Quoth whiterabbit:
No, closing the circle is in there: “I draw a blood line around us,…”
Quoth cwthree:
Basically, a prayer is more humble. Something like this is all about “Because I have Jesus, I can exert power over the flu”. A genuine prayer would be something more like “Jesus, I ask that you, in your power, protect us from the flu, but not my will, but yours, be done”. Basically, you’re letting God know that you’d appreciate Him doing something, but it’s His call, not yours.
Damnit…and I had just gotten “Makes Me Wanna Sing” out of my head after two days…
It’s also kind of why we have the whole ambiguous God/Him/LORD/I Am dynamic in the first place I think. Wasn’t it considered a big no-no to speak/write “His” name in full because then you could exert power over him, which was considered a bad idea at best? So what do we do here? Attempt to exert dominance over God’s powers!
[[Note: I think I got this info from the History Channel and I’m fully prepared to be completely wrong on that]]
If you got it from The History Channel, you better be prepared, because they usually are.
What’s “an further”? Don’t they mean any further? I don’t do spells that aren’t spelled correctly…
I thought a prayer was a one way kind of thing to God, kind of a wish expressed in formal language, while a spell was you trying to change someone else’s behavior through words.
Hmmm… if that last bit is true, spells DO work (sometimes!). Prayer–not so much.
What they left out is the fact that you need to be rubbing the afflicted with a chicken. Also, you gotta smoke a cigarette and drink some whiskey. Don’t forget to spit some whiskey on the ground. And draw the veves nice and clean.
Oh, this ain’t voodoo? My bad.
It’s also nice that it only asks Jesus to watch over the church. Surely a miraculous Jesus-cure from the flu would be a great way to win over those heathens!
This kind of ‘prayer’ would certainly have been looked upon as magic in most of the ancient world.
The is the SDMB. If I hadn’t, somebody else would have, in 5 minutes or less.
The Israelis did it better: they put a bunch of Rabbis on a plane and had them pray, blow shofars and generally go nuts to keep swine flu out of the country. I doubt it worked any better than this spell, but it’s more interesting.
“By his stripes we are healed”? Jesus is a tiger?
Aside from the spear wound, the crucifix is sporting some fearful symmetry.
Yeah, that [del]spell[/del]–er, prayer, as written in the O.P., would probably summon up the Zombie Plague and doom us all. Remember kids: Spelling and grammar count when doing spells and gramarye!
Hey, you remind me of a man.
What man?
Man with the power.
What power?
Power of Flu-doo.
Flu-doo?
You do.
Do what?
Remind me of a man…
Oops, I missed that bit. I’ve never known anybody who would use blood to cast a circle, though. Seems like that’s something the sort of baby-sacrificing Satanists that don’t actually exist would do. Certainly not an upstanding Christian, right?
My ways of avoiding the flu are getting the shot and washing my hands a lot.
I also perform ritual ablutions with the Holy Hand Sanitizer* a lot.
*Not to be confused with the Holy Hand Grenade, though no doubt that would be quite effective as well.
It’s a somewhat archaic term that refers to lash/strike wounds, like with a whip or something. That quote itself is Isaiah 53:5, KJV specifically when I search.
Not sure why I bothered to say that, but there ya go!
I bet I’m the only one who got a mental image of microscopic piles and drifts of swine flu viruses, stunned after running headfirst into the wall created by the blood line.
I was actually imagining a shimmering semi-transparent rainbow “shield” that starts at the circle and spreads out striking them down. A giant circular Carebear Stare, basically.
Blake is spinning in his grave for that one.
According to T.S. Eliot.