All Readings will be Shared to your email in the form of a PDF.
Types of Readings I Offer
Questions Asked (10$)
Consult with me on 3 questions you would like answered. I’ll work with you to formulate a question to ask to get relevant and helpful answers from Spirit.
Messages from Your Spirit Guides (10$)
Receive messages from your spirit guides! I’ll channel your guides through Tarot and translate what they’ve been trying to reach you about.
Boo! Spirits. Deities. (10$)
Find out if there’s any spirits trying to contact you and what they wish to say! Same goes for any deities that may be trying to contact you. In regards to deities, I can also pull cards for suggestions on deities that may be compatible with your energy.
Patterns. It’s time to make some changes. (25$)
This reading takes a good hard look at the the patterns you keep going through in Life. Reflect on what you keep repeating and how you can break these cycles to grow into your highest self. These readings take a lot more energy for me which is why it’s a little more.
Soulmate Reading (20$)
What traits do your soulmate hold? What do you need to work on before you meet them or to improve your current relationship? What changes will your soulmate Invoke? When are you most likely to meet them? These are some of the common questions covered in a soulmate reading.
Past Life Reading (10$)
Find out who you were, what you did and what your life was like in this past life reading.
1 card 1 Question Reading (3$)
With this reading you get 1 question and 1 card pulled for it. I’ll explain in depth what that card symbolizes.
Message me if you would like a reading and what reading you would like.
Payments can be made through CashApp and PayPal, and Readings will be done within 1-3 days.
If a PDFreading isn’t what your looking for; I can refer you to someone who does wonderful video chat readings.
Help me out by getting a reading done! I’m finally making the big move I’ve been wanting to do for 4 years cross country and I need to save up some more money to be able to comfortably do so. I have bills, and car repairs that are mentally weighing me down so whatever you can get as a reading would be a tremendous help!
one time, i was watching noodle recipes to make the next day and suddenly, Lord Apollo popped up. his energy was right behind me. just as i was about to change it, he said “no i want to keep watching” and i said “no i don’t want to” then grinned, tried changing it but he made me open another video anyways.
we gave pendulum readings to strangers on amino with Lord Apollo.
i was meditating. i walked into a castle to see Lady Artemis throw an arrow at Lord Apollo, chase him. i still can’t figure out what the hell that was.
Lady Artemis enjoyed the yarichin b club opening when i sang it to her.
i guess i will add more, but the others are a bit more personal. these are weird enough tho anbdhwhujdhw.
You are a long forgotten god. A small girl leaves a piece of candy at your shrine, and you awaken. Now, you must do everything to protect your High Priestess, the girl, and her entire kindergarten class, your worshipers.
The stone was immovable, in the past. Indestructible. A spire of granite no mortal hand could even alter.
But mortal hands build clever tools, and these last few hundred years I have lived in dread that they will break this, my sacred stone, the last link that preserves me, a faint shadow of a forgotten god. While my sacred stone stands, I do not, quite, fade away.
I am in a park, now, clipped and tamed, my forests long gone. But they landscape around me and my stone, admiring its beauty, so I do not complain. While they take pleasure in the stone, I am safe.
There is a playground a few lengths away, and the laughter and happy shrieking rouse me a little from my sleep. I watched over children, once. It’s nice to hear them again.
But I don’t truly awaken until the Offering is made.
Little hands touch my stone, with curiosity and a sort of reverence that only the very young feel now. For a child young enough the world is still a mystery, and even an ancient granite stone provokes wonder. So I stir, when she touches the stone, becoming hazily aware.
And then, solemnly, the child places a tiny colourful object in the roughly shaped alcove in the stone’s side, the place where offerings were laid two thousand years ago and more, and I awaken. Many people have put things in that alcove, of course… to take pictures, usually, these days, or putting a lost object where it will be seen. Merely to place an object in the alcove isn’t enough. A true offering is given as a gift, with intent.
Because holy shit have the past 3 days been a fucking shit show.
I’ve previously mentioned I was guessing Aphrodite was attempting to call me in my dreams, which I found weird as I don’t want to go near deities yet and she seemed like such a random one to pop up.
It wasn’t Aphrodite.
I contacted this thing via pendulum and it refused to answer like 90% of my questions and I got a migraine once that session was over, already a red flag from my own fucking spirit work but I pressed on. I spent the rest of the day researching deities online and in my books and asking witches who I knew worked with her “Hey, what was your experience like??” and again, the way this thing was acting didn’t add up and I should’ve stopped trying to communicate. I pressed on again. I did a deep meditation before bed and that night the thing actually talked to me.
