Where is your altar?

Do you have a personal altar? Where do you have it set up?

The altar is where we honour Deity, where we show our respect to Spirit, or where we make an appeal to Ancestors.

It can also be where we focus our intention and attention for spellcrafting.

My personal altar sits in my lounge/bedroom. It holds the tools and symbols I like to use for my religous practice and my healing work.

Household Altar

This is not, however, a working altar. Those I set up as they are needed, using whatever tools need to be used at the time. I may take bits from the household altar for these impromptu altars, or I may need nothing more than some sage or palo santo.

If I am doing deep healing work I will bless the area around me with white sage or palo santo and sit in the centre. My altar is not a physical object thing at this time, but my Sacred Garden between this world and the Otherworlds. Here I am able to do amulet readings and give and receive healing. I can also just sit and commune with those OtherWorld creatures and beings who have chosen to come share this space with me.

Like the hidden room in the Harry Potter books, this Sacred Garden has everything I need for the work I need to do at that time. Lately, this has been a warm pool with lots of squidgy mud for sinking in. Other times it may have a small pool with lots of soft grass all around, or boulders, or a waterfall, or a cave. If I am there to give or receive healing, a healing table appears. If I am there to speak with the Amulets, they are both here in real time where I am drawing them from their bag, and there in Sacred Space where I am listening to their messages.

Since I do a lot of my healing work in the client’s home, I have put together a simple portable altar that I can bring with me – within it I have battery candles (it’s not always possible or wise to have a real flame), sage and palo santa for cleansing (if I am able to light it, otherwise I have blessed water), essential oils, and other bits n bobs that I may need. The whole thing is kept in a small toolkit bought for £5 at an arts and crafts store.

What about your altar? Do you have one? Can you have one where you are, or does it need to be hidden? Does it exist in physical space, or only in your mind? Do you see it every day. or is it tucked in a corner where you hardly ever look? Is it where you do your magical, healing, or religious work, or do you have a different altar for that?

What can you tell the world about your altar?

Here are some other posts that I have written about altars.

• Where is your altar?
• Working Tools of a Modern Witch
• The Altar

 

 

Divination Isn’t Set in Stone

The Pagan Experience: Diety and the Divine

Amulets of the Goddess

The question is asked of me on occasion – Can you really see into the future using the Goddess Amulets? The answer is yes, and no.

I’ve been using the amulets for 20 years now and I have found that they can be very accurate, provided nothing in the present changes. As I am rather fond of saying:

The future isn’t set in stone, and even if it was you can always break the stone. The tricky part is knowing which stone to break.

It is my view that divinatory readings give a glimpse of what could happen, provided everything happening in the present continues along its current path. The present is constantly changing though. You take a different road into work and miss a traffic accident. Miss your regular bus and catch the next one, and discover your usual bus broke down. Some changes are dramatic, most are subtle. And, more often than not, it’s the subtle changes which can alter the course of your future.

When I do readings, whether for myself or for someone else, I am looking not so much into the future as into the present. Based upon where I am now in the present, what can I expect to come to me in future? Am I on the right track for what I want to accomplish? What is lurking within my subconscious that I need to be more aware of? Once I have this knowledge, then I can make a choice on what to do with it.

Where does this information come from?

Month-by-month amulet guidance

Being a form of divination, it could be coming to me direct from a Divine source. Or, it could be tapping into subconscious thoughts. Or maybe I am conversing with Spirit Helpers. Or, possibly a combination of all three.

When I do a reading, I lay the amulets out as a Council of Elders, each imparting its wisdom. My own thoughts are that the source for this information depends upon which amulets are drawn.

There are 3 types of amulets in the set that I use. Goddess, animal, and symbol. The Goddess amulets correspond to Divine sources, animals to Spirit Helpers, and symbols to subconscious thoughts.

Together they can give insight into a current situation, and guidance on where one needs to focus their attention.

If this comes from a Divine Source, or from Otherworld where time has no meaning then why can’t it predict the future?

Because the future is not a static thing. Each action, each decision slightly changes the present. And with each change, possible futures are altered. Don’t like what you see coming up in your future? Then change your present.

Contact me for an Amulet Reading. Between now and 20 February, I will be offering Council of Elder readings at 25% off the listed price, (£22.50).

You can read other entries for The Pagan Experience: Diety and the Divine here.