Thought of the Day

[haptalaon]

How - if the Commonplace book serves as a sacred site, then a bookcase (or library) must be also. I have a little Fenbookcase right next to my bed - it is small, and has mostly books with some DVDs and CDs, and not all my witchcraft works either but a curated set. So there are a couple on mountain-climbing, an anthology of British saint stories, old English riddles, a re-released 70s library album of music and spooky poetry about the seasons, and so forth. It hadn't occurred to me that, in some sense, this WAS my altar.

I have an altar in the corner of my room and it is infinitely a clutter pile - at present it hosts jewellery, medicine, old phones, a doll I'm waiting for inspiration to DIY, candles I daren't light because when they burn down I can't replace them, notebooks, and a camera for snapping the mountains and sky whenever the colour is just right. I dream of getting it tidy; it will never happen.

How much better to think of the bookcase already made and filled with things as altar. What is an altar? A place where god dwells. In some paganisms, it's a kind of work table where you put down objects you're using during a process; or a focal point, a kind of decorative feature to reflect on on; or a place to murder goats. It seems right for me that the bookcase itself is the place of power, the dwelling-place of secrets.

Comments

[goodbyebird]

*chinhands this*

The Altared Work

[goatgodschild]

Recently, I decided to move away from calling anything I have a "shrine" or an "altar". Calling a space that makes it feel...untouchable, in a way. For one thing, there's a blurring between a shrine (where the form of a deity lives) and an altar (where rituals are performed), especially since these are often joined together in pagan traditions. Ritual tools also tend to have lives of their own, so taking care of them is required, too. But this tends to jam everything together into a single space, meaning that doing anything ends up being this extremely elaborate interactive diorama -- complete with too much dust!

What I decided to do was to keep my tools and supplies separate from the statuary, referring to them as "work" rather then religious practice (i.e., calling my journal a "workbook" rather than "grimoire" or somesuch). My ceremonial magic things are in my "work basket", with my [Stellar] things in a separate container. The statues have their own shelf, where they may live tidily and peaceably, and come to be worked with when they are needed.