Prayer to Peitho

A modern LABRYS text (see greek-agathodaimon-001), and of everything in this book it is the least borrowed: no Orphic chain of epithets, no "come, blessed one", no ready-made opening — it is newly written.

The deity, however, is understandingly chosen. Peitho, Persuasion, was a genuine wedding goddess: she was honoured alongside Aphrodite, brides sacrificed to her, and at Athens she had a cult together with Aphrodite Pandemos.

Why she in particular is needed at a marriage is plain from Greek practice. Marriages were arranged by parents, and consent was the most vulnerable point; Peitho is the power by which agreement is obtained without compulsion. And what stands in her place when she is absent, Greek myth shows tirelessly: the rape of Persephone, the rape of the Sabine women in the Roman version (gellius-neria-001), and the whole train of such stories. In naming Peitho, a wedding rite names what it must not be.

"Your word is the greatest holy thing": for the goddess of persuasion, speech is declared the sacred object, and that is exact — all her power lies in what is said, not in what is done.

The conclusion, however, is of today: "as Love joins and makes all things one". An ancient prayer would have asked for requital and for children; it did not ask that minds and souls be merged.