A Threshold Prayer

This is the prayer I actually use when I finish doing my morning offerings — which end, coincidentally, when I’m about to pack up my bag and head out to work.

I pray to Hekate, to Hermes, and to Apollon Agyieus, the guardians of the space [or gate, if I’m feeling very poetic] between the home and outdoors. Please protect me as I go out and about on my way from the home, both in the analog and in the digital. Please protect my household, digital identities, and data, and please protect all who dwell here and who use my Internet. Please accept this offering of incense, O Gods of the threshold, and be well disposed.

… you can probably tell that I’m a Millennial. 👩‍💻

I added the bit about analog/digital earlier in the summer, and the bit about data protection came after a recent data breach. The spaces between our private lives and the public streets are not just physical anymore.

Mildly related update: I rejoined Instagram with a private account after getting super fatigued by Twitter and wishing that I could just have someplace where I could connect with people I actually know where I wouldn’t feel stressed sharing a selfie or discussing fun things that my girlfriend and I are up to on the weekends, especially since I’m taking a break from Twitter. Instagram is creepy, I hate its parent company, and it tried to tell me that I should follow the one ex I’m not really talking to even before I’d shared my contacts with it, but it’s better to see the creepiness outright than to get lulled into a false sense of security. Followers of my blog will know that I am very harsh about social media in general, so I think it’s important to note things like this. May the threshold Gods protect the boundaries between the parasocial and the personal for all of us.

🙏