Introduction
The Prayer of the Holy Hieromartyr Cyprian occupies a distinctive place in the tradition of Orthodox prayers for protection and deliverance. It is a long and forceful prayer concerned with magic, sorcery, curses, the evil eye, harmful words, demonic activity, and every kind of spiritual or human affliction associated with them. Its language is unusually direct. Rather than speaking of such dangers only in general terms, the prayer repeatedly names them, describes the various ways in which they may have been imposed, and asks God to dissolve and destroy them. The result is a prayer that at times reads almost like a catalogue, as though it intends to leave no possible form of magical or spiritual harm outside the scope of its supplication.
Its association with Saint Cyprian is particularly appropriate. According to his traditional Life, Cyprian was once a pagan magician who had acquired extensive knowledge of the magical arts. He was hired to use this knowledge against the Christian maiden Justina, but her prayer, fasting, and steadfastness in Christ rendered his efforts powerless. Cyprian eventually recognized the emptiness of the powers in which he had trusted, renounced magic, destroyed his books of sorcery, became a Christian, and suffered martyrdom together with Justina. The story gives the prayer bearing his name an important theological context. Cyprian does not appear in Christian tradition as someone who discovered a better form of magic after becoming a Christian. He became a Christian precisely by abandoning magic and turning to Christ.
This distinction is essential for understanding the character of the prayer. It is not Christian counter-magic, nor does it present Cyprian's former occult knowledge as a source of Christian power. The prayer does not teach secret techniques for overcoming one magical force with another. Instead, everything that is feared—magic, sorcery, curses, the evil eye, harmful words, demonic activity, and every form of spiritual oppression—is brought before God. The prayer invokes the Holy Trinity, the Cross of Christ, the Scriptures, and the Saints. Its efficacy is not attributed to a formula possessing some independent or magical power, but to God Himself. The transformation of Cyprian from magician to Christian martyr is therefore more than the background to the prayer; it provides the central image through which the prayer itself should be understood.
One of the most striking characteristics of the text is its extraordinary use of repetition and enumeration. It names one form of magical work after another, one kind of affliction after another, and invokes a long succession of Saints. At certain points the accumulation becomes almost overwhelming. Yet this is precisely what gives the prayer much of its distinctive character. It attempts to gather together every conceivable form of bondage and place it under the authority of God. The repeated petitions to loose, dissolve, destroy, scatter, and render powerless are not accidental repetitions that can simply be shortened for the sake of smoother English. They are part of the rhetoric of the prayer and of the way in which it presents deliverance.
The history of the text is considerably more complicated than its modern popularity might suggest. For many years the Greek Cyprian prayers were known to scholars primarily through references to manuscripts and through versions in other languages. When Theodor Schermann published his study Die griechischen Kyprianosgebete in Oriens Christianus in 1903, he noted that Greek manuscripts containing the prayers had been seen by various scholars but had not been properly published. His work brought several Greek witnesses into scholarly discussion and provided an important early attempt to examine their textual history.
Schermann also recognized that the prayer had undergone development. He observed that the Cyprian prayers, like the Cyprian legend itself, had been subject to later reworking. Material of biblical and exorcistic character had been expanded by descriptions of particular evils, statements concerning the purpose of the prayer, and long lists of Saints who were invoked for assistance. He further observed substantial differences between the manuscripts, particularly in their introductory portions.
Subsequent study of the Greek manuscripts has made the textual history clearer while also demonstrating how fluid the tradition remained. A number of Greek witnesses are now known, including fifteenth-century manuscripts, and they show that the prayer circulated in more than one form. The differences are not limited to spelling or minor grammatical details. Passages can be added, omitted, rearranged, or expressed differently; the introductions vary considerably; and even some of the lists within the prayer are not identical from one manuscript to another. The prayer should therefore not be treated as though the form printed in a modern Greek prayer book or website can simply be identified with the original text of the historical Saint Cyprian. What we have is a continuing textual tradition that developed through copying, adaptation, and transmission since around the 14th century.
This distinction is important because the surviving manuscripts do not permit us simply to place the modern prayer unchanged in the hands of the historical Cyprian. The prayers attributed to him belong to a later literary and devotional tradition surrounding his name. At the same time, the later date of the surviving Greek manuscripts does not mean that the tradition itself suddenly originated at that time. The Greek witnesses preserve a form of a tradition whose history reaches further back, while related versions in other languages provide additional evidence for its earlier circulation. What can be established with confidence is not a single unchanged text extending from late antiquity to the present, but a developing tradition whose forms have been transmitted and modified over many centuries.
