Given For You

A number of people in the broader Pagan blogging community, especially those who identify as polytheists rather than pantheists or duotheists, have been talking about "daily practice" as a discipline lately.  Most of them seem to mean something like "daily prayer and/or meditation" by this.

I'm not sure I think that's necessary.  I'm tempted to say I don't think it's historically accurate, at least in that it's generally pictured as daily private practice.  Most daily prayers, poems, and hymns in the historical Pagan eras were done quite publicly, in temples or their courtyards, in shrines, and in theaters.

What you and your deities come to an agreement on is, of course, between you and them - P. Sufenas Virius Lupus has a great post up on this.  If that means singing a daily hymn, or meditating for ten minutes every morning and every evening, then great!  But I don't think it looks much like what the gods have traditionally asked for.

It seems to me that what most historical Pagan traditions had instead was regular (not necessarily daily) sacrifice, and other similar ritual actions (such as decorating the votive statuary for a particular deity).  I personally find it more meaningful to offer libations and incense to my broad polypantheon of deities on something resembling a semi-regular basis.  While I see myself as needing improvement here, it's more of a matter of getting a better schedule together and determining what the likes and dislikes of each deity are.

None of this is meant to downplay poetry, hymnody, or prayer.  I've commented multiple times that I think we need more Pagan hymns - we have plenty of chants, and those serve many admirable purposes, but they don't replace longer-form songs, and we don't have enough.  And I'd like to see more for individual deities, more than generic Goddess-hymns, although I'd like to see those too.

Beyond that is the matter of honoring one's ancestors.  I have a hard time with this, partly because my mother-line ancestors are all hardcore Lutherans and would have the taciturn and stoic equivalent of a major hissy at the idea of being the recipient of veneration.  There are similar issues with my father-line ancestors, although the immediate past two, my paternal grandparents, are pretty much okay with it from what I can tell so far.  It's not that I don't want to - it's that I'm not entirely convinced I wouldn't be doing so against most of their wills.  So far, I've mostly been going on the "should you choose to receive these offerings" model, which has not gotten me much in the way of results one way or the other.

At least the ancestors don't need more than household shrines.  I am still awkwardly aware that most of the historical praxis for my gods assumes public shrines at a minimum, and in most cases public temples.  And I don't know if we'll ever have that again - at best, I can imagine grounds owned by Pagan organizations with places for small, permanent shrines and shared larger ritual spaces.  I suppose part of being NeoPagan is learning anew how to respect the gods as a religious minority in a larger culture.  That we tend not to be wealthy doesn't help.  And "appreciate the journey" has never been very satisfactory for me.