If you work with spirits, you can benefit from giving offerings. No matter your path, should the spirits walk with you, offerings can help you. Herein I will disclose what giving offerings can do for you, “basic” offerings to leave for a variety of spirits, and some variations on the normal concept of offerings that are sure to get some gears in your head turning.
So.
Why Offer?
There’s a helpful way to remember why you should give offerings to the spirits you work with. They’re the “three tos”, so have fun with that, especially the fact that they become six numerically:
- To empower
- To pay
- To configure
I’ll go over each of these.
Empower:
Offerings will empower the spirits you give them to, naturally, and increase their connection with the physical world. This allows not only for them to perform at heightened levels of power, but with this world bending more to their will, a joint partnership between you and the spirit will see an increase in efficacy.
Pay:
Due to the nature of offerings being things the spirit enjoys, or things that empower the spirit, offerings are naturally a great way to pay a spirit for a job well done. Spirits that seek offerings as payment may be after increased power and physical influence, or they may yearn to taste the delicacies of this world again. This is generally negotiable.
Configure:
First, let me say that not only do all of these reasons also apply to the loi of Vodun, but that this category may specifically be found in Vodun workings and spirits but not necessarily exclusively. Offerings with the intent to configure the spirit will change how it functions, either slightly or massively, if the spirit accepts it. This is the most partner-oriented reason to give offerings, as some spirits will shift between hot and cool forms with the reception of corresponding offerings. This is why some spirits get “heated up” and others “cooled off”. In specific cases of engineering, a string of configure-based offerings may unlock unusual forms and powers in the spirit.
So, that’s some of the reasons you’d give offerings to spirits you work with. It makes them work more efficiently, which means you can work more efficiently.
Basic Offerings
Below are a list of things that virtually any spirit will accept as an offering. Note that some may not accept any of these, however, those instances are very rare and not in most spirits you’ll see on this forum.
Here’s the list:
- Purple votive candle, full burn.
- Glass (yes, glass) of cool water.
- Sweet tobacco.
- Rum.
- (corresponding animal) Bones.
- Service (“scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”).
- Your blood (not advised, generally, unless you’re well connected with the spirit).
- Your craftsmanship (I mean specifically if you’ve built or painted or written something, it can [u]not[/u] get destroyed or lost if the spirit is to be offered it).
But as you can see towards the end of this list, and those of you who received my chimeras know, there are some pretty weird offerings you can feasibly give to spirits. Let’s go a bit deeper into that, hm?
The Possibilities of Power
What is an offering, really?
The answer is deceptively simple:
It is when you reach out and shake hands with spirit.
What I mean by this is that an offering is really a bridge, and yet at the same time a stone in a much bigger bridge. An offering will allow the spirit some additional influence in this world, and eventually with enough offerings they’ll be fed enough to be virtually as solid as men.
As such, there’s a few different ways this can come into reality. The key is that it has to allow the spirit some influence on this world. This is why sacrifices were so often used as offerings, because make no mistake, there is no offering quite like murder. I mean this literally, in that the moment of death, which may be offered to a spirit, more energy is released that the spirit could use than any other single offering.
But…
See, you don’t necessarily have to sacrifice anything. It is the dedication of the moment of death to the spirit, with authority (that usually comes from being the killer), that allows them access. How does one get that authority without being the killer, however? The answer is declaration.
Yes, you can quite literally perform an invocation of the entity you want the death to “go to” in order to feed the spirit.
But that’s not the only unconventional method of offering. Keeping in mind the purpose of offerings, that is, to bridge, you can perform a similar invocation as the “death minister” style above on virtually anything- a tree, a house, a car, etc. Then that object belongs to the spirit, and in cases of large objects being offered, generally only things you own will work as sacrifices.
There is also another way to create an offering, and that is to allow for a temporary cohabitation of the same body. This is equivalent to being a “horse” in Vodun in a more conscious, precise, and useful way. By offering the spirit equal partnership of your body for a duration of time, not only do you naturally become more intimate with the spirit, but they become more aware of the human condition and all of its dizzying implications.
This concludes the segment. Any questions, class? 