The prayer also has a fascinating history of reception. It did not remain confined to one manuscript tradition or one particular use. Versions of Cyprianic prayers entered different Christian environments and were copied into collections of prayers concerned with exorcism, protection, healing, and deliverance. In later centuries they were sometimes used in prayers over persons believed to be suffering from magical or demonic affliction, while in popular devotion the text could also circulate as a protective prayer. In some places and periods, prayers attributed to Saint Cyprian were even treated as protective objects or as texts to be carried or kept for protection. Such practices are important to the history of the prayer, but they should not automatically be confused with universal liturgical prescriptions or projected backward onto its earliest witnesses.
The history of the prayer beyond the Greek-speaking world is likewise important. Greek witnesses are central to establishing the textual tradition, while versions in other languages demonstrate how Cyprianic prayers were transmitted into different Christian communities and adapted to different settings. Their subsequent forms cannot simply be treated as translations of one fixed Greek original. The history of the prayer is instead a history of transmission, adaptation, and continued devotional use.
There is also a broader significance to the prayer. Its language reveals something about the fears that existed within popular Christian culture: the fear of magic, curses, the evil eye, harmful speech, unexplained affliction, and demonic interference. The prayer does not approach these concerns as an abstract theological problem. It addresses them directly and concretely. It names the supposed means by which harm may be inflicted and then repeatedly asks that every such work be broken. At the same time, it places these fears within a Christian framework in which no magical object, spoken curse, demonic power, or human act possesses an authority independent of God.
This combination of the concrete and the theological is one of the reasons the prayer remains so striking. Its long catalogues can appear excessive to the modern reader, but they belong to the devotional world from which the prayer emerged. They show an attempt to name the many forms that spiritual danger was believed to take and, by naming them, to place them under the protection of God. The prayer does not leave its reader with an inventory of magical powers to fear. It continually returns to the same answer: that these things be loosed and destroyed through God's power.
The translation that follows therefore seeks to preserve the character of the text rather than to modernize it into something shorter or smoother. The repetitions, catalogues, unusual expressions, and accumulated invocations have been retained wherever the Greek permits. I have not attempted to make the prayer more elegant by eliminating features that may seem redundant in English. Where the textual tradition presents a significant variation, it is better to acknowledge that variation in a note than to silently choose one reading and give the impression that the text was always uniform.
The Prayer of the Holy Hieromartyr Cyprian should consequently be read on several levels at once: as a Christian prayer of deliverance, as a text associated with the remarkable conversion and martyrdom of Cyprian and Justina, as a witness to popular Christian fears concerning magic and spiritual harm, and as a document with a long and fluid textual history. Its transmission across centuries has left its mark upon the form in which it is known today. Yet throughout those changes, the central image remains remarkably consistent. Cyprian, who once sought power through magic, became a Christian by renouncing it. The prayer that bears his name likewise turns away from magical power and places every such threat before the power of God.
The Prayer of the Holy Hieromartyr Cyprian for Deliverance from Magic
Master, Lord Jesus Christ, our God, who holds and governs all things, You are Holy and glorified. Therefore, King of kings and Lord of those who rule, glory to You. You who dwell in the boundless and inaccessible light to mortals, which thousands and myriads of Holy Angels and Archangels have seen. You know the hidden things of Your humble servant Cyprian, for previously I did not know Your wonders, O almighty Lord. You alone are the Lord Jesus Christ, our God, who were pleased to make me, the unworthy one, worthy, and who caused me to live together with the longing and love that are in You, unto the hearing of Your Holy Apostles and Hieromartyrs and all Your Saints.
And I beseech Your loving-kindness, that where sin abounded, Your grace may abound exceedingly, O Lord, for I held back the clouds and they did not rain; I bound the earth and it did not give its fruits; the vineyards, and they did not sprout; the flocks of sheep, and they did not give milk; the young goats, and they did not give birth; the men, and they did not unite with their wives; the mothers, and they did not bear children; the ships, and they did not sail; the workshops, and they did not work; the fishermen, and they did not fish; the gardens, and they did not produce vegetables; the trees, and they did not bear fruit; the rivers, and they did not flow; the mills, and they did not turn; the brothers and married couples I brought into irreconcilable hatred and separated them; I made summer winter and winter summer. All these things I accomplished through complete illusion.¹
But now, O Lord our God, I entreat You and beseech You, that through my prayer, before You, O God and Lord of mercy, it may become an acceptable sacrifice to You. And let every person having a spirit of wickedness be completely cleansed. Whether it be a field, or a garden, or an estate, or a mill, or a ship, or a fisherman, or a bee colony, or a merchant, or a learned man, or a ruler, or one who is ruled, or a craftsman, or a silkworm, or even the servant of God __________, together with everyone in his household.
