Pagan things which hurt nature

[Scales]

 
I stumbled across this article yesterday, thought I'd share.

http://www.paganmusic.co.uk/ritual-offerings-sacred-or-debris/

[Bongiorno]

Don't knock it til you've tried it, I hear the fire variant of this ritual can be quite exhilarating. :ange:

 
I'm intrigued on the fire variant. Someone was tinkering in the woods and carved directional symbols on trees and it damaged some. Lets not carve on living trees if we can help it, I think.

[Lionrhod]

I stumbled across this article yesterday, thought I'd share.

http://www.paganmusic.co.uk/ritual-offerings-sacred-or-debris/

Thanks for posting that. Excellent article. And the comments were great too. I agree with Damh that those offerings should have been treated with a bit more respect.

I also think his point about putting up an altar so that folks didn't junk up the site was an excellent one. Granted, some of those things might blow away and become debris also. However encouraging folks to keep it all in one place makes sense.

One of the commenters talked about respectfully removing older offerings - which I feel was a healthy way of dealing with it.

Another commenter made the excellent suggestion of leaving appropriate materials (biodegradable paper and ribbon) for folks to make offerings. I think this is a brilliant idea.

All the above of course, if it's a site where many pagans come to gather and leave offerings. We don't have quite so much of that here in the States. However next time I'm involved in a large gathering I will suggest all of the above to the folks in charge.

The point about differentiating between ritual debris and offerings is a good one too. Why not just pour a few drops of wine/beer (which could actually nourish the soil) on the ground rather than leaving cans and bottles behind. As for candleholders and such, that irks me as well. A votive candle doesn't take long to burn and there's little reason the folks couldn't have removed the containers once that was done.

I generally only leave offerings of my hair, food or drink, flowers and berries or bird food.

When my groups do outdoor rituals, we are scrupulous in cleaning up the site before we leave. Nothing gets left behind and we pick up trash that others left before us if there was any.

[Jack]

After that, the local pagan group got very picky about having a copy of any ritual that a group was doing for one of the public Sabbats, and approving it before they'd let the group do the ritual.

 
Am I correct in assuming that the group that gets to approve of all local groups' rituals owns the space other people are using or something? Because otherwise I'm super impressed that your local community is that organized.

[Lionrhod]

Am I correct in assuming that the group that gets to approve of all local groups' rituals owns the space other people are using or something? Because otherwise I'm super impressed that your local community is that organized.

The group in question is/was a 501c3 organization designed as an umbrella church for all the local pagan community. It used to be the Wiccan Religious Cooperative of Central Florida, and is now the Orlando Pagan Collective.

They were legally responsible for any rituals done under their name, and so therefore had last say on the rituals.

At the time (late 90s - early 00s) they rented space for our 8 sabbats from the UU and the 10-20 or so associated covens/groups vied to put on sabbats. At the time we had some 350 local members, and as many as 600 came to Samhains.

Sadly, due to mismanagement the collective is all but dead. We are presently attempting to give it mouth to mouth.