Do Your Gods Ask You To Do Things For Them?

Reading through a lot of the posts here, it seems like quite a few folks here have God/desses that ask, or require, you to do things for them. I'm just wondering if that's prevalent and what types of things you're asked to do?

With me, Pele's more of a guide and mentor, I suppose. She helps me find my answers to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Sometimes I'll get gentle insights while meditating on a flame, sometimes She shows up in all her terrible glory to make Her point unequivocally clear. But I'm not really asked to do anything for Her, per se.

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Foreign Language Use During Ritual?

Even though I don't live in Hawai'i, I'm learning the language for my spiritual practices. I reason that by using a non-native, non-fluent language, I have to focus and concentrate more on my words and thoughts and thereby imbue them with more energy. Also, because I work alot within the Polynesian pantheon, it just makes sense and shows respect to Madame Pele. Hawai'ian is such a beautiful language and seems very mystical in itself, as words have multiple meanings as well as meanings within meanings.

I'm just wondering if anyone else uses a foreign language in your ritual work and if you find it more effective than using your native tongue.

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One Soul or Many?

Perzephone got me thinking about this in another thread, talking about where the soul resides and mentioned souls in cells.

So my question is, if our bodies are made of millions of cells and each cell has a soul, is my soul made up of many souls or is my soul separate from all those little souls? And if we follow that line upward, does a community have a soul? The whole population?

I know answers will vary depending on definition of soul, of course.

Along this same line, ants fascinate me. The ant colony is really the organism, not the individual ants--they're more like cells. So again, it's the one and the many. Do individual ants have souls or the colony?

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Cats Wreaking Destruction on My Altar

I walked into my bedroom yesterday to find that the cats had scattered the salt, broken one of my shells, and demolished my big turkey feather (which they of course spread all across my floor). Oh, and one of them was drinking the water in my other shell... despite having a full bowl in their *&#@ $40.00 fountain watering dish. ehem.

So my question is, how can I make my altar either more cat proof or more cat friendly... and indestructible. There's nowhere else to put it in my house, and there's no possible way to keep the cats out of there. (believe me, I've tried. They're very devious.)

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What are you doing this Imbolc?

I think I'll craft a candle from beeswax and do a prayer to Brighid.

What are you planning to do?

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Spirit Animals

Mine is a butterfly. I recently got a spirit animal card deck and it has given me some good guidence. My boyfriend has Native American beliefs and he found his spirit animal, an eagle, a long time ago through special meditation.

Anyone else have a spirit animal?
If so, how did you find it?

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Herbalism - Where to Start?

These past couple of years, I've been getting more and more interested in gardening, growing my own food, sustainability, all that. Last year was my first attempt at my own garden, with some successes and some abysmal failures. Point being, I have a little - even if very little - experience growing things. (one of my greatest accomplishments was starting my own tomato plants from seedlings)

I've become very interested in herbalism and herb lore. I'd love to learn how to grow my own herbs, but more importantly, I want to learn how to use herbs for health. Knowing what I want to learn is the easy part - the amount of information out there on herbs and their many uses is ridiculously extensive, and I don't want to jump in blind. I think finding this group at the start of my spiritual journey would have saved me a lot of money spent on books and resources that turned out to be unreliable, hogwash, and ultimately wastes of time. The amount of holistic healing and natural health books out there is astonishing to me, and I take things with grains of salt, not wanting to follow a red herring, and if I do, at least not very far. Also, most of the herbal encyclopedias or dictionaries I've come across, while undoubtedly useful as references, are pretty much Greek to me because I don't know where or how to start.

So my question...where to begin? I'm a book person, if anyone knows any good, reliable books regarding herbs and/or natural healing practices, I'd love to know them! Also, unlike this last summer, I will be moving into an apartment this spring, so I'll no longer have access to a nice garden plot and will be restricted to outdoor pots and window boxes.

In addition to herbs, I'm very interested in essential oils and aromatherapy. I want to burn essential oils and kind of want to try my hand at making my own oil burner, but out of what? I Googled homemade oil burners and, well, that wasn't very fruitful.

Thank you in advance for any help!

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You're WRONG!

What do those words mean to you in a religious sense? Do you ever entertain the thoughts of what you might be wrong about, and what that means to your faith? What's the worst that might happen if you're wrong?

Personally, my religion STARTS at the point of "we're all wrong about something. What IS is a lot bigger than what we can grapple with. So we're going to fall short - and that's okay".

So I'm quite sure I'm wrong about stuff. In fact, with that as a main tenet of my religion, I HAVE to be - if I'm right about everything else, I'm wrong on that!

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Questions about Sensing Energy

I was wondering about sensing energy. I've been reading up on sensing subtle energies, and practicing. I think I'm starting to get a feel for it, but It's pretty light, and my skeptical voice in the back of my head keeps trying to tell me it's all in my head.

The reason I decided to ask about it is because yesterday I did my first ever ritual; cleansing my room of negative energy. Before I cleansed it I concentrated and started moving around the room with my hands a few inches from the wall (with my eyes closed so I could concentrate better). Every once in a while I would feel a prickly sensation in my hands and open my eyes. It was always when I was at a place where there had been a bad occurrence (ex; where there was a hole punched through my wall) so I interpreted that as negative energy. Then once I thought I was touching something solid (the wall), but when I opened my eyes I was six inches away from it, so I interpreted that as a "stuck" place, or stagnant energy. After I did the ritual I went around again and it felt "soft", like more fluid.

I asked my best friend, who was in the other room, to come in before and after and tell me if he could feel anything, and afterward he said that his hands suddenly felt warm. (He doesn't believe in sensing energy).

My question was, how are different types of energy supposed to feel? Can they feel different to different people? Do you believe in the ability to sense energy, and if so how does it feel to you? If you don't, why not? Am I totally misinterpreting anything? Do you have any advice on how I could improve on this?

On a side note, what is your favorite way to cleanse stuff (sweeping, salt, smudging, etc.) and can you use more than one technique in the same ritual? (I swept, cleansed my tools with salt water, and smudged myself and my room, lol! Is that silly?)

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What's the strangest offering you've ever made?

I was putting together a candle spell, and had an urge to throw in a gel cap of ibuprofen. Thinking about it, it suited my intent, but it had never EVER occurred to me to offer up over the counter medication. What's the strangest thing you've ever had the urge to offer/put in a spell?

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