By Fire and Flame

I recently reached a spot religiously where I felt like I was stuck between a bit of a rock and a hard place. The reason? The how of Religious Offerings in Irish Polytheism.

I remember a few years back, there was a kerfluffle about food and drink based Offerings and whether or not you should consume them. One camp was incredibly classist and elitist, the other almost annoyingly superior- and I certainly didn’t stay out of the discussion myself; I’m sure if I dug hard enough I could find my own contribution- but it’s irrelevant now and not worth the time it’d take.

I approach the topic once again, though, because I  wanted to begin giving offerings and building a daily practice. Irish Polytheism has some interesting rules about offerings, however, and everything I stumble across basically says the same thing,

According to the Irish Celtic section of Emerald and Black’s 'Polytheism 101: Offerings' article:

Food offered to the Déithe likely was not eaten, so you may want to avoid doing so […]  Man-made items should be destroyed (broken or otherwise rendered useless, as was done back in the day)

This sentiment’s echoed in several other places- including An Chuallacht Ghaol Naofa‘s video about Offerings on Youtube, and again on their Website in another area… Even Pagan Portals: Reconstructing Irish Polytheism states:

The items are generally broken first as a token that they belong fully to the Otherworld after being given (OhOain 1999)

In other words, once offered, the “essence” of a thing is gone. As such, the rules for Offerings in Irish Polytheism appear to be as follow:

1. You can’t eat them;
   
   
2. You can’t reclaim or reuse them;
   
   
3. You can’t move them from the spot they’re offered;
   
   
4. They should be damaged beyond human consumption or use.

Because of these rules, the most common method of giving offerings seems to be simply  leaving them outside. Or at least that’s the method I see most Irish Polytheists promoting today. Doing that, however, doesn’t sit well with me for a few reasons.

For one, there are plenty of city ordinances against leaving waste items outside. For another, leaving them inside eventually creates biohazards and attracts pests. Likewise, both would create clutter that would eventually overwhelm the space if I’m also not allowed to remove them.

I was stuck at a crossroads between wanting to build a daily practice that included offerings, and being unable to figure out how to do it safely; what do you do, and how do you approach it as a practitioner, when neither eating it nor leaving it outside (or alone at all) is an option for you?

Then a good friend of mine suggested burning them. 

While not exactly the most common method of giving offerings in Irish Polytheism today, burning offerings isn’t necessarily unheard of. In fact, the method was apparently very common; hidden in the short paragraph about Irish Offerings, again, Emerald and Black’s article states not once, but twice that:

The best way to dispose of any offering to them is to burn, bury, or sink it in a body of water. […] (^the items should be broken^) then burned, buried, or sunk.

And prior to the excerpt above, Pagan Portals states:

Offerings are usually made either into water or fire.

Ghaol Naofa‘s materials mention Fire disposal several times as well.

Unfortunately, you can’t just light a fire in any dish, throw your offerings in, and be done with it. There’s a lot more to it than that; safety, fuel, container material, and several other things are important factors to consider when deciding to burn your offerings- or anything at all, really... And so the research began.

I ran into one hell of a wall almost immediately. As it turns out, information concerning the ritualistic (and other) burning of offerings is hard to come by. Trust me… I spent hours on Google searching various search terms (over 100 in the first few hours alone), and the Pagan community- very surprisingly- had nothing.

Apparently no one’s bothered to write about the subject- or, if they have, it’s obviously not easily accessible. And to me, this lack of information’s highly disappointing for a community who regularly suggests burning as a viable method of disposing of or giving offerings. It makes no sense, and it’s almost as offensive as suggesting people leave out offerings that are clearly unsafe for wildlife and nature.

In fact… Of all the pagan specific searches, only one gave me any useful results: A single video from a Hellenic Polytheist, Elani Temperance of Baring the Aegis. And thanks mostly to Ellani’s video, I settled on Alcohol as a fuel- using this site to help me understand the basic differences between the various types of alcohols, and choose which I wanted to use.

But while hers is a great video showing the process of giving traditional Hellenic offerings via fire? It was void of technical information, and offered nothing in the way of the information I was actually searching for.

