Hair offerings: historical context, purpose and uses

Offerings of hair, locks of hair or ritual hair-cutting is quite a regular occurrence in ancient sources and textbooks discussing various religious customs of the ancient Greek world. It also seems to be a fairly forgotten offering in a modern context, which is why I wanted to delve back in and write this post. I

The Adeia – a modern festival to Demeter

Historically, it’s often during times of hardships and crisis that new cults would be established and religious innovations would appear. This one is no different. It’s through discussion with @iliosflower that the idea of creating a new festival, one that would more accurately respond to modern problematics, came to fruition. This is what we’d like

Foods of religious importance in my practice

(Disclaimer: This is a repost from an ask I got on Tumblr, which ended up being more detailed than anticipated. The question asked was: “Do you have any food or drink recipe that is spirituality important?”) I do. Very much so. I feel like I need to split the answer in two parts, starting with

Jewelry as offerings

Another requested topic, which took me wayyy more time than expected. Sorry about that. What has been found in the sanctuaries? We need to divide the offerings found in sanctuaries in two categories. 1. Votive/standard offerings I’d say this is the most common case. Those pieces end up in the sanctuary for various personal reasons.

On offerings of fruit and nuts

This was also a requested topic, in the same vein as my posts on salt and water. The twist though, is that I am going to be focusing on fruits and nuts in a general context and leave out the concept of first-fruit offerings (aparchai), which probably needs its own post. Fruit offerings are extremely,

Why water is not a “lazy” offering

Water was a requested topic and there was plenty of ways to tackle the topic. I’ve chosen this angle of approach because I know I’ve seen some people struggle with the idea. So let’s talk about it and give some context: if you’ve grown up with the luxury of always having had access to clean

Why you should consider clay offerings

Figure offerings of clay (and bronze) are common in archaeological findings and their purpose is honestly quite simple. They are both offering and representation of an offering: they are replacements for the real thing. Mary Depew said it better in “Reading Greek Prayer”: “In cases where it would have been either inconvienient or too expensive to

Offering ideas for special events

That’s a topic I haven’t seen much posts about. Most likely because a lot of people, myself included, prefer to show that offerings can be quick and simple and on the cheaper side for accessibility. This post is meant for those occasions where you want to do something special, whether it is for a special