumbled across my old Insta story from my very first quad-directional dance altar in January 2018!) My studies are taking me in ever more ephemeral, esoteric directions, and I believe things that I would have scoffed at (…hard!) a few years ago. I’m ok with that. Beliefs are fluid, but faith has become constant.

Imagination is a mixed bag. I can imagine all sorts of cool things, but I also have self-limiting scripts, deeply rooted insecurities, and glaring blind spots. Too often, I let my imagination curl in fearful places. Sometimes, I imagine small.

Emotions are my favorite. Sobbing through vespers is the best! I’m glad I’m out of the thick grief of my shitshow, but after a lifetime of emotional repression, I still get giddy feeling my emotional channels be WIDE OPEN. It’s like puberty!

Clarity is my biggest struggle because it taps into some of my concerns with the idea of practicing magic to reach any particular outcomes.

I don’t want to cast spells and make things happen. I’ve spent most of my life working my ass off, feeling like I had to make things happen. These days, I need to allow things to happen, more than I need to flex my muscles and feel like I make things happen.

Honestly, I tried those witchy vibes in 2016. I got myself into some pretty dark places that lead to a lot of excitement but also a lot of suffering. My attention and intention combined, and I was extremely emotional. I remember having a vision of myself detonating like an atom bomb, trying to call in something to do to help me escape from the crushing grief. It worked! It turns out I’m skilled at summoning demons to dance with! I shouldn’t be surprised: I’m ambitious and motivated and good at making shit happen for myself — the problem is that I don’t always make good choices.

Since then, I’ve learned to point my intent laser beams in more benevolent directions. My growth is around letting go of thinking — more specifically, thinking I know the specifics of what’s best for me. I try to have clarity about the sensations I want to experience, like equanimity and peace. I don’t worry about specific details or outcomes.

I know equanimity and peace are always good for me. The specifics of how I’ll get there aren’t known to me, nor do I think it’s my place to know them. A lot of prophets are pretty tortured, right? Why do I think I’d want to know everything?

So, this is many thousands of words, but I think they boil down to this: Evening prayers are just about creating a container for your attention and intention.

MY QUESTIONS FOR YOU

• How do evening spiritual practices differ from practices you might do at other times of the day?
• What are the ingredients of your favorite practices?
• How do your practices reflect Dean Radin’s magical elements (attention & intention) an modulators (belief, imagination, emotion, and clarity)? Does his theory leave anything out for you?