How to Pray the Rosary
The rosary alternates two prayers…the Hail Mary and the Our Father, Maters and Paters, Mothers and Fathers, Yin and Yang, Darkness and Light, the Earth (Matter) and the Sun.
There are A LOT more Hail Marys than Our Fathers and there’s a reason for this. This is the story of The Mother…of her bringing Life into the world, watching that Life destroy itself, and then rebirthing it (and herself) back into the world.
Women hid their devotion to the Great Mother in the rosary during the Middle Ages. They couldn’t worship her as before but they hid, in this circle of beads, all of the wisdom they had collected through the ages. It is no coincidence that the medieval rosary emerged in those areas of France and Europe where the oldest goddess figurines (40,000 years old some of them) have been found. When we pray the rosary our voice joins with those ancestral mothers.
The Hail Mary itself is a three part prayer….to the Maiden (hail full of grace, the Lord is with thee), to the Mother (blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb), and the Crone (Holy Mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.)
The Hail Mary
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us,
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
The Our Father
Our Father, Who art in heaven,
hallowed be Thy name;
Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen.
The Glory Be
The Glory Be is an Honoring of the Eternal Return of Life. It is usually said at the end of every grouping of Hail Marys.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Child,
and to the Holy Mother, as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Use the diagram. Jump in. There are no rosary police. Until the modern era, there were literally hundreds of different ways of doing all of this. Make it work for you.
If you would like to add meditations on the Mysteries to your rosary, please see the section on How to Pray with The Mysteries.
For an in-depth treatment of the rosary, please see The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary