I am not Christian and I am not going to compose a prayer for you.
My name is Ren Kagetsuki. What I can do is set out which psalms this tradition actually uses, and at which point in the work each one is said, because that is the part nobody writes down.
They are not interchangeable. Each one has a job.
Why psalms and not something newer
There is a practical property here that has nothing to do with belief, and it is the reason I respect the practice.
A psalm is fixed. The words do not drift between the first repetition and the third.
That is the single most common failure in any spoken working. People improve the wording as they go without noticing, and three improved sentences are three different workings run once each.
A text that is centuries old and known by heart cannot be improved in the moment. Whatever else it is, it is a technically sound instrument.
Which psalm, and for what
- Psalm 51. The cleansing one, and the one most associated with uncrossing. Said in the bath rather than before or after it.
- Psalm 37. For when the trouble has a person behind it and you are being told not to burn yourself up about them.
- Psalm 35. For active attack, where something is arriving rather than merely lingering.
- Psalm 7. For false accusation, and for situations that have reached other people’s opinion of you.
- Psalm 91. Protection, used after the clearing rather than during it. Commonly written out and carried.
- Psalm 23. Steadying. Used when somebody cannot sleep and needs the nights to be survivable while the rest is done.
Fifty-one and ninety-one are the two you will meet everywhere. The others are the ones that make the difference, because they are chosen for the situation rather than by habit.
When each one is said
The timing is the part that varies least between practitioners, which is usually a sign that it matters.
1. Before the water goes in, nothing. Preparation is not the working.
2. In the bath, the cleansing psalm. Said aloud, low, once at the beginning and once more before you stand up. Not on a loop.
3. While rinsing, nothing. The rinse is the part that finishes it and it wants your attention rather than your voice.
4. After drying, the protection psalm. Once. This is the one people skip, and it is the one that holds what the bath took.
5. Each of the nights, the same psalms in the same order. Changing them between nights is the drift problem arriving by the back door.
Where those nights sit in the wider course is here: the seven nights, and what happens on the fourth.
The carried psalm
The second form, and the one that survives outside the bathroom.
Write the protection psalm out by hand on plain paper. Not printed, not on a phone.
Fold it away from you, three times, and carry it in a pocket or a wallet.
Replace it weekly. The old one is burned or put out of the house rather than thrown in a bin indoors.
Handwriting matters here for the same reason speaking matters. It takes long enough that you cannot do it absently.
The one at the other end of the book
There is a psalm used for the opposite purpose, and I am going to mention it rather than pretend the tradition is one-sided.
Psalm 109. It is used against people, and it has been for a very long time.
I am not going to tell anybody what to do with their own scripture. What I will say is what I say about every working of that kind.
Something said with a wish in it belongs to the person who said it, and it comes home.
The same book holds the cleansing psalm and that one. The difference between them is not the language. It is what the person wants while they read.
If this is not your tradition
Then use the psalms as they are given, or use nothing.
Do not rewrite somebody else’s text into something that sounds more like you. A fixed text improvised on is no longer fixed, which removes the one property that made it work.
The Japanese form of this course has no words in it at all. Salt, water and repetition, seven nights: the prayers used against curses, and how they are used.
Silence is not a weaker version. It is simply a different way of keeping one thing still, and keeping one thing still is the whole of the technique.
If you have run the course with the psalms and it bought you a fortnight, tell me the two dates. That gap says more than the wording ever will.
