Put Your Magic Where Your Mouth Is: Offerings of Service
Updated: Jun 27, 2022
As witches, many of us provide offerings to the spirits with which we work. It’s always a joy to see my friends' offering plates, which include things like wine, cakes, ales, flowers, harvests of things they’ve grown, herbs, etc.
In my practice, offerings look a little different. With the exception of the physical offerings I leave for the kami in my Shintō practice, I don’t generally do physical offerings. Instead, my offerings are done in the form of service to the earth and humanity.
This could be in part that I’m deliberately aligned with spirits whose missions were helping—in particular several Bosatsu (bodhisattvas)—but I also feel that the act of reverent service speaks more loudly to the spirits I’m connected with, and that I’m a vessel for goodness in the world.
Ironically, I never did missions work or proselytizing back in my Christian days years and years ago (I’ve been practicing witchcraft for 25 years and this was before then). Yet the heart of missions work, minus the conversion aspect, is essentially the same as what I do: give back to the earth and humanity in the form of reverent service.
Service could be anything from donating to local food banks, cleaning up the shores of my local Great Lake, to writing to my legislators about climate legislation or human rights protections.
In honor of my Japanese heritage, two of the spirits I align myself with are Jizō Bosatsu and Kanzeon Bosatsu, both spirits focused on compassion for humanity. O-Jizō-sama (地蔵) is the guardian spirit of children, so in his honor, I sponsor two children through a sponsorship program. One is in Sri Lanka and the other in the Philippines. Kannon-sama (Kanzeon Bosatsu, 観世音) is the spirit of compassion and mercy; this spirit is the Japanese form of the Chinese Kuan Yin and the Buddhist Avalokiteshvara, to give more context to the energy and purpose. In honor of Kannon-sama, my service includes global healing meditations, holding space for others, and offering healing and compassion to others as I’m called.
There are various other spirits I work alongside in these ways, and my offering to them is generally not a physical item--though they are invited to ritual and celebrations and to partake of feasts for various festivals--but instead my service to earth and humanity.
Small changes I make in my life, such as growing my own produce, the switch to an electric car to be mindful of my carbon footprint, and the work I do for Witches Healing the Earth are all done in service and offering to these spirits with which I align.
In this way, I feel my offerings have further reaching tendrils, healing and touching others in a way that hopes to spark inspiration, gratitude, and service in and from them in their own practices and lives. In an age of separation, self-serving, and an “every man for himself” attitude, these small offerings intend to unite and foster compassion. It is through the separation which we often experience suffering, and as a salve to a wound, I hope these small acts of reverent service act as a soothing, relieving, and rejuvenating healing of the fractures that exist within our collective consciousness.
As kintsugi (金継ぎ) offers beauty in its rejoining of pieces through its art, so too do I intend my service offerings to repair fractures of humanity and compassion, little by little.
My next offering I’m working toward is to be able to donate some of my harvests from my Lettuce Grow farmstand to local families in need, in partnerships with local charitable organizations. This will require an extra farmstand or two, but I know that in the right time, I’ll be blessed with the means in which to accomplish that. In the meantime, I’ll keep acting in reverent service as offerings to the spirits with whom I am connected, and will continue to invite others to do the same.
Charlie Nichols is the founder of WHE and a staff contributor. Charlie studied Journalism & Mass Communication, Marketing, and Psychology at Madison College in Madison, Wisconsin. She has practiced witchcraft for over two decades and is a certified spiritual empowerment coach, a certified ethical psychic, and a certified crystal healer. Charlie lives on the shores of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin, USA with her partner, daughter, and animal companions.