That being said: I did finally find the information I was searching for… Hours later… Buried under obscure search terms in odd corners of the internet…. In the sailing community of all places. Yes, that’s about a million light years away from where I started- and it’s absolutely ridiculous.

Regardless, through them I learned how to properly extinguish an Alcohol Fire, how to control one, the best ways to light one. MSDS sheets for Isopropyl Alcohol helped as well. The two combined gave me the following guidelines:

General alcohol fire safety:

Alcohol is highly flammable; poor your fuel into a container before lighting, and never add more fuel to burning flames once lit. Burning Alcohol creates Carbon fumes; use a well ventilated area and do not breath fumes if possible. High exposure may cause respiratory irritation, dizziness, vomiting, nausea, drowsiness, stumbling, headaches, and general Nervous System Depression. Spills or drips may create a fire hazard; clean up with a paper towel or rag, remove rag to safe place (preferably to another room), wash the spill area thoroughly with water and detergent to dilute, and allow to dry / evaporate. Store Alcohol in an air tight bottle in a well ventilated area- avoiding confined storage near heat or flames.

To extinguish isopropyl alcohol fires:

Smother- especially with a material such as Sand; apply gentle and regular spray of water to dissipate Alcohol Vapors; heavily douse at a 4:1 Water to Alcohol ratio in order to dilute alcohol to non-flammable levels; or use Alcohol Resistant Foam.

I also learned that Alcohol actually burns fairly hot– and a hot burning fuel meant I needed two things: 1. A container that was relatively heat resistant, and 2. Some sort of plate beneath it that would keep the heat from dispersing into the surface it was on… Which, of course, also needed to be heat resistant.

From there I learned about various materials and how they responded to heat, and discovered a lot about something called Thermal Shock– a process wherein an item doesn’t heat or cool equally, expanding and contracting to different levels at different points.

Thermal Shock is pretty important because if the stress on the area exceeds the material’s strength, a crack will form or the container will shatter… And unlike what Elani states in a subsequent post on her blog? Cast Iron and “Oven Safe” materials are not enough to guarantee safety, or protection against thermal shock. And I know this, because younger me had plenty of experience with thermal shock in regards to oven safe and cast iron items.

At one point I thought dumping water on a cast iron skillet I caught on fire was a great idea. Unfortunately, it was so hot that doing so cracked the skillet in half… I did it again a few years later with a Coffee Pot when I pored cold water into a hot pot in order to rinse it and it shattered too… And then there was the time I broke a hot oven safe dish when it burned me- causing me to flinch, and drop it into a sink of cold water.

There are plenty of examples of this in my life; I may not have known what caused it at the time, but suffice to say that thermal shock and I are no strangers to one another.

What makes it so dangerous when burning items? Is the risk of shattering your container creating a bigger blaze or spreading the fire. And this is especially true when you’re using a liquid fuel such as Alcohol- which not only burns hot as balls as a baseline, but also requires heavy dilution to stop its flame.

Resistance to not only heat, but thermal shock became important. Because of that, a metal container was the obvious choice; even heat safe Glass and Clay doesn’t stand up to metal in several ways- and Borosilicate Glass (the type of glass lab equipment is made out of) wasn’t an option for me.

But what type of metal was a good option to go with? Thankfully the International Molybdenum Association’s publication of results concerning the Fire Resistance of various Metals helped determine that fairly easily once I stumbled across it.

Through IMOA, I learned that industrial grade Stainless Steal has the highest heat resistance of most metals- up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit for up to three hours. Further research in other directions led me to information suggesting that it was also less susceptible to Thermal Shock and was therefore less prone to cracking; impurities could make it possible, but it was still less likely than with other metals- including Cast Iron.

The best part was that it’s not only cheap, but also easy to obtain; Stainless Steal is used in most appliances now a days, as well as in kitchen utensils and serving and cookware. Finding an adequate container would be easy and inexpensive. As a bonus, it is easy to clean and maintain as well.

With that in mind, I set out to find the perfect dish. Eventually I settled on a Vintage 1980’s Serving Bowl that included handles and a lid. It was decorated minimally with leaves- which also made it fitting concerning my path.

The only thing left is wait for it to arrive!