The Unholy Hours
There are the hours the world forgets. There are moments the sacred slips through the cracks. This is the rhythm of the Unholy Hours -- eight ruptures in the ordinary, either invitations to return to your aliveness.
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From Waking to Witching, the Technicolor Monastery keeps time differently. This is not a schedule. This is a salah, tefillah, prayer. A rule for the unruly. A way back, again and again, to what matters most.
Waking
Time: Dawn Mood: Emergence, breath, remember that you are still here
Invitation: This is the first light - the quiet yes of your body before language returns. Waking does not ask you to be ready. It asks you only to be. To notice breath. To gather yourself gently from the night. To remember you belong to the living.
Opening Breath: Place one hand over your heart. Feel it beat. Inhale gently. Exhale without effort. Say aloud or silently: “I have returned.”
Prayer: Holy is this stirring. Holy is this body, returned to me again. Holy are the remnants of dream and dark, the ache that followed me from sleep, the light that rises anyway. Let this be enough: to breathe, to be, to begin. Amen, or something like that.
Practice Prompt: Touch your face. Whisper your name like a blessing. If you cannot rise yet, bless the bed that holds you.
Blessing: May this be a day that does not rush your becoming.
Undoing
Time: Mid-morning Mood: Unraveling, release, unbecoming
Invitation: The day is in motion now, and so are you. But before you build, before you perform, before you prove – you are invited to undo. This hour honors the sacred act of loosening: the unfastening of roles, masks, identities, and expectations. Here, unraveling is not failure – it is faith in your own becoming.
Opening Breath: Place your hands palm-up in your lap or at your sides. Inhale: “I release.” Exhale: “I return.” Let something fall open in you.
Prayer: Let this be the Hour of holy unraveling. Where what no longer fits can be set down without shame. Unfasten me, Spirit. Undo what is tight with fear. Unravel what I was taught to carry. Let the threads of my becoming fall freely, winding into new forms I don’t yet know. I do not have to hold it all. I do not have to be who I was. I am allowed to loosen. Amen, or let it fall apart.
Practice Prompt: Name one thing you are allowed to release today. Say it aloud. If you can, drop your shoulders. Unclench your jaw. Unbutton something. Breathe.
Blessing: May your undoing be gentle, and your unmaking be holy.
Mirrors
Time: Midday Mood: Illumination, self-recognition, truth-telling
Invitation: This is the brightest part of the day – the hour when nothing hides. Mirrors asks you to see clearly, to stand in the full light of your own becoming. It is not about perfection. It is about presence. To witness yourself without distortion. To honor the truths that shimmer beneath the surface.
Opening Breath: Stand or sit upright. Face a sort of light – sun, candle, screen flow. Inhale: “I am here.” Exhale: “I am seen.” Let the light touch your face.
Prayer: Let me see truly. Let me see without shame. Not through the eyes of the world – but through the gaze of love, clear and unwavering. May I face what lives in me: the beauty I’ve buried, the rage I’ve silenced, the hope I hardly dare name. And when I see myself–not as perfect, but as whole–may I not look away. Amen, or mirror me.
Practice Prompt: Look into the mirror or your own eyes in a selfie camera. Hold your gaze for ten seconds. Speak on kind truth aloud. Or, if that’s too much, gently say: “I am still becoming.”
Blessing: May the truth you see become a doorway, not a wall.
Ash
Time: Mid-Afternoon Mood: Heat, hunger, exhaustion, holy residue
Invitation: The day is burning low. Fatigue sets in. Longing stirs. Ash is the Hour of what remains – the ember after the blaze, the ache beneath the action. It is where grief meets desire, where what’s been lost and what’s still burning live side by side. You are invited not to fix, but to feel. Not to rise, but to smolder.
Opening Breath: Place your hand on your belly. Feel its rise and fall. Inhale: “I carry the flame.” Exhale: “I honor the ash.” Let the breath settle deep.
Prayer: This is the hour of fire spent – of effort poured out, of wanting without answers. Let me sit among the embers. Let me name my hunger. Let me mourn what has gone to ash. May I not rush to clean it up. May I not demand it makes sense.
May I bless the burn and the body it leaves behind. Holy are the remains. Holy is the longing. Holy is the heat that has not gone out. Amen, or let it smolder.