It went on this spiel about how it had “chosen” me and that I was to submit to it and worship it and it would repay me heavily in due time if I followed what it was saying. It told me I had no choice in the matter.
My half a day’s worth of research pointed at a big fuck off sign that read “THIS ISN’T APHRODITE”.
Before I could do anything about it though I woke up and vomited and have been lying in bed since exhausted and unable to eat for most of the day (And I’m 99% sure I’m not just normal ill; I have not left the house in 2 weeks due to the lockdown so no chance of getting any stomach bug outside, I don’t have food poisoning as I ate the same things my family has eaten and no one else is sick and no one else previously had any bugs, this sickness came out of nowhere)
This is something I knew could happen, however I have seen little information on so fuck it, I’m throwing it down because some other witch who’s trying to work with deities for the first time or some idiot who didn’t properly research is going to fall for this shit and could get hurt.
DEITY WORK IS A CONSENSUAL THING FOR BOTH PARTIES
You and the matron or patron have to consent to work with each other. Just because a deity reaches out to you does not mean you have to drop everything and work with them. Just like how you can leave offerings for a deity but they just may not be interested in working with you due to timing, you may not be suited best to that certain deity, a million things.
DEITIES DON’T “CLAIM” YOU/SPEW TO YOU THAT YOU’RE THE “CHOSEN ONE”
I’ve seen this phrase tossed around here and a shit load on the TikTok Witch Community that people are “claimed” by deities. This is also not true. You can be called by a deity, they can drop hints that they wish to work with you over a period of time (not all at once like what happened with me, it may take weeks, months, a year, longer). These hints can vary and are usually symbolic in nature so you may not pick up on them right away. You may dream of a person who strikes you differently and looks like a certain deity (what I thought was happening to me), sometimes symbols of a certain deity start appearing in your life, etc. Deities don’t “claim” people though, as that breeches the consent part I mentioned. You don’t suddenly belong to a deity just because they wish to work with you.
DEITIES DON’T ACT SHADY AS SHIT
Honestly, deities don’t have the time to be beating around the bush with you. If you figure out a deity is trying to communicate with you and you reach out with questions they are most likely going to answer you. They won’t bullshit around refusing to answer questions you have, especially if they’re interested in working with you. Also they don’t ask you to worship and grovel to them, there’s a reason why pagans and witches say they “work with” deities. It’s a mutual exchange, you respect them and give them offerings and prayers or whatever and they will support you in spells, times of need and perform favours for you. What you put in is what you’ll get out of it, vice versa.
DEITIES ALSO DON’T LEAVE YOU FEELING HORRIBLE AND SICK
Honestly if they pulled this shit on everyone I don’t know why anyone would be working with them.
_____________
IN CONCLUSION (+Specfically for baby witches)
In case ye were wondering, I am okay and safe now. I banished the entity, cleansed my house and room and have put up specfic wards using sigils to keep anything bad out but to let anything good in (a potential REAL deity perhaps ). I am a lot smarter than this and under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have let it go that far, but I was so bewildered at the idea of a deity noticing me I completely ignored my gut feeling and knowledge about entities.
While I did fuck up and make a mistake by dismissing red flags, I’m sure I’ll be able to look back on this at some point in the future and be thankful I learned never to ignore my intuition again.
If it was the actual Aphrodite I probably wouldn’t have taken her up on this offer straight away anyway, 1. I know barely anything about deity work and would probably need a good year to learn and research everything and 2. My own needs and issues need to be tended first before I can begin to appease a literal God or Goddess. I would maybe like to work with a deity in the far away future but right now is not the time for that.
From the research I did do to try wrap my head around this and to make this post, I honestly do get why people work with deities, it seems like a wonderful connection to have and I’m sure it’s a fulfilling relationship to be a part of. However, due to the work and commitment it takes and the possibility of incidents like what happened to me happening, baby witches or inexperienced witches shouldn’t be rushing into this. Witchcraft in general is not a thing you can speed read in a few days and rush into expecting brilliant results, if you fuck around it will come back around and punch you in the face so please be smart. I feel like people get excited looking at the advanced stuff or get unintentionally pressured by the community of witches who have already found their deities or work with other entities and then on week one start using a ouija board to talk to their “deity” who showed up yesterday to drain them of their energy before they learn any basics like protective magick or anything like that and it’s honestly quite a dangerous situation.
