Food Offering Versus Sacrifices

For the disciples who have an altar built, you got to understand the difference between food offerings and food sacrifices. Your altar has 2 decks, the upper level is “Yang” (positive) and the bottom is “Yin” (negative). Yang outputs, Yin intake. When you put food up the altar, there is this basic mindset that you need to clarify before you decide which level to give the food to.

Food Offerings

Food offerings are given to the top deck, it’s meant to show appreciation, thankfulness, and to let the gods know what you like or want to have. You give the food with the intention of thanking but also will be taking the food down for your own consumption because the gods will bless it back with the magical powers that you need. That is why you need to give an intention and some thoughts to the food about what you are trying to express and let the gods know. You can see more details on the secret of food offerings.

Food offerings are always good to give and always good to eat, because they are like magicalized food, and it’s also a way for the gods to give you the magic power refills. Always put some small things like candies and dried goods on the altar so you can consume them daily and refill those dishes at times.

Food Sacrifice

Food sacrifice is not for you to take and consume, they are given because that’s something you want to give to the lower deck, and that’s it. You are giving it for the altar to take it fully, so you must not eat it. Everything given will be thrown away after it is done.  These will result in pumping energy into your altar and boosting your gods, but if you eat it back then it won’t work because you already want the energy to go back to your body. Read more on the sacrifice article! You can give many things that you don’t eat or want anymore – such as carrot and potato skin, vegetable scraps, chicken bones and such. 

Little tips here, you can be eating your dinner, then save up all the bones and everything you don’t eat or cannot eat, and put them into a plate, then upload them to the ground altar as a sacrifice. It might feel not so respectful in human culture to give something you ate and leftover – but the “ground” likes that. Imagine you put these into the real ground outside, it becomes a good fertilizer for the soil. You need to not think of it like it is a human-to-human gift, but more like a human to nature. Especially after you eat it, licked it, it contains your energy and that’s why it is so valuable and nutritious for the gods.

Another mind-blowing news for you – the shampoo bottles, coffee powder and capsules, plastic bags, leftover toothpaste, toilet paper rolls, and many things like that are “garbage” but they contain your energy inside too. You can set a box somewhere near or inside the ground altar and put them in as sacrifice. After you burn incense and wait for one day, take them out to trash for real. This allows the altar to absorb the energy as fertilizer and make the altar stronger too. If you don’t do that, you just throw them out, then the energies that belongs to you return to yourself, which isn’t going to help much. However, instead of getting it back yourself, you choose to give it to the altar and to the gods, to empower them. How nice!

 Ordain to learn more, and most importantly is to get the connection with the Tao and celestial court established. Interested in reading more? Read our “First Taoism Book” to understand more about Taoism!