An altar is a work space for rituals. In Hellenismos, the Greek word for an altar is a bômós (Βωμός).
Generally, any elevated flat surface will suffice for an altar. We’ve used elaborate stone tables, or made an altar out of side tables, the top of a dresser, book shelves, coffee tables, and even an overturned milk crate with a handkerchief over it.
An altar is generally covered by an altar cloth, but that’s the only nearly universal characteristic. Almost all religions use an altar, and each has their own layout. Wiccan ancestor altars are usually oriented to the West, and Hellenic altars to chthonic deities are usually low to the ground or even dug out and recessed below ground level. There are many such details specific to a certain tradition.
At Fire Dance, our altar generally contains deity candles or images, an oil lamp, a bowl of salt, a bowl of water, a censer for incense, athame, wand, chalice, bell, anointing oil, a pitcher for libations, a plate for food offerings. Other tools vary depending on the ritual.
Altars may be used for complicated religious rituals, but also for any magical working. We maintain a working altar in our altar room which has space for any spellwork. It holds a brass plate which can be used for burning candles, incense, and most anything else. Our altar room also permanently houses an altar dedicated to the seasons, which changes after each of the Sabbats; and an altar dedicated to mushroom ceremonies and other entheogenic rituals.
A shrine is similar to an altar, and these terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but they aren’t quite the same. A shrine is dedicated to a particular deity or concept. Usually, only one deity, but may instead be dedicated to a group of deities. Shrines are used for worship and making offerings. Votive images, candles, food and libations, and so forth. An altar may be used for the same purpose as a shrine, in addition to its use for ritual and spellwork.
A shrine can take almost any form, and can be even more varied than an altar. Tables, alcoves in walls, shelves, large free standing statues. Anywhere that can house an icon of a deity or spirit and provide space to leave offerings can be a shrine.
Altars and shrines should be tended often, kept clean, and treated as the sacred spaces they are. Perishable offerings should be removed promptly, either after a ritual is concluded, or after a day or so. For food offerings, if you wouldn’t eat it, it shouldn’t be on the altar. Allowing anything on the altar to decay or deteriorate is disrespectful. I follow Hellenic tradition and clean my altars/shrines and my altar room as a whole on every dark moon, considered the last day of the lunar month, and sacred to Hekate.
There are many variations on altars and shrines, and we will include just a few examples and ideas as follows.
Ancestor Shrine
In our altar room, our ancestor shrine occupies a place of honor.
The shrine holds statues, candles, and votive images dedicated to deities of death, including Hekate, Haides, Persephone, Medusa, Santa Muerte, and The Raven Queen, who is Ris’ patron goddess.
It also contains various memento mori, or reminders of mortality, such as skulls, both real and artificial.
Most importantly, it is home to mementos of the beloved dead themselves. Photos and objects associated with departed friends and family of members of our household. A brooch that belonged to my grandmother, a necklace that was a gift from a family friend whose funeral was the first I ever attended, photos of our deceased parents, and so on.
For the purposes of most Ancestor Worship traditions, the Ancestors need not need be your relatives. There is always room for friends, as well as personal heroes. People you respect and seek wisdom from but may never have even met. In Hellenismos it’s common to include mythological heroes, who are often seen as quasi-deities in the same sense as Catholic saints.
An ancestor shrine also needs spaces for offerings to the dead and related gods. Ours has a backflow incense burner featuring a dragon skeleton, which we use to burn offerings of incense to the ancestors. We also usually keep a brass plate for burning candles, and a bowl for food offerings.
Healing Altar
In ancient Greece, temples to the god Asklepios, called Asklepions, were destinations for pilgrimages of healing. The petitioner would make offerings and pray to the god for healing and guidance, and then sleep in the temple, a practice knows as incubation.
Asklepios would offer advice to the patient through their dreams, which were then often interpreted by priests of Asklepios, to develop a treatment plan for the illness. Often, the patient would remain at the temple for some time, and treatment plans routine featured holistic well being practices of rest, recreation, healthy diet, and exercise.
Once a patient was cured, they would write how they were healed and the nature of the illness on a clay tablet, which was then kept permanently in the temple. Many such tablets have been found in archeological excavations of ancient Asklepions.
Today, active temples are hard to come by, so we must make do with home altars.
In our altar room, we have an altar dedicated to Asklepios, and his father Apollon, both gods of healing and medicine. The altar cloth is usually yellow, Apollon’s color. On the altar we have a statue of Apollon, and will soon have a statue of Asklepios, as well as candles dedicated to the gods, and a censer and a brass plate for offerings.
We light candles (preferably blue) and seek the help of the gods to heal anyone who asks us to do so. We follow up on our healing spells, and when they are successful, we will write out the nature of the illness and recovery, and place it permanently as an offering in a small brass box we were gifted which features an image of Apollon on the top.
Household Shrine
Household shrines dedicated to deities of family and protection, as well as spirits of place, are common in many religions. All places, and every home, have a spirit of the place itself. In Hellenismos, the spirit of a home is called the Agathos Daimon, and is commonly honored alongside Zeus on a household altar, which may also sometimes honor important ancestor spirits.
On our household shrine, we have statues of Hestia and Artemis, the goddess of home and hearth, and of the forests which surround our home, respectively. We have a candle holder in the form of two serpents, in honor of the Agathos Daimon.
