The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/offerings)
Like a “Sunday Catholic” who is extremely devout on Sunday mornings but lives a decidedly un-Christian life for the rest of the week, we can all too easily make grand speeches over the drinking horn at blót but neglect to put intention into action when we step out into the wider world. Are we honoring the ancestors in our lives? Or are we dishonoring them?
Perperikon, an ancient Thracian city in Bulgaria, reveals new discoveries, including Roman-era altars possibly dedicated to underworld gods. Excavations uncover connections to Dionysus worship, mystery cults, and possibly psychopomps and underworld deities.
But of all the Witchy items I’ve acquired over the years, the go bag is by far the most useful. Like all my favorite tools, it seems frivolous and self-aggrandizing until it is suddenly vital.
My room became a Wunderkammer of sorts, filled with strange and magical items right alongside cheap pieces of mass-produced plastic that made me laugh and reminded me of my friends. The ways in which I saw the gods grew into a visual language, a series of physical metaphors grounded in my everyday experience and sprawling across my living space. Like all languages, it began to create its own meaning.
Does the value of religiosity as response end at the line of the sacred circle drawn by practitioners, or does it truly make a difference outside of that circle? Beyond therapeutic effects for the practitioners themselves, are we just doing a form of that most ineffective and overly online form of religiosity in the face of violence and horror, the sending of “thoughts and prayers”?