autumn colors on my altar 🎃🌼🌸💜
a corner of my altar in the sunlight 🐚🌊✨
been a little while since i tended to my altar - in grief and exhaustion i'd let it get dusty. then a surprise gift of money from my partner's dad made me remember that i still need to be present and at least give thanks for what i receive (the rose, for hermes, who always provides me with enough to keep going). just taking a little time to clean and give it attention was helpful to my state of mind. 🌹🕯
rain is coming today and i want to capture its energy in this pendant 💦💎✨
a new candle, an offering, & a prayer to hermes. i bought 2lbs of huge juicy strawberries and i’m gonna make ice cream 🍓🍧
Anonymous asked:
Hey! I'm new to magic and what not..(I always believed it was real when I was younger but grew up in a Christian household.) While I still hold beliefs in god, I've realized my sensitivity and longing for learning to work with positive energies and find help from the earth. I do consider myself a green witch. I was wondering what the function and purpose of an altar is and whether or not an altar is necessary to practice? Especially to someone who doesn't worship deities.?
thanks for this question!
for me personally: i currently consider my practice secular, and instead connect it to the way my own energy and the energies of the universe around me interact. so when i set up my own altar space i wanted it to be somewhere that would help me connect more fully to those energies.
it can be hard to put yourself in a spiritual mindset when you’re in a really mundane setting, like your bedroom, so often an altar or a shrine is simply a place to remind you of your higher/deeper context. maybe you would consider having a crucifix on your wall a similar analogue, or a nativity scene - physical, artistic (and therefore emotional) representations of spiritual symbols. a lot of what goes on my altar simply provokes a certain emotional quality, things that represent how i connect to energy in meaningful ways. and because of these layers of meaning, and the attention i direct to this space, and the time i take to sit there and meditate, i believe that it is the most charged conduit i have to connect with my own spirituality and to funnel energy into my work.
none of this is devoted to any deity or higher power, particularly. at its simplest i would say it is just an altar to myself. and i definitely don’t think there’s anyone who would tell you that an altar is mandatory to do anything at all, especially if you feel that you are energized by, called to, or enjoy connecting with the earth in other ways.
i don’t know exactly how you feel about all this, but i think it will be interesting for you to consider the relationship you have between christianity and nature, and how god informs your faith in nature, and vice versa. and maybe you will come to find some part of your beliefs that feels worth honoring with a physical space. but you are going to choose whatever feels and works right for you!