Offerings you dislike.

[Geroth]

Do you consider it disrespectful to give offerings to a deity that you don't like yourself? For example, I personally am a teetotaler but I know that many deities like alcoholic beverages as offerings. Do you give alcoholic offerings to them anyway just because they like them even though you don't? Or should you hold off and give them something else that comes from your heart?

Which is better in your opinion?

I should mention, this isn't just about alcohol. This goes for all offerings.

[Sean R. R.]

Re: Offerings you dislike.

My Gods find no use in material things, so there's nothing I can offer to them other than my energy. My dedication to sorcery and empowerment of my life through satanic means is enough of an offering to them.

[iris]

Re: Offerings you dislike.

I don't usually do physical offerings, but when I do, it's whatever feels right to me, it has to come from the heart. So if, say, wine just doesn't feel right to you even though that deity is known to like wine, but maybe bread or fruit does, that's what I'd go with. I don't think they actually care what they get, to me it's just a symbolic offering. What they really get from me, like SeanRave said, is energy.

[Torey]

Re: Offerings you dislike.

I give to my gods the offerings that They enjoy or request - my personal dislike or enjoyment of those offerings is irrelevant as the offerings are for Them, not for me.

[anunitu]

Re: Offerings you dislike.

Little thought here,making the offering YOU want(as opposed to what your deity likes) brings to mind why Cain and Able got all biblical on each other....

[monsno_leedra]

Re: Offerings you dislike.

For me it depends. I consider offerings to be physical things left out for them such as food, material items, etc. For those I tend to either burn them upon a raised altar for the celestial gods / goddess or burn in a depression or hole for the chthonic gods / goddesses. Libations I tend to pour into the earth for chthonic and burn or pour upon a raised altar for celestial. Libations to me tend to fall into things such as water, milk, honey, beer or ales, occasionally harder alcohols. Admitting I use that method more for the Hellenic and Roman gods / goddesses.

For the Kemetic or Egyptian divinities I tend to use the notion of essence where the god / goddess takes the essence of the item but then the item is consumed by me. Yet the items I use tend to be similar to the things I make use of for the Hellene gods / goddesses.

About the only difference is when I make such offerings and / or libations. Consider I see Bastet in her earlier solar configuration so make those during the heated midpoint of the day. I see the same sort of configuration for Pahket so any offerings again would be midpoint of the day not evening or morning. Yet I may make an offering to her Artemis / Bastet conflation during the evening or moon periods.

So for me offering and libation is more than just what I offer but when I offer it and how I offer it as well as to whom I am offering it.