Their preparation is the province of women, who will spend a considerable part of their waking hours at this activity. Every day offerings are laid at the family temple, to trees and statues, to the rice fields. Offerings of food for temple ceremonies take on more lavish proportions. There are Brahmana women who specialize in this art and who lend advice to other women. Offerings can take almost any form, and may well include skewered pieces of pork fat, smoked duck and other unattractive tidbits.
Many offerings are purely decorative, such as the palm-leaf pendants.
These will soon fade and eventually rot away as all with temple offerings, the work that goes into them is for the moment only, not for posterity. Animal sacrifice is still widely practiced in Bali, especially for the New Year festival of Nyepi, and for major ceremonies such as Eka Dasa Rudra art Besakih. It is considered necessary to spill blood to appease the evil spirits, and ducks, chickens, geese, and cows are recruited for this purpose, as compensation for which they are assured of an improved lot when reincarnated in their next life.