The elements that make life on earth possible are transformed into offerings and thus returned as gifts to their original Creator. But an offering not only consists of the fruits of the earth, but also mirrors its essential structure - decorative motifs often symbolize the various constituents of the Balinese universe.
The colors and numbers of flowers and other ingredients, for example, refer to deities who guard the cardinal directions. The requisite betel on top of every offering symbolizes the Hindu Trinity, as do the three basic colors used - red for Brahma, black or green for Wisnu, and white for Siwa.
Conical shapes, whether of offerings as a whole or of the rice used in it, are models of the cosmic mountain whose central axis links the underworld, the middle world and the upper world - symbolic of cosmic totality and the source of life on earth. Cookies of rice dough represent the contents of the world plants, animals, people, buildings or even little market scenes and gardens. Pairs of such cookies, like the sun and moon, the mountain and sea, the earth and sky, symbolize the dual ordering of the cosmos in which complementary elements cannot exist without one another. The unity of male and female, necessary for the production of new life, is in many ways represented in the composition of offerings. By recreating the universe through the art and medium of offerings, it is hoped that the continuity of life on earth will be assured.
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