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If you are not a Catholic, you might not understand the importance of a string of Catholic rosary beads. This is because a Catholic’s rosary beads are an aid to prayer and penance. It is because of this that Catholic rosary beads have the same number of beads all around the world. The beads are counted off as the prayers are said.

Rosary beads are given to young Catholics and frequently a set of beads will be handed down through generations as heirlooms. It is considered an honour to get given a set of rosary beads that are decades or more old, just as it would be if a relative left you anything else old and valuable. Old rosary beads can be very valuable, depending on what the beads are made of, their age and the sort of metal used to string them together.

The Catholic Rosary is used to matter off the number of prayers said in repetitions in the same way that an abacus is used for counting money. Rosaries have ten small beads followed by a large one to indicate that the repetition ought to be started again.

It is an old style of prayer harking back to when people were less schooled. However, beads aid the person praying concentrate on the prayer and not on the counting as well.

Most Catholic rosary bead chains have enough beads for five cycles of prayers. This makes it easier for followers of the Catholic Church to say their prayers and do the penances metred out to them by their priest for ‘committing sins’.

In fact, the Catholic Church is losing ground very rapidly in Europe especially in such traditional strongholds as Eire (Southern Ireland) and the southern provinces of the Netherlands. They are also losing ground in Spain, Portugal and America, usually due to the sex scandals involving priests.

Whatever one thinks of the Catholic Church, the pope and the Catholic clergy, rosary beads are a part of the history of mankind’s development in the West over the last 2,000 years. Whether you see Catholic rosary beads as a symbol of devotion to God or as a symbol of the Catholic Church’s tyranny over scared people, the rosary in itself is an interesting phenomenon.

Some individuals create a hobby out of collecting rosaries because they are widely traded and can be very valuable. It is not unusual for a set of Victorian rosary beads made of a semi-precious stone on a gold chain to go for thousands of dollars at auction.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a number of subjects, but is now concerned with religious beliefs in China. If you would like to know more go to What is Religious Belief?

In my twenties I continued reading books on philosophy and religion, but I tended towards Buddhism and Hinduism, which seemed very closely related to my family’s spiritualist beliefs. I practiced yoga, but being physically lazyish by nature, I preferred the more psychic exercises.

I meditated. I would not drink alcohol for 48 hours before the evening that I had asked for permission to meditate; then I would exercise, bathe and lie down in a dimly lit room. I used to begin by relaxing my body.

The course of action that worked best for me was to imagine little factory workers in overalls at every muscle and, beginning from my feet, I would send them off for luncheon. I would march them all up into my head and out of my ears so that I was ‘paralyzed’. Then, I imagined a crevice opening up in the middle of my mind and I made my thoughts jump across it as it grew wider.

Petty thoughts disappeared quickly, but even persistent, deep-seated problems would eventually fall down the crack. Then I would be left alone in me. I never got rid of ‘me’ try as I would. The next step for me would be to pose a question.

An example is: ‘How can I tell the difference between a meaningful dream and my mind merely processing the day;s events?’ Invariably I would see myself, from the back or over head, sitting in a cinema or a theatre alone.

Then someone would be on stage and start a film. The person would commentate and halt and restart the film until I understood the answer to my question. The commentator was nearly always the same one, but if it was not, I made him tell me his name before I would pay any attention.

In this state, people who saw me reckoned that I was asleep, but I could hear each noise that was made in the house and on the street outside. People said I snored as well, but I could hear myself snoring.

To this day, if I relax deeply, I snore but I can hear everything and am not asleep. My wife often turns the TV off while I am listening to it. I know that lots of men say that, which makes it more, not less, true. It shows that meditation is natural and that we can all do it if we give ourselves the opportunity.

When I was a teenager, I got into the habit of scribbling my dreams down, because I have the type of memory that remembers items when I have written them down. I can throw the paper away then and I will remember|.

Anyway, I can remember my dreams now without having to write them down, but what is more valuable than that in my mind is that I have always known if I am dreaming. One last thing, when I walk in my dreams it is on two legs but if I run it is on all fours like a dog. Many people have called me ‘wolf’ or ‘bear’ in my life, have they seen something? (My wife says she sees me as a wolf too)’

I do not mean anything weird, but it is something of a coincidence or not? Last year, I was talking to a girlfriend of my wife and she said that she runs on all fours in her dreams too. She was bowled over when I said I did too. How many more are there?

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a number of topics, but is now involved with non-religious beliefs. If you want to know more go to What is Religious Belief?

By the time I was a teenager, I had four younger brothers, the youngest of whom was eight years younger than I and I was trusted to look after them for short periods during the daytime on the week-ends, which gave my Mum a little more time to get out of the home. That is why, I presume, there was no longer any need to take me and my youngest next brother to church on Friday nights to give her a break.

Whatever the reason, my Dad stopped taking me to church with him when I was a young teenager. I did not miss it. However, I continued to wade through my mother’s books on Buddhism (especially Tibetan) and my father’s books on yoga. I say ‘wade through’, but I found the philosophy fascinating and ’so obviously true’, although I practically never discussed them with my parents.

The only discussions we had often in those days were concerning dreams, but we had discussed dreams since I was about six. One of my earliest recollections, when I was around six, was going down to my parents after being sent to bed and complaining that I could not sleep because ‘the Indians kept talking to me’ – I was referring to native Americans.

My parents did not shout at me or tell me ‘not to be stupid’. Instead, Dad came up to my bedroom and spoke to the Indians, explaining that I needed my sleep. I could still see them, but they stopped talking to me. The next weekend, my wallpaper was changed for one with cowboys and Indians on it and I never had that ’situation’ again.

During my teens, one of my favourite times of the week was talking about my dreams with my mother over breakfast. One day I was telling her that my dream the previous night had been about my mother and me standing on a pier in Portugal, when a car pulled up. She stopped me and said that she had had the exact same dream. She described the car, it’s colour and what happened next.

We had had the same experience and she referred me to a book on Astral Travelling. I had already read it, but it was great to have had a personal, practical example. There was no holding me from then on.

I began getting up three hours before I needed to go to school to do yoga practice both physical and breathing types. I meditated for hours each week. My father’s mother must have got to hear about this and she summoned me to go down to visit her.

She praised my interest in what she called ’spiritualism’ – she refused to call it ‘the supernatural’, because she said it was as natural as sunshine. Anyway, the point of the summons was to warn me of the dangers of carrying out spiritual exercises ‘without permission’.

Real spiritualists, she said, asked permission to ‘hold a seance’ at least a week beore carrying one out, which is why seances and services are held on a regular basis. The person holding the seance or service needs to organize protection for those attending the session. This is quite simply done and almost always granted, but you still have to ask.

My grandmother explained that people do not transform into angels just because their body has died. There are decent dead people and bad dead people just like on Earth. Without permission, that is without a guardian, these mischievous spirits can enter the living body through the base of the spine and make that person appear to be mad – literally out of his mind (because someone else is in there as well).

She made me promise there and then never to ‘do anything spiritual’ without authorization, but especially never to use Ouija boards and never ever to ‘try anything’ if I was under the influence of any drugs that made me ‘lower my guard’.

At the age of 13-14 in South Wales in those days, I had no notion about drugs or alcohol, but I have never forgotten my promise, because I know that my grandmother has not either.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a variety of topics, but is now concerned with non-religious beliefs. If you want to know more go to What is Religious Belief?