Forgot to Mention

Hi All,

I forgot to mention that I headed back east for the holiday.  Arrived here last weekend and am having a blast visiting family and friends. Regularly scheduled posting will return after turkey day.

Hope have a wonderful holiday as well!

 

Bloodless Sacrifice

A debate on Twitter had a hand in inspiring this project. You see, the debate revolved around sacrifice specifically animal sacrifice which left one of the debaters, a vegetarian, feeling uncomfortable about the way some ancients practiced their religion. While I am a meat-eater, I must admit that were the butcher and grocer removed from my food supply chain, I would become a bean-loving vegi in seconds.

Anyway, the debate caused me to turn to The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization for more information about exactly how the Greeks & Romans conducted sacrifices and what role sacrifices played in their religious practice. In among the information about pigs, cattle, goats, birds and dogs (which made me hate the ancients for just a moment) was a small paragraph about Likna.

likna unearthed at Demeter's temple in Corinth

Likna, meaning winnowing baskets, are ceramic cakes left as offerings in temples and sanctuaries. Cakes (flour-based sweetmeats or fancy breads) were regarded as a luxurious delicacy to be eaten with fruit after the main course at a special meal.  If the cakes were to be sacrificial cakes, they were called liba in Greek and placentae in Latin. Those cakes offered as sacrifice very often had a special form characteristic of the relevant deity or rite, such as the Attic amphiphon which was stuck with lights and offered to Artemis on the day of the full moon or the Sicilian mullos, shaped like female genitals and offered to Demeter and Persephone.  (info gleaned from The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization, Hornblower & Spawforth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998)

Likna, made from terra cotta, were more permanent offerings and can easily be adapted to modern practice. The sacrifice of your time and effort, as well as your devotion, are symbolized by the creation you make. The process couldn’t be more simple.

You Will Need:

• Clay that can be baked, like Fimo or Sculpey, in a variety of colors
• a tool to roll the clay thin
• creativity
• patience

First, create a base of some kind. I did a thin “plate” the size of a cd, then wrapped the edges as decoration. You may want to do a basket, bowl or cup.

This project is very free form. Think of the deity or spirit for whom the offering is intended and create appropriate tokens out of the clay. Create what comes to you, what seems appropriate. I did bread and vegetables we regularly eat and a plate of coins because, well, money is always important along with yellow and blue flowers for the sun and moon respectively.

Bake according to package directions.

Leave on your shrine or altar as a mindful offering, just as the ancient Greeks and Romans did.