"The offering of animal, plant, or human life or of some material possession to a deity, as in propitiation or homage."
m.dictionary.com/definition/sacrifice
Most of us do not sacrifice animals, and taking a human life is considered taboo in most religions and moral codes. Not to mention it's illegal. An example of a sacrifice to the gods could be just putting an Amaranth, a flower sacred to Artemis, on your altar.
Re: what do I give gods By: Lark Moderator / Adept
Post # 6 Jan 01, 2014
What constitutes an appropriate sacrifice depends in large part on which God or Goddess you are working with. If you will look in the mythology surrounding that particular Deity it will likely tell you what the ancients considered appropriate.
As an example, I work with Sekhmet, and Egyptian Goddess. The traditional offering to her was red beer. However, as water was precious in a desert country, water remains an appropriate sacrifice for any of the Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. Another traditional offering to Sekhmet was blood. This doesn't have to be large quantities of blood, nor does the blood have to come from killing anything. Pricking one's finger with a sterilized needle and adding one or two drops to your offering bowl is quite enough.
Another offering might be lighting some incense. For Sekhmet sandalwood, myrrh, or frankincense are appropriate; however, I like to make traditional kyphi incense that was burned in the temples of ancient Egypt.
Offerings don't always have to be of tangible objects. Time and service dedicated to the Deity is fine as well. Or, again as in the case of Sekhmet, I can make a donation to the blood bank where I dedicate the giving of the blood to her.
Personally when it comes to sacrifice to me its like something that is important to me and give that as sacrifice such as gems, Then again this really depends on what god and goddess you are working with.
Just don't sacrifice is a fancy word for kill in most cases I mean you can sacrifise grains or stuf if you sacrifase to a harvest god but its just pointless and a vaist like some gods refer to mighty entities on the astral plane and they couldn't given a dam if you do and many gods are fired so have daemons with the same nam and you could be sacrificing to the demon if the god doesn't except it and the rest like the christian one are made up yeah I said it (but since they made up saitan and made people fier him they created the mightiest demon of all time just saying) Just don't and if the book says you must and isn't a religious thing just throw it in the trash
Hi mistimander,
Traditionally sacrifices of human and animal flesh were offered to the gods. This can be seen through the mayans killing sacrifices to the gods, the hnorned one who runs among the deer in pagan mythology and the calf (I think it was a calf?) that the hebrews slaughtered after reaching the promised land. However we live in a world where doing so would mean all out war with animal lovers and authorities. You can find incense (be careful when choosing incense for egyptian gods. Also, you can find plants or flowes that are sacred to your particualar deity. Like pomegranate seeds for Hades. There you go
Huggles and blessings. spellsinger.........:....................
Re: what do I give gods By: Personified / Knowledgeable
Post # 10 Jan 01, 2014
It depends on the God(s) in question.
As Lark was mentioning, some Gods have specific foods and drinks they like offered up to them. Thor likes hearty alcoholic drinks, for instance. Sometimes Gods like physical things, such as Loki liking fire as an offering. You can offer up personal belongings, or things that mean a lot to you in order to show devotion. Offering blood is seen as a very personal, meaningful offering.
There are nonphysical offerings as well. Some deities, like Hel, accept fear and other emotions as offerings. Sometimes you can offer time, devotion, oaths, etc.
It depends on the god you would not give Anubis the same offerings and sacrifices as Brigid
Also a sacrifice is not killing it is giving what is hard to give if you are very poor simply buying a candle is a sacrifice. Same as organ donation for some gods like Hela that is something that requires you to give something precious of yours to someone else in her name. (There are things you can donate with out being dead like kidneys, part of the liver, bone marrow and blood)
If you are alright with killing an animal then it really has no significance as a sacrifice. Animal sacrifice was popular in the past because live stock was precious so when it came to a feast day or celebration you would select one of your farm animals and kill it. It served as a sacrifice but what's better is it was eaten in the name of that god at the feast.
Think of it as your Christmas turkey a specially selected animal that is killed and eaten at a celebration.