Anyway, you’re not missing out on anything by spending a couple of months just reading and building up your skills before jumping in so just brew some tea, grab some books, start slow and small and always stay safe and protect yourself.
My style of clothes is hardcore alternative, the only color I’d wear was green and black. Since I’ve started worshipping aphrodite I’ve been buying so much pink stuff??? And like I’ve painted my nails pink, I didnt even know I owned pink nail polish. But I found it in my room and it just felt GOOD. Idk man this is wilddd
As many people, I have a lot of difficulties to meditate. But there’s a meditation called mental japa that can be done in multiples ways and is very efficient.
You can spoke your mantra or the name of your divinity loud or softer while you contemplating your god or goddess. But you can also do it by writing, which is very efficient too.
Vaikhari Japa is spoken loud enough so that, although this is not why it is so loud (unless it is a group japa session), nearby people can hear it recited. It may be useful when there are other sounds nearby (though some consider this to be a mistake)[16] or when concentration is difficult and is thus considered most suitable for beginners. (wikipedia)
Personally, I would love to say “Hermes” very loud during a session, but it’s impossible, because the walls of my apartment are thin like paper. My next door neighbours got a rabbit and I sometime hear him tapping vigorously his paw on the floor…(I nicknamed him Cap’tain Pan-Pan)
Upamshu Japa is said quietly, at a whisper. It is said to be one hundred times more effective than vaikhari japa. During upamshu japa the practitioner’s lips should barely move so it is difficult for an observer to see that anything is being said. (wikipedia)
I often practise it, just whispering the name of Hermes on each expiration is the best for me. It’s a silent prayer to the name of the divinity conveyed by the breath and the feelings of your relation with the divine.
Manasika Japa is recited in the mind. It is said to be one thousand times more effective than upamshu japa and thus 100 000 times more effective than vaikhari japa. It is also said to be difficult or impossible to practice for those who are not already grounded in vaikhari japa practice.(wikipedia)
I’m not experimented enough to try this one, my mind is like a bunch of cats after a laser pointer…
Likhita japa is the writing of a mantra while, usually, reciting it aloud at the same time. Proponents say it is more effective than simply reciting the mantra aloud. Likhita japa is often written in a book dedicated to the purpose. Books intended for shorter mantras have a grid of rectangular cells with each cell holding one instance of the mantra. Practitioners may use different coloured ink to write in certain cells in order to make a decorative or symbolic pattern (wikipedia)
My favourite meditation method to stop the enraged cats in my mind…Write very slowly and carefully the name of your divinity and once it’s done, whisper the name.
As I write, I contemplate the name with an intention to honour and love my god.Write the name slowly and gently, the pen is caressing the paper and convey your feelings in the name of the divinity. Whisper the name…
Don’t force yourself to write pages and pages, I keep a notebook exclusively for this practise and often write just half of the page, very slowly. In a world where things are faster and faster, this meditation is a real quality time with your deity :)
I wish to get closer to my deities through writing; any tips/suggestions?
I have some suggestions! Just from my own experience
•write letters to them, like written prayers.
•use pendulums or tarot or another divination form to ask them basic questions, like, is _____ an offering you would like? Should I speak to you formally or casually? What is your preferred method of communication? Would you want to interact via astral travel/in the astral? Do you want your own altar? Etc. pretty much any question you can think of.
•write poetry about them/for them.
•document Everything! Any meditation, divination or astral sessions you may have with them! Write it down!
•if possible, give each deity their own separate notebook/journal for prayers/documentation/etc. most deities do not enjoy competing for attention.
•do your own research about the deities’ lore, mythology, legends, history, associations, etc. and write it down in their journal. You can add to it if you discover new things through your interaction with the deity.
•make up different sigils for the deity/to honor the deity/or as an offering.
•use special ink in colors associated with that deity
•when picking a journal out for a specific deity, pay attention to your gut instinct. If you feel pulled toward a certain design or style, it’s very possibly it is the deity subtlety saying ‘I want that one’
•stickerssssss! Get and use stickers that may be associated with you deity. For example, flower stickers for persephone. And then decorate the pages of the journal with them!
i’ve been absent for some time from this blog. after a long-needed hiatus, i would love to get back into the swing of things by offering some free readings!
right now it’ll be only 1 card pulls until i start getting used to things again. if this sounds up ur alley, shoot me a message!
soooo looking forward to being back and spamming u all with new posts !
