Incan Ceremony for 2013

Picture of the Day for 12/13/2012. Readers of my blog are aware that I occasionally attend classes taught by an Incan shaman. Elena held a ceremony tonight to usher in 2013. To begin, all of the attendees were asked to stand up in front of the group and give a brief overview of what our intentions are for the upcoming year. 

After that, we selected an object (i.e., flowers, fruit, nuts, crystals, seeds, corn, pine cones, etc.) from a table, held it to our third eye (i.e., forehead) and thought about our intention or wish, and then placed the object on the cloth as an offering. We repeated this process as often as wanted or needed. I'm not going to reveal my wishes/intentions here, but I will list the objects I placed on the cloth: flower petals, money, corn, apple, chocolate, amethyst crystal, foil stars/moons, walnut, berry, banana, white candle, beans, rice. I did catch one of the men looking askance at me as I held a banana up to my forehead. Don't blame him! I'm sure it looked like something out of a comedy sketch.

For my Mormon friends/family reading this blog- don't be alarmed by this ceremony. There were a ton of other Mormons at the event. It was a nice way of preparing for the new year.