Shrines and Altars
Last weekend, I carried six bricks, a couple handfuls of stones, and some bits of glass for over a mile. I went up a hill and then back down, along roads and finally into dense woods. Six bricks, I realized only after I'd started packing them up, are heavy. At least thirty pounds. It's fortunate that I'd just gotten a good hiking backpack. Wonderfully coincidental that I needed to try it out with a heavy load for a trip I'm taking later this month. But that's not why I carried those bricks.
I picked my way along the faint trail, and finally sat down at the place where a drainage outlet joins a thriving creek. On the bank there was a rough triangle of sticks… or there had been, until some animal or another knocked them askew. But I remembered the place, and the shape, just fine. I finally set down the pack, and started arranging the bricks. It turned out the triangle the sticks had been in wasn't quite the right shape anyway. But I found what was. Bricks were arranged, stones laid in, glass sorted and placed, all as I listened to the creek, the leaves… and the owl who for some reason called at two in the afternoon, just like they had last time I'd visited.
All the world is filled with spirits, and yet, there are certain locations where the spiritual seems more evident… and there are certain locations where we work to make them more evident. Places of power we might call them, when they're natural, and altars or shrines when they're spirit-anchors of our own construction. Being an animist, a designer, and someone deeply affected by my environment, it's probably no surprise that I think a lot about how to bring the spiritual to a location. The shrine I built at the creekside is not my first, and it won't be my last.
But what is a shrine, and what's an altar for that matter? The answers may differ from person to person, but I have a definite sense for myself. I can tell you for sure that if someone saw what I made there and called it by the latter term, I'd feel strange about it, and be compelled to correct them. For me, it ties into both the how and the why of one or the other. I have both, both are important to me, and I think it's worth exploring the question in detail.
To me, a shrine is a meeting-place. It's set up to speak to and about a particular spirit (or group of spirits). When I'm at a shrine, those spirits feel more salient, more real, more… there, and I go there first and foremost to be with them. That could mean just being in their presence, but it also means talking, or offering to them. That means it's pretty common (but not required) for a shrine to have a place for offerings. It could be a bowl, or just an area set aside to place what's being offered.
In our house, we have an ancestor shrine. It's simple: a black candle, a small bowl, and a collection of memories: photos, quotes, a piece of a tree, a small metal statue of a roadrunner. At least every week, I light the candle for the ancestors of fire, pour in the bowl for the ancestors of water, and spend some time with the objects that remind me of those who have gone before.
In our yard, we have a shrine to the Wanderers. It was a bit more complicated to make. The skull of a coyote, the antlers of a deer, the shell of an abalone, some pavers, some fancy specimens from the rock shop, and some copper wire that holds them all more-or-less in shape. As many mornings as I can, I pour some of my freshly-brewed tea into the bowl, and say a few words for my gods. If I have more time, I think about them, and reach out to them, trying to situate myself among them under the Lights, among the Ways, above the Pulse, each one represented by a part of the shrine. It centers me, even on days when I'm mostly thinking about how I just need to get on and go to work.
Near our fireplace, there's a small table. It's covered with a cloth dyed to look like fire, and it holds quite a few items. A candle and a bowl, of course, but also a flat red stone where incense burns, and a copper plate that holds fragrant wood. An elaborate decorated drinking vessel in red and orange, in which usually sits a firebird made out of Legos. It's maybe no surprise that our household and community experiences the spirit of this place as very phoenix-like. Every time we cook at home, I add some food to the bowl. Every week, I light the candle and the incense, pour some water, and think about the changes I've been through that week, seeking guidance from that phoenix and the others who gather there about what those changes mean, and what those changes need, to complete in the way they should. And every ritual, I take the cup that that phoenix has guarded, and fill it with the toasting-drink for our circle, trusting that the spirit's blessings will spread to all of us.
In a corner of my room, there's another table, absolutely covered with objects. I'm not going to name them all here. There are several more candles, and another bowl. There are animal carvings, pieces of stone, and ritual tools marking off the thirds of a circle. There's a drawer full of incense and stones and some other things I should probably clear out. There's a corner full of rocks and shells and other odds and ends taken from near and far. Every week, I light the candles, pour water into the bowl, leave some other offerings, and focus in on my spiritwork. Sometimes it involves some of those ritual tools. Sometimes I use a rock to connect to a place far from here. Sometimes I just sit there, body bathed in candlelight, mind far away. My work there begins with meetings and with offerings, but it doesn't end there.
The overloaded table in the corner of my room, and the one at our hearth, are certainly shrines, in the way I described them above, but they're more than that too. They aren't just places to meet with spirits. They hold tools, and they focus work, and that's why I call them altars. For a long time, I'd talked about the hearth-shrine, until I realized that the more I did there, the less-correct that word felt. It was that, but it had become more, with how it kept and charged our tools for ritual. And yet, without that bowl, and that intent to meet, it wouldn't mean much at all.
And as for the one in my room… well, of course that was an altar; every pagan has to have an altar… but as it grew, more and more parts of it became very shrine-like. Those odds-and-ends on one corner? A shrine to all the land spirits who mean the most to me. The candles dedicated to specific Wanderers as I worked with them? Those are theirs and theirs alone. I do work there, but more and more my work is done in cooperation with my gods and other spirits. More and more it feels like my altar is made of shrines, and each shrine could be an altar. Even as those words hold their own meanings, each one challenges me to do more with my work.
And then there's the new shrine at the creek. I've been going to that creek off and on for over a decade, foraging for salmonberries and fiddleheads, getting my paws wet in the water… and one time having a truly epic wipeout on a muddy part of the trail. When I left the creek, the other day… it was just about the same. There was a bit less litter, once my back was freed of its load to more easily pick up the cigarette butts and little wrappers that always seem to show up… That part I always do, whenever I visit. My small show of appreciation to the place. But this time, of course, I also left something behind. A piece of work, and a place of meeting. Just about a foot across, an arrangement that will need its own tending. If other people get that far down the trail, I hope they'll appreciate it, recognize something of the space in it, and hopefully honor the creek in their own way. But most of all, I hope that it becomes a place for me and the creek together to meet, and to work, a reflection of not just what the place has meant to me in the past, but what we'll continue to mean to each other into the future.