In our last post regarding personal practice, we examined creating a personal daily practice via daily prayers. In this post, we would like to delve a little deeper and create a weekly personal practice.
To begin with, we would suggest seeing this as an extension of you daily work, just with a little added complexity. In this practice you will be making formal offerings to the Sacred Three; the ancestors, the Sidhe (and land spirits), and the gods. Each of them in turn with their own offering on a specific day of the week. We suggest to give yourself a easy to remember schedule for these offering times. We have utilized a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule to great effect, but any set schedule that you can keep to is what is important.
As stated earlier, each of the days you chose will be dedicated to a specific group, ancestors one day, Sidhe (fae folk) another, and the gods another. These days of offering will be times that you make a formal offering to those you venerate. It is also a time to commune with those beings and reflect on the changes they have brought to your practice. It can be highly personal time for you.
Next we suggest a format that you can remember easily. It doesn't need to start out as elaborate and complicated. In fact it can be quite simple. The set up we have used to great effect is to have an offering bowl to receive libations an incense burner, and a candle as the tools and a memorized beginning, middle and ending for the ritual itself. Below is a set of suggestions, feel free to change them to suit your own practice:
- Beginning: The Opening of this can be as simple as saying a prayer while lighting your candle. We usually open our ceremony with a prayer to the beings that we are venerating that day. Lighting the candle is symbolic of lighting a sacred fire, it is a sign of welcoming the beings and a way to make offerings to them.
- Middle: This is the meat of the ritual. This is where you make offerings to the powers that you are venerating in the ritual. We usually make a libation offering to beings we worship, ale for our ancestors, dairy for the Sidhe, and whisky for the gods. These are just suggestions, let your intuition lead you on what to offer in libation. Over time, the beings you offer to will let you know their desires of libations. We also make an offering of incense to these beings as well. As before, the choice of incense is up to your intuition and in time the beings offered to will let you know what the like.
- Ending: The closing of ritual should be a reverse of the opening, with a prayer of thanksgiving to the powers that you have offered to. Extinguish you candle but let the incense fully burn, just remember to practice fire safety.
This format can be tweaked to your own way of doing things. It is important to make this sort of ritualized offering your own. This is a personal interaction between you and the powers. This ensures that your weekly practice means something deeply to you.
Lastly, there will be days you have that you just can't do your practice. Something may come up, or you may be ill, or you just can't summon the energy to do it. We implore you, DO NOT WORRY when this happens. It doesn't make you a terrible pagan. It doesn't mean that you have to begin all over again. You are human, you are fallible. It is okay, the Sacred Three WILL UNDERSTAND. Just do your best and center your practice around your life the best way that you can. Remember, this is about right relationship and not about being the best. Even the gods have off days. Take it a step at a time and you will be doing great.
***Burning candles and incense can pose fire and
health hazards. To stay
safe, keep candles and burning incense away from flammable materials, never leave them unattended,
and ensure they are placed on stable, heat-resistant surfaces.***
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