The altar is home to an oil lamp which is a family heirloom, and a variety of crystals and symbolic objects associated with home and family and harmony. It also houses symbols associated with local spirits to whom offerings are made on this shrine. The shrine itself is a wooden electric faux fireplace, a hearth, which is central to Hestia’s domain, and considered the heart of every home. Acts of ritual and worship before the hearth were once very common.
The lower shelf at the base of this hearth is used for offerings and such things as a kadiskos.
We do our best to make offerings at the household altar daily, though we think the gods and spirits understand if we’re not always able to do so.
Memorial Shrine
Memorial shrines are extremely varied. Large scale permanent monuments such as to the victims of a war; temporary public displays of images, candles, and other artistic expressions located at sites significant to the victim of a tragic death; and little roadside crosses with the name of a traffic accident victim are all memorial shrines. These are simply any site dedicated to honoring the memory of the deceased.
Mushroom Altar
We and our partner (Borderlands Collective) have collectively over thirty years experience with use of entheogens; substances which induce altered states of consciousness used to pursue spiritual enlightenment. In particular Borderlands are experts in the subject of psilocybin mushrooms and the conducting of mushroom ceremonies.
So naturally our altar room is home to an altar dedicated to mushroom ceremonies. Mushroom cults have existed all over the world throughout history, and the altar reflects that fact, representing deities and plant spirits from multiple traditions whom we have worked with, as well as various symbols of personal meaning, and tools such as censers for incense and musical instruments for use during rituals.
Wayside Shrine
Wayside shrines, built on the side of a road, are ubiquitous across many traditions around the world, including Hellenismos, Shinto and Buddhism, Catholicism, and Mesoamerican traditions.
Typically, an icon of a deity or saint is placed within a shelter consisting of three walls and a roof. Some of these shrines are no more than the size of dollhouses, while some are large enough to kneel beneath the roof, and still others are large enough to house a life sized statue of a deity. Anyone may come to such a shrine at any time to pray and leave offerings. The shrine is usually built and tended by someone who lives nearby, as an act of devotion.
Crossroad Shrine to Hekate
Hekate is a goddess of crossroads and liminal spaces. It was once common in Greece to see shrines dedicated to the goddess at three-way crossroads. Often these shrines are built around a statue of Hekate with three bodies or three faces, one for each direction of the crossroads.
Simpler shrines may be as little as an open air shelter erected beside a crossroads.
Offerings to Hekate and the restless dead are left at this shrine, primarily on the night of the dark moon.
Seasonal Altar
Shortly after each Sabbat, we set an altar for the next one. This serves as a constant reminder of the changing of the seasons and their deep importance. We set this altar with all the tools we will be using in the upcoming Sabbat ritual, so that we have all those tools gathered well in advance and know where they are. It helps prevent us from procrastinating and putting ourselves in a position where at the last minute we realize we’re missing something we need for a public ritual.
Presently, the altar holds a basket of biodegradable faux Easter eggs, which will be used as part of the Ostara ritual, candles dedicated to Eostre and Persephone, an offering bowl, bowls for salt, water, and anointing oil, our wand and athame, a bell, a censer, a chalice, and a pitcher for libations.
Travel Altar
Travel altars are another important format. It can be challenging to maintain routines, and particularly to maintain devotional routines, while traveling. One solution to this is to prepare a travel altar, ready to take with you anywhere you go.
You will likely have to leave out a few less important tools to make a travel altar. To fit in a reasonable amount of space, they need to be stripped down to the essentials.
The image here is a travel altar made by our friend Snowy, who is a Saxon Heathen as well as a Buddhist. She includes small icons of Eostre and her hare, along with a painting of them, an iron hammer in honor of Thunor, and a statue of the Bodhisattva, Ksitigarbha. The whole thing fits inside a tin of the sort used for breath mints, which also serves as a sort of shadow box when the altar is in use.
Making a travel altar requires a little creativity. Breath mint tins are a perfect container if you need an altar that fits in your pocket, which is ideal for truly going anywhere. For a slightly larger version, I’ve seen people use a small jewelry box, or a small hand bag.
Tiny figurines are great, but if you can’t find those, other options include stones sacred to a deity, or any symbol of that deity, especially one you make yourself. Or in a pinch, little chime candles of an appropriate color. If you want a bell, the tiny sort found in cat toys will do.
A wand/athame could be a sharp stone ranging from a tiny chip to something more like an arrowhead, or a thorn from a plant, or a pocket knife you carry anyway. Boxes of cone incense often come with a tiny fireproof stand that can serve just fine as a censer, but a small dish filled with sand can also work.
Remember that there’s really no wrong way to do it. Whatever speaks to you is the way to go.
Working Altar
Our working altar is a constantly evolving collection of magical tools used for recent workings or that we expect to need in the near future. It always holds a fireproof brass plate used for burning candles and incense. This is where most of our spellwork takes place.
Presently it’s also home to numerous candles, some sealing wax and a seal we use for certain spells, a singing bowl, a cauldron, chalice, an iron wand used for necromancy, a small bouquet of black roses made of wood, and a few other magical items.
The altar also presently houses icons of Hekate, The Moirai, Tiamat, Athena, and The Morrigan.
A working altar can take whatever form you need it to. All that is required is that it be a stable surface large enough for the workings that will take place on it.
The possibilities for designs and purposes of altars and shrines are limitless, but these few examples should provide a decent understanding of the possibilities. As with all other things, work with whatever you have available to you. You do not need specific expensive tools. It’s okay to take your time acquiring tools as well. You don’t need to have everything before you set up your altar. Get started whenever you want.
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