The name of my online shop is Devotion. And for a reason. Many of the unique and beautiful items you can find there are related to personal practice, to presence. Many would make extremely wonderful gifts for those who like to play in these realms.
I recently added several new, one-off, altar cloths to Devotion. I find them to be extremely beautiful and, alone, they can be used to set a delignated place to remember.
An altar is a place where you remember.
The etymology, the root of the word, is actually to pull yourself together. The ‘member’ relates to the members on your body. Although a man might describe his penis as a member, your arms and your legs are also your members. When you ‘remember’ you pull yourself together. A bit like an elasticated doll, you know those Victorian dolls with their legs on elastic, and you can pull the elastic tighter to have them spring back into place?
What you are remembering is the sacred aspect of yourself.
The flame on an altar is important. It represents your soul. So, generally, you would have a flame.
You would also have water. I have altars all over my house and usually have a glass vase with water and flowers. The water is there as a remembrance of the power of creativity and death and destruction. Everything growing, nature coming.
You tend, certainly in the Hindu and the other lineages I work with, to have the flowers.
On my altars, too, I usually have incense.
“The Perfume of Your Prayers”
If you light the incense you should not blow it out. The same with the candle. You should not blow that out, either. The incense, the smell, the smoke, is the perfume of your prayers. You’re ignighting your soul.
You can light the incense to worship your deity or your altar. You use incense to cleanse the space too. Both an activation and cleansing comes through the use of the incense each time, and traditionally, yes, your altar would be cleaned.
Clean it, reset it, with everything treated with a huge amount of love and respect. And then, every time that you see the altar you activate that higher part of yourself. The part of yourself that wants more. ‘I would like to…’
An altar as an offering…
On your altar you can have offerings. Let’s imagine you were pregnant, or have a grandchild on the way, you could have a picture of the scan, or the child. If you knew that someone needed your help or your care or that they were sick you could have an image of them. You can activate in that way.
You can also use other things. I use sage. Again, don’t blow it out, you can wave it to put the flame out and it will smoke. You can clear your mind, and clear your own energy field with it, but also use it as a way of cleansing.
When a burnt sage leaf is finished it is not rubbish, it is not to be put in the bin, it is a very extraordinary thing… all of the matches, all of the debris, including the ash from the incense, don’t throw it away. I have a dish, I keep all of the debris, the leaves, the ash, it gets burned outside as another offering.
Your altar doesn’t need to be or look like mine.
If you think about a quantum field being created with an activated altar, to see it, work with it, acknowledge it, each day can be an extraordinary thing.
An activated altar is a ceremonial place but it is also an energetic field where, when you start to play with them, you may realise that they are actually really powerful. It doesn’t have to be in any way religious. It could be purely about nature. It could be an offering, Altars can be an interesting way to move into the space of gratitude.
Gratitude is on my altar. When you make your own space you would likely want to be bringing gratitude in too.
If you would like to play with Gratitude…
The Prayer Workshop
A 5 part series, 2 hours each Sunday on Zoom, over the Christmas period, and I can say, whole-heartedly, that it is extra-ordinary as a journey for The Self.
It is time that prayer and gratitude take their rightful place in the architecture of personal practice as much as they do in religion and other forms of worship.
The Attitude of Gratitude
Six 90 minute classes exploring the kundalini and the attitude of gratitude. We will look at different ways to incorporate gratitude into our practice on the mat and out there in the world, as we walk towards the new year and beyond.
And if the thought of Christmas shopping leaves you feeling dull and uninspired…
Do check out Devotion, my shop, where pieces have been chosen and or designed by me and all are related to pieces that I have myself and use, often. Exquisite, is the word.