If he is bound by magic and evil works, or enchantments, or is hindered and bewitched by 72 glossofagiai, and 365 words of magic² which come for the harm and destruction of the servant of God __________, together with everyone in his household, immediately, wherever this present supplicatory entreaty and prayer of mine is read before Your grace, O God, let every world and every place be delivered from every wrath and illness, and from every bondage and magic, and from every sorcery and enchantment, every evil eye and slander, glossofagia,³ negligence or sluggishness, lack of self-control, folly, weakness and despair, every injustice and every delusion or deception, or hindrance proceeding from the devil; likewise, let the servant of God __________, together with everyone in his household, be delivered.
And let him be loosed and delivered in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
And whether those magics and sorceries are in heaven, or on the earth, or in the sea, or in every place and land, immediately, at this very hour, let them be loosed and abolished from the servant of God __________ and from his entire household; and let the servant of God __________ and his entire household be delivered from every evil hour and enchantment, or evil eyes, or envy, or slander, or glossofagia, or magic, or sorcery, or curse, or anathema, or excommunication, and every blasphemy or activity thereof.
Immediately depart from the servant of God __________, every influence of the evil one, at the invocation of Your All-Holy name, of the Father and of the Only-Begotten Son and of the Good and Life-Giving Spirit. And through the prayer of me, Your humble and reverent servant Cyprian, let the demons flee; let their wickednesses be put to flight and abolished; and let the clouds give rain upon all the earth, and let the earth give its produce in their season, and let the trees bear fruit, and let the vineyards yield an abundance of clusters, and let the women be loosed and delivered from the evil of their wombs.
Likewise, let the livestock of the shepherds and the whole world, ruler or ruled, garden, beekeeper, silk-worker, and every possession be loosed from every bondage and demon. Likewise, let the servant of God __________, together with everyone in his household and his possessions, be free and delivered from every illness and evil hour and every demon and opposing power. We beseech You that the evil works be loosed and destroyed through the invocation of the All-Holy Spirit of God Sabaoth.⁴
And if the servant of God __________ is bound and hindered in heaven, let him be loosed; or on the earth, let him be loosed; or at the upper threshold, let him be loosed; or at the lower threshold; or in the hide of an animal; or in iron; or in stone; or in wood—if they have nailed the evil works there, let them be loosed and vanish like smoke; or in a written document through ink, or through the blood of a human being, animal, bird, or fish; or through lead; or through cinnabar; or through lemon juice; or through anything else with which they wrote them and placed them in some place, and the servant of God __________ stumbled upon them to his harm—at this hour let the works of magic be loosed, abolished, and uprooted from the places and dwellings where this entreaty and prayer of mine is read.
Or if they buried them in the courtyards of his house, or scattered them, or made those knot-bindings with some metal, let them be loosed; or if they pierced them into bones; or if they were thrown into the sea, or into a well, or into a tomb, let them be loosed; or if they were made with the claws of human beings, animals, or birds, whether living or dead; or if they made those magical preparations with earth from the dead, let them be loosed; or if they were covered beneath a slab, or by stakes, or nailed with a nail, or pierced with a needle, let them be loosed at this hour; or if they made the evil works with silver, or gold, or some other metal, let them be loosed at this hour; or if they bound these things with wool, or cotton, or silk, or flax, or hemp, or with any other grass, let them be loosed at this hour; or if they buried them in a bed, let them be loosed at this hour; or if they bound them with a noose, rush, or anything else, let them be loosed at this hour; or if they made them in water, or in hollow wood, or boiled them in boiling water, let them be loosed at this hour; or if they made them with the blood of a human being, animal, bird, or fish, whether living or dead, as You, O Lord our God, know the places and the methods and the people, let them be loosed at this hour, and let the works of magic be torn apart wherever they lie.
And preserve Your servant __________, together with everyone in his household, while let the evil works be loosed and destroyed and vanish like smoke from the servant of God __________, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And through the glory of the great living God, let all opposing powers be crushed by the power of the Honorable and Life-Giving Cross; let the works of Magic depart and be removed from the servant of God __________ 65 miles,⁵ through the intercessions of the Martyrs and all Your Saints. Amen.
We beseech You and entreat You, Lord Jesus Christ, our God, that You free and give life to every shackled soul and to the servant of God __________, together with everyone in his household; likewise, to those who write this prayer and keep it in their house, and to those who carry it as an eternal phylactery.⁶ And may Your right hand, O Lord, be their shelter and help, and may there always be joy and gladness in their house.
