How I built a small Dia de los Muertos ofrenda in Oslo (and why it felt like a moon ritual)
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I’m not Mexican, and I don’t want to pretend I inherited the ritual. But this past year, my grief has been messy, and I kept circling the same feeling: we’ve turned a lot of sacred things into lifestyle branding. Yoga mats, moon candles, “shadow work” stickers. I teach asana now, but lately I’m more interested in what happens under the breath than the pose.
When I saw posts about building a Dia de los Muertos ofrenda, I kept thinking: what if it’s not just for people who lost someone specific? What if it’s for the parts of us we stopped talking to?
So I made a small one on my kitchen table. A plate, some dried flowers, a candle, a photo of my grandmother, and a little card that said “for the version of me I’m trying to be kinder to.” I didn’t do a full altar. I didn’t have pan de muerto. I had Norwegian coffee, a few sweets, and a bowl of water. It felt humble. It felt true.
What struck me was how the act of arranging it slowed my mind down. Not in a spa-y way. In a nervous-system way. I kept placing things and then taking them back, like I was negotiating with a memory. I think that’s why Jung’s idea of the shadow lands for me so hard. We don’t just bury people. We bury versions of ourselves, especially when life gets practical. An ofrenda, to me, is a way of saying: you were here. You mattered. You can sit at the table.
Tarot has been creeping into my practice too. Not as a cute aesthetic. The Death card, for example, doesn’t scare me as much as I used to. It’s not always dramatic. Sometimes it’s just a doorway: the end of a habit, a relationship, an identity. Building the ofrenda felt like a little Death-to-Temperance arc. Grief, then care, then something steadier.
I’m still learning. I’m not claiming this is the “correct” way. If anyone from the Mexican tradition wants to correct me, I’m listening. But for me, the ofrenda became a moon ritual in its own right. A place to set down the stuff I usually carry around like it’s part of my skeleton.
If you’re thinking about making one, I’d start smaller than feels impressive. One photo. One object that smells like the person. One question you’re willing to sit with. You don’t need a marketplace aesthetic. You just need a space where the dead don’t have to perform.
(There's a deeper dive on this in our wiki: Mercury Retrograde Explained: What Actually Happens (Without the Hype) | Mystic Wiki.)
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