Simple Magick: Offerings - What Are They?

Another post about offerings - this time what they actually are. An offering is something we give ~ or sacrifice ~ in Witchcraft for a given reason.

We can leave offerings:

To celebrate 

To give thanks 

To honour 

In memory of 

In appreciation of

We give them to:

Deities 

Ancestors 

Spirits: eg. of the land, a place, a dwelling, a person

Entities and beings eg. The Fae

Offerings vary hugely. They can be anything from an item or object to an act of service. It doesn’t have to be over the top. It can be simple, but should always be heartfelt.

Examples of offerings

Food and drink 

Incense 

Candle

Special words: eg. poetry/verse/song

Bowl of herbs/flowers 

Acts of service: eg. tidying/gardening/cleaning/getting rid of rubbish

Stones, crystals 

Personal affects eg. leaving a hair 

Special items eg. jewellery

If this post has been helpful don’t forget to Save it so that you can refer back to it.

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NEXT - Fabulous Folklore: Neptune - God of The Sea & Freshwater

Fabulous Folklore: Neptune - God of The Sea & Freshwater

This is Neptune’s Grotto at Burghley House in Stamford, Lincolnshire. The Romans celebrated Neptune as the god of freshwater, and of the sea. It was thought that Neptune was associated with freshwater springs long before he became associated with the ocean. He was appropriated from his Greek pantheon counterpart, Poseidon, ruler of the seas.

Neptune only had one temple in Rome, situated near the Circus Flaminius, a Roman racetrack. Like Poseidon, Neptune was worshipped as a god of horses. They were said to pull the chariot he travelled in over the sea. Neptune was one of only four Roman gods to whom it was considered appropriate to sacrifice a bull. The others were Apollo, Jupiter and Mars.

Neptune was often described as a tall, white-bearded figure who carried a trident. The Romans celebrated him on Neptunalia, the festival of Neptune, on July 23rd. He was petitioned in times of drought and heat. Ironically, and rather coincidentally, we visited this grotto within a few days of this date; in the height of a heatwave.

Word Magick: Invocation to Pan

Invocation to Pan ~ by Helen Bantock

Pan, god of the unfettered wild!

Come from thy secret dwelling,

Where mighty mountains sleep, and, undefiled,

The waters sweet are welling,

O, fearless, swift! O fierce and free!

God of the forests! God of liberty!

Pan, sing we a paean! Pan, we call on thee!

Pan, god of the unfettered mind,

Of faith and will unshaken,

Come, piping loud and wild upon the wind

Till sluggard worlds awaken.

Healer divine! Heart of the free!

Spirit of music! Soul of ecstasy!

Priest of delight! Thou laughter gay- all hail!

Twy-horned, goat-footed, lord of revelry!

The sweet singer, the light dancer, the wild piper - clear and shrill!

The keen hunter, the swift pursuer, the lord of fear - and deathless will!

Pan, to thee we raise our voices, Pan, great Pan, all hail!

Image taken at The Museum of Witchcraft & Magic, Boscastle, Cornwall.

NEXT - Word Magick: The Season of The Witch 

Fabulous Folklore: Storm Callers

Seidr, a form of pre-Christian Norse magic, was concerned with discerning the course of fate, to bring about change or to alter the path of destiny. Amongst other things, there were Seidr rituals for controlling the weather.

In medieval lore, Tempestarii were weather-making magicians. These people lived amongst the commoners in a village, but they were adept at raising or preventing storms. Some held the belief that the Tempestarii were in league with a mythical race of cloud-dwellers, who could sail the skies in storm clouds, whipping up storms over farmland, so that they could sweep down under the cover of cloud to cause trouble and to steal corn and other crops.

During the witch hunts, there was a strong belief that witches could cause all sorts of harm using the weather, but others argued that anyone who had control over the weather and could ‘raise a gale’ must have a belief in God to be able to do such things.

Today, Storm Magic is a favourite of many witches. It allows the practitioner to access thunderstorms using the storm as a battery from which to take energy, or to manipulate the air of blizzards and hurricanes. Clouds and cosmological events are used as divination tools, in a type of scrying known as Aeromancy. Under this umbrella, you have cloud divination (nephomancy), thunder and lightning divination (ceraunoscopy), meteor and shooting star divination (meteromancy), amongst others.

Any form of Air Magic is potent because Air is the element of movement, making it perfect for Seidr rituals and other forms of magic where change is sought. Air can be gentle or raging, it can extinguish fire or ignite it, give life (oxygen) or destroy; offering many nuances and possibilities for spell work. Divination of clouds is a great skill - they’re always at hand (especially if you live in the UK!), they’re free, and you just have to look up! 

NEXT - Fabulous Folklore: Lesser Celandine

NEXT - Fabulous Folklore: Salt