About 5 minutes
This daily form assumes a Storm Table already understood as a place of address. Fresh water, recognition and a small act give devotion somewhere to recur. The practice is intentionally short enough to remain usable on an unremarkable working day.
The offices used in the book are a working vocabulary: Storm, Voice, Rain, House, Contest, Hidden Face and Clear Sky. Choose one that actually fits today. You do not need to recite the whole list, and it is not a universal table of ancient correspondences.
Recognition before request
- Come to the table and fill the cup. Acknowledge Satan.
- Say Baal’s name with one office relevant to the day. Storm may concern something that must move; Rain, work fed by repetition; House, structure that needs keeping.
- Speak one honest sentence of recognition. It should still be true in a plain room without incense.
- Sit quietly for about a minute. Let attention include the water, the body and the actual condition in which the day begins.
Give the act a place
After the quiet minute, name the day’s practical act and give it a time or cue. The source offers opening a document after breakfast, recording before interpreting, or leaving the desk closed at the end of work. Choose something within your responsibility.
A sentence such as “When breakfast is finished, I will read the next two pages before opening messages” has an occasion on which it can be kept. This is an example of the form, not a compulsory phrase. The devotion does not read the pages for you.
Close the address
Close the address in the manner you use. Empty the cup after sitting unless you have deliberately made another plan for that day. Keeping stale water is unnecessary. Then carry the named act into its appointed time.
If one morning allows a longer sitting, it need not establish tomorrow’s minimum. Some days the quiet minute will be ordinary. The religious continuity is in actual returns to the table and in the conduct that follows them.
Read the source
Page numbers refer to the original-language PDF edition, not a translation of the book.
- The Storm House of Baal: Chapter 23, PDF pp. 87–89