Build An Altar
This Slow Ritual Helps Celebrate a Season, Your Ancestors, Holidays, a Passage, a Loved one
Your Spirit
Halloween Altar Ancestors Included
How to set up one in link above
It's almost Halloween and one of my friends is a Wiccan, a friendly earthy witch where nature informs her and altars are a creative and essential part of her ritualistic life. This Samhain Altar is about the end of the harvest and calling in the spirit world. The veil is very thin this time of year between the living and the other side. As you can see, her altars are very well done. She's sort of like a Martha Stewart of the occult. If you have been to Mexico and like Day Of The Dead Folk art, her altars are a feast for the eyes. I tend to find high level passionate people in nature based places where I travel because I like to be in the woods or cavort with unconventional wisdom and learn new things. This witchy friend of mine is a wildly successful producer for a few major technology companies, but she has a creative side and I am inspired by her connection to ritual and the grounded precision of her real world work. It's nice to mix and match your identity with a little mysticism however you want to express it. So forget about what you think an altar is and experiment with found objects and pictures or heirlooms from and of your ancestors. Find a spot in your house that would make a great altar. This is the time of year to start playing and slow down with your mystical self as the days get shorter and the nights linger.
My Improvised Altar Celebrating A Birthday
Honoring My Ancestors
I have a good eye but I am not bound by tradition or any particular sect. I like beauty and meaning, a well placed photo, candle, flower, rock, shell, jewel, box, poem, leaf, it's all good. I like relics of holidays and creating special places in my home to mark the years, seasons, and sometimes my grief. When I lost my father, I created an altar and in the Jewish tradition lit a Kaddish candle and built a story around the light with photos and relics. Altars are a great way to express what can't be expressed in words or cards. They are symbolic representations of your personal and spiritual archeology. I had a big birthday last year and my enchanting friend encouraged me to build an altar and put up pictures of my ancestors. We had a little ceremony and I lit candles and discussed how each ancestor influenced parts of who I am. I have one living parent and knew my grandparents. I'm no altar building artist but what unfolds for me during holidays is always a creative patchwork of something eventually magical and always improvised.
Honoring the snowflake My winter solstice Altar
A Design Altar With Specific
shells and feathers in New Mexico
How To Create an Altar of Purpose
The Witch Of Forest Grove (Altar related Pacific Northwest site with good forage, photos and festive)
Mexican Home Altars Cultural Riches
