Monday, January 3, 2011

Month 3, Day 3: My Pagan Altar


An altar is a focal point in lots of religions—in a Christian church, for example, or maybe you’ll remember my sad little Hindu shrine.

Paganism is no different. The pagan altar serves as the center of spiritual practice. It gives you a place to meditate, to pray, to do ritual, or to do magic (we’ll talk more about that another time). So I knew I needed an altar of my own—and, as usual, I did a pretty sorry job of setting mine up.

Below is a picture of my new pagan altar. It may not be pretty, but it’s already serving its purpose—giving me a place to go to focus on spiritual things.



Traditionally, pagan altars are made out of wood (or, at least, some type of natural material, such as stone). Since I’m away from home and have to make do with what I can find, I had to use a plastic storage tub, turned upside-down. It’s a little cheesy, I know, but it’s got a flat surface, which is really my main requirement.

On top of the altar, I’ve placed some of the standard pagan tools. Because paganism is based in nature, the altar tools generally reflect aspects of the natural world.

First off, you’ve got to have symbols for the four natural elements: earth, air, fire, and water. My earth symbol is the salt in the small bowl (the bowl itself is made—like most of my religious symbols lately—out of Play-Doh).

My air symbol is the incense—which is a pretty common symbol for air in the various branches of paganism.

My water symbol is the bowl of water (made of Play-Doh again—I just hope it doesn’t leak!).

And my fire symbol is—go ahead and take a wild guess. Obviously, it's the candles.

The candles actually serve a dual purpose on the altar. Besides representing the element of fire, the two candles also stand for the God (the orange candle on the right) and the Goddess (the white candle on the left). Although many pagans argue that the God candle should be red, I really hate the color red and I love orange, so orange it is. Paganism, remember, is all about personal choice and worshipping the Divine in your own way, so I’ll choose the colors I like, dammit!

Next to the candles, I’ve also placed small tokens to represent the God and Goddess. In an ideal world, I’d be using statues, but let’s just say that my effort to sculpt statues (out of Play-Doh) fell a bit short of my expectations, so I turned instead to the natural world.

For the Goddess, I used a simple roundish stone. The Goddess, after all, is Mother Earth, so a piece of her “body” seems like an effective representation of her.

For the God, I used an acorn I found outside while I was walking the dogs. One pagan myth we’ll talk about later mentions the Oak King battling the Holly King—two aspects of the male side of the Divine duking it out for supremacy at different times of the year. So, an acorn is a nice way to represent the God, I think.

The pentacle (a five-pointed star enclosed in a circle) on my altar is another fine example of my Play-Doh sculpting abilities. The pentacle serves as a place to make any offerings to the Deities—like food or other gifts (blood sacrifice being strictly forbidden).

The last items on the altar are the “working” tools. There’s the chalice (okay, it’s a cheap wine glass—cut me some slack) for ritual drinks, kind of like what is done in the Christian rite of Holy Communion.

Then there’s the athame (ah-thah-may)—the ritual knife. It’s supposed to be dual-edged with a black handle, but I did my best. It’s quite a nice steak knife, I must say. 

One point I should mention: The athame is never used for blood sacrifice, despite what some anti-pagan types might tell you. In fact, it’s never used to cut anything at all. It’s only used to make ritualistic gestures and to symbolically raise power and energy.

Finally, there’s the wand. Mine is an excellent dried-out branch that I found outside on the ground—again, while I was walking the dogs. (See? I’m getting out there and communing with nature, while also cleaning up dog poop. It’s a win-win all around.)

Like the athame, the wand is used for assorted ritualistic purposes, such as directing energy. I’ve got to say, I can’t wait to try it out.

So, that’s my pagan altar. It may not be fancy, but it seems to be working for me. I even managed to meditate a little after I consecrated the altar—that is, I had to do a special ritual to cleanse the area, empower the tools with positive energy, and make the altar an official sacred space.

I kind of like my sad little Rubbermaid altar. I feel more centered and more . . . I don’t know . . . magical . . . already.

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