Welcome. You have found your way to a quiet corner of the web and you are wondering what to do with it. This page is for you. It assumes nothing: not that you know who the Essenes were, not that you have ever prayed or meditated, not that you believe anything in particular. It assumes only that something brought you here and that you would like to know whether there is anything in it.
There is. Here is how to find out.
The First Week: Read a Little
Spend the first week reading, but not much. Read these four pages, one a day, slowly, and then stop reading.
- The Essenes in History, so that you know who we are talking about.
- The Key Teachings, the overview page only, so that you know what we hold.
- The Way of Practice, so that you know what we do.
- The Morning and Evening Watch, because that is what you are about to do.
Do not read the rest of the site yet. It will still be here. The Essenes kept a candidate outside the full library for three years; we ask you to keep yourself outside it for five weeks.
The Forty Days: Keep the Morning Watch
Beginning on the eighth day, keep the Morning Watch every morning for forty days. Only the Morning Watch. Not the Evening Watch, not the Communions, not the Still Lamp beyond the five minutes of silence that the watch contains. Just this: rise before the day begins, wash, go to a fixed place, light a lamp, sit in silence for five minutes, read one short text twice, say today I choose the light and name one way, and go.
Twenty minutes. Forty days. The number is the tradition's: forty days of rain, forty years in the wilderness, forty days on the mountain, forty days in the desert. It is long enough for a habit to take root and short enough to be seen to the end.
You will miss mornings. Keep the next one. The forty days are not forty perfect days; they are forty days in which you returned.
For the short text, the fellowship suggests the Lections of the Morning Watch, beginning with the seven morning lections and repeating them. Or a psalm a day. Or the sayings of the gospel found in Egypt, one a day. Anything short and old.
After Forty Days: Take Stock
On the forty-first morning, after the watch, ask yourself three questions and write the answers down.
- What has changed? Not what you have learned, but what is different in your days.
- What was hardest? The rising, the silence, the choosing, the returning after a miss?
- Do I want to continue?
If the answer to the third is no, the fellowship thanks you for the trial and wishes you peace. Not every road is for every traveler, and forty days of rising before dawn is not nothing; you will carry something from it. If the answer is yes, go on.
The Second Forty: Add the Evening
Add the Evening Watch. Ten minutes at night: gratitude, examination, release. Read the teaching of the One Law and the teaching of the Children of Light, one in each of the first two weeks, and let them shape the evening examination. Begin reading the rest of the site, one page a day, in whatever order draws you.
The Third Forty: The Communions and the Noon
Add the morning and evening Communions inside the watches, and the Noon Peace at midday. Read the teachings of the Tree of Life and the Sevenfold Peace. Begin the scrolls, in a good translation, with the Community Rule, a page a day.
The Half Year and After
By the end of the third forty you will have been walking for about half a year. You will have all the practices but the table and the service, and those, the fellowship has found, have usually arrived on their own by then. You will have read most of the site. You will be, in the fellowship's language, a Hearer, and ready to read The Three Circles to see what comes next.
You will also, very likely, be tired. The first fervor fades at about this point for nearly everyone. When it does, read For Continuing Students. It was written for that morning.
A Last Word
You do not need anyone's permission to do any of this. You do not need to tell anyone. You do not need to believe anything you have not yet found to be true. You need a lamp, a fixed place, and the willingness to rise before the sun for forty days and see what happens. The ancient Essenes needed more than that, and asked more. The fellowship asks only this. Begin.