The full moon is the time for fomenting your intentions and seeing them to fruition. You can increase your prosperity by remembering one of the most basic principles of prosperity: by giving, so shall you receive. To create a prosperity altar, consecrate the area with sea salt. Cover a low table with green and gold altar cloths or scarves and place matching candles on it. Each day, “recharge” your altar with an altar gift such as flowers, jade or other green crystals, golden flowers, scented amber resin, and coin-shaped pebbles.
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Here is a pagan party plan which is wonderful for weekend evenings. You can add many embellishments such as important astrological or lunar happenings, but you should gather your friends or coven and celebrate life any Saturday night of your choosing. If the weather is warm enough, have the festivities outside. Otherwise, make sure to choose an indoor space with enough room for dancing, drumming and major merriment. Ask each of your guests to bring cake, cookies and sweets of their choice along with their favorite beer, wine, mead, cider or ale and sitting cushions. Place the offerings on a center table altar and light candles of all colors. Once everyone is seated and settled, the host or designated circle leader chants:
Gods of Nature, bless these cakes.
Lighting a candle to a tree. Dear Gods.
How could anyone be so stupid?
In England's Malvern Hills, the 500-year old Whiteleaved Oak has gone up in flames. Charred tea-lights were found at its base.
Dear Gods. How could anyone be so stupid?
Tea-lights are despicable anyway, and never a worthy offering. Ask yourself: what kind of offering leaves garbage behind?
Hear, O Pagandom:
“For [god/goddess], because he/she heard my cry.”
What would you be willing to give in order to get rid of the Troll-in-Chief?
The ex-voto—the vowed or votive offering—is a fine example of a spiritual technology inherited from the ancestors but sorely underutilized today.
Here's how it works. You're hoping for outcome X. So you make a vow to Deity Y: If you will bring about Outcome X, I will, in return, give you Z.
I will:
Sacrifice a fine bull.
Commission a statue of you.
Throw that beautiful boar's-head torc into the Mississippi.
It's a contingency vow. If X, then Z. No X, no Z.
If it all sounds just a little transactional, bear in mind that this practice is firmly grounded in our divine pagan gifting economy: Do ut des, a gift for a gift.
Be warned: if Deity Y comes through for you, do not fail to follow up with Z. Do not. There are lots of stories about those who didn't*, and—believe me—you don't want to hear any of them, much less become one. As Alexander the Great always used to say, It doesn't pay to be stingy with the gods.
Why do I bring this up now? Well, as you may have heard, there's an election coming up.
Who would expect to be confronted with a theological conundrum upon walking into a supermarket? Welcome to the Wonderful World of Paganism.
I've gone over to my neighborhood Asian market to pick up some tofu. (At a buck-fifteen per cake, it's still the best deal in town.) Just inside the door, in his little shrine on the floor, sits Weng Shen the Door God. Flanked by electric candles, he scowls as good door-wards do. Before him burns a bowl of electric incense.
The porcelain bowl filled with gravel looks just like a real incense bowl, if you ignore the electric cord that runs through a hole at the back of the shrine. Even the “sticks” of incense—I assume that they're plastic—could almost pass for the real thing, if it weren't for those uniform glowing red electric tips.
So here's the conundrum. Is a symbolic offering still an offering? Does electric incense “count”?
I suppose that the answer to this question depends upon what you mean by “count.”
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