Yes, O Lord, hear me as I entreat You, that wherever this prayerful and supplicatory prayer of mine is found, every person and his household may be loosed and delivered from an evil hour, from every illness, from every excommunication and anathema, from every curse, from every wrath, hindrance, hardship, slander, glossofagia, envy, evil eye, negligence, sluggishness, gluttony, weakness, stupidity, lack of self-control, folly, pride, lack of compassion, injustice, arrogance, and every delusion and deception, through Your holy and glorified name unto the ages. Amen.
Conclusion
Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered, and let those who hate Him flee from before His face. As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish; as wax melts before the fire, thus let sinners perish from before the face of God, and let the righteous rejoice. This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.⁷
Dismissal
Christ our true God, through the intercessions of our all-pure Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary; through the power of the Honorable and Life-Giving Cross; through the protection of the Honorable Bodiless Heavenly Powers; through the supplications of the Honorable and Glorious Prophet, Forerunner, and Baptist John; of the holy, glorious, and all-praised Apostles; of our Fathers among the Saints and the great ecumenical teachers and hierarchs, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom, Athanasios and Cyril, John the Merciful, Patriarchs of Alexandria, Nicholas of Myra, Spyridon, Bishop of Trimythous the Wonderworker, and the Holy Apostle, Protomartyr and Archdeacon Stephen; of our Venerable and God-bearing Fathers Anthony, Euthymios, Savvas the Sanctified, Theodosios the Coenobiarch, Onouphrios, Arsenios, and all the Venerable Fathers; of the Holy and wonderworking Unmercenaries Kosmas and Damian, Cyrus and John, Panteleimon and Hermolaos, Samson and Diomedes, Mokios and Aniketos, Thalelaios and Tryphon, and Pankratios the Archbishop; of the holy, glorious, and victorious Martyrs, of our Venerable and God-bearing Fathers, of the holy, glorious Great Martyrs George the Trophy-Bearer, Demetrios the Myrrhgusher, Theodore the Tiro and Theodore Stratelates, Menas the Wonderworker, and the Hieromartyrs Haralambos and Eleutherios; of the Holy and Righteous Ancestors of God Joachim and Anna, of the Holy Hieromartyr Cyprian, and of the Holy Martyr Justina, and of all the Saints. We entreat You, O Most Merciful Lord, hear us sinners as we entreat You, and have mercy on us.
Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen.
Notes
1. “Through complete illusion” (φαντασία τελεία).
The expression is unusual. Rather than interpreting φαντασία as “magic,” “sorcery,” or “delusion,” I have retained the sense of the Greek as closely as possible. The unusual expression is part of the character of the text and should not be silently normalized.
2. “72 glossofagiai” and “365 words of magic.”
The Greek form translated here gives 72 γλωσσοφαγίαι and 365 λόγια τῆς Μαγεία. These numbers have been retained exactly rather than being replaced with readings from another textual witness. Schermann's published Greek text has a different reading at the corresponding passage, referring to "12 glossofagiai," while elsewhere his text refers to "360 magical works." The differences illustrate the fluidity of the Cyprianic prayer tradition.
3. “Glossofagia” (γλωσσοφαγία).
The Greek term literally combines glōssa (“tongue”) with a verb meaning “to eat” or “devour,” giving the striking literal sense of “tongue-devouring,” or devouring someone with your tongue. In modern Greek usage, however, glossofagia refers to harmful or envious speech directed against a person and the misfortune believed to result from it, and it is very much seen as being related to the evil eye. The term is therefore retained untranslated here because neither “tongue-devouring” nor “evil-tonguing” fully conveys its linguistic, folkloric, and devotional associations.
4. “God Sabaoth.”
The Greek Θεὸς Σαβαώθ preserves the Hebrew divine title Sabaoth, familiar from the Greek Old Testament and Orthodox liturgical language. It has therefore been retained rather than paraphrased.
5. “65 miles” (μίλια 65).
The Greek text reads μίλια 65, literally “65 miles.”
6. “Eternal phylactery” (φυλακτήριον αἰώνιον).
The Greek phylaktērion denotes a protective object or amulet. The prayer explicitly mentions those who write it and keep it in their house and those who carry it as an “eternal phylactery.” The expression is significant for understanding the prayer's devotional reception, since the written prayer itself is presented as something that may be kept or carried for protection.
7. “Let God arise” and “This is the day which the Lord has made.”
The passage beginning “Let God arise” comes from Psalm 67:1 in the Septuagint numbering (Psalm 68:1 in the Hebrew/Masoretic numbering). “This is the day which the Lord has made” is Psalm 117:24 LXX (Psalm 118:24 in the Hebrew/Masoretic numbering).