Practice Prompt: Name a desire or grief you’ve been avoiding. Write it down, speak it aloud, or hold it like a stone in your palm. Don’t solve it. Just stay with it for a breath or two.
Blessing: May your ashes become soil. May what’s burned feed what grows next.
Tending
Time: Early Evening Mood: Care, gentleness, grounded presence
Invitation: This is the Hour of quiet devotion. After the heat, before the descent. Tending calls you to care for what is still living – your body, your space, your aching parts. It is not glamorous, but it is holy. A pot stirred. A floor swept. A breath taken with intention. This is love made ordinary.
Opening Breath: Place both hands on your chest or belly. Inhale: “I am worth of care.” Exhale: “I offer what I can.” Let care flow both inward and outward.
Prayer: Bless these hands, however tired they are. Bless this body, however unfinished it feels. Let me tend without urgency – to what is mine, to what is fragile, to what asks for attention but not perfection. Let small acts be enough. Let gentleness be a form of prayer. Let me begin again with tenderness. Amen, or as long as it takes.
Practice Prompt: Tend to one thing: a corner of your room, a wound on your heart, a plant, a dish, a thought. Let the act be simple. Let it be enough.
Blessing: May every small act of care ripple out like prayer.
Gloaming
Time: Sunset Mood: Transition, liminality, sacred pause
Invitation: This is the Hour of blur and beauty. The light bends. The edges soften. Gloaming is the moment between stories – neither day nor night, neither arrival nor departure. You are invited to pause here. To let what’s unfinished rest. To stand at the threshold and not rush across.
Opening Breath: Gaze out a window or toward a fading light. Inhale: “I welcome the in-between.” Exhale: “I release the need to know.” Feel the dusk settle into your skin.
Prayer: Let this Hour be a hinge. Let me not fear the turning. What was bright is fading now – not in failure, but in rhythm. Let me meet this change with wonder, not grasping. Let me loosen what clings and greet what comes. Between light and dark, between known and unknown, let this be a holy pause. A breath held at the threshold. Amen, or not yet.
Practice Prompt: Light a candle or turn on a small lamp as the sun goes down. Say aloud: I honor the in-between. Let yourself do nothing for one minute. Let that be sacred.
Blessing: May you find beauty in what is unresolved.
Veil
Time: Night Mood: Darkness, concealment, quiet surrender
Invitation: Night draws its curtain now. What was visible retreats. Veil is the Hour when the world softens into shadow, when endings whisper and silence becomes its own liturgy. You are invited to stop striving. To let the day fall away. To meet the holy hidden, without needing to explain itself.
Opening Breath: Dim the light. Close your eyes. Inhale: “I am held.” Exhale: “I let go.” Let the darkness be a cloak, not a threat.
Prayer: Bless the dark that does not demand. Bless the questions that go unanswered. Bless the endings I cannot make tidy. Veil me, Spirit. Wrap me in what I cannot see. Let the hush be healing. Let this surrender be sacred. I do not need to understand the dark to rest inside it. Amen, or silence, will do.
Practice Prompt: Turn off one light. Lie down or recline. Name something from the day that you are ready to lay to rest. If words fail, simply breathe and release.
Blessing: May the dark hold you without asking you to shine.
Witching
Time: Deep Night Mood: Magic, shadow, dream, ancestral presence.
Invitation: This is the Hour when time thins. When dreams speak louder than reason. When the veil between worlds is not a well, but a breath. Witching invites you to descend into mystery, into memory, into the sacred dark. It is not an Hour of fear, but of possibility. What you meet here may change you.
Opening Breath: Let your eyes soften or close. Light a candle or imagine one burning. Inhale: “I enter the unseen.” Exhale: “I open to wonder.” Let the dark speak.
Prayer: Here, in the Witching Hour, let my spirit drift wide. Call to me, ancestors and dreamwalkers. Call to me, forgotten parts of myself. Let what is hidden rise – not to haunt, but to teach. I offer no resistance to mystery. I welcome what stirs in shadow. I trust the dark to birth something new. May I be remade in the night’s deep waters. Amen, or by moonlight alone.
Practice Prompt: Place a journal or scrap of paper beside your bed. Before sleep, ask one question you don’t know how to answer. Write it down. Let the night respond in dreams, symbols, or silence.
Blessing: May what finds you in the dark carry you into the dawn.