On Offerings
I suppose I should weigh in on the offerings and consumption of said offerings. I give Loki a fair amount of food and drink. He enjoys the extravagant gesture, but having spent time starving in a cave (still starving, since time is not linear for Him and everything is happening, has happened, will happen) He doesn't really care for the wasting of food in my personal experience. Furthermore, my ancestors, particularly the ones who lived through the Great Depression, would have a coronary if I dumped lots of food regularly. If I have an excess of food, or more of a meal than I can eat, there is always someone who is hungry in my local community.
I have one exception to this: alcohol. I feed Loki more booze than I could ever consume (or should). So that gets poured out when He's done with it. It's likewise for other Deities that I offer alcohol to as well.
And it's different for my vaettir as well; I have fruit bearing trees on my property, so I feed them, because they feed me, but what I give them is often what I cannot eat, like excess fat that wouldn't do my arteries good but is a rich treat for them. They don't require that very often though, and in truth I find that they prefer that I behave in more ecologically friendly ways - recycling, finding ways to pollute less, etc.
Ultimately, when you're considering what you should do with offerings, or even what you should offer, listening to your gut and your heart is probably the best practice. What I consider a sacrifice of my self may be a very different sacrifice that the one that you would make.
Things that make good offerings/sacrifices:
- food
- water
- incense
- candles (LED ones work if you live in quarters where you can't burn things)
- sexual energy
- other energy
- poetry
- singing
- dancing
- drumming
- drawing or painting
- other craftwork
- cleaning up a park or road of trash and debris
- donating your time to a charity or cause that is dear to the Spirit
What I'm trying to say is that there really is no way to Do It Wrong, so long as you do it respectfully. Part of respect is offering something the Deity wants - sexual energy would be great for Aphrodite, not so much for Athena, but if you're at the very new stage where you don't even know Who you're talking to yet, lighting a candle and practicing mindful listening is probably offering enough.
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