- must be following this account for tarot reading -
Like the thing about Loki in Norse mythology is there’s like 8000 myths about Loki just being chaotically mischievous and the other gods are like lol oh that scamp, no matter how disastrous his schemes are, their reaction is still pretty much always ‘haha oh that’s just Loki.’
EXCEPT for basically….one myth. Where Loki’s instrumental in the death of Baldur and the gods are all WHOA TOO FUCKING FAR DUDE and send him to Hel to be tormented for all eternity, leading to his ultimate escape/release in Ragnarok to end all things and lead the army of the damned and his monstrous children to pretty much…eat all the gods, destroy Asgard, and burn the World Tree all to the ground so it can all start over.
Here’s the thing though. Norse mythology spanned centuries. The tales of Loki as the mischievous trickster god were told for centuries.
However, for most of that time, the myths were told as part of oral traditions passed down generation to generation, until they were finally compiled in manuscript form in the 13th century, roughly. This is when pretty much all the sagas, as Norse myth compilations were called, are considered to have been written down for the first time, and so they included thousands of stories that had been told over hundreds of years.
They were also regional, though there was a lot of overlap, given that the Vikings traveled widely and regularly across the various parts of Scandinavia. Still, different parts of Scandinavia had their own sagas. Norway had different sagas than Denmark who had different sagas than Iceland, etc. Even though all of them featured primarily the same figures, they each had their own unique stories featuring the gods. However, very rarely did they have radically different takes on those gods.
Now what’s significant about the fact that pretty much every saga we have, where these myths were all finally written down and preserved, is from the 13th century….
Is that pretty much all of Scandinavia had converted to Christianity by the early 12th century, with active worship of the Norse gods being scattered and mostly underground from that point on.
Why is this significant?
Because it means every Norse myth we have a written recording of was not written by people who still actively worshiped those gods. Nor were they intended to be read as such at the time.
They were written down by Christian scholars who wrote them AS stories. They were intended as collections of their regions’ cultural histories, but not by or for people who still actively believed in these stories or the figures they featured. They weren’t like….TRYING to be super accurate, is the thing. The scholars who wrote these sagas were writing down the stories that had been passed down for generations, but through the lens of people who saw them as stories their ancestors once believed, not ones that pertained to their own current worldview.
And they were writing these sagas for an audience of people who similarly believed as they believed.
Which means that inevitably, some things got ‘adjusted’ to fit the current world view, the zeitgeist of the scholars writing down the stories and that of the people who would read or have the stories read to them from thereon. Because again, they weren’t aiming for being 100% faithful to the tales as they’d been told to them. They were just treating them as stories. And what do you do when the story you’re writing down has elements that don’t make that much sense to you because they were born of and aimed a worldview that doesn’t match yours?
Well, if you’re the Christian scholars writing the Norse sagas, you ‘tweak’ those elements until they make a story that fits your worldview.
So remember how I said the various sagas were regional and had a lot of overlap but some stories were distinct to some regions and didn’t show up elsewhere?
Yeah, Ragnarok is one of those.
Thousands of sagas encompassing centuries of Norse mythology and oral traditions were written down all over the various regions of Scandinavia in the 13th century.
Ragnarok only showed up in one.
The most famous, granted, but still. Everything we’re told in Norse myths about the death of Baldur and Loki’s role in it, leading to his punishment and torment in Hel and his ultimate release and bringing forth the armies of Hel to slay the gods and end the world?
Comes from the Prose Edda and the later Poetic Edda, from Iceland.
Which had primarily converted to Christianity as far back as 1000.
Now, the Vikings? Were actually surprisingly not a big doom and gloom people. Pretty much every assumption of them as such comes from how synonymous we regard Ragnarok with their culture.
It is after all, the ultimate Judgment Day myth, isn’t it? Right up there with Christianity’s Book of Revelations. An apocalyptic end of the world scenario, a war between heaven and hell, where everything is destroyed so that the world can basically start fresh with a clean slate. Nothing old ‘deserves’ to survive, pretty much the only way for a world free of sin and evil to arise is from the ashes of the old, after everything has been cleansed with fire.
Now contrast this ‘myth’ with pretty much every other Norse myth that’s survived. Larger than life tales of grand adventures, noble quests, gods walking among mortals in disguise and heroes fighting giants and stealing from dragons.
