Ritual and Practice
We all have our ways. We all practice as we see fit, and I am not going to preach to you here about what is or is not an appropriate way to celebrate any given holy day, festival, or other religious festivity. As a solitary practitioner, I do not have grand festivities, not grand processions or great conflagrations of offered meats and fruits to the Gods. Mt practice, like me, is rather low key and very personal.
In place of a procession, I have a blessing:
Starting at the altar to the virgins (the hearth altar) I light the candles in honor of the Olympian virgins and then from the hearth candle (in honor of Hestia) I light three sticks of incense that I then place into a vertical soapstone holder. This allows the smoke to exit, but not the ashes. I stand and ask the gods t bless my home, invoking them either by name or by the ritual formula "All you gods above, all you gods below, all you gods who walk upon the sacred earth" and in each room, I make the same plea, taking the incense burner with me and essentially "smudging" the room. I imagine you can use a smudging stick or bundle, but this is how I do it. Once I am done, I place the smoking holder either on an altar whose blessing I particularly seek, such as my altar to Aphrodite or to Ares, Apoll, and Hermes which share an altar in my bedroom, or I place it, if it is morning, in my east facing window in honor of Helios.
One can see how this can be seen as a kind of procession, seeing as I proceed from room to room.
In place of sacrifice, I have offerings:
I am not a rich man. I cannot offer the Gods a grand temple or a sanctuary. If I could, I would, as it is my grandest dream to one day be the keepr of a great Hellenic temple here in the USA, but I offer what I can. This has manifested itself in several altars in my home. The altar to the vigins is the central altar in my home, and it is dedicated to Hestia, Athena, and Artemis. Flowers, plants, a cast iron urn for burning incense, and a small white chest that holds things like prayer beads and lighters for lighting candles and incense.
An altar to Aphrodite, which has upon it a statue of Aphrodite and on it are several candles, both wax and oil, as well as pictures of people I love and have loved in my life.
An altar to Hera, queen of heaven in her youthful aspect, which has a statue of Hebe on it holding in her hand a bowl in which I burn cone incense as well as two oil candles and a wax candle. Behind the Hebe is a wall plaque depicting Mother Earth (Gaea) with many children.
A small altar to Persephone as Kore, holding a bird in her hands (A statue that is anonymous, as I have no idea what character in myth it is supposed t depict, if any) and I burn a wax candle there when I pray to her.
An altar to the Gods Ares, Apollo, and Hermes. Here I burn incense and candles of various types in their honor, and there are statues to each of them, the largest of which is Ares as warrior awaiting battle.
Finally, scattered throughou my home are statues of Poseidon, Aphrodite, Perspehone, and Dionysos, and while I burn incense there, they are not what i would call true altars.
These are the places where I offer incense to the Gods, but as things I have had to buy to build, they are also offerings to the Gods themselves.
My prayers are fairly simple, and I have many of them listed in my Shadow of Olympus site.