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Sacred Sites: Gift Giving
There's an art to identifying, adopting, working with, and maintaining a nature-based sacred site.
While the initial offering to begin working with a sacred site is described in the lesson, Discovering Sacred Space, it's entirely appropriate to offer gifts to the spirit world and the spirits of the site at varying intervals. You can simply follow your instincts in doing so or you can base them around significant personal, lunar, or solar holidays.
For instance, when I lived in a home owned by my ex-wife's family, we had a small orchard in back of the house. After the last of the fruit had been picked (or had fallen to the ground - it's considered proper etiquette to leave up to 25% of the crop for animals, birds, and the fae), I would take a stoneware pitcher of well water and pour some on the roots of each of the trees, wishing them a pleasant sleep. Without fail, we would have bumper crops of fruit each year, including a tree that had only produced fruit once in the twenty years previous to us arriving in the home.
One of the items that I like using is apple, either in the form of fresh fruit or as juice. I'll pour the juice out on the roots of the trees, much like I did with the well water in my previous home, or I'll cut the apple into pieces and either scatter or intentionally place the bits of fruit around the area.
Lay an apple on its side and cut it through at the "equator"...
If you lay an apple on its side and cut through the core at the apple's equator, you'll reveal the star at the center of the fruit. Around the outside of the seeds are a series of dots. If you place the fruit "star up" and cut downward with your knife, using these dots as a guide, you'll perfectly core your apple, leaving you with five pieces per half - four quarters of fruit and the core in the middle, displaying the apple's star.
...and you'll reveal the star hidden within.
Author's Note: No, that's no my athame, but it is a ritual knife that was given to me as a gift. Yes, another type of blade would have worked much better, but it was left at home with a handful of other items on this day... we Pisces types are much better at going with the flow than we are about making well thought out plans.