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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in libation

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Messy Religion

Blood spraying, semen squirting.

Libations splashing, incense dropping ash.

Paganism sure is messy.

Well, the Old Ways are religions of life, and what life isn't, is neat and tidy.

One could say the same for pagan thought. Theology we have; systematic it isn't.

Messy religion. Not to everyone's taste, perhaps.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
World's Shortest Ritual

In ritual, it's always best when words and action reinforce one another.

Here's one of my favorite libation formulas: quick, no nonsense, easy. In English and her sister languages, to refer to someone as "my + (name)" is a gesture of affectionate intimacy.

 

Drink this (name of libation) with me,

my (name of deity),

and I will drink with You.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Offering to the Minoan Deities

Ariadne's Tribe is a pretty broad spiritual path. People come to it from many different directions and backgrounds; our commonalities are the family of deities, the Minoan sacred calendar, a standard ritual format, and a few basic practices that we all share. Prominent among these is making offerings to the Minoan deities.

The image up top is a lovely three-footed offering table from Akrotiri decorated with dolphins. Perhaps its owner left fruit, flowers, seashells, or some other offering on it, dedicated to the ocean goddess Posidaeja or another favorite deity (though I'd vote for Posidaeja because of the dolphins).

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
My Cup Runneth Over: A Ritual for Abundance

This little prosperity/abundance ritual comes from my book Ancient Spellcraft.

My Cup Runneth Over

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Francesca De Grandis
    Francesca De Grandis says #
    Oh my, Laura, I was delighted to see this post and love the job you did with it. For decades, been channeling rituals with milk an
  • Laura Perry
    Laura Perry says #
    Thanks very much for your kind words. Yes, we really have missed out on a lot of really powerful symbolism and connection by remov

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Feel the Pour

It's one of the older conundrums in the ritualist's book.

You're pouring at a public ritual. You've brought the libation. You paid for it, so the other attendees have no investment, no personal stake in it.

How, then, do you get them to feel the pour?

Here's my recommendation: beautiful as it is, leave grandma's silver libation ewer at home.

Pour straight from the bottle.

And pour out the whole thing.

Every last drop.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Every system of thought has its own inherent flaws. That's why we have to keep changing.
  • Tony Lima
    Tony Lima says #
    Paganism in its rightful way under scientific knowledge at large, is probably better than Christianity.

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
A toast to the Minoans!

It can be hard to figure out what kinds of rituals and traditions people of the past had, especially if we don't have any written records of them. But sometimes art can help.

The image up top is part of the Camp Stool fresco from Knossos, the largest of the ancient Minoan cities. It shows a banqueting scene that includes ritual toasting, a common activity in many societies from that time. Here's a reconstruction of the whole fresco, with two rows of people participating in toasts and possibly libations (poured offerings) as well:

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
O God

For all its recent history, the English word “god” is a fine old pagan word with a long, long pedigree.

Cognates occur in all Germanic languages (German Gott, Icelandic guð, etc.), and in all Germanic languages, interestingly, it was this word that was chosen by early missionaries to denote the Christian god. How and why this came to be is in itself an interesting question which would well merit further study, but that's not my intent here.

For historical reasons—largely because of its Christian associations—we've come to think of “god” as (connotatively, if not grammatically) masculine. I suspect that among English-speaking pagans this masculinization has been emphasized by the word's implied pairing with “goddess.” English lost its grammatical genders after the Norman invasion, but the other Germanic languages have kept all three of them (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and in all of them (again, for Christian reasons) the word god has become a grammatically masculine noun.

But that's not how the ancestors saw it.

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