A while back, I was at my local botanica and looking through their baskets of prayer cards, pamphlets, and prayer books. To my surprise, I found a small booklet written by Father Eliseo Porras Rojas of the Iglesia Ortodoxa de Latinoamerica in Bogota, Columbia; the name wasn’t important, nor was it even written in full in the booklet, but what caught my eye was that it was a novena to Saint Cyprian of Antioch along with Saint Justina. I finally got around to translating it from Spanish, and I have to say that it’s certainly an odd novena. Yes, it has prayers to be done over nine days, and there’s a place every day for you to make a request of the good Saints Cyprian and Justina, but it’s focused more on contemplation and meditation rather than on reciting prayers and making offerings. It’s an unusual text, and I plan to try it out in the near future.
Of course, this isn’t the first time I’ve translated something from Spanish for Saint Cyprian. He’s widely renowned (famously or infamously, depending on whom you ask) in Central and South America, and is called on primarily for defense against demons and black magic, and secondarily for love. There’s plenty of material written in Spanish in pamphlets, prayer cards, or whole books, and much of it is out of reach of many Anglophones. To that end, I’ve decided to gather a bunch of prayers I’ve found from botanicas and online and translate them into English into a new ebook, the Vademecum Cypriani, or “Handbook of Cyprian”, including four novenas and several other prayers that have never been translated before (or, if they have, I certainly can’t find reference to them), as well another prayer and the Chaplet of Saint Cyprian written by yours truly all combined into one document. You can get a PDF copy for US$9.00 off my Etsy page at this link. Go on and get it; it’ll be a useful thing to get, what with the Feast of Saint Cyprian coming up on September 26!
Of course, there are plenty of other prayers you can find to the good saint across the internet, and while I have them all copied down in my personal notes, I didn’t want to include them in the ebook, since…well, why should you have to pay for something you can find for free, and why should I profit off the creation of others without reason? So, since I like sharing knowledge, here’s a list of links with prayers and other resources for the good saint that I’ve collected over the months:
- Verus Jesuitarum Libellus on Esoteric Archives, which contains the Conjuration of Saint Cyprian used to work with demons
- Myth Woodling’s Praying to Saints and Folk Magic: San Cipriani di Antiocha for an Italian stregheria point of view on working with the saint
- Shadow’s post on Saint Cyprian and Justina in religion and spiritual work
- The Orthodox Church in America’s page on hymns for Saint Cyprian used in liturgy
- Jason Miller’s blog post from about this time last year on Saint Cyprian, with another follow-up on working with the saint written the day after
- A much older post from Jason Miller’s LiveJournal (really?) with a prayer he himself wrote
- Wolf and Goat’s Jesse Hathaway’s blog posts (one, two) on the Days of the Cyprians he started last year but, regrettably, never completed (though it had excellent promise; maybe he’ll start up again this year?)
- Docteur Cæli D’anto’s blog post on Saint Cyprian with a few prayers of his own
Besides that, I highly recommend getting copies of Conjureman Ali’s Saint Cyprian: Saint of Necromancers and Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold’s Saint Cyprian & the Sorcerous Transmutation, both of which are available from Hadean Press for UK£3.00 and are fantastic resources for working with this good saint; Conjureman Ali’s book is a good worker’s introduction to setting up an altar and performing work with the saint, and Frisvold’s excellent exposition of Saint Cyprian concludes with a Quimbandero’s litany-esque prayer to Saint Cyprian. Don’t forget the more expensive books that came out on Saint Cyprian earlier this year, too: Jake Stratton Kent’s excellent Testament of Saint Cyprian and José Leitão’s translation of the Book of Saint Cyprian are nothing to scoff at, and only add to the awesome corpus of literature on this saint.
The Digital Ambler 
I’m currently reading Jose Leitao’s Cyprian book. I’m loving it.
I’m currently saving up for it, myself, if only to see how well I did with my own translation. *grin*
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Your ebook is unavailable on the Etsy website as of today, 10 Sept. 2017 Are you rewriting it for St. Cyprian’s Day this year?
Oh, no! It means I need to reallocate more copies to be sold on Etsy, is all. Thank you for letting me know! (I don’t fully understand why they don’t allow a “sell infinitely” option on digital downloads on Etsy, which would prevent this from happening.)
I take it back — it’s available on your Etsy site, but the link you have built-in leads to an unavailable copy.
Fixed! Check the Etsy shop again. I may need to fix the link, but it’s definitely back on there now.
I’m in a similar boat… every so often I have to make THE BEHENIAN STARS have 999 copies available for sale from time to time. Not that it matters — I’ve not sold anywhere near that many copies. :-)
Im looking into this however (coming from an Eastern Orthodox background), they should have left the later papal/Catholic coat of arms hat off of the above Sigil. Aside from The fact that Catholicism didn’t exist till 1055 (great schism) St, Cyprian wouldn’t bow to a pope nor was he under one! (That hat is common in catholic order coats of arms for upper clergy)To an extent he is more of a show of orthodoxy having a metaphysics connections that fit into other schools of esoterica and of metaphysics. (Just like st Cornelius and st Seraphym of Sarov show for saints lives. Liturgically speaking orthodoxy has a high ceremonial magic esq construction for how it works.)
Also with what rome was trying to pull with it’s jurisdiction as a patriarchate (when it was part of the other 5 holy cities), they never really honored many preexisting „saints from outside of the Rome jurisdiction“ after the Great schism. This was largely because Rome was looking to centralize power and try to make itself an empire. Although they did make themselves a historically inaccurate version of church history to validate themselves(since it was a heresy) and kept the eastern church under wraps from general knowledge, they only had Western Europe up then Poland. (Poland was also taken in a short period of time qhen you were the same religion as your rulers. Poland was actually catholic due to the monarch converting to caholicism which led to a subsequent “conversionary land grab“.) Basically… They didn’t have a hold on the Middle East until they tried to use the crusades to take out the existing Eastern Orthodox Patriarchates of Jerusalem and antioc.
Also, cyprian was Turkish and in Turkey so he would have a patriarchate of constantinopal cross, not the Russian patriarchate cross. (He can still receive all Orthodox sacraments in all other Orthodox churches connected to constantinopal but the Patriarchs have their own crosses. Constantinopal has „Justinian‘s cross“, not st Andrew‘s cross.)
I appreciate the historical and liturgical accuracy of this! I admit, I’m not an expert in the nuances and details of papal and ecclesiastical symbolism for coats of arms or so forth by any means, but I wanted to express a syncretic, Western-centric presentation of the general notions of the good saint. Thank you for the information!
Hi Polyphanes,
Would mind telling me what the name of the pamphlet by Father Eliseo Porras Rojas is? I’d like to read the novena in Spanish.
Thank you!
It’s literally a tiny little botanica pamphlet entitled simply “NOVENA A SAN CIPRIANO”. The only publication info is given on the last page:
Se imprimió esta Novena
en los Talleres Gráficos de
Impresos Salamanca
Bogotá, D.C. — Colombia
I wish you all luck in finding copies of it!