Showing posts with label offerings. Show all posts

Offerings, Sacrifice and Altar Devotion

 In this video, I talk about offerings, sacrifice, and altar devotion as they have existed throughout history. Before modern witchcraft or organized religion as we know it today, people honored their gods through simple, consistent acts of care. Food, drink, incense, handmade objects, and time itself were given not as payment or fear-based obligation, but as a way to maintain relationship and presence.



I also touch on what sacrifice meant historically. To sacrifice was to make something sacred, to set it apart. In many cultures, sacrifice was communal and shared, not about loss or destruction. Most devotional acts happened at the household level through small altars, lamps, bowls, and offerings refreshed regularly as part of daily life.

This conversation leads into my latest clay work. Working with earth has always been part of sacred practice. Pottery, lamps, figurines, and vessels were among the most common devotional objects across cultures because they required time, attention, and intention. Making something by hand has always been a powerful offering.

This video is an invitation to think differently about devotion. You don’t need extravagance. You don’t need perfection. You need consistency, care, and honesty. Those are the things people have offered the gods for thousands of years, and they still matter now.

I also cover my decision to move out of Wix as a webhost. I'm working on transferring my domains now and have already moved Sanctuary of Hecate Brimo to Facebook. I will look to find another suitable host but for now, I just cannot continue to support this organization. Happy to discuss this decision privately.

I have added the individual cards from the reading below. I hope this post finds you well and happy.


Recommended reading - Hellenic Polytheism - Household Worship






Pagan Blog Project 2013 - O is for Offerings

Offerings – A thing offered, a gift or contribution

Since my dedication to Hecate, I've spent most of my dark moons creating an altar indoors and weather permitting, outdoors to leave my offerings to her.  I take leeks, onion, eggs, honey, garlic and at times regional flowers to place in my sacred spaces. 

After my ritual inside the house, I take her gifts out to the crossroads and leave them there.  On special occasions I also do a blood offering.  Historically, some followers of Hecate sacrificed black dogs and black bulls to her.  Though not across the board, many did indeed practice this.  In the clip below Sorita D’Este talks about the relationship of sacrifice of dogs and the Goddess.



My blood offering to the Goddess is not from any animal.  I use my own blood as an offering.  Using a lancet from checking blood sugar levels I simply add a few drops of my own blood to the offering bowl before I carry it outside.  Blood offerings are completely personal and I wouldn't recommend trying this unless you've had some training in how to correctly check blood sugars.  You do not want to create a permanent injury.  Blood offerings are not required in the service of the Goddess Hecate, this is a personal choice that I have made.


I also take part in Hecate’s Deipnon or Supper.  I've changed it up a bit to meet with our modern times. 

"Ask Hekate whether it is better to be rich or starving; she will tell you that the rich send her a meal every month [food placed inside her door-front shrines] and that the poor make it disappear before it is even served." - Aristophanes, Plutus 410

Instead of leaving my offerings at my “shrine”; or my altar where no one would find them.  I take non-perishable food to Food banks and make offerings to charitable organizations in her honor.  Though historically, this was not the intention of the Deipnon, I feel that this is a great way to honor the Goddess as well as give something back to my community.

Offerings can be as simple as a flower; as serious as an offering of one’s own blood or as complex as creating an entire meal and leaving it at a cross roads for the Goddess Hecate.  My offerings range across each of these.

Though the items offered to any of the Gods and Goddess of the world vary in their type the main thing to take from this is that you are giving back to your deity something considered precious.  Something that would be considered a gift to them, or a sacrifice for you to be without.
As with each of us, offerings are individual.  Learning about what others offer can be inspiring and enlightening.  Just remember, it is not necessary to do exactly what someone else does.  Your offerings are special because they come from you.


Namaste & Blessed Be
Sosanna
)O(


*Note - This blog post in no way encourages readers to do blood offerings or make any sacrifice they are uncomfortable with.  It merely lists the way the author conducts her own rituals.