
I have found in the last year and a half or so that I am decent at writing invocations. By that I mean I can grab a notebook and come up with something passable or better in about three minutes. Tweak a few words here and there and usually within about 5 minutes, I've got something I'm happy with. (I generally cannot write anything else like this. Especially essays describing the evolution of my personal religious practice.) Even at times for deities with whom I am not particularly familiar, such as the one I wrote for Airmid at Lughnassagh.
I've another invocation to write to the less familiar. Water nymphs. I might take a bit more than 5 minutes on this one...lol...
I'm thinking I may use the Orphic hymns to the Nymphs and Nereids as models.
Orphic Hymn to the Nymphs (trans. Athanassakis) - incense: aromatic herbs
Nymphs, daughters of great-hearted Okeanos,
you dwell inside the earth's damp caves
and your paths are secret, O joyous and chthonic ones, nurses of Bacchos,
You nourish fruits and haunt meadows, O sprightly and pure
travelers of the winding roads who delight in caves and grottoes.
Swift, light-footed, and clothed in dew, you frequent springs;
visible and invisible, in ravines and among flowers,
you shout and frisk with Pan upon mountain sides.
Gliding down on rocks, you hum with clear voice, O mountain-haunting
sylvan maidens of the fields and streams.
O sweet-smelling virgins, clad in white, fresh as the breezes,
with goatherds, pastures and splendid fruits in your domain. You are loved by creatures of the wild.
Tender though you are, you rejoice in cold and you give sustenance and growth to many,
O playful and water-loving Hamadryad maidens.
Dwellers of Nysa, frenzied and healing goddesses who joy in spring,
together with Bacchos and Deo you bring grace to mortals.
With joyful hearts come to this hallowed sacrifice
and in the seasons of growth pour streams of salubrious rain.
Orphic Hymn to the Nereids (trans. Athanassakis) - incense: aromatic herbs
O lovely-faced and pure nymphs, daughters of Nereus who lives in the deep,
at the bottom of the sea you gambol and dance in the water.
Fifty maidens revel in the waves,
maidens riding on the backs of Tritons and delighting
in animal shapes and bodies nurtured by the sea
and in the other dwellers of the Tritons' billowy kingdom.
Your home is the water, and you leap and whirl round the waves,
like glistening dolphins roving the roaring seas.
I call upon you to bring much prosperity to the initiates,
for you were first to show the holy rite
of sacred Bacchos and of pure Persephone,
you and mother Kalliope, and Apollon the lord.