🛐 Weekly Witchy CHALLENGE - All About Altars!

Activities
90

:warning: TW/Content Warning: This post mentions depression and anxiety. I won’t be discussing anything too in-depth, but I just wanted to give y’all a head’s up so that you can skip over this post if the subject will cause discomfort. :warning:

I apologize for the length of this post – I’ll condense it down a little bit by “hiding” my responses to the quesitons I was pondering :sweat_smile:

This week’s challenge didn’t go super well for me. I was hit pretty hard with my depression and anxiety symptoms, so I haven’t been able to do too much of anything. I was planning on finally getting a more permanent altar set up so that I could have a dedicated place to practice my spirituality that wasn’t the desk I use for work. Needless to say, things didn’t really go as planned, and I wasn’t able to do much in the way of setting up the altar.

On the other hand, all the extra time I’ve spent in bed keeping to myself has given me lots of time to reflect on what I want my altar to be like, and what purposes I want it to serve. I reflected on my journey on my path so far, and on what I want to achieve moving forward on my path. I brainstormed quite heavily, some of which I’ll share below. To me, my personal altar will be a very special, private place, so I haven’t yet figured out how what and how much I want to share of it.

I also wanted to thank all of you for sharing all the pictures of your beautiful altars! They’ve given me tons of inspiration and ideas for things to reflect on for my altar. :heart_eyes_cat:

Below are some of the questions I asked myself and ideas that I considered while brainstorming.

How fancy do I want my altar to be? Do I want it heavily-decorated? Or, do I want to keep it minimal?

My responses to these quesitons

  • I decided that I want my altar to be minimal. The past few years, I’ve been attempting – unsuccessfully – to work on minimizing the amount of “stuff” I have. I want to focus on the few objects that truly bring me enjoyment, both in my mundane and Magickal life.

  • I’m someone who sometimes gets caught up in focusing on “stuff” rather than the intent behind the item. Having fewer items on my altar will allow me to resonate more deeply with fewer items as opposed to having a larger quantity of less-meaningful items. For me, personally, I feel like the law of supply and demand applies here: the less of something there is, the more valuable it becomes. This isn’t to criticize having lots of beautiful crystals and statues and candles, but rather to say that at this point in my life and path, simplicity works better for me.

  • Simplicity works best for me because my mind perceives it as being more “tidy.” Sometimes, when I’m surrounded by lots of “stuff” I become a bit overwhelmed and my anxiety starts acting up. Keeping things simple will hopefully keep my anxiety levels lower, and when my symptoms do act up, it will be easier for me to maintain and keep clean because I’ll be less likely to be as overwhelmed as if there were tons of stuff that I had to dust and keep cleansed and arranged.

What items/beliefs/deities/energies/tools/aspects of my spirituality are most important to me at this time?

My responses
  • Bast
  • Hekate
  • Nature
  • Aphrodite
  • Ancestor work
  • Positivity
  • Herbs
  • Shadow work (using tarot as a tool for analysis)

What altar items will be useful in working with the energies/etc. listed above?

My responses
  • Candles
  • Tarot cards
  • Incense/oils for invoking/evoking deities/ancestors
  • Offering bowl/plate
  • Items dedicated for offerings (non-perishable, of course)
  • Book of Shadows/grimoire/Book of Mirrors (Omnibook)
  • Items that make me think of the deities/ancestors I want to work with

This post is already pretty long, so I’ll go ahead and stop here, but I just wanted to share what I’ve been working on for this challenge, even if it’s not exactly what I was originally planning on doing! :sweat_smile:

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