Sharing some altar photos

Hello all.

I talked a few posts ago about my naked altar. I've been going through some photos on my little Nikon coolpix and transferring them over to the computer, and I found a couple of shots of my Old Year's Night/Samhain altar. This is essentially as crowded as my altar has ever been, though there's an item or two you may not be able to see well as they are dark items on a black altar cloth.

The pictures were taken after the ritual. The three candles are burning for the dead in offering. The black candle in the middle is a focus candle, lit during ritual. The white ones on either side are illumination candles, to keep the ritual well-lit. There's a bird's wing on the right, my witch's ladder (more on those another day) spread out in front of the black candle, and my incense burner on the left. It makes the incense smoke billow wonderfully, as you may be able to see in the second picture.

Note that my Hammer isn't in residence on my ritual altar; this ritual in particular is for my Hedgecraft and isn't related to Heathenry, so the Hammer is placed elsewhere for the ritual.

My Naked Altar

My altar is reasonably large. I like it that way... I feel like I can spread out my arms and still be "before" it, in a manner of speaking. I like having the option of space. But despite all that space, I have only five things on my altar: two illumination candles for rituals, a taper candle between them, for focus, my candle snuffer, and my Hammer. That's all.

I like that it is not cluttered. Clutter would, I think, make me feel a little claustrophobic. As it is, I feel like I can move my arm across it to light a candle without knocking anything over or needing to worry about shifting anything accidentally. Yet when I look at the altars of other people, I am genuinely surprised that they manage to get that much stuff onto them. I look at my sparse altar, and I really can't think of anything to add to it. Occasionally a stone will sit there in the middle, surrounded on all sides by vast empty space, or a necklace, or a piece of ribbon or string. Maybe a stick of incense, or a tealight candle. Anything else, and I feel almost like the focus of the altar is gone, that it's pulling in too many directions. That might be a construction issue... if the things on the altar are chosen well and properly arranged, this probably doesn't happen. I certainly look at many full altars and think they look beautiful, like lovely devotional creations to the relevant gods. That never seems to happen with mine. I even usually have trouble decorating it for the holidays.

I'm caught between feeling mildly inferior - my altar is not so pretty or so full! - and feeling overburdened by a cluttered altar. I'm not sure what to do about it. I like my altar well enough in its simplicity, but it certainly doesn't look like a devotional creation to my gods in the way that some people's altars do.

An unsolved problem - or perhaps a work in progress.

In other news, I've decided to start posting some of my "30 Days of Paganism", a meme that was going around like nine months ago that I still haven't finished yet. It will give me something to post, and it will help you, the reader, to learn more about me and the two faiths I practise.

May Your Gods Smile