Where the closest thing the Norse pantheon has to a devil figure is Loki, the god of mischief….not even evil, but MISCHIEF, because a far more accurate representation of the Vikings’ world view is that sometimes shit happens, because Loki the god of chaos likes to make a mess of things. And what do you do when that happens? If you’re the Vikings, you basically just shrug, go “well, that’s Loki” for you, and drink some more mead.
Loki isn’t vilified in a single myth until Ragnarok, because the Vikings didn’t hate him. And they certainly didn’t fear him. They LAUGHED at him. In nine out of ten myths, Loki ends up the subject of ridicule himself, as he has the tables turned on him or outsmarts himself
Until Ragnarok.
Which, granted, could very well be another Norse myth that was passed down generation to generation in Iceland, land of frequent volcanic eruptions and likely inspiration for Musplheim, the land of the fire giants.
BUT. Which could equally likely, and far more plausibly given the overall context of Norse mythology, simply be a story the scholar who wrote the Prose Edda made up to ‘finish off’ his saga of the world according to the Vikings, from beginning to end.
An ending his Christian audience of the times would understand and identify with a lot better than they would understand the concept of a devil-figure that existed to be LAUGHED at, to show how little the Vikings feared some mythical figure with the power to lie and deceive them….the complete opposite of the way Christians feared Satan.
Basically put….Ragnarok, for all that we think of it as the ultimate Norse myth….DOES NOT MAKE SENSE in the context of almost EVERY single other Norse myth AND in the context of how Norse society viewed the world and their place in it, or their gods and their relationship with them.
Same with Loki’s depiction in Ragnarok.
What both Ragnarok and Loki’s role in Ragnarok DO make sense in the context of, however, is in a bastardization of Christianity’s own doomsday tales of a Judgment Day, stylized to fit the trappings of Norse mythology and feature their gods instead of Christian figures.
With Loki recast in the role of the Devil, as he was the closest fit they could find to that.
And with Baldur, god of light (a Norse god who is at best a footnote in Norse myths other than Ragnarok, and certainly was never the major pantheon figure he’s assumed to be), recast in the role of the Christ figure. Whose death starts the ball rolling for Judgment Day and who is destined to return for it, to triumph over Loki/Satan and preside over the new, purified world once it’s reborn from the ashes of the old one.
Anyway, tl;dr, don’t believe the hype, Ragnarok’s probably not even an actual Norse myth but the invention of Christian writers who were like lol this would make for a great Book of Revelations fanfic AU, and Loki was almost certainly never regarded by actual Vikings as some evil, malicious world-destroyer who would lead armies of the dead at Armageddon whoops I mean Ragnarok.
There are some spirits and gods in the worlds that really must be approached with the correct offering, or will be very offended if you bring the wrong one. This post is not about them.
Thanks goes to @river-in-the-woods for help proofreading and providing additional perspectives
Spirit and deity work is a huge part of my deal, and therefore so are offerings. When I help people with various spirit issues or perform divination that suggests a spirit wants to contact them, I usually recommend giving offerings as a first step.
This usually creates a lot of questions, like:
I don’t want to worship them, so I’m not comfortable with offerings.
I only want to work with spirits I don’t need to pay.
What kind of offerings are OK? I can’t afford to buy extra stuff right now.
I can’t have a shrine or leave food sitting out so it’s not possible for me to make offerings.
The reasons why offerings are given change from culture to culture, and situation to situation. I personally see offerings as being one of two things: good manners, or equivalent exchange.
How to do so comes after the saucy radio dialogue and the fairy tale.
Good Manners
Your grandma comes over. She was just on a 5 hour flight to come visit you. She comes in through the front door. You offer her some water and a snack.
Offering grandma water and a snack isn’t a form of worship or payment. It’s polite and respectful. It took her a lot of energy and effort to come and see you. Her well-being and comfort are important to you (in this hypothetical, of course).
When I drive 10 minutes to see my best friend, she always offers me tea. She’s not paying me for my friendship – she’s happy I came, she wants me to be comfortable, and it’s a sign of mutual respect. “I value your presence; I’ll offer you some tea.”
If my friend stopped offering me tea, I’d wonder if our relationship was doing OK – and if she explained to me she was out of money, or she’s doing a no-tea challenge, we’d be perfectly good.
But if you greet grandma empty-handed and say you don’t think it’s your job to provide her meals, the situation feels a little different. It feels to me as if grandma might not be as interested in making the trip to see you next time.
Equivalent Exchange
“Hey, what are you doing here?”
“I’m going to bury some stuff. I just did ritual and an important part is burying the remnants at the crossroad.”
