1 Ululu, Internet 45
Aug. 15th, 2015 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaMy outdoor altar has been ransacked. The three candles were all knocked over and off of the altar, smashing one of them - the glass jars on the other two are intact. There's a smear of molten wax from the one that broke, but I think that's from it being in direct sunlight for part of the day before we found it. Both deity images (since this deity set was An and Ki, who are rarely if ever actually depicted in Sumerian art, they were printouts of a NASA Hubble image and a Mother Earth statue in a public park in Georgia) were tossed off of the altar, and one was slightly crumpled.
I have set up the two surviving candles on the folding camp table on the porch, swept up and unceremoniously disposed of the broken candle, sacrificially burned the desecrated images, and am laundering the altar bunting. I'll have to re-consecrate the altar and set out new images; under the circumstances, I might just choose a new deity set.
I don't know if this was accident/random vandalism, deliberate desecration, or the result of our neighborhood squirrels and raccoons (who I know do occasionally steal the food offerings) investigating whether the candles are edible. For the moment, I'm inclined to guess the latter, on the grounds that a deliberate desecration probably would have involved tearing up the deity images and we'd have likely heard it if a delivery person had knocked it over accidentally.
The bright side is that the offertory altarware - the cup, libation bowl, and plate - were not on the altar at the time and thus are safe. I removed them yesterday to wash them and decided to let them drip-dry instead of replacing them immediately; solid intuition on my part, there. But - uggghhh. This is so frustrating!
I have set up the two surviving candles on the folding camp table on the porch, swept up and unceremoniously disposed of the broken candle, sacrificially burned the desecrated images, and am laundering the altar bunting. I'll have to re-consecrate the altar and set out new images; under the circumstances, I might just choose a new deity set.
I don't know if this was accident/random vandalism, deliberate desecration, or the result of our neighborhood squirrels and raccoons (who I know do occasionally steal the food offerings) investigating whether the candles are edible. For the moment, I'm inclined to guess the latter, on the grounds that a deliberate desecration probably would have involved tearing up the deity images and we'd have likely heard it if a delivery person had knocked it over accidentally.
The bright side is that the offertory altarware - the cup, libation bowl, and plate - were not on the altar at the time and thus are safe. I removed them yesterday to wash them and decided to let them drip-dry instead of replacing them immediately; solid intuition on my part, there. But - uggghhh. This is so frustrating!
