Designate and Consecrate the Circle: Building the Altar You Can't See
There's the altar you can touch, and there's the one you can't. The first holds my tools. The second holds me, my space, my workings, and the line of light that runs from all of it up to Divine Source. I created this ritual to build that second altar, and I build it every time.
Building the Ceremonial Altar: Tools, Space, and Intention
A candle is wax and wick until intention is placed behind lighting it. A stone is mineral until it's been chosen, deliberately, to represent something specific to you in that particular working.
Building Altars
When creating your Sacred Space, you get to define what is sacred and you get to define what is Space.
Junk Magic
What do you wish to achieve? When you know this first, you work with the magic and elements available to you rather than trying to create some interesting mystical tableau of artifacts and rituals and clouds of smoke.
Begin your magical workings with an intention. It can be really, super specific like “I want to overcome my addictions” or “I’d like to honor this ancestor who recently passed” or “I’d really like to be in a nicer and more comfortable home within a year.” Or it can be general: “I’d like to raise this community”, “I wish to be more grounded” or “I want to generate abundance.”
Sacred Space
The first rule of creating sacred space is that you get to define what is sacred and what is space. You’ll find lots of books and articles and Instagram posts about beautiful decorated altars, and amethyst bowls for bathing, and elaborate candle patterns, and exactly what kind of silk you should cover your altar, and what kind of cushion you should sit on for yoga or meditation.
Don’t waste your money on those books. It’s fine to seek out ideas and images, to inspire you, but ultimately you get to decide what your sacred space will look like.
But first, I want you to decide what you want it to feel like.