“Right on, we’re the spirits of the crossroad, so you came to the right place.”
“Yeah, so you’ll be opening the gates of the four directions and delivering my spell to manifestation, right?”
“Sure, we can do that.”
“…”
“…”
“Are you going to, uh… pay us for that service?”
“I don’t see why I should.”
“But you need us to open the gates for you. We have to spend our own energy to do this work. I mean it’s not terribly difficult, but still.”
“Yeah, but I don’t see why that should be on me.”
“Not even a tip? Have you got some change in your pocket?”
“To be honest, I don’t think it’s fair to me to have to pay.”
“So you want us to work for free?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t care what it costs us to do this work for you, you just want to take the fruits of our services without regard for us?”
“Yes.”
“And we should do it because you feel it’s unfair to have to pay us for our work?”
“You got it.”
“And if others told you that you must donate your labor to give them what they want because it’s unfair to give you a wage, this would be…”
“A huge injustice. This is actually a major problem in my country right now. We are so underpaid for what is demanded of us that it really is hurting my mental health and wellbeing. You have no idea how hard it is to be exploited for someone else’s prosperity. I kind of feel like one day I might just go off grid and refuse to be a part of their system.”
The Quality of Offerings Are Relative
The fairy queen Medb was curious about the humans beyond the Greenwood, so she decided to meet them all, from the wealthiest noble to the poorest villager, and to give a gold coin to the kindest one. Before she left, she cloaked herself in a human disguise and dressed as if she were a hardworking seamstress.
First she went to the house of a rich farmer who owned herds of cattle. She knocked on the door and was greeted by the mistress of the house, Frau Hilda.
Medb said, “I am a traveler and the road has been long, may I have some water?”
Frau Hilda kindly invited Medb inside. She sat the queen down at her large, clean table in her warm and cozy kitchen. Frau Hilda went to the larder. Medb could see that her larder was overflowing enough with fine wine, cheeses, and sausages to serve an army. Frau and fetched two jugs of milk and two loaves of bread. One of the jugs of milk was thin, and the loaf of bread was dry. The second jug of milk was thick, as if it was pure cream, and the loaf of bread was hot and fresh.
“Here, have some milk and bread,” Frau Hilda said. “It is much better than water, and will restore you from your travels.” Frau Hilda poured a glass of each milk, and handed the queen the thin milk and old loaf. Frau Hilda herself drank the rich, delicious milk and ate the hot bread.
“This is much better than water, and I thank you for your kind generosity,” agreed Medb.
The two women spoke kindly and politely to each other. Medb learned about the wealth and prosperity of the farmer and his household. They spoke until Medb finished her thin milk and old bread. As she left, Medb thought to herself that the thin milk and old bread, although better than water, were the poorest things in the larder. She kept her gold coin to herself, and walked down the road.
The next day, Medb came upon the hovel of a poor woodcutter and his wife. She knocked on the door and was greeted by Frau Brunhild.
Medb said, “I am a traveler and the road has been long, may I have some water?”
Just like Frau Hilda, Frau Brunhild kindly invited Medb inside. Frau Brunhild’s kitchen was small and cramped. She went to her larder and Medb could see it was almost empty. It only held a bag of flour, a scrap of bread, and a jug of water.
Frau Brunhild brought out the water and bread. “I am sorry I don’t have any milk for you,” Frau Brunhild said. “But let us share in what little we have.”
Frau Brunhild poured Medb some water and gave her one-third of the bread. “We must save some for Mister Brunhild,” she explained.
“I thank you for your generosity,” said Medb. “You show kindness in sharing what you have.” The two women spoke kindly and politely to each other until they had eaten the bread and drank the water. As she left, Medb thought to herself that although it was only water and a little slice of bread, Frau Brunhild had truly offered the best in her larder.
Medb was so moved by this generosity that she returned to the hovel that night, and hid the gold coin in one of Frau Brunhild’s shoes, and after that the Brunhilds always had better prosperity and fortune.
No matter what you have, your best is your best. You do not need to over-spend, give away too much, or sacrifice your wellbeing to give respectful offerings to spirits. If the best you have is a glass of tap water, that is good enough.
What kinds of offerings can you give?
I’m copying this over from my neighborly protection post.
Food and Drink: Good offerings include things with strong tastes and smells, foods high in caloric value, milk, honey, all nuts, eggs, and seeds (things which contain the potential for life are very good offerings), all home cooked/baked foods, fresh water (an especially good offering), coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco, and juices all make very fine offerings.
