Offerings

Empowering Manifestation

Offerings are conduits of empowerment and exchange toward manifesting our will in the world.

They are a vessel of our intention and on being received physically and symbolically enable others to assist us in making real our wishes and desires.  In this way, we are making a supplication to others who are also present with us and may assist us as an honoring of the spirits of place. This is not worship, religion, or faith, these are real world events with cause and effect outcomes.  It is important for us to be in a high state of vibration in order to attract that which is resonant with our work.  I have been using a journal and documenting the cause and effect of these practices and am myself convinced that this work and its fruits are intimately connected.

Offerings consist of tangible objects of health, wealth, and prosperity such as fruits, nuts, seeds, flowers.  It may contain objects of purity such as crystals and minerals and stones, precious metals such as gold, silver, or copper, and jewels of a variety of rarity and value.  We may bring objects we have made ourselves, such as bowls and cups or platters or crucibles.  Glass objects, containers of food matter such as cornmeal, elemental offerings such as Water, Plant matter for Earth, Music or song for Wind, and a flame for Fire.  Animals such as butterflies and moths elevate our gifts, the symbols of spirit.

Offerings may speak in the language of symbolism as a way to reach beyond the confines of our material existence.  Roses may represent love and fidelity, an Apple may mean The Garden, the birthplace of perfection, containing within it the five-petaled symbol The Flower of Life.  The Divine Proportion may be represented by a pine cone or a fern leaf. Numbers have symbolic significance themselves, the number four, possibly represented by a pyramid, represents grounding and stability, the building block of structure.  Four Tobacco Blossoms may represent also the Four Directions, Four Seasons, Four Stages of Life etc.

One such example is my Summer Solstice offering for healing.  On this date I created an offering for healing the Trail of Tears. The offerings included flowers, peonies, roses, iris, Lilac, and sunflowers.  Fruits of peach, apple, strawberries, grapes, watermelon, plum and pear, and corn.  I had brought a handmade bowl of stones and crystals, and Lemurian seed crystals, water from the spring, and candle and a jar of honey with an infusion of rose petals inside, representing love and timelessness.  But the key to the offering was a metáte, a stone mortar and pestle, given to me by a father figure in my life, a decendent of the Trail of Tears from his family homestead  in Tennessee.  With it I ground the corn and seeds as an offering to transform the legacy of displacement and suffering with a fresh beginning, from seven generations in the future, and a thousand miles away, in the same mountain range where this story began.

The burnt offering consists of the four elements, Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire.

Earth is represented in the sacred herbs, Sage, Sweetgrass, Tobacco, and Cedar, and an array of other aromatic herbs, leaves, roots, and resins such as frankincense and myrrh. Wind is represented by the music of the flute and drum, and Water from the offering glass.  The offering is then lit with the gift of Fire and the smoke carries our prayers and intentions to all corners of heaven and earth.  In this case, located in a star gate, the offering reaches into other realms of consciousness and manifestation.  This offering is made in joy, a celebration of all that is Cherokee culture.  To transform culture and history of portraying these events in terms of loss and sadness by bringing beauty to the gate. Love heals all Wounds. Joy over Sadness. Celebration over stagnation.   The Wood Mouse, my totem, appears at the edge of the metáte, receiving the offering.  The old and the new, celebrating the present as a new potential is established with intentions of healing and renewal.

A new threshold within an ancient Doorway.