Luireach Padraig

St. Patrick's Breastplate (Prayer of Protection)
Saturday, June 05, 2010, 4:54:04 PM | James P Casey
St. Patrick’s Breastplate

My mother, rest her soul, when I moved out of her house at age 19 gave me a small folded prayer to keep in my wallet at all times, & told me to say it every day I could. She said it would protect me and was called “Luireach Padraig (Loricah Porrig) “ in the Irish. I’ve seen many versions of it but I always liked hers best. A Lorica was a Magical or Mystical Breastplate which if worn by a Celt would insure protection at all times and a passage to the best of the Otherworlds, called Heaven or Paradise by Jews, Christians & Muslims. Christ did say that his father had many mansions. I came across it a while ago in an old wallet of mine & it was nearly disintegrated, but luckily I could still read most of the words. There may be a missing section or two, from the look of it but what remained I give to you. If you are of a Goddess bent, or somesuch you can substitute GodEssence or All-That-Is for “God”. Christ since it is an honorific high level spiritual title such as Avatar or Buddha, I would leave alone. There is also an Afterward you might find interesting. (Most versions use the term ‘bind’ instead of ‘gird’. Both are correct, but I find the encircling nature of ‘gird’ more pleasing than the squeezed sort of feeling ‘bind’ brings to mind.)

Luireach Padraig

I gird myself today with the might of heaven:
The rays of the sun,
The beams of the moon,
The speed of wind,
The depth of sea,
The stability of earth,
The hardness of rock.

I gird myself today with the power of God:
God’s strenght to comfort me,
God’s might to uphold me.
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to lead me,
God’s way to lie before me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s angels to protect me
From the snares of the divil,
In whatever guise,
From the temptation to sin,
From all who wish me ill,
Both far and near,
Alone and with others.


May Christ guard me today
From poison and fire,
From drowning and wounding ,
So my life’s mission may bear
Fruit in abundance.

Christ before me and behind me.
Christ beneath and above me,
Christ with me and in me,
Christ around and about me,
Christ on my right and my left,
Christ when I rise in the morning,
Christ when I lie down at night
Christ in each heart that thinks of me,
Christ in each eye that sees me,
Christ in each ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through the power of the Trinity,
Through faith in the thereness,
Through trust in the oneness,
Of the Maker of earth,
And the Creator of heaven



Afterword
The Celts believed in the sacredness of the 3. They had triple gods & goddesses. They also had an overall Principal Being called a Father or a Mother God who was above all, depending on what part of Europe. In Ireland it was a Father God, called the Dagda, or Good God. Water was also sacred to them & interestingly enough it too is a triplicity: H2O. We live on Earth which is mainly a Water Planet. The number 3 was sacred to the Celts, & this in fact became the Roman Catholic Trinity. The Irish were great seafarer’s like their Celtic cousins in the islands & mainland of Europe. The Romans killed millions of Celts but not the majority and the rest of them are the earliest European ancestors that unite the EU, even w/ the various other ethnic groups that intermixed with them.
Their religion or Druidism was sort of like a Western European version of Pan-Paganism, Buddhism & Pythagoreanism practiced by a gregarious, loosely held federation of like minded souls, which was changed by the conquest of Rome. Ireland escaped Rome’s fury & so called civilizing notions. Patrick was the son of two Celts, a Briton & a Gaul who were Roman Citizens. They lived on the western seashore on the border of what today is Scotland & Britain. His father was like St. Luke, one of those hated Tax Collectors who would bully money from their fellows until they had raised enough that they would receive a special honor & would no longer have to pay taxes, great incentive that greased the great machine of the Roman Empire.
St. Patrick blended Druidism with Christianity like many other of his kind creating what was called the Celtic Church. Women were allowed to say & participate in the Mass as well as some other features, environmentally speaking, that today People of Spirit would appreciate. At first Patrick destroyed the Druids books, but then he lamented and he had his monks record the remaining ones as well as the oral Lore of the People, Bards, Seannachies, Poets and Minstrels to whom we Irish are most appreciative. The message of Jeshua was radical: It said that all were equal under God & that God was Love. No King or Queen was more special than the lowest slave. The Celts were Democratic in nature & this message took off like wild fire, especially in Ireland where there were no martyrs. From a people who call a rainy day: “Tis a soft day”, we do not call them Pagans but Pre-Christians & honor & cherish our ancient heritage. There are more Irish manuscripts of lore many of which is still not translated, then all the worlds stories combined.
Incidently, I no longer have access to the kind of Photo Copier that can shrink stuff down, as I’d love to carry it in my wallet again. Come to think of it, the run of bad cess or luck I’ve had in the last 4 yrs coincides coincidently, even though there are no coincidences, with the time I got the current wallet on Father’s Day 2006. Please you of non-Islamic-Christian-Judaic faiths don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and identify the message of Joshua Ben Joshua or Yeshua ben Yeshua or Jesus Christ with the later established Churches, as did Aleister Crowley, who grew up under the weight of a small sect of fundamental Christians, and their nonsensical beliefs. A Christ is a Bodhisatva, an Anointed Avatar. The message in the Lorica is all you need, as you all are children of God-Essence All-That-Is, the children in the ancient Celtic trinity: The Mother of Darkness melded with the Father of Light and in their outbreath (the Holy Spirit: the three points of a triangle are the trinity united by the lines of the HS connecting them. The triangle is the smallest building block.) created we, the Children of God. We are eternal, but we are on Earth to learn how to be a Godchild, or to teach others how to do so. GodEssence Bless ye!