Perhaps tellingly, the finest or most necessary offering is simply a glass of fresh water (yes, it can be tap water).
Consumables: Incense and candles both make good offerings. Both should be burned. I am actually more wary of using real resins and herbal powders for spirit offerings, since the natural powers of these plants are released and may affect what I’m trying to do (or make it easier or harder for spirits to speak to me, or drive away spirits I’m trying to talk to, or draw in ones I don’t want to talk to). For these reasons I like to use stick or cone incense for offerings. It is the light and warmth from the candle which is enjoyed by spirits so it can be any type or color of candle.
Artwork, fake paper money, origami, and other burnable stuff can be dedicated (another way to think about this is to gift it to them) and then burned. The point is not destruction; the astral essence of these things is released so the spirits can possess them in their world.
Non-consumables: Coins are very common offerings. Small, delightful objects (especially shiny ones), like shells, little figurines, or toys often make good offerings. The act of devoting a ritual tool or vessel to a spirit can be an offering. Things which can be consumed (like cigars or paper art) don’t have to be burned and can be given as regular offerings also.
Energy: Your personal energy is a great offering. You don’t have to give a ton of it away. Try making an energy ball and sending it upwards and away, intending that it reach the spirit you want to give it to. I often like to pattern these gifts into an object, like an energy coin or energy apple.
How do you give physical stuff to a nonphysical being, though?
Lay out the offerings on a clean surface. It doesn’t have to be an altar or a shrine, although I suspect such consecrated places can make it easier for spirits to access and enjoy your offerings. It can be just like setting out a glass of water and half a sandwich for grandma.
Do something which indicates the offering is for the spirits or a specific being. My friend can make me a cup of tea, but if she just sets some tea down on the table and walks away, I’m not going to be sure it’s OK for me to drink it until she says, “this is your tea!”
What you do can be as simple as standing before the offering and saying or thinking, “This is for [names of spirits, or ‘the household spirits’, etc], please enjoy! I’ll come clean it up by noon, enjoy it before then.”
At a minimum I recommend leaving non-consumable offerings out for fifteen or thirty minutes. If it’s a candle or incense, they burn out when they burn out (you do not have to let large candles burn completely, but be careful of promising a candle as a gift to spirits, then going back on that promise and using it for something else). Energy offerings are given instantaneously and no waiting period is necessary.
Whenever you return to clean up the offering, it’s polite to say something like, “thank you for coming by, and I hope you enjoyed! It’s time for me to clean up now. Please return to your abodes; as you came in peace, leave as friends.” I personally like to affirm the purpose of giving an offering - that it’s because I want to be a good neighbor, I want to have solid relationships with the spirits around me, and that I hope we’re all going to be friends. I also like to affirm that although I invited them all to the offering, they should go home now - I wanted you for the BBQ but it’s like 9pm now and we’re going to bed, so you need to go home too.
I throw out food. I compost it if I can. Whether or not you can eat food already offered to spirits is a whole discussion and beliefs vary. My belief is that you shouldn’t eat it after it’s offered.
Other non-consumable objects can be buried if they’re nontoxic to the environment. They can be left on an altar or shrine, and cleared out on a regular basis (like once a full moon, or on holidays).
To Eat or Not to Eat?
I mentioned briefly above that I don’t believe you should eat offerings after they’ve been offered. This is a pretty complex topic that does merit discussion.
For example, I sometimes eat the offerings whilethey’re being offered. I have a close relationship with various spirits, and sometimes I invite them into my body to taste and experience the food and drink I eat.
The reason I don’t prefer to eat offerings after they’ve been offered is that my belief is that the metaphysical substance which supports us as living creatures has been removed and taken away from the spirits. I don’t believe the food would be harmful, but that it also wouldn’t be helpful. To me, throwing the food away isn’t a waste because it already fulfilled its purpose.
However, tons of people believe that you should eat food and beverage offerings. This is in order to avoid waste (because after all, even if I say metaphysically the food served its purpose, I’m still throwing away totally edible food). I am advised that in Buddhism, offerings given to ancestors, buddhas, and bodhisattvas aren’t degraded at all, and you can safely eat and drink offerings afterwards (and not doing so would be wasteful). For buddhas and bodhisattvas offerings are just a sincere gesture; the ancestors do get nourishment from food offerings and they greatly benefit from it. Even so, food offered to ancestors is still perfectly wonderful to eat.
In other belief systems, some people think that eating offered food can actually make you sick, especially if it’s offered to the dead. This may be due to a metaphysical change in the food, or because the spirits don’t want to share.
Sometimes, whether or not food is eaten after being offered depends on the type of spirit or god it’s given to; chthonic entities often seem to frown upon their offerings being eaten or shared.
Some believe that food offerings shouldn’t be eaten but neither should they be trashed; they should be burned or buried.
Sometimes, dedicating a food or drink offering to a spirit is a way to bless it under their power. If I dedicate a glass of water to the Indweller of the Sun, it’s understood to be imbued with the virtues of the Sun. If I drink it, it becomes a form of equivalent exchange - I gave something to the Sun, it gave something to me, and this ritual action is completed when I consume the offering.
Given all these varieties of belief, it’s safe to say that you probably can’t go wrong. If you can’t or don’t want to waste food, or it isn’t counter-indicated by your path, eat food offerings.
If you’re especially nervous or worried about what might happen to you if you do eat them, then don’t. Or, avoid the problem altogether by just giving energy or incense offerings.
that by my hand fate may be changed and order overturned/
And I praise you for the gift of mortality/
that anything stuck might die so long as the strike is true/
And I praise you for the benediction of wounds/
that we may drink of our hated enemy’s blood before we end/ ..
- Hymm to Miaephon, ninth canticle
Setup: They say you can’t teach an old god new tricks, but for the bloodsplattered patron of violence, “ Stab it till it dies” has been the only trick needed to carry this warlike deity from the dawn age and into the modern era.
The Spear god has no ideology, no ethos, no precepts, only a litany of those slain by his intercession and the tributes paid to him my grateful petitioners. In this way Miaephon’s worship is far simpler than other deities: Ask the Bloody One to make something dead, and if the god hears you a way to that death shall be opened. Sometimes it manifests as a confluence of events that brings about the target’s downfall, othertimes a blessed fervor that fills petitioner with an immortal battlerage, heedless of wounds until their foe is defeated. The simplest of these blessings sees a needed weapon placed in the hands of the unarmed, while the greatest involves Miaephon hurling a spear from heaven, impaling the target before the prayer is even over. All these blessings can be turned against the petitioner should Miaephon find fault with them, and so only those surest in their devotion and fury call upon the Spear god by name.
Adventure Hooks:
Weapons thrown from the bloody one’s own hand are said to possess fantastical properties, and are sought out as artifacts of war by those who wish to utilize the god’s power without risking his ire. Long thought to be nothing more than a ruin, an ancient and monolithic spire is revealed to be one of Miaephon’s first spears, thrown during the dawn age to skewer some titanic creature too large for words and buried into the earth ever since. Excavation shows that the spear is in fact sunk so deep that its gouged a fissure deep into the earth, possibly all the way to the underdark and so an expedition is launched into the world below in an attempt to recover the weapon’s deadly head.
After she was beheaded for treason, the family of duchess Imeadia were exiled to an estate by the sea, there to live out their days in polite exile under guard by mercy of the crown. The Youngest of Imeadia’s sons has escaped however, a boy of no more than 14 who slaughtered seven guards and half as many servants on the way out and was last seen in the company of man bearing a truly frightening tally of scars. This man is the former lord Volco, a priest of Miaephon who came into the wargod’s service after a brutal bloodfued saw his clan exterminated. Volco possesses a knife blessed by the bloody one to grant the bearer unearthly skill in battle, able to blind foes to his passage and fling his own wounds at victims across a room or across provinces. Volco now seeks to train the young Imeadia boy in the weapon’s use as he was trained long ago, a new link in a chain of pain and vengeance that stretches back generations.
While his cult has fallen out of fashion in the modern era, Miaephon was once revered by those ancient empires that sought to expand their holdings through the veneration of the spear, pouncing upon their neighbors and pressing the survivors into thralldom. One of these empires was the Warrior Republic of Knossa, which had expanded from one of many warring citystates to a cultural hegemony poised to strike out and conquer much of the continent. On the eve of their great campaign however, a curse befell them, transforming their disciplined legions into hordes of minotaurs, which tore apart the empire in a single night and transformed the Knossan homeland into what it is today: The Savage Coast. Now Little more than Ruins, beasts, and encroaching wilderness, Miaephon sends his followers into the savage coast as a form of brutal pilgrimage, hoping to retrieve relics from the overgrown temples that once resounded with his praises.
